AFSCME endorses GRT, is AFL-CIO next?
From the Governor's Office:
CHICAGO – Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today welcomed the support of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) for his ambitious proposal to reform Illinois’ tax system, which closes corporate loopholes and brings greater stability to the state’s fiscal future. The Governor’s plan to establish a Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) on commercial activity has been embraced by many economists because of its broad base and low rates....
....“We believe it is critically important to ensure that the Illinois tax system is fair, stable and produces adequate revenues,” said Henry Bayer, Executive Director of Council 31. “Governor Blagojevich’s proposal for a Gross Receipts Tax meets that test on every count. Contrary to the claims of some in the business community,” Bayer said, “we believe this plan has the potential to provide a real boost for the Illinois economy. We intend to do all we can to help enact it.”
As CapitolFax reported earlier, AFSCME's lukewarm reception to the GRT was standing in the way of an AFL-CIO endorsement of the GRT. That obstacle appears to have been removed now. I doubt an all-out push from the AFL-CIO is all that far behind, especially since former AFL-CIO head Margaret Blackshere chairs the committee paying for all of the Governor's t.v. ads.
What does the AFSCME endorsement mean?
Although it's a small step, the AFSCME endorsement could result in a giant leap if the leash comes off the AFL-CIO. Full engagement of the AFL-CIO means it will be difficult for Speaker Madigan to act as the lone stopper for the Governor's plan, sans a viable alternative.
The ball is now solidly in the court of the business community, represented by the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Manufacturer's Association, Illinois Retail Merchant's Association, Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, and the Civic Federation.
If Illinois, Inc. truly believes that the GRT is as devastating as they say, they need to offer an alternative route for all of the public pressure in favor of funding education, property tax relief, and to a lesser degree, health and human services.
Madigan can only dam up public demand for so long. Illinois, Inc. needs to stop merely sticking their finger in the dike, stonewalling, and offering up red herring arguments (like the one that says we shouldn't do anything without rolling back pension benefits, which, by the way guys, I'm sure helped Rod get AFSCME on board. Way to go.)
If Illinois, Inc. can't get behind HB 750, or some compromise version thereof, they need to offer up their own reasonable, politically viable, compromise solution to the budget challenges facing the state. Otherwise, GRT is coming.
From The American President:
Lewis (Michael J Fox): People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
President Shephard (Michael Douglas):Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.
20 comments:
I understand AFSCME's endorsement, given that either tax boondoggle will yield funding for more through feeders and bigger troughs, but does the AFL-CIO REALLY want to sign on to either bill (GRT or 750)?
Both will chase more businesses and more high earners out of the state, while leaving even greater burdens on those who stay.
If Illinois, Inc. truly believes that the GRT is as devastating as they say, they need to offer an alternative route for all of the public pressure in favor of funding education, property tax relief, and to a lesser degree, health and human services.
What "public pressure?" The push for a tax increase is coming mostly from lobbyists that are ginning up noise from interlocking groups (with help from the echochamber media).
I don't see the over-taxed property owners clamouring for 750. Most of them are smart enough to see it for the scam that it is.
Sure, Martire has built a few facades like A+ Ill. and the like. He's also gotten clueless reporters to parrot his sob stories. I don't see this as creating much "public" pressure.
The tax swap scam has been around since 1994, and it's been pushed big-time by it's PR noise machine. Still no passage.
Note that Michigan passed a REAL tax swap and now the greedy districts are crying poor (I love it). If that were proposed, the public would jump on it in a second.
Alas, the business community and the clueless Republican party are too stupid to propose such obviously good policy. The degree to which the tumor of public education has metastized into the body politic is extreme.
Business and Political leaders are too stupid to propose the obvious good policy. No wonder, they now all have friends on the cocktail circuit who are $150,000+ administrators bleeding the public dry.
One more time, AFSCME does something its members are against.
Do we have stupid painted on our foreheads? This tax, as with any tax against corporations in any way, will be passed down to consumers. And why do the unions suck up to Milarod so much? The many I know aren't any better off for supporting him that before he became the nemises of Illinois.
Wisdom,
it appears that more and more of the electorate is stupid in your eyes. Do you ever entertain the possibility that they're not as stupid as you think, they just disagree with you?
As far as I am concerned, the AFSCME leadership has been bought out. Did you guys get $3.00 in dimes, or has the price for betrayal risen with inflation?
And to think they want me to join AFSCME at the county level. I always thought highly of unions whan I was younger. But the union movement in this state is all too often as corrupt as the politicians they aresupposed to be battling.
I think they have simply made a rational decision (to them) that GRT has a greater chance of becoming law than does 750. Only time will tell whether they are right.
Steve,
I suppose it is only fair to cop to the charge of thinking some people stupid.
On one hand, it may be that this rhetoric is too harsh, as some of these folks are successful in business & politics, and have all the accoutrements of social/political position.
On the other hand, with decades of feeding this beast, spending on payroll, perks and pensions, and whining about how powerful the Democrats have become, I believe that "stupid", if not a perfect word, comes close.
Perhaps "willfully ignorant" is closer to your liking.
You've attempted to make this case before, and the fact is that one can;
A) disagree with me, and
b) be quite smart, and
c) still be wrong...
about spending yet more taxes on a horrible education system.
When one refuses to debate/think about the actual facts, continues to whine about the business climate, and still continues to fund candidates in the Republican Party that vote against good economic policy, then they are either;
a) operating under different premises than they are admitting to, or
b) stupid.
That same analysis is true of any Republican who votes for either the GRT or HB750.
They are either a) operating under different premises than they are admitting to, or b) stupid.
Further, if people don't agree with me, they certainly won't start to if I don't make an argument. I notice that very few people attempt to even address the issues I raise, and instead point to "poll numbers" and Legislative Votes.
Slavery too was once too popular to be abolished. Yet Wilburforce perservered, and won. I'm sure the Steve Schnorf's of his age told him he never stood a chance as well.
I'm happy to clarify this for you once again.
Fund Children, Not Bureaucracies.
If Illinois, Inc. can't get behind HB 750, or some compromise version thereof, they need to offer up their own reasonable, politically viable, compromise solution to the budget challenges facing the state. Otherwise, GRT is coming.
So Illinois Inc is responsible for the State of Illinois's fiscal mismanagement and corruption.
GOP should do nothing to help pass HB 750 or GRT.
Let the Democrats bring what they can and accept the consequences of their work.
Democrats won overwhelmingly YDD. No one else is responsible for offering anything. Democrats won it all.... let them figure it out.
Wow another great post and a movie line to boot. This only makes it clear to me that there are some tough choices to make in this budget.
Oh clever Randall. Dimes are no longer made of silver. Besides, are you trying to go all Edward Moskal on us?
I'm as partisan as the next guy during an election season, but do you guys listen to yourselves? Are you at all interested in addressing the challenges facing your home state, or is scoring political points in time for the next election the only thing you care about?
We have BIG problems in Illinois, especially when it comes to education. According to the 2006 Statewide school report card:
We're spending less than an hour a day teaching elementary kids math;
Less than 45 minutes a day teaching elementary kids science;
Less than 45 minutes a day teaching kids social science (history, social studies, government);
1 in 5 seventh graders aren't meeting state standards for BASIC science knowledge;
1 in 4 seventh graders aren't meeting state standards for BASIC reading ability;
1 in 4 seventh graders aren't meeting state standards for BASIC math skills;
Lest you assume this is purely a question of race, or urban v. rural:
33% of WHITE 11th graders failed the test of Reading;
36.4% of WHITE 11th graders failed the test of Math;
38.3% of WHITE 11th graders failed the test of Science.
You can see the test scores for yourself here.
What's the result?
There are currently 800,000 high school drop-outs in Illinois, costing our economy an estimated $10 billion a year;
There are an estimated 2 million adult Illinoisans who can't read above the 5th grade level;
Illinois' adult literacy rate is 34th in the U.S.
Now, you may not see the connection between these statistics and the interests of Illinois' business community, but most people can. More likely, you can see it, but you just don't want to admit it. Because once you admit that this is a problem that affects every Illinoisan, you have to admit that we all have a shared interest, a shared responsibility, to fix it.
Ensuring that every child in Illinois has the opportunity to make the best use of her or his God-given talents, to work hard and get ahead in life, to provide a better life for their children then they enjoyed: this should not be a partisan issue. If we insist on making it one, we are lesser people for it, and that is my primary objection to Governor Blagojevich's approach. He's squandering an opportunity to UNITE people across partisan lines, racial lines, class lines, and geographic lines.
"(Blagojevich's) squandering an opportunity to UNITE people across partisan lines, racial lines, class lines, and geographic lines"
Not really. I find myself agreeing with Pat Quinn and Jesse Jackson, and that does not happen very often. People are getting united...united against our irresponsbile governor.
JBP
YDD, are YOU interested in addressing the problems YOU perceive in Illinois? HB 750 does not make a single, solitary policy change to address even one of the stats you cite. At least Blago's SB 1 would allow more charter schools, which is a lot more than can be said about HB 750. The only thing HB 750 does is raise taxes. It has absolutely zero policy changes aimed at improving education. Yes, I've read the bill and the new amendments and there is still nothing in their to reform or try to improve education. Nothing, much contrary to your claims.
I do think the electorate is getting smarter. More and more are staying home. What was it, over 70% of people eligible to vote didn't? And 10% of those that did went for an alternative candidate and Blago won with less than 50%. Mostly, people want to be left alone and they recognizing there is very little difference between the liars running for office these days.
Trigg - increasing foundation level funding for all schools to the level necessary to provide a sound, basic education will address all of these problems cited, as will the creation of a education venture pool, as laid out in HB 750, to provide grants to under-performing schools for proven strategies, like year-round schools and professional training for teachers and principals.
I know that there is some fear from folks like you that if we put more money into schools, somehow teachers will end up making more money. As we all know, teacher salaries are negotiated by local school boards, so none of the money going to your school district will go to higher salaries unless your local elected leaders say so. What's wrong with local control?
I think what you are also afraid of is that teachers in some other school district will end up negotiating a pay raise. Again, I say what's wrong with local control? More importantly, I know that the chief complaint of many of you is that are school districts are full of bad teachers (funny how we never blame bad parents or hard-to-teach kids -- a THIRD of which must be white, according to the above stats).
Well, let me ask you, if bad teachers are the problem, how do we get better teachers? Pay them more, perhaps?
Let's also not ignore the impact that funding has on class size, another important factor in student success. Chicago's elementary schools average 24 students in K-3 classrooms, but if you look at schools in the struggling neighborhoods, its not unusual to find an average of 30 kids in a classroom.
Compare that to Wheaton, where they average 20-21 kids in their K-3 classes, and it's not unusual to see individual schools with only 14 or 15 kindergartners in a class.
For the love of all that is holy, please tell me how you think we get to smaller class sizes without spending more money on building classrooms and hiring teachers?
You solve that one, then get back to me.
YDD,
Class Size is just another way to pad payroll, and you should know that.
Most of us went to schools with 25-30 in class, and learned just fine.
Increasing the arbitrary and silly foundation level is another exercise in futility. The money does not go to kids, it goes to the same failing school system, and is dissipated in a sea of Ass. Supers, Ass. Principals, Ass. Directors, and the like.
I'll see and raise your "foundation level." Let's just give each kid around $7500 bucks and turn every school into a charter.
Send the worthless bureaucrats home. There will be plenty of money left to negotiate good salaries for good teacher, and the freedom to get rid of the drones.
You can laugh all you want about how 'there will never be the votes' for such a system. You may be right. But I laugh all I want when I read a "progressive's" whining about the poor poor kids.
We've seen the numbers. We know what charters can accomplish. We know what curriculum works and what doesn't. We know that edcuating your basic kid isn't rocket science. You can't defend the current system, and then be taken seriously when you carp about "the kids."
Maybe we both ought to stop laughing at each other and work together to solve some of the problems.
"For the love of all that is holy, please tell me how you think we get to smaller class sizes without spending more money on building classrooms and hiring teachers?"
Cut bureacratic bloat by merging districts. Stop giving the Wheaton's and Barrington's and Round Lake's state money for their 12 kids per class. Redistribute the money you have now, and there is more than enough to lower class sizes. Aha, but there isn't a real leader in Illinois honest enough to even propose taking money from the rich schools and giving it to the poor schools, which is the solution you seem to be seeking. What good does it do to give Round Lake the "foundation level" when they are spending almost $20,000 per year per 2nd grader? That's like giving Social Security to Bill Gates (which he will get at my expense, btw). Flip that, why only give the foundation level to Central District 50, the lowest spending per pupil in the state that outperforms Round Lake in several categories?
Tell Daley to spend $150 million on schools instead of the Olympics and Hired Trucks and campaign workers and patronage jobs. Same for Stroger and Schillerstrom for that matter.
For the love of all that is holy, tell me you don't really, really believe that every penny, even every million or billion, is being spent the most efficiently and wisely that it can be.
And the additional money absolutely will go more toward pay raises than additional teachers to cut down class sizes. Look at how much funding has increased the last 5 years, look at the average teacher pay increases the last five years and then look at the average class size the last five years. Funny how the class size remains the same, but spending and average salary is increasing more than the rate of inflation adjusted for population fluctuations.
So who is introducing the amendment to HB 750 that would double the number of charter schools like SB 1 does?
Seems like one of answers is obvious; get rid of local control, so the schools won't continue to be run by those idiots you keep electing.
We don't send a foundation level amount check to a school district spending $20,000 per kid. They are probably getting a very small amount of general state aid, most likely the minimum grant.
And btw, I don't want to take money away from a district whose residents have chosen (there's that damn local control again) to tax themselves to provide a good education for their kids, in order to redistribute it to poorer districts. Leveling down has never made much sense to me.
And Trigg, after what I've read of your postings, don't try to convince me that you are some great fan of charter schools. You simply hate them a little less than you do other public schools.
Steve,
Local control is a myth. A board can't hire people outside the bureaucracy. It basically rubberstamps what the Superintendent tells them, and if they get of out of line, some line in the school code (purchased by either Unions or the IASB/Supers/IASBO) prevents blunts any reform.
Theoretical "local control" may exist, but with many board elections being 'off-cycle" and only replacing part of the problem, the established corrupt structure always has the advantage.
Now, in theory, locals DO have the ability to vote down a tax increase (but no process to force a tax cut you may notice!!) But once again, the Education Establishment is able to keep coming and coming and coming, every March, Nov. March Nov.
There is no way to enact any real local control Steve, and you know it.
___
You relish in reminding I don't 'have the votes' to enact my far superior idea. You are certainly correct about that...for now.
In the meantime, I ask the unbiased observer to once again engage in this thought experiment.
Put your paltry vote for 3-4 board members that have no power to actually change anything in one hand.
In your other hand, place a $7500 scholarship (more than the silly EFAB amount)that your child can use at any newly de-districted and de-bureaucratized charter school.
Who has local control? Who has empowerment?
C'mon Steve & YDD, sure you have the votes and the clout. I hope you are all proud of yourselves doing the bidding of your bureaucrat/union masters.
Just don't try to convince a thinking person you give a crap about "the children." You can't be taken seriously making such a ridiculous claim.
Fund Children, Not Bureaucrat's and their unsustainable pensions.
ew,
I'm intrigued. Exactly who are my bureaucrat/union masters?
Though I don't know you personally (so far as I know) you certainly seem to believe you have a great deal of insight into my brain. Our teachers and schools, and school boards have shortcomings, no doubt about it, but I don't think I would want to put my village in the hands of someone who openly states his belief that you have to destroy it to save it.
Steve (& YDD),
Apologies re: the "masters" comment. Perhaps I unfairly conflated the State Legislature, who are, in fact, bought-off meat puppets of "Big Education" (Witness Bassi, Eddy, & the awful woman who tried to kill charters) with you guys.
Yet, if they aren't your masters, its still clear that you are doing their bidding by promoting yet more feed for the BIG ED trough.
Spare me the Vietnam era "destroy the village" stuff. Getting rid of of Districts won't destroy anything but wasteful spending.
I'm concerned about our children's education, and therefore could not care less about the protection racket for teachers or administrators.
I believe Al Shanker (former Teacher's union boss) said it best when he said "When school children start paying union dues, that 's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
At least he was honest.
You can attack me and my ideas with bad metaphors all you want. As you keep reminding me, your side has the votes. I just enjoy pointing out how those votes were bought, and who bought them.
___
BTW,
I could go on with that "village" metaphor, and point out that creating bankrupt villages full of un-educated and unemployable kids is a more effective destroyer of villages than merely abolishing a wasteful bureaucracy, but I get the sense that the point is obvious to our readers.
Have a great weekend.
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