Glenn Grothman: agent of the Chinese Communists.

Hi everyone,

I'm only half kidding about Glenn being an agent for the Chinese.

I'm just back from another excursion to the People's Republic of China where they happily spend the money to insure their kids learn English and Calculus by the time they leave high school and where, using this educational infrastructure, they're looking forward to a future in which the US will become the new France -- or maybe Belgium.

In the meantime, Glenn keeps frantically slashing away at our educational system as if this were a good thing.

What do you call a business that stops investing in R&D?

Easy pickin's.

Maybe Glenn hopes to turn over the US for a profit. I wonder if we'll be able to buy stock options before the sale...

Anyway, in the meantime, I note he's conducting mock interviews with himself again pretending to be outraged on behalf of the "tax payers" -- the very people whose economic throat he's slitting.

Maybe irony will be enough to sustain us, even after China gets the rest of our jobs. With Glenn's help, they won't even have to try. We're doing it for them.

More on this as the jetlag settles.

hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman attacks Wisconsin values.

Hi everyone,

Glenn Grothman finally shows his hand. I wrote him last week but, so far, no explanation. I think he must be embarrassed.


Last week in his "From the Hill" editorial in the West Bend Express News Glenn said two things that floored me.

He said the university was the enemy of middle class values and, then


he claimed that the UW Board of Regents is raising tuition in order to squeeze out middle class Wisconsinites.

The technical term for the style of argument in Glenn's claim is called "Three Card Monty" or, more popularly, the Shell Game [btw, if you click on the Shell Game link there's a picture of Glenn with his hair done up in corn rows taking money away from some kid.]

Okay, by the numbers:

1. Is the university an enemy of middle-class values? Uh, no.

For most people, (me and Glenn included!) the university is how Americans get into the middle class in the first place. If the university were opposed to middle class values, it wouldn't produce middle class people.

From Glenn's point of view, then, I must be an enemy of middle class values -- but if that were true, then how come I spend every day helping people acquire the skills they need to move into salaried, professional, and traditionally middle class positions? (These people are mostly from farm and blue collar families -- and refugees from once good jobs now sent overseas by the same economic system to which Glenn pledges his allegiance.)

Glenn even ignores the hard facts -- the dollars involved. Economically speaking, the university is a major engine for development in the state of Wisconsin and thus, one of the major contributors to the economics that make our middle class lives possible. The UW trains the people who run our economy. Remove the university and everyone in Wisconsin would end up working for people from other states -- or, these days, other countries.

Want to know what makes this worse? Glenn knows all of this.


Which leads us to the heart stopper --


2. Do the UW Regents keep raising tuition because they too hate middle class values?


No. Senator Grothman himself is the reason the Regents are forced to raise tuition.

The vaporous sloganeering in Glenn's article is hypocritical in ways I can barely describe.


Here's how it works. Keep your eye on the ball.

The Regents raise tuition because the Legislature cuts the UW budget and the money has to come from some place. It isn't going to our salaries (we're among the lowest paid faculty in the country) and it isn't going into slick new offices (the computer in my office is 5 years old, and it works just fine). There isn't enough waste in the system to make up the difference (the UW administration is famously -- and I hate saying anything nice about administrations -- one of the most efficient and least wasteful university administrations in the entire US).

So the money has to come from increases in tuition.

And again, Glenn knows all of this, too.

Oh, but wait... there's more.

The hypocrisy goes even deeper (I've dealt with this before): when Glenn was in college the taxpayers subsidized nearly 75% of his tuition. This was a good deal for the students, but also for the state's economic profile. But Glenn has undone this economic dynamo. After the last 10 years of budget cuts, compliments of Mr. Grothman, the taxpayer now subsidizes only 25% of our students' tuition and now Wisconsin produces fewer Bachelor's degrees than Mississippi.

I guess Glenn didn't mind having the taxpayer subsidize his education, but the kids in school today?... or the adults who have had to go back to college in order to compete in the new, globalized, economy?

Nope. Glenn's votes say "screw 'em."

Glenn's votes demonstrate he doesn't believe todays taxpayers should have the same level of access to the university he did.

Were you able to follow the ball on that one?

Let's review: 1) Glenn claimed the major route to a middle class life (the university) is opposed to the middle class.

[the theme from Dragnet plays]

Dumb da dumb dumb.

And 2) he blames the university for raising tuition when it's really his fault, and the fault of his fellow travelers in the legislature who continually vote to limit access to the university system and, thus, to the middle class life every American deserves.

Dumb da dumb dumb dummmmmmb.

Glenn himself, through his voting record, has limited the ability of hard working, economically threatened Wisconsinites to attend the University of Wisconsin. First he votes to cut the UW budget, which tightens access to moving into the middle class and then, in order to duck the blame himself, he blames the university.


This isn't rocket science: the real enemy of the middle class in Wisconsin is a state senator who votes, every single time, to keep Wisconsin residents out of the middle class.

Did Glenn think his tax cuts would be free? Didn't his dad tell him TANSTAAFL !

Glenn is taking away more than a free lunch, however. He's taking away the economic future of this state. He's taking away your children's future.

...in Wisconsin, at any rate. They can always move to Chicago or Minneapolis.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong for denying workers' civil rights.

Hi folks,

In the wake of our meager pay raises, Glenn has weighed in on the pro-American right to unionize. Senator Hansen and Rep Richards sponsored a bill to authorize UW faculty to unionize, something currently forbidden -- yes, really -- under state law.

The Badger Herald reports:

by Cara Harshman

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

[...]

According to Hansen, 29 other states give university employees the right to form a union. UW, the University of Indiana and Northwestern University are the only Big Ten schools that do not let professors unionize.

However, in Wisconsin, he added technical college faculty and staff are allowed to collectively bargain and unionize.

With experience in teaching and union contracting, Hansen said, “forming a union is a universal human right. It is part of a democratic society.”

But Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said the proposed bill is “a horrible idea.”

“I might be missing something, but I cannot find one first-class university that unionizes its faculty,” Grothman said. “It is a quick route to making UW-Madison a second-rate university.”

But Richards hopes recruiting and retaining top quality teachers will be an outcome of the proposed bill.

“We are competing with universities around the country and around the world,” Richards said. “We lose people when we don’t treat them right. We can at least give [UW employees] the option to unionize.”

I'd note in passing, as I have before, that technical school faculty salaries run 20-30 thousand dollars more a year than ours. Now, it could be that property tax payers simply believe that machine shop is worth $30,000 more a year than engineering or molecular biology, or it could be that our hard working colleagues at the tech schools have better representation in wage negotiations.

-- oh, wait... that's right. We don't have representation -- or negotiations -- when it comes to wages.

But, as usual, if you look for more than a moment or two you'll find a foot in Glenn's mouth. Sometimes two.

He puffs himself up over the UW-System being "a first-class university" when he is personally responsible for slashing its funding, eviscerating health care benefits for its staff, and cuts in funding to make sure that todays students pick up 75% of their tuition costs when, back in the day, he only had to pick up 25% of his.

Good deal for Glenn. A lousy deal for Wisconsin and the rights of its citizens.


hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: wrong for not investing in the future of Wisconsin.

Hi folks,

In the "there he goes again" category:

On Thursday AUGUST 16, 2007 the Chipppewa Herald reported that Glenn once again found himself in the minority on the position of university tuition.


From the Chippewa Herald online

Wisconsin lawmakers approve tuition reciprocity deal

By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. - A tuition reciprocity deal between Minnesota and Wisconsin won approval Thursday from Wisconsin's budget-writing committee, sealing the deal that had been worked out between the two states.
...

The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee approved the deal 15-1, with Republican Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend voting against it. He expressed concern that the deal encourages Wisconsin students to choose Minnesota schools over ones in their home state because there's no higher cost to go there.

I'm surprised Glenn worries about students leaving Wisconsin. Every time he's voted on a budget, he's increased the cost of education for Wisconsin residents.

Glenn had it a lot easier when he was at Madison.

As recently as 15 years ago, the state invested nearly 75% of the tuition costs for each student attending the UW -- but during the last 15 years, the state legislature blindly cut the state's share to about 25%.

The people of Wisconsin covered 75% of Glenn's tuition back in the 70's. He paid about 25%.

For students today, it's the other way around -- they now pay 75% of the cost and precisely because legislators like Glenn believe education is not a good investment of our tax dollars.

You don't improve economy by making it harder for people to go to college.


hiho
Mpeterson