I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation for 5 to 10 minutes today, sometime during the 1PM hour, talking about last night’s Veep debate. I’ll let you know when I know a more specific time frame.
UPDATE:
I’m told I’ll be on around 1:40PM.
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Market is closing much weaker.
Good thing I sold Apple & NOV earlier today, huh?
You KLOWNS probably bought in today at the top…as usual.
Just posted on Rasmussen that Rossi & Gregoire are tied. Bad for Gregoire is the Dems had a huge bounce the past 2 weeks.
From Rasmussen:
Gregoire and Rossi Tied in Washington’s Gubernatorial Race
Friday, October 03, 2008
The race for Washington’s next Governor is now a tie. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds incumbent Christine Gregoire and challenger Dino Rossi each attracting 48% of the vote.
Gregoire is viewed favorably by 51% and unfavorably by 47%.
I actually called in this morning during the 10 am news roundup.
I was pleased that the subject of education came up (Palin brought it up). She said something odd about Biden’s wife (a teacher) getting her reward in heaven. I think she was alluding to teachers not getting paid much. Then, she said things should be ramped up and teachers should be paid more and, amazingly, that NCLB needs changes.
Education is a very local/state issue (hence the oddity that NCLB says it is so we know how American schoolchildren are doing but then allowed each state its own test). So I completely missed her point about how teachers would be paid more. It isn’t at the McCain website on their education page. (In fact, something they do support, charter schools and vouchers, are only alluded to whereas Obama supports high-quality charter schools.)
In fact, the Republicans want to get rid of the Department of Education and yet we have Palin saying someone (the feds?) should pay teachers more.
I think she threw that out there because it’s always a big applause line to give teachers more money but the reality is that there is no McCain plan to do so and she did it as a throwaway.
westello spews:
“In fact, the Republicans want to get rid of the Department of Education and yet we have Palin saying someone (the feds?) should pay teachers more.”
westello–
Here is where you start tangling things up..
The Dept. of Education is a tax dollar sucking bureaucracy that takes dollars out of the classroom where they belong.
We know a lot of teachers…and these behemouth bureaucracy’s do absolutely NOTHING to help them in the classroom. Instead, they create more & more studies and extra unproductive BS for the teachers.
Same thing with the office of Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. All you have is tax-payer arm of the Teachers Union with Bergstrom in there.
But it does NOTHING to improve the education of our kids & grandkids.
More money in classrooms? You Bet!
But before you raise taxes, shut down all the unproductive bureaucratic overhead like this!!
Also dump the thousands off eggheaded consultants rooming around sucking dollars from the classroom.
Help teachers be effective teachers…
Then if they fail, fire them.
Also, Washington State needs to get rid of the many ESD’s and centralize those services.
What a waste of classroom dollars ESD’s are.
There are also many School Districts, especially in rural areas, that ought to be consolidated.
Arizona consolidated several hundred 5 years ago or so…with the end result being MORE MONEY FOR THE CLASSROOMS and less bureaucratic overhead.
Too much localized control is over-rated in terms of cost/benefit.
Just got an email from Norm Dicks. Dicks does a good job of laying out why he voted for the bailout, but fails to talk about how/if the bailout would/will work (maybe I could have written that a little better; my brain’s kinda scrambled at the moment.
Dear Mr. ******:
Amid the sharp debate over the emergency economic stabilization bill being considered this week in Congress I have heard dire predictions from both extremes warning of a financial Armageddon if we do no t approve the bill or of squandering billions of dollars if we do. Beyond the intense rhetoric, there is a growing body of evidence of serious impacts in every American community this month as the shrinking credit market has already affected consumers’ ability to buy cars, purchase inventory for their businesses, afford college loans and obtain home mortgages. I am concerned that it is only going to get worse until Congress takes some action that will have a direct effect on the credit markets and on our confidence in the integrity of the U.S. banking system.
The Gallup poll conducted this week for USA-TODAY indicated that more than half of all Americans – 56 percent – say their financial situation has already been harmed by the financial meltdown of the two weeks, with 20 percent of our population saying they have been seriously harmed. The longer term outlook is even more gloomy.
Locally, the failure of our state’s biggest financial institution – Washington Mutual – last week has been a reminder of the gravity of this crisis. Thousands of financial industry employees, including Washington Mutual employees in the Puget Sound area, will likely lose their jobs in this collapse, which has largely resulted from bad decisions made by executives that most Americans consider to be grossly overpaid. It is understandable for Americans to be angry, and to oppose any direct bailout of Wall Street.
But most of the people who are being hurt by this crisis today are not overpaid bankers or stock market executives. They are working class families in our towns whose small businesses can’t get credit for inventory or payroll, and people down the street who are not able to obtain a car loan to replace a broken down automobile.
Economists remind us that auto sales are typically one of the first indicators of economic trouble. Last month, car sales dropped by 27 percent from September 2007, the slowest pace of auto purchases since 1991. The chief economist at J.D. Power and Associates, Bob Schnorbus, estimates that the credit crunch alone is responsible for more than 40,000 people being denied loans every month. And as the crisis has deepened in recent weeks, even people with good jobs and credit are having difficulty arranging auto financing.
The financial disruption is also affecting student loans – the primary way through which we as a nation open the doors of higher education to middle and lower class Americans. The buyout of Wachovia has limited the access of nearly 1,000 colleges to $9.3 billion the bank has held for them in a short-term investment fund. Many of these schools are struggling to meet their payrolls and other commitments, including scholarships, as we start another school year.
Over the longer term, if credit contracts further, so will the availability and affordability of student loans. If it closes the doors of higher education to American kids, this short-term financial crisis has the potential to result in a long-term loss of competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Small businesses are also feeling the burden. As my colleagues know, small businesses account for roughly half of the nation’s total economic output and employ about 40 percent of the total U.S. workforce. The chief economist for the Small Business Administration noted in an interview this week that these businesses are either being denied capital to grow and add jobs or they are simply afraid to seek capital because they are scared of the direction of the economy. More than anything else, cutting off capital to small businesses will be an enormous drag on the economy and job creation over the long term.
The credit squeeze is already having a downstream impact on our economy. Consumer spending this quarter appears to be declining for the first time in 17 years. Last month, unemployment reached a five year high – 6.1 percent – and new filings for unemployment hit the highest level since just after the Sept. 11th attacks. Factory orders are down, and manufacturing activity has fallen to the lowest level in seven years.
Two major employers in the rural areas in my District, Port Townsend Paper and Grays Harbor Paper, are victims of this loss of confidence. These firms, both critical to employment in their respective cities, have stated that they are already taking steps to protect themselves from a recession, holding off on investments and new hires as they prepare for a decline in sales.
So with mounting evidence that the impact of this crisis is being felt well beyond Wall Street, I supported this bill. I am not doing so in order to boost the salaries of Wall Street executives, but so that janitors and nurses and secretaries and teachers and car dealers in my district can keep their jobs. I am supporting this bill so that kids and their parents will still have the access to affordable loans to go to college – an advantage I had as a young man.
I am not suggesting this is a perfect solution. But I am absolutely convinced that we must take action before the credit crisis deepens and before it further affects the lives and livelihoods of even more of our friends and neighbors.
@5
I’m not familiar with ESD’s. This map:
http://www.k12.wa.us/maps/ESDmap.aspx
makes it look like there aren’t very many of them.
Then he should have voted for the bill, after the pork was removed.
Dicks is kind of a gasbag, ain’t he!
He’s trying to hypnotize and wear down folks like me who were against the bailout i guess…and he’s might effective!
I’m surprised Dicks didn’t also add that HE lost a bunch of money in the market too!
michael–
9 ESD’s is somewhere between 6-7 TOO MANY.
And take a l0ok at the list of school districts:
http://www.k12.wa.us/maps/SDmainmap.aspx
Everyone of those ESD’s has personal doing the same jobs. Everything is now automated….like payroll, personnel record-keeping and other accounting.
Do the same thing 9 times??
Not very cost effective.
As for the School Districts–
Everyone of them has a Superintendent and support staff. They all have school boards and lots of similiar overhead for office space.
Take a look michael.
It’s BULLSHIT at any time…but especially times of crisis.
PS–
Some moronic School Board’s have actually tasked their own Superintendent and staff to do studies on whether or not to consolidate!!
What do you think the answer always is?
It’s out of control.
Usually a few pushy, vocal parents dominate things…and School Board members are clueless about finance…they are great dreamers, but incapable of responsible decision-making.
They support every call for more levies and new buildings because THEY TALE ORDERS FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT!! The same guy they are supposed to hold accountable!
It’s eerily similiar to Wall Street where the CEO chooses his Board!
@10
Not trying to argue with ya on this one, just trying to figure it out.
Cyn,
1) If you look at the ESDs (seemingly a pet peeve of yours) they receive almost no direct tax money. Over 75% of PSESDs funding is through competitive grants, the bulk of the rest is paid through the individual districts.
(This fact might explain the payroll, and overhead you were griping about. If they were state agencies which were eating out of a common rice bowl, your arguments on consolidating functions would have some merit. They’re not, and they don’t)
2) Your remark on the superintendent vs the school board is a non sequitur. The superintendent is an appointed position which ultimately serves at the pleasure of the school board. The board is composed of elected officials accountable to the voters. I would hope that a school board and a superintendent are broadly aligned on goals. If you have ANY organization, public or private where the head of the organization and the board are at loggerheads, you have a dysfunctional organization.
Yes, school board members are not wizards of finance. That’s why, um, they usually don’t let them hold the purse strings. Most districts have a finance department to handle that function.
I like you Cyn. really, I do. You’re smart, you write your own material, and you usually don’t go off this week’s talking points. That’s worth a lot in my book. Unfortunately, your sense of disdain for all things in the public sector seems to cloud your judgment a bit.
jsa–
I agree with you that School Board members are accountable to voters…just like Board of Directors of Corporations are elected by stockholders. However, how it works legally vs. practically are 2 different things in both cases.
The problem I have seen in a number of School Districts is popular, yet unqualified people, run for office. You are right, School Districts have finance departments, but they report to the Superintendent. Therefore you have staff (Superintendent is staff) controlling the information flow to an uneducated & easily manipulated (most of the time) School Board. That’s where the problems lie as I see it. And can you imagine having staff give you a recommendation to consolidate school districts?? Never happens. I have seen 4-5 studies that all are staff driven and all conclude there are no economies of scale to justify consolidating. Imagine that.
Re: The ESD’s…you may be right about some of the funding sources, but it still doesn’t mean there aren’t savings if more centralized. Do you realize virtually every School District has Finance Directors with Payroll clerks, Accounting Clerks, HR specialists and a plethora of assistants?
I will have to look deeper into the funding to see how much each school district and the State contribute to the ESD’s vs. Grants….but jsa, just because it’s “grants” doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be evaluated if you can do it more cost effectively. Perhaps some of the grant money could be re-directed to a smaller, consolidated number of school districts……….freeing up more money for dollars directly to the classroom.
jsa, my main gripe about the Public Sector is too often they focus immediately on TAX INCREASES before looking at more cost effective ways of doing things. And with School Boards that are ignorant & just trust the Superintendent & staff……..
see my concern?
It truly happens at way too many levels of government. Often because bureaucratic thinkers are clever enough to know they can get increases based on the number of people & Budget they manage.
Where is the incentive for cost-effective management?
It seems like “trust us, we’re from the government” has run it’s course.
These tough times do require true reformers.
I’m not saying McCain or Palin are true reformers. You can’t tell until they get in.
What I do know for sure is Gregoire is a career bureaucrat who is incapable of reform…partly because of the entrenched bureaucrats she choose to keep or recycle to other parts of the “system”. It’s what happens when one party (either party) controls the Governor’s Office too long.
And 24 years is waaaaaaay too long.
Uh, Cynical,all I did is say that conservatives want to get rid of the Dept of Ed (which is true). Quit foaming at the mouth. You still didn’t answer the question of where this money is coming from to give teachers more money.