21st Century Schizoid Man!

Here is a post from On the Borderline.

Doyle’s walk down the yellow brick road

It looks like we have two Gov. Jim Doyles running the state.

Last week a Gov. Doyle flew into to New Richmond for a quick press conference to schmooze Western Wisconsin. He expounded on what great things he has done for the state and what he plans to do. He didn’t raise taxes, he plans on increasing shared revenue for schools, reduce government spending, add faculty to the University of Wisconsin, but cut administration, fix the state deficit of $1.6 billion, balanced the last budget, sold seven state-owned airplane, and 600 state-owned cars.

In the next two years, according to his state-of-the-state address, he plans to pass a meaningful worker training bill, increase the school breakfast assistance by 50 percent, reforming the way teachers are paid, new funding for SAGE, require a third year of math and science, invest $750 million in biotechnology, $3 million in Alzheimer’s research, increase college tuition tax deduction, full funding for shared revenue, significantly increase aid to education, and (last but not least) provide a billion dollars in property tax relief. Don’t hold your breath.

Then there is the Gov. Doyle who wanted to call a special session of the legislature to roll over bonding debt to reduce interest rate that saves $10 million, but vetoed a bill to put teachers in the state health plan that would have saved $100 million. This would have saved New Richmond, $326,000; Hudson, $499,000; Ellsworth, $360,000; and St. Croix Central, $207,000.

This Gov. wants to do away with the qualified economic offer (QEO) which is hated by the teacher’s union. It will not happen unless both houses of the legislature turn Democrat.

This Gov. Doyle has no good words to say about taxpayer bill of rights (TABOR) patterned after Colorado’s TABOR. He expresses total ignorance about the constitutional amendment presently in the legislature. If enacted, this amendment would limit spending of all state entities (state, counties, towns, villages, cities, and school districts) to the cost of living increase in Milwaukee/Racine plus increases in population, student enrollment, or new construction. I have only one question: why can’t governments live with cost of living spending increases, hmmmmm?

TABOR has nothing to do with a property tax freeze nor will it hurt education. Much has been made of the Colorado’s poor performance in the ACT scores of high school students. The reason is that Colorado is the only state requiring 100 percent student ACT participation. Common sense tells us that requiring all students to take the test skews scores downward because some of the students have lower abilities, are less motivated, or have less ambition.

Wisconsin and Minnesota rank themselves near the top because the ranking disregards states with less than 50 percent participation. Wisconsin is actually tied for ninth place. Vermont has the highest ACT scores, but only 12 percent of the students take the test. It’s a dirty little secret perpetuated by the teacher’s union. Like the car companies love to say, ” Wisconsin is best in its class.”

bobz @ Ontheborderline