Prairie Weather

It's the media, stupid

This is just another example of the rule of the megaphone in our politics.  If there's a government shutdown, Democrats will take the blame.

Twenty-nine percent of likely voters would blame Democrats for a government shutdown, compared to 23 percent who would hold Republicans responsible, according to a new poll conducted for The Hill.

Just about how bad it is can be gauged by this comment (though, admittedly, Hill's commenters are among the most info-challenged!):

I doubt Obama will run in 2012. He may have a hard time meeting ballot requirements in several states.

Fashion debacle

Lately -- maybe the past decade -- the duds women wear  to the Oscar ceremonies have been uniformly awful.  They range from wholly unwearable to got-it-at-the-Dollar-Store even though they come from some of the "best" designers. 

This year only one dress passes muster and it is, damn it, a knock-out!  Instead of looking like a 1950's doll-baby, a Barbie to the Great American Ken, it is a woman's dress.  It liberates the body rather than deftly hiding or coyly "enhancing" a woman who's cringeing inside. Instead of being a teenager's dream plastered on a woman's body, this one says "woman" with a capital "W."

Can you find it?

Support deficit hawks and "lose the future"

You can always tell who or what's going to get screwed by Republicans.  It's the person or group they most fondly embrace with their rhetoric.  Right now families and children are getting it right up the old wazoo.

Paul Krugman uses Texas as the extreme example, but the gleeful neglect reaches well beyond Texas.

...When advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear. ...

...While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

And things, Krugman assures us, "are about to get much worse."

The next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

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This morning in Texas, in a very rural part of the Texas panhandle, Krugman's nightmare scenario appears in harsh, high plains daylight.

Cuts proposed to state Medicaid funding could mean reduced access to medical care throughout rural areas in Texas, according to doctors and rural hospital advocates.

Dr. Mike Henderson of Childress told the Austin American-Statesman that cuts could close the obstetrical unit at Childress Regional Medical Center, the only hospital within 100 miles of Childress that delivers babies.

Republican Rep. John Zerwas, an anesthesiologist from suburban Houston, understands the dilemma and said the state's Medicaid rates are "woefully inadequate."

Henderson's son, John Henderson, is the Childress hospital's chief executive. He said 70 percent of the infants delivered there are Medicaid cases, and the hospital loses about $1,000 on each. Year to year, the hospital loses from $200,000 to $300,000 just on Medicaid births, he said.

"Anything that reduces payments to rural hospitals because of their narrow margins could jeopardize their ability to stay open," said Don McBeath of the Texas Organization for Rural and Community Hospitals. ...Houston Chronicle

Two imperial powers are completely irrelevant in the growing "revolution"

Their absence may be  key to our future as a people, if not a nation.  And there's a delicious irony that Al Qaeda and the reigning powers in the US find themselves in the same boat.

For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.

In fact, the motley opposition movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers.

So for Al Qaeda — and perhaps no less for the American policies that have been built around the threat it poses — the democratic revolutions that have gripped the world’s attention present a crossroads. Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance? ...NYT

We don't own democracy.  So America has no claim to being a role model for demonstrators -- except perhaps for the protesters in our own Wisconsin where those who remember democracy would like to bring it back, wrest it from the grip of our own internal AQ.  The real Al Qaeda defeated us long ago, not by any sweeping takeover but by hastening our implosion. All that's left is the belief that we helped the people of the Middle East reach for self-determination.   Maybe, in spite of ourselves and our dependence on their resources, we did.

The truth about government vs. private industry pay and benefits -- or how Republicans are lying through their teeth

Public-sector workers’ compensation is neither the cause, nor can it be the solution to  a state’s financial problems. Only an economic recovery can begin to plug the hole in  the states’ budgets. Unfortunately, the states’ own current budget balancing efforts  may prolong the economic downturn by increasing unemployment and reducing  demand for products and services. Thousands of state and local public employees will  lose their jobs, and their families will experience considerable pain and disruption.  Others will have their wages frozen and benefits cut. Not because they did not do their jobs, or their services are no longer needed, nor because they are overpaid. They too will join the list of millions of hard working innocent victims of a financial system run amuck. They do not deserve bullying or our ridicule and condemnation by elected officials and the media looking for scapegoats.

Finally, the study I've been looking for -- thanks to Paul Krugman who points to a recent (9/10) "debunking [of] the myth of the overcompensated public employee," an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, 14 pages in pdf.  What I looked for, and found, is a series of comparisons by education, training, gender, job, form of pay and benefits, and more.  What the EPI found (above) isn't too surprising.

Here are a coupleof the findings.

Comparisons controlling for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability, reveal no significant overpayment but a slight undercompensation of public employees when compared to private employee compensation costs on a per hour basis. On average, full-time state and local employees are undercompensated by 3.7%, in comparison to otherwise similar private-sector workers. The public employee compensation penalty is smaller for local government employees (1.8%) than state government workers (7.6%).

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On average, state and local public-sector workforce; 54% of full-time state and local public sector workers hold at least a four year college degree compared to 35% of full-time private-sector workers. State and local governments pay college-educated labor on average 25% less than private employers. ... The compensation of workers with a high school education is higher for state or local government employees, when compared to similarly educated workers in the private sector.

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Public employers contribute on average 34.1% of employee compensation expenses to benefits, whereas private employers devote between 26.1% and 33.1% of compensation to benefits, depending on the employer’s  size. Public employers provide better health insurance and pension benefits. Health insurance accounts for 6.3% to 8.3% of private-sector compensation but 11.2% of state and local government employee compensation. Retirement benefits also account for a substantially greater share of public employee compensation, 8.1% compared with 2.8% to 4.8% in the private sector. Most public employees also continue to participate in defined benefit plans managed by the state, while most private sector employers have switched to defined-contribution plans, particularly 401(k) plans.  On the other hand, public employees receive considerably less supplemental pay and vacation time, and public employers contribute significantly less to legally mandated benefits.

So, what else is Scott Walker doing to Wisconsin?

We're focused on his efforts to eliminate collective bargaining.  But that's not all he's got in the 144-page legislative proposals, according to Think Progress.

For a start, there's the Medicaid deal.  If the governor doesn't completely eliminate Wisconsin's Medicaid program, he has given it a jail cell with a view of the scaffold.   The bill includes "a little-known provision that would put complete control of the state’s Medicaid program, known as BadgerCare, in the hands of the state’s ultra-conservative Health and Human Services Secretary Dennis Smith. Smith would have the authority to 'to override state Medicaid laws as [he] sees fit and institute sweeping changes' including reducing benefits and limiting eligibility."

Then there's a knife to the heart of environmental reforms and a nice gift to coal companies by putting all state power plants up for sale, in a no-bid privatization effort.  He would also like to ban wind power from Wisconsin.

In late January, Walker introduced a bill that would ban wind-powered energy from Wisconsin and exacerbate the state’s dependence on out-of-state coal. If passed, it’s estimated that the law would immediately eliminate $1.8 billion in new wind power investments and jeopardize eleven currently proposed wind projects. After a public outcry earlier this month, Walker’s bill is (for now) dead.

How about this one, water drinkers?  The governor would "repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water."  One way or another, Mr. Walker is determined to weed out the weak from the population: first by supplying them with dirty water and then limiting medical care.

No more wetland preservation.  After all, wetlands are another source of clean water.

In a rash fiscal move, he wants to institute the same procedures in the Wisconsin legislature that brought California to its knees and demolished its governor.  This week he signed the bill that will require "a 2/3 supermajority in the legislature to pass any tax increase."

Thanks to Walker, Wisconsin is on its way to effectively disenfranchise many voters with a new photo-ID bill.

He's killed 130,000 jobs by killing a federally funded rail system.

He's changed the status of state employees by converting "thirty-seven state employees from civil servants to political appointees — consolidating his power over state government and expanding his power to 'hire, fire and move key employees to carry out his agenda'.”

And finally, the governor has given himself "complete power to draft agency rules which the legislature must then either approve or reject" by taking over "the power to write rules for formerly independent state agencies like the state Departments of Justice and Education — and most ominously the Government Accountability Board, the state’s ethics watchdog."