Milwaukee Teachers Earn Over $100,000 a Year

The Wisconsin teacher strike has ignited another debate about America's supposedly underpaid teachers.

Let's talk reality here.

According to the MacIver Institute total teacher compensation in Milwaukee is $100,005 a year. Salaries average $56,500 and benefits are $43,505. It's a strange salary to benefit ratio, but unions have been pushing benefits over salaries for decades. It was their choice to do this.

Teachers work less than 37 weeks a year. They get 10 weeks off in the summer, 1 week at Christmas, 1 week for mid-winter break, 1 week for spring break, and 11 holidays. The leaves 1472 hours for work. $100,005 / 1472 hours is $68 an hour.

Over the last couple of years, I ran a little consulting firm. When I needed people, I brought them in as 1099 subcontractors at a straight hourly rate. No benefits whatsoever. Over the last two years, the average hourly rate I've paid is $65. That's less than the Milwaukee teachers make.

There are three important differences as well:

First, I live on the west coast, where the cost of living is much higher that it is in Wisconsin. Computer programmer rates are much lower in the Midwest than they are in Seattle. The average teacher in Wisconsin makes significantly more per hour than the average contract programmer.

Second, I hire people who have quantitative college degrees, like Computer Science where they go through 4 semesters of calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. I don't hire people who have worthless teaching certificates or degrees in "Phys Ed".

Third, if the people I employ don't do a great job, my customers won't pay me. They certainly won't bring me back to do more work. On the other hand, teachers get "tenure", which makes it impossible to terminate them no matter how screwed up their product (your kids) become.

The sad fact is that America's poorly performing public school system has little to do with lack of funding or poor teacher compensation. The schools don't perform because the unions care more about their own power than they care about our kids. That's the bottom line.

MSNBC: Wisconsin Teachers Out to Lunch

This morning on the MSNBC show Jansing & Company, they showed an interesting graph on the real financial situation with the teachers in Wisconsin.

According to MSNBC:

- The average single private sector employee pays 18% of the cost of his/her healthcare insurance.

- The average married private sector employee pays 29% of the cost of healthcare insurance for themselves and their family.

- In Wisconsin, teachers only pay 6% of the cost of their healthcare insurance.

Wisconsin has a budget deficit of $3.5 billion. They are constitutionally mandated to balance their budget. To help balance the budget, Governor Walker has proposed to increase the amount teachers contribute to their health insurance premiums from 6% to 12% of the cost. This is still far lower than people in the private sector pay. The teachers's union response? Close the schools, stop educating our kids, and run around carrying signs that equate Governor Walker to Hitler.

The underlying story is that America has among the most under-performing public school systems in the developed world. Last year, American students ranked 25th out of 34 developed countries in Math and Science. American was right in the middle on language skills. It's not a great performance for the students of the greatest country on earth.

Money isn't the problem. America spends more money on education per student than every other country except Switzerland.

Wisconsin teachers earn on average $89,000 a year in salary and benefits. They work less than 9 months of the year. That's $10,000 a month, equivalent to $120,000 a year if they worked full time like the rest of us. That's a fair chunk of change. Quite frankly, great teachers should probably make more than this. That's how to attract great teachers. We need to attract more great teachers. However, we also need to terminate bad teachers. Bad teachers are rarely terminated. Why?

The problem is that the NEA owns the Democrat Party. The NEA uses forced union dues to support Democrat politicians who reciprocate by blocking merit pay for great teachers, Charter Schools (which was the idea of courageous Democrat politicians), and school choice. Of course, any notion that a Principal could terminate a lousy teacher who is destroying your child's future is just not even open for discussion by the NEA and their Democrat protectors.

The McKinsey Global Institute just released a study which showed that America's public sector and especially America's public schools are the among the most unproductive in the developed world. They are also the most resistant to change. McKinsey also faults the U.S. government for creating the most burdensome regulatory climate in the world; not doing it's job in providing a healthy infrastructure that meets our needs; and ignoring our growing energy challenges.

What did The Economist say about McKinsey's conclusions? "Alas, a country which is so good at business is pretty bad at government".

That about sums it up.

This is our challenge.

Every American Should be Proud of the Egyptians

The brave Egyptian protesters are in day 16 of their protest against the dictator Mubarak. Mubarak refuses to leave. The Egypt military is starting to make veiled threats against the protesters. Yet, the protests continue.

Every American should be proud of the civil disobedience the Egyptians are displaying. After all, Americans pretty much invented civil disobedience. Sorry President Obama, it wasn't Gandhi. Gandhi was a big fan of Henry David Thoreau.

Unfortunately, there is a segment in American society that is alarmed by the protests in Egypt. It's a segment of the population that I have a great affinity with and respect for -- conservatives.

One has to wonder how "conservatives", who champion American values, came to be alarmed by and even oppose the Egyptian's desire to be free of tyranny.

It all started with the Cold War. It continues with the desire of some "conservative" politicians (the neo-cons) to remain relevant by exploiting the fears of Americans, rather than exploiting our ideals.

During the Cold War, America faced an organized, ideological enemy (Communism) that enslaved half of the world and had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at us. America did what it took to fight this tyranny. One thing America did was prop up anti-Communist dictators -- some of whom were pretty nasty at home. American did what we had to do for the future of world. I supported it 100% and I won't apologize for it.

However, after the Cold War ended the U.S. government stopped propping up dictators in Latin America and Asia. Most countries in Latin America and Asia have progressed to market economies and pluralistic political systems.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government did not stop propping up dictators in the Middle East.

Who flew the Airplanes into the Word Trade Center? Hondurans? Chileans? Filipinos? South Koreans? NO. It was people who lived in oppressive regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that are supported either financially or militarily by the U.S. government.

Today, Tunisians and Egyptians are clamoring to be free. Others are likely to follow.

Americans should be cheering. Unfortunately, many "conservative" politician are sounding the alarm bells instead.

Why?

The GOP coalition is much more ideologically diverse than the Democrat Party. The only thing that held the GOP coalition together was anti-communism. After the Cold War ended, parts of the GOP coalition including libertarians like Ron Paul and paelo-cons like Pat Buchanan started questioning our expensive military commitments abroad.

This alarmed the "neo-cons", so they started looking for a new enemy. For a while during the 1990s, they were beating the drums against "Red" China, which in many ways is more capitalist than the U.S.

9/11 saved the GOP coalition for while. But 9/11 is not the hot topic for Americans today. So the neo-cons are reaching for new solutions. Some are starting to beat the drums against China again. Others are warning of an imminent threat that radical Muslim regimes will pop up all over the middle east. But Egypt is not Iran. There isn't an exiled Ayatollah waiting to take over. The most respected institution in Egypt is the pro-Western military.

I love my country. I often call myself a "conservative". But American conservatives who oppose the demonstrators in Egypt are on the wrong side of history.

The Real Story with Obama's Colorado School Turnaround

During the state of the union address, Obama praised the Bruce Randolph school in Colorado for turning themselves around rather dramatically in a few short years.

Three years ago, Bruce Randolph was one of the poorest performing schools in Colorado. In 2010, 97% of the seniors graduated. Many of the graduates were the first in their families to get admitted into college.

How did they do it?

Sen. Michael Bennet and the school's principal Kristin Waters, convinced the Colorado government to give the school almost complete autonomy from the state's education bureaucrats over budget, staffing, schedule, school calendar, and curriculum.

One of the first things they did is terminate all of their tenured teachers and told them they could re-apply for their jobs. Only 5% got their jobs back. 95% of the tenured teachers weren't up to par.

The Gate's Foundation has done significant research into why public schools fail. Their conclusion is that it's all about teachers. The producer of the movie "Waiting for Superman" came to the same conclusion. Good teachers succeed and bad teachers fail our children. It's not any more difficult than that.

In the private sector a business can: A.) fire bad employees and B.) pay good employees a lot of money. You can't do that in government. That's the problem. It has to change.

If we're really serious about fixing the public schools, we need to give principals the ability to terminate bad teachers and reward great ones with substantial performance bonuses tied to international test scores. We also need to get schools out from under their state's education bureaucracies and let the principals and the parents who have kids in the school have a greater say in how the schools are run.

This is how the Bruce Randolph school was able to succeed. It's how other schools will be able to succeed as well.

Unfortunately, the teacher's unions have viscously blocked every attempt to implement these types of common sense reforms.

The big question is whether or not Obama and the Democrats are willing to do battle with their largest specialist interest group (the NEA) so that our kids can have a fighting chance in the global economy?

Obama's Tepid State of the Union Speech

Last night, President Obama delivered on of the most tepid state union speeches in recent memory. Obama's "winning the future" theme was exactly the right one. Unfortunately, very little of what he said will help us do that.

Obama should have held up the report from his own Deficit Commission. He should have told the American people that this is his program for moving forward. Then he should have turned around and handed it to John Boehner and asked him to pass it immediately.

Instead, we got a laundry list of disconnected new initiatives that just don't add up and won't do a thing to solve the looming fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending.

Here's the blow-by-blow analysis:

1.) Obama is calling for new "investments" on infrastructure. In this context, he's actually using the term "investment" correctly. Here's the problem: for years Democrats have called every bit of government spending "investments", including spending on transfer payments from one group to another. Only 6% of Obama's trillion dollar "stimulus" program was spent on real investments in our future. So, at this point it's difficult to trust what the Democrats say about this. Yes, we need to fix and upgrade our crumbling roads, bridges, ports, airports, water and sewage systems. But it has to be paid for by cutting subsidies and transfer payments.

2.) Obama mentioned China's "green energy" programs. Great! China is building the largest damn in the world. It's difficult to build a damn in the United States anymore because the extreme fringe of the environmental movement won't allow it. China has 30 nuclear power plants under construction. The last time the U.S. started a new nuclear power plant, Jimmy Carter was still president. Again, the extreme environmentalists won't allow it. Please tell us Mr. President, what specifically do you plan to do about your supporters, who have been blocking energy progress since the 1970s?

3.) Obama called for more "investments" in education. What he really means is more transfer payments to the teacher's unions who have destroyed our school system. No thanks. Been there, done that. Not a single dollar more at the local, state, or federal level should be spent on public schools until: A.) the teacher's unions are de-certified, B.) we abolish the entire notion of "tenure", which only serves to protect bad teachers, and C.) every school is taken away from the board of education bureaucrats and turned over to the parents who actually have kids in the school, i.e., every school is turned into a Charter school. Obama has claimed for years that he supports Charter Schools. It's time to put up or shut up. We're either going to truly reform one of the worst performing education systems in the developed world, or reconcile ourselves to becoming a second rate country.

4.) Obama called for building high speed rail lines in California and the Midwest. The last thing in the world we need is to waste money on a government run high speed rail system, which will cost a ton of money, almost no one will use, and will quickly degrade and stagnate like every other service the government tries to provide. A better answer to providing mass transit is to eliminate state and local laws which prevent private entities from competing to provide bus and other types of mass transit services. The Philippines have privately run mass transit systems, which do a great job at getting a lot of people where they need to go.

5.) Obama is right about the crazy organization of the federal government and all of the duplication across agencies. For example, the federal government has 72 welfare programs. They could all be collapsed into a single program that provides cash subsidies to the poor and disabled. We'd save a TON of money on administrative costs. A TON. Do you actually think that he will do anything like this? I don't.

6.) Obama called for a 5 year "spending freeze" on domestic discretionary spending. This won't even come close to balancing the budget. His freeze might reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next 10 years, but deficits are projected to be $14 TRILLION dollars over the next 10 years, which will double the national debt to $28 trillion. His freeze amounts to less than 3% of the projected new debt. It's not enough to keep the country solvent.

7.) Obama is finally paying attention to the trade agreements with Columbia and Panama which have been languishing on the shelf for years. That's a good thing.

8.) He paid some lip service to tort reform to help reign in heath care costs. This is also a good thing, but I don't think he's serious given that Trial Lawyers are among the largest contributors to the Democrat Party.

9.) He also mentioned lowering the corporate tax rate, which is the highest in the world, and simplifying the tax code. This is the one recommendation from his deficit commission that he seems to be endorsing. It's a great idea and it should be done to help restore our competitiveness.

10.) Of course Obama had to throw some red meat to the fringe left by bashing oil companies and successful people. No surprise, but it is getting really, really old.


It's pretty obvious that Obama still doesn't understand that the country faces an almost insurmountable fiscal disaster caused by excessive government spending. Here are the two big questions: A.) Will the GOP actually do something about it? B.) If the GOP does do something about it, will Obama really go along? We'll see.

Healthcare Reality Check

The GOP House has voted to overturn the huge mess known as Obamacare. We'll see if it passes the Senate. Regardless, President Obama is not going to sign. So, the GOP is already starting work on replacing Obamacare with their own ideas.

What should the GOP propose? There are two countries that can guide us.

Switzerland undoubtedly has the best healthcare system in Europe. Singapore has the best healthcare system in the world. Switzerland spends about 10.8% of GDP on healthcare. Singapore spends less than 4%. Healthcare expenditures in the U.S. have ballooned to a whopping 16.5% of GDP.

Neither Switzerland or Singapore have the kind of "socialist" or "single payer" systems that enchant the know-nothings on the American left. In fact, public expenditures on healthcare as a percentage of the total is about the same in Switzerland and the U.S. The government spends a much lower percentage of the total in Singapore:

Switzerland -- 55%
United States -- 50% average, depending on the state
Singapore -- 34%

Why do their systems work to control and costs and ours doesn't? Singapore and Switzerland have similar philosophies -- they put people in charge of their own care, but they also require them to take responsibility.

In Singapore you are required to save 8% of you income for healthcare. You can use your health savings to buy insurance and pay for out-of-pocket expenses. The government subsidizes health savings for very low income people.

In Switzerland you are required to spend 8% of your own money on health insurance. The government subsidizes insurance payments for very low income people. Out of pocket expenses are additional.

Switzerland and Singapore have created nation's of healthcare shoppers, who use their own healthcare dollars wisely.

The problem in the U.S. is that Medicare, Medicaid, and employer paid insurance take financial responsibility away from individuals so people don't have any incentive to use medical services in a cost effective way.

I've been to Singapore. They have a great and very cost effective healthcare system. It cheaper than ours. They also have better outcomes than we do. ditto for Switzerland.

The answer to escalating healthcare costs in the U.S. is not to give more control to power hungry politicians and greedy bureaucrats. The answer is personal responsibility and personal control. Singapore and Switzerland have shown us the way. Are American politicians smart enough to follow? We'll see.

TSA Grooms Children to Cooperate with Sexual Abusers

It's bad enough that the TSA demands to take naked pictures of us, or subjects us to invasive "pat downs", which includes fondling breasts and rubbing genitalia. Now they've truly outdone themselves.

TSA director, James Marchand recently issued an official directive to TSA agents ordering them to turn the "pat downs" into some kind of game for children.

"Try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier."

He also said that making it a game would become a part of the TSA's training.

Child abuse experts are not amused. As Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, points out:

Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is one of the most common ways that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact. Children don't have the sophistication to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator. The TSA policy could desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children.

How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game? To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years.


Whichever numskulls at the TSA came up with this idea should be fired. More importantly, the manner in which the TSA conducts all of its business needs to be closely examined.

Isaac Yeffet, who was formerly in charge of security for Israel's El Al Airlines has made it very clear that the TSA's entire approach is misguided. As a result, the TSA is actually endangering us, not making us safer.

El Al Airlines spends their time looking for people who might be a threat to us. They do this by determining common characteristics (including travel habits) of terrorists and then spending more time interviewing and searching the people who have those characteristics than other passengers.

The TSA on the other hand spends their time patting down 3 year old girls, taking dirty pictures of 40 year old nuns, and abusing 70 year old men with artificial limbs and colostomy bags looking for things. Sure, the TSA finds a lot of things -- shaving cream, shampoo bottles, and maybe even an occasional Lady Gillette. Have they ever caught a terrorist trying to board an airplane? No.

Things have gotten so bad that even Republican Congressmen who voted to create the TSA are now calling for it's abolition. I agree.

Airline security should be placed in the hands of the people who have the most to lose from a terrorist attack -- the airlines themselves. Banks, Armored Cars, and even shopping malls provide for their own security. Airlines should be allowed to do them same. We'd all be safer as a result.