The Reactionary Right hates defined benefit pensions for public employees.  As best as I can tell, they make two arguments: they are a huge unfunded liability and they are more generous than pensions in the private sector.

Show Me Institute, Rex Sinquefield funded “think tank” to provide “research” to defund the private sector and privatize everything, just issued a new report “Missouri Transition Costs And Public Pension Reform”.

This report is written by a grifter at the American Enterprise Institute. (More on that at the end of this posting.)  

If you open up the report on the link above, you find it is a very strange report on Missouri public pensions.  If you do a search, there is no analysis of any public pensions in Missouri.

In the actual text, the report mentions only Missouri four times: one identifying the executive director of MOSERS and three times in a paragraph I will cite after the fold.

The executive director of MOSERS provides a quote on a defined contribution system that the report attempts to refute.  

This paragraph is in that refutation with the three other mentions of Missouri.

One might argue if public pensions were reduced, the lower incomes of retired public employees would cause them to rely on public assistance, thereby transferring costs to the government.  These payments would not be, of course, liabilities, but more important is that these payments are unlikely to be significant in any case.  Full-career public employees in most states retire with benefits far exceeding any level at which public assistance would be payable.  In Missouri,for instance, an average full-career state employee retiring today would receive almost $24,000 annually in pension benefits, based on the Missouri State Employee Retirement System’s annual report, plus another $13,000 or so in Social Security benefits.  Based upon U.S Census data, such a public employee would have a retirement income greater than about 83 percent of new retirees in Missouri. (p. 18 of the PDF file)

Wow!

Missouri public workers’ pension along with Social Security provide them with a retirement income ($36,000/year) which is greater than 83% of new retirees in Missouri, so it is no big deal to cut their pensions.  

(I wonder what the average education of those workers are and their income in relation to the population as a whole.)

I always thought that one of the characteristics of being middle class is to be able to retire in some comfort.  I wonder how comfortable anyone is with $36,000/year.  As someone approaching retirement, I could get by on that, but with increasing health care costs, it will not be comfortable.

In a better world, we would be appalled that a retirement income of $36,000/year is greater than 83% of all new retirees in Missouri and we should be thinking about how to raise their retirement income and NOT reducing the pensions of others so everyone who works for a living is equally poor.

Remember this is the “research” from one of the richest Missourians that will be cited by the reactionary right to end defined benefits for state workers.

The author of this report worked in W.’s administration, Andrew Biggs is a real piece of work.  Because this report has next to nothing about Missouri’s public pensions, it reads like something that he has done for other states.  On his website, I couldn’t find one.

However, he does have this report on Federal worker pensions titled “We’re No. 1 – in public employee pay.”. It has a lot of charts comparing Federal workers at various pay grades to governmental workers in countries of “Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the “rich man’s club” whose membership includes most of the world’s developed, high-income countries.”

The argument he makes is that US federal workers are paid more than in these other “rich man’s club.”. Here is the membership of this “rich Man’s club.”

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

[Biggs says he compares US worker pay to 18 countries, but never mentions those countries.]

Given how expensive health care is the US, it would be good to know how much health care costs those workers in other countries in relation to what it costs in the US.  Likewise, in those other countries, public universities don’t have the tuition costs in the US.  

The intellectual dishonesty of Biggs is breath taking.

Let’s keep in mind what these “reports” are arguing: These workers are better off than others; therefore, we can (and should) cut their wages and benefits. In other words, because a lot of people are already poor, let’s make that number even bigger.

How much one gets paid to comfort the very, very comfortable by proposing ways to make people poorer.

Does this argument work the other way? American CEOs are paid significantly more than CEOs anywhere else in the world.  Shouldn’t we enact policies to correct this huge inequality, too?

 

Recently, at Lindenwood University, the long simmering debate over public education exploded into hateful rhetoric against public schools by voucher advocate Rex Sinquefield, founder of the right wing think tank, The Show Me Institute.

Financier Sinquefield was lecturing on how to improve Missouri’s business climate.  The base of his speech was his support for no income tax.

Two years, I had written an Opinion Shaper column opposing no income tax, and had come to hear his side.  I was joined by Anita Miller, Francis Howell’s NEA President, Kim Garbs, Fort Zumwalt’s NEA President, and Cheryl Heibler, former St. Charles County councilwomen.

Following is his speech, Sinquefield was asked about his support to eliminate tenure for teachers. That ignited Sinquefield into a rant not only against tenure but against public education and teachers. He climaxed with these incendiary words from a column in an Osage county newspaper:

“a long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said how can we hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives? And what they designed was the public school system.”

Only a trickle of laughter sprouted, most were like my friends and I, just stunned. This was only the final nail in Sinquefield’s diatribe of false accusations against public schools. Prior to the KKK remark, Sinquefield had incorrectly said, “In this country, can you think of any other occupation where you can screw up, and screw up a child’s life permanently, and they can’t fire you?”

As a school board member, I have been one of the “they”; and Sinquefield is just wrong.  My second year of the school board, we terminated over 80 teachers including a large number of veteran tenured teachers. A teacher’s contract is like any workers contract it allows for dismissal of poor performing employees.  All a contract does is set up fair procedures for termination.

Besides, it takes two to sign a contract. If the administration doesn’t like a clause in a contract, work to change it in negotiations.  Tenure does not have to be granted for five years. If it takes an administrator longer to evaluate a teacher, you need a new administrator.

Sinquefield further insulted all veteran teachers by saying, “Many teachers quit. After about three to five years many of the good ones leave … and the bad ones stay.” That is how little regard Mr. Sinquefield has for all dedicated experienced teachers.

Kim Garbs asked Sinquefield if he had ever been in a public school and talked to a public school teacher. Sinquefield said he had, but the school he cited was a charter school.

Sinquefield is Missouri’s foremost advocate of charter schools. Yet charter schools have a bleak ten year history of failure in the St. Louis. Even after closing three of the worst charter school, charter schools still underperformed St. Louis public schools by almost 25 percent last year.

This failure of charter schools was underlined by a Stanford University study of 70 percent of the charter schools in the nation. They found only 16 percent of charter schools outperforming the public schools.

Despite this clear evidence there legislation is being considered which would bring charter schools to St. Charles County. Ultimately what is wanted is a voucher given to all children to go to the school of their choice.  This would mean a 12 percent cut in funding of public schools in order to bankroll private schools.

Sinquefield’s final attack on teachers came when he said, “It is, right now, illegal to consider the performance of students in setting the pay of teachers.” I questioned how my wife could be held responsible for the performance of homeless children (12 percent are in her district) or children who are beaten or sexually abuse, or are offspring of felons, drug addicts and alcoholics.

Sinquefield can be held responsible for the performance of his employees because he can fire those who are not producing. My wife cannot fire a child.

Kim, Anita, and I are members of an Education Caucus who believes in the words of Martin Luther King, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” It is time for all residents of St. Charles County who are friends of public education to stand up to the Rex Sinquefield’s.

My Opinion Shaper Column from St. Charles County Surburban Journal – cwviking

Via our good friends at Fired Up!:

@pelopidas Travis H. Brown

If #Pujols runs to #FL, I for one will blame the #MOIncomeTax. #letvotersdecide #cardinals 6 Dec

Pujols, Angels reach $254 million, 10-year deal

By RONALD BLUM

….The three-time NL MVP agreed Thursday to a $254 million, 10-year contract with the Angels….

….St. Louis also offered the slugger a 10-year deal that chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said was in excess of $200 million….

Do the math. With that kind of money you can put a nice roof over your head and eat three squares a day no matter what the personal income tax rate.

The Missouri personal income tax rate:

Section 143.011, RSMo mandates tax is imposed at a rate of 1½ percent on the first $1,000 of taxable income and increases at a rate of ½ percent for every $1,000 increment up to $9,000. The tax rate is 6 percent on Missouri taxable income exceeding $9,000….

The California personal income tax rate (2011):

The maximum rate for individuals is 9.3%

The AMT rate for individuals is 7%

The Mental Health Services Tax Rate is 1% for taxable income in excess of $1,000,000.

Maybe Rex Sinquefield should ask for his money back. Or move to Florida.

I have a few last observations on this primary day about money as it applies to Sinquefield, Hubbard, Hoskins, and Tony Condra (challenging Maria Chappelle-Nadal in H.D. 72.)

Let’s start with Condra (pictured at left) and work our way back. The St. Louis American has a damning several paragraphs about him. In fact, they’ve put up a website entirely in his honor, with a video outlining his frequent abuse of two wives and his threats on their lives. The video also shows his support for Hubbard and Koster.

Actually, though, when I looked at his contribution report filed eight days before the primary, the big money didn’t come from them or Sinquefield, at least not directly. It came through the legislative committee in the 80th district–$1,800 and $1,250. That’s Ted Hoskins’ district, where I live. I don’t know who his primary opponent, Brenda Boyd, is, but she’s getting my vote.  

My vote will be just a tiny token of my lack of appreciation for a representative who takes money from Sinquefield and, like his friend Hubbard, hangs with the Republicans.

And speaking of Hubbard, he just got more negative mailers sent out about him by the Black Women’s PAC. They filed limited activity in their July report but then BINGO, they hit the jackpot.  

Funding the anti-Hubbard attacks are: Missouri National Education Association ($20,000), Missouri School Administrators PAC ($5,000), AFSCME ($2,500), Electrical Workers Vol Pol Educ & Leg Fund ($2,000).

That’s almost $30,000. Hope it didn’t come too late to stop Rodney.

photo courtesy of the St. Louis American

Missouri ProVote has this bit of satire on vouchers:

The motto of school voucher advocates in Missouri must be, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, because big money donors to state legislators who favor vouchers have already given more campaign contributions–fourteen months before the elections!–than they did in 2004 and 2006. 

In 2004, $385,340 was donated.  Last year, even though it was an off year election, contributions went up; pro-voucher candidates received $403,840.  So far in this election cycle, $483,850 has already been given.  Of course, a major reason the contributions are so high this cycle is that between January and June there were no caps on contributions. 

Indeed, now that the Supreme Court has put the kibosh on that travesty, Jay Nixon is returning all his over-the-limit contributions.  But the big honcho in the pro-voucher camp, Rex Sinquefield (pictured),  filed a legal argument with the Supreme Court asking that none of his donations be returned to him.  His brief, almost but not quite, said:  I bought ’em fair and square.  Okay, what he actually said was that his political groups gave money early in the cycle because that’s when it helps the most, and he doesn’t want it back.  For whatever that argument is worth.

Which brings us to Sinquefield’s two groups:  All Children Matter and the infamous Show Me Institute.

All Children Matter exists in only ten states, and we’re among the lucky ones to be targeted.  Most of the money for it comes from out-of-state, with less than a third coming from actual Missourians.  Make that Missourian, singular, as in Rex Sinquefield.  Ninety-five percent of the in-state contributions come from him.

The Show Me Institute, on the other hand, is based in St. Louis.  The ProVote website tells us that:

Their work “is rooted in the American tradition of free markets and individual liberty” and “seeks to move beyond the 20th-century mindset that every problem has a government.”

These groups and their legislative supporters want Missouri tax money going to private schools.  They have a problem, though:  the Missouri constitution forbids that.  So they have come up with an ingenious shell game to circumvent the law.  It’s called tax credits, and here’s how it works.  Say I want to send my child to a Catholic parochial school.  If a tax credit law were passed, I could get the Missouri taxpayers to foot most of the bill if I donated to a scholarship fund at that school.  I would give the fund $1000, and–this is if the pro-voucher people could ever get the law they want passed–the state would tell me that I get an eighty percent tax credit.  In other words, I would get to take $800 of that $1000  off my Missouri taxes.  Then the school conveniently would happen to award that $1000 scholarship to my child!  Can you imagine such a coincidence?  What are the odds?

That way, you see, Missouri wouldn’t have to give any money at all to a private school.  The state would still be out $800, but technically it wouldn’t be supporting a religious school.  So far, each attempt to pass this law has been resoundingly defeated.  Thank goodness, because if it had passed, it would have cost Missouri $40 million dollars this year. 

A few of the legislators voting for this shell game are doing so in good conscience.  Rodney Hubbard, Talibdin El-Amin, and Ted Hoskins, for example, are concerned about the plight of students in the St. Louis City Schools.  Most of the legislators who voted for it, however, are hypocrites.  They claim to be worried about poor children stuck in bad schools, but almost without exception they voted for Blunt’s Medicaid cuts. 

And anyway, the poor children aren’t very likely to be helped by these tax credits.  Even if parents of children in inner city schools could afford their share of the tuition, the religious schools reject two out of three children who apply.  They take the cream of the crop. 

No, the push for tuition tax credits is aimed at helping the affluent.  Erlaine Eltoomi mentioned at the recent West County Dems meeting that some churches have contrived another back door voucher plan.  Impatient that no tuition tax credits have been passed, some churches are declaring that any money a parishioner gives above a certain amount can be directed toward tuition at that church’s school.  Church donations, you see, are tax deductible.  That’s one more reason I’d favor doing away with tax deductions for church donations.

Look, if we’re going to get stuck with an extra forty million bill for education, let’s invest that money in the public schools, the poorest ones, and see if we can actually solve some of the problems.

Thanks go to Fired Up! for the photo of Rex Sinquefield.