Tuesday, December 21, 2010

CHRIS POWELL: ‘Systemic change’ isn’t just raising taxes again BY OUR NEW GOVERNOR ELECT - The Middletown Press (middletownpress.com)

Posted by Frank Smith at 21.12.10

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This article by Chris Powell is one of his better ones - he does well when he's not bashing Linda McMahon.

Wholeheartedly, I agree that the magnet school concept is an abject failure when compared to results of test scores in the state; also it is patently apparent that Sheff v. O'Neill was a decision that has proven to be nonsense. Many letters to the editor and blog comments have cooroborated this assertion. I recall one letter to the Copurant a few years ago that said, minorities in the poor cities don't necessarily want racially integrated schools, what they want is a good education.

I agree also that labor union contracts for government employees with their lucrative pension benefits have driven the economic structure of CT into a financial abyss. Census figures bear out this fact when one considers the number of millionaires that have left CT in this past decade.

Woe is us!

December 21, 2010 at 8:18 AM
The Thorn said...

Powell said: "Two-thirds of degree-seeking students in the state university and community college systems require remedial math and English. That is, they shouldn’t even have graduated from high school. Enforcing standards in high school and reducing the state’s higher-education capacity, liquidating the mere pretense of education rather than education itself, could save tens of millions every year."


What Mr. Powell doesn't mention is that this is because unions have turned out public schools into inferior institutions where employees matter more than the students that are used as pawns to protect teachers' lavish benefits and guaranteed retirements.

It is about time teachers were held accountable for teaching, isn't it?

December 21, 2010 at 2:22 PM
Anonymous said...

SYSTEMIC CHANGES - Why Mayor Tim Stewart should run for reelection in 2011- Systemic Changes.

Facing a state budget gap of nearly 20 percent between planned expenditures and likely revenue, Connecticut state government needs “systemic” changes, Gov.-elect Dan Malloy told a business group breakfast in Hartford this week. What does that mean?

Does it mean the sort of “systemic” change Connecticut got when the state income tax was enacted in 1991 -- higher taxes and bigger government serving only to diminish Connecticut’s quality of life? Probably.

But there are many opportunities for another sort of “systemic” change -- changes to increase the value obtained by the public from state government.

First on that sort of agenda for “systemic” change would be to identify what are so smugly called the “fixed costs” of government and to unfix them, to put them under ordinary public administration. Collective bargaining for public employees, binding arbitration of public employee union contracts, public employee pensions, “prevailing wage” requirements for government construction projects -- all these state laws and others actually prohibit controlling

Most taxpayers don’t have the defined-benefit pensions state government provides to its employees, and the chronic underfunding of the pension system shows that Connecticut can’t afford such pensions anymore. They should be replaced with the 401(k) retirement savings plans that are good enough for the most fortunate taxpayers. (Of course many taxpayers have only IRAs or no pension plans at all even as they are taxed for luxurious state employee pensions.)

Eliminating defined-benefit pensions for new state employees will prevent the disaster from getting much worse but it won’t make the fund solvent. No, even if systemic reform began today Connecticut would be stuck for decades devoting a huge share of public wealth just to the retirements of state government’s current work force.

Two-thirds of degree-seeking students in the state university and community college systems require remedial math and English. That is, they shouldn’t even have graduated from high school. Enforcing standards in high school and reducing the state’s higher-education capacity, liquidating the mere pretense of education rather than education itself, could save tens of millions every year.

December 21, 2010 at 2:22 PM
Anonymous said...

SYSTEMIC CHANGES- Why New Britain needs Mayor Tim Stewart to be reelected - Systemic Changes of CT Raising Taxes again?

Facing a state budget gap of nearly 20 percent between planned expenditures and likely revenue, Connecticut state government needs “systemic” changes, Gov.-elect Dan Malloy told a business group breakfast in Hartford this week. What does that mean?

Does it mean the sort of “systemic” change Connecticut got when the state income tax was enacted in 1991 -- higher taxes and bigger government serving only to diminish Connecticut’s quality of life?

But there are many opportunities for another sort of “systemic” change -- changes to increase the value obtained by the public from state government.

First on that sort of agenda for “systemic” change would be to identify what are so smugly called the “fixed costs” of government and to unfix them, to put them under ordinary public administration. Collective bargaining for public employees, binding arbitration of public employee union contracts, public employee pensions, “prevailing wage” requirements for government construction projects -- all these state laws and others actually prohibit controlling

December 21, 2010 at 2:29 PM

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