Glenn Grothman: why stop at cutting taxes?

Hi everyone,

Recently:

From The Badger Herald - Certain jobs hard to fill, report says

In Wisconsin, Senate Democrats tried to pass a measure that would add $5 million to expand a program last session that helps residents acquire skills from technical schools.

[...]

Opponents of the bill, such as Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, said Wisconsin does need more people with technical skills but disagrees with increasing taxes on businesses.

“They call it the ‘Las Vegas loophole,’ but you would be chasing jobs out of Wisconsin,” Grothman said. “I don’t think raising taxes on business is good way to help businesses in Wisconsin.”

Glenn is not one to let the facts ruin a perfectly good economically elitist ideology... but:

The reality is that Wisconsin ranks around 39th in the US with regard to corporate taxes. [See my earlier posts on this.] We're not even in the top 10.

Another reason for a dearth of engineers is that Wisconsin ranks just ahead of Mississippi in the production of BA's. [Should I repeat that? Our university system is about as productive as Mississippi's.]

One reason for this sad state of affairs is that, throughout his career, Glenn has slashed away at education in Wisconsin. I guess we'll have to attract those new engineers from Illinois or Michigan or Iowa since, if we keep this up, the UW won't be able to afford those programs anymore.

But here's an idea: why stop at cutting taxes? Why not introduce a bill to cut wages as well?

That would attract a lot of new business to Wisconsin. With government controls to keep costs down, we could become the China of the Midwest.

I'm just thinking out loud, of course.

hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: anorexia as educational reform.

Friends and relations,


In the category of unrecognized irony, Glenn thinks that getting rid of bad teachers will improve the health of an educational system he has made a career of starving.

Here's the story:

Bill to get rid of bad teachers passes committee

By Jackie Johnson

A legislative committee votes in favor of the "Every Child Deserves a Great Teacher Bill" (AB-670).

"For the first time in at least 20 years the legislature's advanced a bill making it easier to fire a bad teacher."

Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) is a sponsor of the bill. He cites an example in his district where over $200,000 was spent so far, trying to remove a teacher who watched pornography on a school computer. He's been trying for several years to make it easier to fire bad teachers.

"The teachers union, of course, will always fight to keep bad teachers, but we hope other members of the legislature will put the school children first."

Grothman says a child's academic growth can really be stunted without a quality teacher in the classroom. But it's just too hard to get rid of the bad apples.

1) Firing "bad" teachers is so obviously important that the only reason Glenn would mention it is because he's really up to something else. [Closing the schools to save the taxpayers money?]

2) To "fight" in this case doesn't mean fight to "keep" them, but "fight to give them due process so that they don't get fired simply because they piss off the principal and a few of the parents."

The reason tenure exists -- whether in universities or the K-12's -- is to make sure an educator is able to conduct the process of education. Arguably, the real task of all education is to help the individual learn to question what they believe in order to find out whether their beliefs are actually true -- a process that inevitably makes some people furious.

Teachers need to be protected from the natural resistance that arises when they expound on a truth that a majority of the local population (falsely) believes to be a lie [like discussing evolution or global warming say or, increasingly, that America is a democracy].

Glenn is lying when he says that teachers unions fight to keep "bad" teachers. Nobody wants to keep bad teachers. [Unless, using the same syllogism, Glenn would like to argue that the electoral system fights to keep lousy State Senators. Hmmm.] The unions fight to make sure that when they fire someone, due process is observed.

Democratic activity of this kind is increasingly frowned upon by people from Glenn's universe, but it works. Innocent until proven guilty is, still, what we do in the US. For the French, you're guilty until proven innocent. I don't see any reason to treat our educational system like the French.

and, [and here is where the hypocrisy works its way to the surface like a splinter of glass trying to climb out of Glenn's thumb]

3) Glenn's entire career has been about draining the blood supply out of public education, draining it into the sacrificial chalice of "free market economics" and rights for the rich. He's cut funding to the educational system at every opportunity, starving it at every turn. His other latest hooha has been to try to eliminate kindergarten for 4 year olds, despite solid evidence that it gives kids a jumpstart.

Glenn would blame the cafeteria ladies for starving the kids even though he's the one cutting off their mac & cheese.

Now there's a picture.

hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: American Mullah?

Hi folks,

Glenn's off on another one of his social engineering projects and, once again, it's about sex. First he votes against emergency contraception for rape victims, and now he wants to stop waivers that help to prevent unwanted pregnancies in teenagers.

Have you noticed that for Glenn it's always either about sex or taxes?

Glenn is becoming the sort of character you'd invent in an end-of -the-world scifi novel -- the lunatic who'd plunge us into a new Dark Ages because he'd appealed to everyone's worst instincts and greatest fears.

Listen -- American mullahs aren't any better than Iranian ones.

Here's his latest tirade.

Wisconsin Radio Network: Grothman tries again to eliminate free birth control to teens

Grothman tries again to eliminate free birth control to teens

Monday, January 14, 2008, 12:12 AM

By Jackie Johnson

A state lawmaker tries again to get rid of a program that gives young teens birth control.

Senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) is once again introducing legislation that would end Wisconsin's Family Planning Waiver program for 15, 16, and 17 year old girls.

"It seems absurd that the state of Wisconsin is paying Planned Parenthood to put 15-year old girls on the pill and then turning around and charging 17-year old boys with sexual assault and making them sex offenders for life when they have sex with these girls."

The Medicaid program that provides health care services to low-income Wisconsin women also provides free birth control for these high school girls without parental knowledge. Grothman cites several recent cases in which young adult males were charged with felony assault after having sex with their younger girlfriends. He wants to terminate this program.

"Not only is it sending a mixed message but it's also offensive to parental rights because these counselors are meeting with these girls without their parents knowing about it."

Grothman points to the contradiction of laws that prevent sexual abuse of kids, while this program allows the Health Department to give young girls birth control, sending a message that encourages premarital sex among teens. Advocates of the program had said if youngsters don't have access to family planning services, then sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancy, and abortions will increase. The supporters claim, birth-related costs will increase the burden on Medicaid. Lawmakers were one vote short of passing Grothman's measure through the state Senate last session.

Whew. Okay, in order:

1. Glenn hates Planned Parenthood the same way 'the terrorists' hate our freedom. We know that. But here he's using Planned Parenthood as a red herring. Wake up. No one is paying Planned Parenthood to "put 15 year old girls on the pill." Planned Parenthood is simply one of the "qualified providers" the law specifies. "Qualified provider" includes means your own doctor.
2. Planned Parenthood never (and cannot) "put" anyone on the pill. Those girls make the decision to put themselves on the pill.
3. The weirdest, most dishonest, thing he does is to tie this into a conundrum in the law -- that 17 year old boys can be convicted of felony sexual assault for having consensual sex with their 16 year old girl friends. That may be something the legislature needs to address but Glenn makes it sound as if 16-year-old-girls-on-the-pill are the cause of 17 year old boys committing felony sexual assault. Right. Young women only want to have sex when they're on the pill and young men only want to have sex because their girlfriends are on the pill. Notice that neither of those options are true.
   

The real reason Glenn worries about birth control is his belief -- accompanied by a Mullah-like certainty -- that letting girls protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy simply encourages them to have sex in the first place. He has this backwards. Girls who aren't having sex aren't likely to want birth control. Girls who are already having sex are the ones who most need to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

For more info on our, terrifying, third-world levels of teenage pregnancy, follow the link to the Guttmacher Institute.

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 worrying about the trees

In order to avoid thinking about the forest.

Hi folks,

The Senate Committee on Education held hearings this week on Senate Joint Resolution 27, an effort to start thinking about ways to fund education that would be more efficient than the property tax burden we're currently carrying.

John Smart, writing in the Capital Times, notes:

The purpose of the hearing was to examine Senate Joint Resolution 27, co-sponsored by Assembly Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, D-Verona, Sen. Roger Breske, D-Eland, 14 other senators and 43 other Assembly representatives. All but one of the people testifying supported the resolution.

The resolution calls for the Legislature to recognize that the system we're using to pay for our schools is not fair and equitable and simply does not work -- that it underfunds our schools while throwing too much of the burden on the backs of property taxpayers, who are understandably rebelling. The resolution refers to a number of new funding formulas that all deserve consideration, and it sets a deadline for the Legislature to examine these, and any others, and pass a new compromise plan for school funding by July 1, 2009.

Several members of the committee, notably Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, and Sen. Mary Lazich, R-New Berlin, insisted on attempting to debate the merits of one or another of the plans, asking how much they would cost and where the money was going to come from. They had to be reminded repeatedly that this resolution only sets a deadline and doesn't endorse any specific plan.

I'm not surprised that Glenn wanted to debate the merits of plans that don't exist yet and which weren't included in the resolution. When you don't want to think about a serious problem -- especially when you're in the political minority -- you pick away at the edges, like sparrows picking around under a bird feeder. Arguing about irrelevant details, while the main issue -- finding a better way to fund education -- gets pushed out of sight, is an often-used and well understood strategy to make sure those main issues are never dealt with.

Based on Glenn's past performance, it's pretty clear he's opposed to funding education effectively, and this still mystifies me. I keep imagining that Glenn is, at least, ideologically driven to be efficient, like anyone suffering from business-paradigm paralysis. -- but he isn't.

For all his puffery about cutting taxes, Glenn has never offered us a more efficient way to address the things we actually need to spend money on. What's conservative about cutting taxes while leaving unfairness and inefficiency in place? You need to address both ends of the spreadsheet.

Simply saying "no" to everything is not the same thing as creating a better Wisconsin.


hiho
Mp

Glenn Grothman: taxes okay when you don't notice them??

Hi folks,

Not a lot on Sen. Grothman in the news these days, apart from his minority vote on the budget and making sure illegal immigrants will never find sanctuary in the United States.


Just a few thoughts:

1) Both Sen. Grothman and Rep Strachota voted against the current budget primarily, as Rep Strachota noted to the West Bend ExpressNews, because spending will increase by 6.6 percent over the next two years. Nice, nice, very nice.

What I'd like to know is why our representatives are worried about this now, but not when property tax spending on the tech schools increased by 6.6 percent per year in each of the last 9 years? Why was that okay, but spending on our health and college education, isn't? I'm still troubled by the fact that our tax-avoidance crusaders could have missed billions of dollars in tax increases so completely.

2) Why is Glenn making such hay about illegal immigrants? I suspect it's because immigration is a perfectly safe issue for him. He should be worried about the millions of non-immigrants now working happily away at jobs in China, 1000's of which used to be in Washington County. You don't level the global playing field by making a good education even tougher for the next generation of American entrepreneurs to get -- even though that's pretty much what he does during every session in the Senate.


And so it goes.
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: Taxcutter as Deadbeat Dad.

Hi folks,

In an opinion piece for the Journal-Sentinel last week, Glenn complains that funding 4 year old kindergartens is a bad way to improve educational performance.

From the Journal-Sentinel: "Be leery of government 'helping' your children"
Glenn begins this way,

The most important function of a society is raising its children. And with American high school students doing poorly on international tests, it's tempting to accept any new suggestion to improve our educational system.

I'm startled, frankly, that Glenn believes society should have any hand at all in raising children, but, now that he's said it in print, I'm more hopeful.

American high school kids are performing horribly on international tests. Glenn finally looked at the reports showing -- ready? -- that by the 12th grade, US students only outscore "Cyprus, Lithuania and South Africa in math."

This scares the hell out of me, but Glenn doesn't seem too worried about it. He's repeatedly slashed away at the kind of responsible funding for education that would have invested in our economic future by keeping our kids competitive with the rest of the industrially developed world.

Even more glaring is this comment at the end about working mothers:

It is easy to forget that, while most mothers with preschool children now work, only a minority of them work full time and leave their children with strangers. For the rest of our lifetimes, the left will continually say that the more the government cares for the children, the better off the children will be. I doubt that the founders of this country would have believed that.

Funny he should mention The Founders of this county. My particular favorite had a comment about this:

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Thomas Jefferson, 9/28/1820

We do that by making sure each child gets a great education. We have to educate each child as if they might become President -- or a State Senator. Because, they might.

Otherwise we'll get the leaders we deserve.

Period.

While it's obvious that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it, cutting off most of its funding doesn't fix it either. Glenn's entire life, etched boldly on his vanity license plates, is about cutting off funding to 'wasteful' programs like -- apparently -- education.

That's why this "opinion" piece was soaked through with enough hypocrisy to give me a migraine.

Look:

• You can't slash the number of employees in your business to save money and then complain that service isn't as good as it should be.
• You can't cut the number of doctors in a hospital to save money and then complain that the care isn't as good as it should be.
• And you cannot cut school system funding and then complain that they are doing a bad job.

But here's what else I know:

1) Slashing funding to the high schools, whether in MPS or elsewhere, punishes children who don't deserve to be punished. You don't make students smarter by stuffing more students into a classroom. Trying to punish the teachers who refuse to vote for him, only hurts the children.

And

2) Slashing funding to students you are obligated to help, is equivalent to abandoning your family.

Thinking like this makes Glenn the deadbeat dad of tax cutter, refusing to keep up child support.


hiho
Mpeterson

Glenn Grothman: wrong on clubbing his alma mater to death?

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" says Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Green Bay ...

-- whoops, I mean William Shakespeare in Henry VI Act IV, Scene II.


Or, since they won't let him do that, how about this?

The Janesville Gazette reports

Tired of lawyers, lawmaker wants to cut law school's funding

MADISON, Wis. - A lawmaker who persuaded the Assembly to eliminate all state funding for the University of Wisconsin law school says his reasoning is simple: There's too many lawyers in Wisconsin.

That and soon to be ex-Rep. Lassee might have thought to consider that the UW law school is the only state university law school in Wisconsin. Well, here:

More than 14,000 Wisconsin residents are practicing lawyers, according to the American Bar Association, which puts the state in the middle of the pack nationally for its overall number of attorneys.

Davis said the law school has educated many political and business leaders and was proud of its record.

Its alumni include former Gov. Tommy Thompson, six out of seven state Supreme Court justices and several of Lasee's colleagues. Two of them - Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, and Rep. Sheryl Albers, R-Reedsburg - voted for the budget that slashed their alma mater's funding.

And, I put this up in here because Sen. Grothman is also a product of tax-payer subsidized education at the UW Law school.

Does Glenn believe that future students should have to pay a massively larger share of their education than he did? That it was okay for us to subsidize his education, but not future students?

Just checking. I guess we'll find out.

hiho
Mp