What John Kerry Needs to Read if He Thinks He’ll Ever Run for President Again
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Read the whole thing, but do not drink liquids or be in a place where laughing so hard you cry is unaccepteable.
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25 Least Influential People
Sangamon State Grad Ward Churchill clocks in at #20. Leading ArchPundit to ask yet again, who the fuck is this guy and why the fuck is the conservative blogosphere bitching about such a loser?
In at #18 is Pat Sajack with no known Illinois ties, but raises the question of if a dork farts on his own web site–does he make any noise if no one is listening?
At #12 is departed Trib Columnist and emotional schlockmeister Bob Greene. Word is he is trying to get a gig as a college professor ensuring a steady supply of young women to hit on–and be rejected by as he ages.
At #9–Alan Keyes beats out fellow primaryist Steve Forbes. After all, Keyes was in Florida for the Schiavo fiasco, while Forbes was on The Apprentice looking dorky as ever.
The Wisdom of Nugent
Apparently he’s for Enron accounting in increasing the roles of the NRA
Speaking at the NRA’s annual convention Saturday, Nugent said each NRA member should try to enroll 10 new members over the next year and associate only with other members.
Effing brilliant.
Lance Is Retiring
After his attempt for a 7th Consecutive Win at the Tour de France.
Pretty good for a guy who is supposed to be dead.
I had a professor in grad school who used to hold annual, “I’m not Dead Yet” parties. He and Lance were kindred spirits.
In other news, a decision on Tyler Hamilton’s doping trial is scheduled for today. It doesn’t look good for Hamilton, though here is his defense
House of DeLay
Frankly, the entire web is so confusing, most people confuse what DeLay scandal one is talking about. To solve that problem, the DCCC put together a fantastic primer, Tom DeLay’s House of Scandal will keep you up to date on why close DeLay associate Jack Abramoff appears ready to talk.
A description of the effort to keep him around is available at the New Yorker.
Cross Attacks Dunn’s Plan to Send Money to the Formula
Tom Cross attacks Dunn’s position to send more money into the formula instead of into categorical assistance. Why? Because that is where suburban districts get most of their cash. Using the example of Palatine that I’ve been using for some time due to comments about the District–Palatine gets about 3% of its funding from the state under the general formula. It gets over 8% of its funding from categorical assistance which John Patterson’s article does a good job describing.
It’s hard to fault Cross for representing the concerns of relatively well off suburban districts, but frankly, the greatest need is in inner ring suburbs and rural areas where an increase in funding of the formula would help the most.
Over time categorical aid has become more significant for two reasons. First, and most legitimately, schools do a lot more than they used to including more special ed, more transportation and more special needs requirements mandated by the feds and state government. Second, relatively well off districts know they won’t get a ton from the general formula, have pushed state reps to put increases in categorical aid instead of the general fund formula.
Patterson’s article is good at pointing out the basic issues and much better than most school funding articles. Kudos for a good job.
A stain on the House
I personally want Tom DeLay around for the midterms, but it’s not looking good when the Republican Trib calls on him to step down and takes a shot at Denny for letting him stick around (of course, Denny doesn’t ‘let’ DeLay do anything–DeLay ‘lets’ Denny be Speaker since DeLay doesn’t have the votes.
But Republican leaders have to go beyond that. They can’t continue to aid the efforts by DeLay to dodge responsibility. The worst example is this: After the Ethics Committee rebuked DeLay for the third time, the GOP leadership neutered the Ethics Committee. The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Joel Hefley, was removed from his post over his objections, and the committee rules were changed so either party could block an investigation of a House member.
Republicans can argue that the committee chairmanship was due to rotate. But the rules change to block investigations was an incredibly blind and arrogant tactic. Don’t blame DeLay for that one. Blame House Speaker Dennis Hastert for letting it happen.
Hastert may be calculating that his friend DeLay can survive this ethics mess without doing too much damage to his party before the 2006 midterm elections. But the decision to stop the Ethics Committee from effectively doing its business stains the entire GOP leadership.
A Gallup poll released last week said only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job, while 54 percent disapprove. Mr. Speaker?
Republicans have enjoyed a good, decade-long run in control of the House. Maybe so good they’ve forgotten that they took power in large part because voters were fed up with the arrogant, ethically questionable practices of Washington. It would be ironic if the GOP lost power for the same reason.
20 Years of Talking–Solution–Keep Talking!
So what happens when you do that? You leave two unsustainable districts into one–and districts that are doing fine never have to accept consolidating Districts–leaving the pool small for those that do consolidate.
That doesn’t solve anything, it just prolongs the problem.
Does the Trib Editorial Board Know Much About Education Finance?
The gist isn’t that bad, but it’s written very sloppily:
Remember that each district usually comes with a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, a principal and an assistant principal. And that’s just for starters. Some of those administrators are making big salaries–up to $300,000 a year–and working up similarly astounding pensions. Now consider that almost half of those 881 districts have fewer than 150 students. It’s no wonder voters start acting grumpy at the prospect of a tax increase.
The problem is that those small districts don’t pay people anywhere near $300,000. Strictly, the editorial doesn’t say that, but the implication for the average person who is poorly informed is there. The point that there are too many districts is a good and important point–in fact, there are too many in Missouri as well. The problem is that the smallest districts are generally some of the lowest paid at both the administrative and the teacher level.
The bizarre part is portion about the amount of money spent outside the classroom. Let’s look at the salary structure that often gets mentioned in comments here and at Capitol Fax–Palatine over at the Family Taxpayer Network’s database of school salaries.
The Trib offers up a rebuke of those high salaries and suggests a solution of having 65% of the operation budget going towards the classroom anc claim that 59% currently goes there, but if Palatine is truly the measure of high salaries and waste, one ought to be careful.
Of the highest paid employees, 54.8% of the salary goes to teachers–an in classroom expense. Another 9.3% goes to direct support such as librarians, speech pathologists and guidance counselors. This doesn’t include social workers.
Another 18.5% of the high salary group salaries went to principals and 16.5% went to administration.
High salaries are heavily weighted towards administrators so to me I doubt Palatine would have any problem meeting the requirement as is. Salaries make-up about 3/4 or so of most District’s budgets and outside of places like Chicago that have special needs administratively, that’s mainly teaching and direct support salaries. It’s likely that overall, administrative salaries are a much lower overall percentage of salary costs.
What does this mean? The Arizona idea would probably hit the wrong group of schools. Because districts rich in property can affort to pay high teacher salaries, they’d be virtually unaffected by such a system. Who would be affected are relatively small districts that have to fill a minimum number of administrative posts simply to operate.
From a quick glance, the idea hits exactly the Districts one doesn’t want to hurt–small rural districts that have tremendous financial strains.
Ultimately, funding in Districts like Palatine should be local issues where local communities decide how to tax themselves. Whether they pay people too much can be decided at the local ballot box where people can decide what level of taxation they can afford and what level of school funding they like. They should receive a basic hold harmless amount from the state and then be on their own.
The point of school finance reform should be to create a basic minimum by which smaller rural districts and inner ring suburban schools (or ones with such features) get a basic floor at which they can fund their district without killing local property holders. And the Trib gets half of it right in saying there are simply too many Districts in Illinios. The state needs to force consolidation. But the 65% mark won’t help the basic problem–it actually has the possibilty of limiting essential needs required to plan and implement curriculum reform in smaller districts.
It isn’t entirely clear whether Illinois has an overall finance problem, but it certainly has a problem of disparity between Districts. How one solves that problem then determines whether Illinois needs to greatly increase funding or not. The recent ISBE report, as I understand the recommendations from news summaries, is more about improving the worst off while not touching the funding of the best off–that isn’t the only possible solution and many solutions might involve less of an overall increase at the state level and simply changing the prioritization of state funding.
DeLay’s Deflation
Lynn Sweet discusses his current problems and how they are unlikely to result in him ever making Speaker. I think this was highly unlikely even before for the simple reason he is the kind of guy who is unlikely to get a unanimous vote in his own caucus. Unless the Republicans had a fairly large majority, there is a faction of Republicans who would have never voted for him including those who defected from reelection of Newt Gingrich in his last election as Speaker. Jim Leach and Chris Shays stick out as two examples who never would have tolerated the guy as Speaker.
The more interesting question to me is what happens to Hastert if and when DeLay gets taken down. Hastert won’t directly be challenged within the Republican caucus, but without a strong partisan in support of him as DeLay has been his effectiveness would be decreased. Unless DeLay’s replacement was as effective positioning for Hastert’s position would become the Caucus sport.
Whether Hastert wants to put up with that is an open question to me because part of the reason the Republican Caucus has been so effective in the House is that there was one power structure that essentially restrained any effort to come up with competing solutions from competing factions. Everything is cleared through leadership and there is no gain from going outside because you lose leverage within the Caucus. Without enforcement of that, the process breaks wide open. A breach causes even more problems for governance because the way a majority traditionally overcomes such factious politics is by spreading pork around. While the drunken sailors are having fun now, there’s going to be less and less money to throw around as pork as the budget stands now. No one would want to end their reign under such annoying conditions. It’s entirely possible that if DeLay is removed, but Majority Whip Blunt moves up one, the apparatus could stay in place and that would lessen the problems inherent in the job, though in the long run, ambition will win out.
Even more fun, is Gingrich pointing out that the stalling and combative strategy DeLay has developed is a bad way to handle the situation. The reason I’m convinced DeLay is toast has to do with two factors. First, the drip, drip, drip just attracts the press to further scrutinize the guy and he’s played fast and loose enough over the years that eventually something is going to stick. Second, his tactics have been to be more boisterous and to raise his profile.
The second is the fatal mistake–he’s fine as long as he’s out of the limelight, but his style and his politics is well out of the mainstream and he creates a great target to hit every Republican in a moderately competitive district. By publicly leading on the Schiavo fiasco and now publicly defending himself, he becomes the target and the debate which is exactly what the Democrats want.
The only thing I think Sweet gets wrong is that DeLay is a realist–a realist wouldn’t be heightening his profile. DeLay thinks he’s on a crusade and he believes he is an essential part of it. He’s not going willingly. He may resign, but it will because his whip organization comes back with a number that says he loses a vote as Majority Leader. .