In a press release about the budget forecast there’s, a paragraph about McCleary where Representative Terry Nealey says:
“The demands by the state Supreme Court for the Legislature to meet educational funding requirements under the McCleary decision will likely lead for new calls during the 2015 session to raise taxes. That would be devastating to our state’s economy. The correct course of action is to fund education first within the budget and let the economy heal by resisting job-killing tax increases. If we stay the course, Washington’s citizens will have more job opportunities, our state will reap the benefits of higher revenue, and we will be able to meet our constitutional requirements as it relates to education.”
This is a broader press release about how the revenue forecast increased $157 million for the biennium. But we’re billions behind. As long as 2 billion or so is more than 157 million, we’re not just going to be able to grow out of our problems.
But I will meet Rep Nealy part of the way: Yes raising taxes can have a deleterious effect on the economy. That’s true. But what the GOP never acknowledges is that so does cutting government services. So I would like to hear how the state could cut the difference between what grew or what the state can expect to grow and what’s needed to fulfill the McCleary obligations. Because suddenly making massive cuts to social services will also affect the economy in a negative way.
Hell, even the largely mythical wringing efficiencies from the government or cuts to wages and pensions would hurt the economy as it would mean less money being pumped into the economy. Government spending drives the economy in its way. Obviously, when we have a balanced budget, those efficiencies are generally balanced out by the taxes that have to be paid to fund them. But that’s the point: we’re going to have to look at spending and at taxes if we want to fix McCleary without doing too much damage to the economy. And since we’ve been mostly cutting in the past years, it may be time for more taxes.
Fuck your taxes. Let the Supreme Court learn a lesson.
Actually, cutting government services usually doesn’t matter much to anyone at all. You’re trying to pretend that government services are some miraculous gift from the omnipotent but they’re not. They actually suck most of the time, and people looking after each other do a far better job than government workers. Screw the higher taxes, sort of like screw the mosquitoes.
@2 — Are you being ironic or are you really that stupid?
Carl, what you are asking for is that Republicans like Terry Nealey have an understanding of macro economics that enable them to receive a passing grade. You’re clearly setting the bar way too high.
Perhaps you could meet today’s Republican party half way and ask them to eat the yummy education funding? Yummy Yummy for der tummy!
@MikeBoyScout: You Librul idiots really don’t have a clue do you? It really doesn’t matter how much money we pour down the educational drain. The kids are far dumber today because of a lack of teaching quality and quality course curriculum. Just take a look at the Kansas State 8th grade graduation exam questions from 1895: http://www.salina.com/1895test/
The kids in todays 12th grade classes can not answer these nor do they have a clue what’s even being asked by 90% of the children asked today. And, all people like you want to do is pour more, and more , and more money into this proverbial toilet of an education system we have now. How about some ACCOUNTABILITY from the Educators first!?? If I don’t do my job as a software developer and continually miss deadlines or write crappy software, guess what? I get fired. I lose my job and have to see about mending my ways to get another. If the students in a Teacher’s class can’t pass the tests why do THEY get to keep their jobs?
They are clearly more interested in “teaching” lies and falsehoods than anything else. My 12 years old son came home from school last month telling me that the Holocaust was a lie. After going apopleptic and regaining my composure I hauled him down to our local library and showed him some the of the liberation films from that era. He tried to cry Hollywood magic and screamed “My Teacher told me this was a lie! You’re lying Dad! This never happened!” He’s now grounded and reading serveral books about the attrocitites commited by the Nazis.
Years ago when I was in school the kids were smarter and percentage of the budget poured into Education was a mere fraction of what it is today. I say DISGUSTING and most Teachers today should be just ASHAMED of themselves and the jobs they do!
@5. I don’t disagree. I was pissed when I found my High School English teacher had been watering down her tests because she felt we couldn’t handle the hard versions. She never gave us a chance. And she didn’t have to teach as hard. Common Core is supposed to help keep education standard.
Offhand, do YOU know how big a bushel is without having to look it up?
“They are clearly more interested in “teaching” lies and falsehoods than anything else. ”
I cannot agree with such a blanket statement. That would be like saying “all conservatives are bigots” because some are. But for every anecdote about an instance of a terrible teacher, there is an anecdote about a great teacher inspiring a love of learning. Or endless anecdotes of teachers teaching accurate information.
I’m sorry your child’s teacher was obviously a whack job. Have you reported this to the principal and the school board?
FYI. Given your anecdote, I wouldn’t expect that teacher to be a liberal.
Holocaust denial, then, unites a broad range of radical right-wing hate groups in the United States and elsewhere, ranging from Ku Klux Klan segregationists to skinheads seeking to revive Nazism to radical Muslim activists seeking to destroy Israel.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/ar.....d=10007273
I checked out your Kansas link. Did you bother to read the inset box about the flaws of the old test?
For example, 8th graders are being taught to use computers and office products. How to make an effective PowerPoint presentation wasn’t on the test.
@ 7
While learning computer skills is laudable, it shouldn’t come at the expense of, say, knowing how to multiply 9 by 8. Knowing how to use a spell-checker shouldn’t come at the expense of knowing how to spell.
Wouldn’t meeting Rep. Nealy part of the way entail proposing a $$ number for additional education funding that is:
1. Politically realistic.
2. Able to be spent, in full, in the next biennium, without waste?
Beginning in about 2009 Congress handed the VA an awful lot of additional money, so much money that the VA wasn’t able to mobilize to put the people and programs in place to spend it. As a result they didn’t/can’t spend it all, and still carry over nearly a half-billion dollars in medical care funding each year because they don’t have a means to spend it.
Dropping $2B all at once will result in chaos and waste. Dropping a substantial part of it, with further increases to come, is much more realistic.
BTW the upcoming biennium has been re-forecast at around $237M higher, so there’s more money to come.
My question to HA libbies is this: What reasonable $$ over the next biennium should be pushed for, assuming $2B is a non-starter?
@8. Typical conservative bullshit meme.
Do you HAVE any kids in school right now? Those teachers are trying valiantly to teach the basics AND the extras and subversive cheap shot assholes like you are fighting to cut their budgets, their pay, and make their jobs more miserable.
@ 10
Yes.
Then I can’t understand why you promote conservative bullshit memes about teaching.
Are YOUR teachers not teaching YOUR kids how to multiply 9 by 8?
@5 — “How about some ACCOUNTABILITY from the Educators first!??”
Should your teachers be held responsible if you write crappy software or should you?
From that point, extrapolate and see if you can come up with something a little more adult than your steam-out-the-ears blather.
OK
following the good man’s lead, since anything done by go’mnt is bad for the economy, how about
1. Take the state patrol off of the roads.
2. No ferries
3. Privatize the UW and Wazu
4. Privatize the Huskies
5. Open the locks, drain Lake Washington.
6. Privatize City Light and Grand Coulee
7. Privatize all irrigation water
8. Remove all tax subsidies
9. Release all prisoners who have not been convicted of a violent crime
10. Sell naming rights to Mt. Rainier and the Puget Sound
11. Defund Sam and all organizations at Seattle Center,
12 Defund all pro athletic teams
See how this helps your economy
7.
If as Rep. Nealey says, funding education should come first of all budgetary items, why didn’t the Legislature do that last year?