Yet, the SEIU is asking for cost-of-living and merit raises over the next two fiscal years, according to the county. It is also trying to hold on to longevity pay for new employees. The county wants to freeze salary increases for a year and cut longevity pay, which is antiquated and costly, for new employees. ...
The unions should step back and look at this realistically: Americans who have jobs are thankful to be working; they’re not demanding wage hikes.
The county should stand firm and focus its efforts on preserving and providing services. Given the economy, there is precious little funding, and salary increases don’t serve the taxpayers well. They also don’t help the unions. By continuing to hold out for salary increases, unions have hurt their credibility, and that’s a price they’ll have to pay in years to come. [Emphasis added]
It took me about 20 minutes to narrow the editorial down to these three paragraphs, because there was so much good stuff in it. I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.
Exit question: Some Clark County employees were supposed to receive wage increases of over 23 percent in three years. Who approved that and did anyone think that was sustainable?
Chaparral High School Principal David Wilson refers to math as “the gatekeeper” that determines the success or failure of high school and college students. Those who pass will move on. Those who don’t will fail and may be “absolutely, positively” sentenced to a lifetime of weak professional and earnings prospects. Students will have five opportunities to pass the exam. ...
The academic and professional stakes are high, and Wilson has pushed the transfer of at least one math teacher since the start of the school year after he concluded that the educator was not able to adequately meet the academic needs of students. [Emphasis added]
So a math teacher isn't able to "meet the academic needs of students" at Chaparral and what happens — instead of being fired, like would happen to individuals in the private sector — he or she gets sent to another school where, presumably, he or she will continue to not adequately "meet the academic needs of students."
This is why it's so important that schools be allowed to fire bad teachers — the learning of students, including your kids and grandkids, is at stake. And while lawmakers made minor reforms during the 2011 Legislative Session — schools can now fire a bad teacher after three years of poor performance — that's of little comfort to the neighbor kid down the street, who needs an excellent teacher right now, not in three years. (And given the power of the union representing underperforming teachers, it's doubtful how many underperforming teachers will actually be removed.)
Nevada's children deserve better than lemons. To ensure the best educators are teaching our children, teacher tenure should be eliminated.
We want an end to corporate money's influence in politics, whether through campaign donations, PACs, or other groups. Money is not speech.
We want truly effective campaign finance reform, so that corporations and other interests have no overwhelming advantage over the rest of us in any part of American politics.
For a group that claims to be interested in getting money out of politics, a protest outside of a luxury hotel where the President of the United States is holding a fundraiser would be a no-brainer, right?
The RVJ on Saturday says Obama will be here Tuesday. I haven't seen any news concerning this since then. I notice that all the messages related to this event have disappeared from the OccupyLasVegas website. Has this been cancelled? Or has Obama cancelled his visit?
But cancel they did, because they're too busy ... or something.
I wanted to help with a protest with the obama event but there's just too much to be done setting up the new occupation site. That mixed with the uncertainty about where he was supposed to actually be really threw a wrench in the works. You can be sure I'll be at the next political rally to remind people about our mission. Dems, Repubs, they're both crap at the moment. We won't miss the next few regardless of party.
At tonight's GA [General Assembly] there were a few reasons mentioned not to do this. The visit was happening too quickly for us to create a coherent response, and there were some concerns about the secret service. There was some disagreement here; some will be protesting the visit anyways, which is fine.
I finally discovered the VERY general location (east side of Vegas) that he'll be in tomorrow. The area is being blocked off so no one can determine the exact route he'll be taking. We discussed planning for future events and being ready to go with 10-12 hours notice (approx. what we'd have for tomorrow) for his next visit.
A key part of that article quoted union organizers using their influence (and promise to turnout union members to OLV events) to steer protesters away from protesting a Democratic event. They registered no objections, however, to protesting the Republican presidential debate.
If Occupy Las Vegas was living up to its own mission statement, they would be protesting unions for being among the largest campaign contributors in the country. Instead, Occupy Las Vegas is relying on union organizers to boost their numbers at rallies — assuming, of course, those rallies are to the liking of those unions.
A project labor agreement requires all contractors, whether they are unionized or not, to subject themselves and their employees to unionization in order to work on a government-funded construction project. This is done by including a union collective bargaining agreement in a public construction project's bid specifications. In order to receive a contract, a contractor must sign the agreement and subject its employees to union control. ...
The use of a project labor agreement usually results in cost overruns and higher construction costs for taxpayers. Qualified non-union contractors who wish to make lower-cost bids, and employees who wish to work non-union, are locked out of the project. However, politicians and government officials continue to impose project labor agreements to reward the union officials that fund their political campaigns and keep them in power.
The unions’ only hope remaining was to use their political influence to force contractors to use union workers on public works projects. In 2009, a few months after unions spent more than $200,000 on just the four winning candidates in Clark County Commission races, the Commission took up a proposal to impose a PLA on every County construction project.
Only through the action of groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors, which were able to quickly mobilize a strong showing of opposition, was this attempt to impose the will of unions on the public stopped.
But that didn’t stop the unions, or their favorite politicians. Rather than a blanket PLA, they’ve been working on imposing PLA’s on individual projects, with the same ultimate effect.
While the recent decline in government employment has attracted attention, government employees have fared far better than private-sector workers in the recession. The unemployment rate of government employees is just 4.7 percent, the lowest rate of any industry. [Emphasis added]
The GOP presidential candidates are in Las Vegas for a CNN debate tonight at 5 p.m.
While there are many questions worth asking the Republican candidates — and the current president — this is mine: Who will admit that the way our country's spending money is unsustainable, and what are you going to do about it? Note: If your answer doesn't involve reforming Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, we both know your answer is worthless.
Fiscal conservatives and libertarians have the plans to fix this mess — actual concrete ideas — what I want to know is this: Which presidential candidate will have the courage to support them?
More specifically, do they matter to Ruben Murillo, president of the Clark County Education Association — at least when it comes to accurately noting how much the Clark County School District will spend per pupil this year?
We’ll find out for sure soon enough, but the answer seems to be “no.”
Wondering where Murillo had come up with the $5,000 figure, I called him up and asked. Murillo told me the reporter had cited him accurately, but then admitted his figure was just an "estimate" and that it could be higher.
Murillo gave me his e-mail address, and I sent him the research linked above, showing that CCSD will spend more than $9,000 per pupil this year. And that $9,000 includes only "current" education expenditures. If you include total expenditures, CCSD will spend over $12,300 per student this year.
Murillo e-mailed me back and said that the spending amounts to which he had been referring were as follows (these numbers are per student, per school year):
Statewide average:
11-12 $5,263
12-13 $5,374
CCSD
11-12---$5,136
12-13---$5249
He then wrote: "These are the figures I was referring to and will continue to use when addressing CCSD & Nevada per pupil expenditures."
The DSA is the budget through which the State distributes direct financial aid to local school districts. It does not include the entire funding for K-12 education but rather includes only the State’s portion of the guaranteed basic support.
After I e-mailed Murillo to explain the different sources of government funds (although I strongly suspect he knew this already) and encouraged him to be honest with the public, he wrote simply: "Thanks for your response."
While it'd be nice to think that Murillo will start telling the truth about Nevada's education spending, nothing in his e-mails suggests that such honesty is forthcoming. In fact, he explicitly committed to using inaccurate numbers to describe education spending in CCSD and in Nevada.
So much of today's education debate isn't about policy. It's about cutting through union lies, like this one, and making the public aware of what's actually happening.
Whether or not Murillo knew the truth about education spending before our exchange, he most certainly does now. It will be shameful if Murillo and, by extension, the CCEA, choose to ignore this information and lie to the public about how much we spend on education in Nevada and in CCSD.
Teachers deserve to be represented by someone with enough integrity to tell the truth on a matter as simple as this.
We’ll see if Murillo and the CCEA start discussing education spending honestly. But if they don’t, the media, teachers and the public shouldn't let them get away with it.
Before the GOP presidential debates head into Las Vegas next week, you might be interested in this game put together by our friends over at the Reason Foundation.
It lists quotes from each of the candidates on a variety of policy topics and invites you to pick which quote most closely aligns with your particular views on the issue. At the end, it tells you who your GOP "sweetheart" would be.
Honestly, I would have preferred it just say "This guy's views are closest to yours," but Reason chose to go the sweetheart direction...
As the current legislative session approached, I hoped our state’s political representatives would set politics and ideology aside, and then find a balanced solution to address Nevada’s many challenges — a solution that would position Nevada for long-term success. ...
In a continuing effort to find a responsible middle ground, the Democratic budget proposal introduced this week offers a balanced approach that includes significant budget cuts as well as new sources of revenue.
"I am known for working across party lines to get things done," he [Horsford] said. "What I don't do is I don't compromise my ideals and convictions. I don't sell my constituents out."
What's in the past is past, of course, but there's a valuable takeaway here.
The next time a liberal attacks a believer in limited government for not adopting a "balanced approach" to raising taxes or attacks them for signing a pledge not to raise taxes — they should just say they're following the example of Sen. Horsford by not compromising their ideals and convictions.
Rarely is the disconnect between what an organization says and what they're actually doing as apparent as it is with the words of the Nevada State Education Association and the actions of the Clark County Education Association.
Success can be measured different ways. For many, it involves wealth, prosperity or power. For Nevada’s educators, it means something entirely different.
For these educators, success in schools is about more than test scores. It’s about values and hard work. It’s about the expression on a child’s face when she finally grasps the concept of a basic equation, the enthusiasm in a roomful of kids eager to be called on to answer a question, and the tearful goodbye from an accomplished student at the end of another academic year.
Nevada educators experience success — and disappointment — every workday, because they care about kids, not money or perks. Somehow this gets lost in education policy debates, where the voices of front-line experts aren’t heard. [Emphasis added]
Peck and Warne are clear — teachers care about kids, not money or perks.
So which is it? Is the CCEA not representing the interests of teachers or do teachers care about money and perks, despite the claim made by Peck and Warne? Or both?
I should point out that there isn't anything inherently wrong with caring about your salary or perks. I love how Peck and Warne make it seem like caring about their salary is beneath the dignity of teachers in a column where they spend most of their words shilling for more spending on education — and therefore educators.
The major problem with teacher salaries isn't that teachers are paid too much or too little. It's that there's little to no relation between how good of a teacher you are and how much you get paid.
Most everyone can agree that great teachers need to be paid more and poor teachers should be paid less (or encouraged to find other work), but the union insists on paying teachers for length of service and advanced degrees, neither of which have significant impacts on teacher quality.
Once again, union rhetoric doesn't match union actions.
Today, I'd like to address the economic philosophy behind that statement and why it is also wrong.
The unstated, underlying economic assumption that many leftists make is that the rich have to pay their "fair share," because the rich are wealthy only because they have taken from society or the poor and that government must right that wrong through taxes or "spreading the wealth around."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What's amazing about free-market capitalism is that the way you get rich is by meeting the needs of other people and making their lives better. Generally, rich people are those who've created the most wealth or value for other people. They've grown the economic pie.
This idea of creating wealth is critical. If you think the amount of wealth in the world is limited, it might make sense for government to take from the rich and give to the poor, because the economic pie is finite and if someone has more, than someone else has less.
But that's not the way the world is. The amount of wealth in the world is rapidly increasing.
You have to make a distinction between wealth and money. Wealth is stuff — cars, cell phones, medical care. Money is the ability to buy stuff. There’s little point to having $300 billion in money, if there’s nothing to purchase.
An easy way to think about this is to imagine yourself — with your car, income, internet access, indoor plumbing, A/C, refrigerator, cell phone, TV, etc. — living in the early 1900s. With those modern conveniences, you'd be the wealthiest person in the world. John Rockefeller would have more money than you, but you and I would have the best stuff and the best standard of living.
Your TV is bigger and gets more channels. He never had a microwave. Your cell phone is better than any form of communication he had. He never had a DVD player or even a VCR. Through the internet, you have access to more information at virtually no cost than he could have imagined. He never had access to a CAT scan, MRI or Lasik. The twelve-second flight at Kitty Hawk didn't even occur until 1903.
I drive a 1994 Mercury Sable, and I have a better car, in terms of performance, than Rockefeller, a man who would have been worth over $300 billion in today's dollars, ever did.
Think about that. It's stunning to consider.
You and I are wealthier — in terms of stuff — than John Rockefeller, who would have been worth over $300 billion in today's dollars.
Why?
Because over the last 100 years, thousands upon thousands of inventors and entrepreneurs have created stuff that made the lives of people they didn't even know much better off.
Why did they create and invent? While, given the complexity of human motivation, it's impossible to give a definite blanket answer, for most entrepreneurs making money is a significant motivation. And the best way to make money is to create something that another person will pay for. And what do people pay for? Things that improve their lives.
As a result of entrepreneurs’ ability to make things that are beneficial to others, some of these inventors and businessmen and women became rich — some fabulously wealthy.
Their wealth has not detracted from our wealth or quality of life. In an uncountable number of ways, you and I are indirect beneficiaries of the wealth they created.
Rich people aren't the enemy of the poor. In many ways, rich individuals (through their businesses and inventions) have made the lives of the poor in America better than the lives of rich Americas 100 years ago.
• 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning
• Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR
• Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation
• 43 percent have Internet access
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD television
• One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo
As he often did, Milton Friedman explained this best. Enjoy this clip of him talking with Phil Donahue about how the masses escape poverty through the free market.
Because the economic pie is always growing in a free-market economy, the richer the rich get, the better off the rest of us are.
Via the Heritage Foundation, here's how much the “rich" pay in income taxes.
So, the top one percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of the total federal income tax bill in 2008. In comparison, the bottom 95 percent of wage earners paid 41 percent ... combined.
You might think this fact would be enough to defeat “the rich aren't paying their fair share" fallacy, but I'd respectfully disagree.
The problem with that statement isn't that liberals are wildly misinformed about how much the rich pay in taxes — although that's often true — it's the assumption built into that statement.
Saying "the rich aren't paying their fair share" assumes that government or other members of society have a right to your wealth — at least if you're rich. After all, who determines what's fair, and why does that amount always seem to be increasing?
Now government costs money, and there should be a uniform and low tax rate, but after that, neither the government, your neighbors nor society has any right to your money or mine!
Government corruption takes many forms, but one of the most obvious is when an elected or unelected official uses his authority to benefit himself, a spouse or a supporter financially.
That's the reason Rep. Shelley Berkley is in hot water. As The New York Times reported, she used her influence with regulators "to pursue an agenda that is aligned with the business interests of her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner." (I'm not commenting here on whether or not Berkley did anything unethical or wrong here. I'm just noting that the appearance of acting in the financial interests of her spouse, and hence her own financial interests, raises questions.)
Now, imagine Berkley had acted in the opposite manner. Say she had supported shutting down the kidney transplant program, even though it would hurt her husband's business. This would be a non-story, because she had done something not in her financial self-interest.
That's why I don't understand Patrick Coolican's column Friday in the Las Vegas Sun. In it, he attacks Nevada state Sen. Michael Roberson for supporting putting more money in classrooms, while his wife has a CCSD job "outside" the classroom. If Roberson is successful in mandating that 65 percent of school funding be classroom funding, his wife's position may be eliminated.
First, this is actually the kind of behavior we should be encouraging in our elected officials. Supporting a policy because it's best for students and taxpayers, even if it might have a negative impact on your personal situation, is a very good thing. If there were a columnist or two out there who kept wondering where Nevada’s leaders are, this might have ended the search.
Second, Coolican's column is really an attempt to claim Roberson is acting in a hypocritical manner.
State Sen. Michael Roberson is a rising star in the Republican Party.
He caught the attention of conservatives during his first legislative session this year with tough rhetoric attacking teachers unions and a Clark County School District he said was bloated with personnel who aren’t in the classroom. In fact, he offered legislation that would have mandated 65 percent of education money go to classrooms.
As it happens, the School District received a report recently from Gibson Consulting Group recommending $162 million in efficiency savings over five years, money that could be put toward classroom instruction. One of the cost-saving measures that would reap $1.8 million per year would eliminate the position of “theme coordinator” and “recruiting counselor” at the district’s magnet schools.
That’s the job title of Liberty Leavitt Roberson, Roberson’s wife, who works at Advanced Technologies Academy.
Think about this for a second. Liberals have mandated that all citizens pay taxes into the public school system and Social Security and Medicare. Mandated. If you try to avoid paying those taxes, you'll go to jail.
But when fiscal conservatives point out problems in those systems, some liberals shout "hypocrisy," because those conservative individuals are participating in a mandated system.
What garbage.
It's not hypocritical or "awkward" to work for changes in a mandated system you're employed in or living under — especially if those changes would actually impact your personal bottom line negatively — because the government mandates those systems.
Third, Coolican then tries to claim that Roberson misidentified the number of CCSD members making over $100,000. Roberson said it was 350.
There aren’t 350 education bureaucrats making six figures. There were 299 in 2009 and 285 in 2010. (But hey, if his accuracy were a batting average, he’d be the best hitter ever.)
After checking on TransparentNevada, I found out that there were actually 346 CCSD employees who made over $100,000 in 2010. When I e-mailed Coolican to ask about this discrepancy, he said that he only asked CCSD about administrators, because Roberson's exact quote was "350 education bureaucrats."
Since one definition of “bureaucrat” is anyone in a bureaucracy, that's pretty thin hair splitting to try to justify a snarky shot.
Write on Nevada is the blog of the Nevada Policy Research Institute. NPRI promotes free-market public policies and individual liberty in the Silver State. For more information visit npri.org.
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the individual authors and should not be construed as the official view or position of the Nevada Policy Research Institute.
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