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Facebook gets surreal sometimes. I don't pick my friends there, acquaintances and family pick me, for the most part. I see the thoughts of quite a few conservatives, and their friends.
One conservative acquaintance posted something about the political "situation" here in Wisconsin. The new governor is trying to bust the teachers' union, under the guise of balancing the budget. In addition to eliminating collective bargaining rights, they're trying to make them pay more for their "cushy" benefits. (Public sector workers generally receive lower wages and better non-wage benefits.)
There seemed to be many teachers who called in sick to work, in order to attend the protests at the state capitol. Conservatives, of course were outraged that people would shirk their duties to go against the will of the citizenry, and called for their firing.
Someone commented, "I agree whole-heartedly. There are many fresh out of college grads with teaching degrees just waiting for that opportunity. Federal, state and local governments have coddled these ingrates for long enough. Enough is enough!!! Taxpayers need a break. We don't all work for the government and bask in the perks they receive."
What's the matter with people? Coddled the ingrates? Basking in the perks?
So I commented...
"Fire them all, whether they show up or not. They make too much money, and their benefits are too much. I'm paying their salaries and I can't afford it anymore."
I thought I'd up the outrage a bit. A little sarcasm never hurts, I always say. Guess what happened? The person who wrote the previous comment "liked" mine. Uh... not sure what happened there. Was I not outrageous enough? Was this person really a right-wing wacko? Were they originally doing the same thing I was, trying to show the other side what they sound like?
So I raised the ante a little bit more, hoping my motives would become clear, whatever the actual position of that person...
"Public sector employees already make less in wages than their private sector counterparts. The only thing keeping them in these cushy state jobs are the benefits. If we can cut their benefits, we can make them quite their jobs and go to the capitalist system, rather than riding the backs of the taxpayers. And without public education, those of us without children will no longer have to pay for schools."
Surreal.
One conservative acquaintance posted something about the political "situation" here in Wisconsin. The new governor is trying to bust the teachers' union, under the guise of balancing the budget. In addition to eliminating collective bargaining rights, they're trying to make them pay more for their "cushy" benefits. (Public sector workers generally receive lower wages and better non-wage benefits.)
There seemed to be many teachers who called in sick to work, in order to attend the protests at the state capitol. Conservatives, of course were outraged that people would shirk their duties to go against the will of the citizenry, and called for their firing.
Someone commented, "I agree whole-heartedly. There are many fresh out of college grads with teaching degrees just waiting for that opportunity. Federal, state and local governments have coddled these ingrates for long enough. Enough is enough!!! Taxpayers need a break. We don't all work for the government and bask in the perks they receive."
What's the matter with people? Coddled the ingrates? Basking in the perks?
So I commented...
"Fire them all, whether they show up or not. They make too much money, and their benefits are too much. I'm paying their salaries and I can't afford it anymore."
I thought I'd up the outrage a bit. A little sarcasm never hurts, I always say. Guess what happened? The person who wrote the previous comment "liked" mine. Uh... not sure what happened there. Was I not outrageous enough? Was this person really a right-wing wacko? Were they originally doing the same thing I was, trying to show the other side what they sound like?
So I raised the ante a little bit more, hoping my motives would become clear, whatever the actual position of that person...
"Public sector employees already make less in wages than their private sector counterparts. The only thing keeping them in these cushy state jobs are the benefits. If we can cut their benefits, we can make them quite their jobs and go to the capitalist system, rather than riding the backs of the taxpayers. And without public education, those of us without children will no longer have to pay for schools."
Surreal.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 04:37 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:07 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:12 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:23 am (UTC)From:In my school community, we are lobbying for the right to keep the funds we were cut to last year instead of having new money funneled away to parochial and charter schools that have no teacher professional standards. All the while, we public school teachers are jumping through bonus and merit pay and assessment (and...and... and...) hoops to justify improved student success on standardized tests.
This is all driven by the great NoChildLeftBehind engine that runs on this kind of gas: change good schools in order to flush out the bad ones.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:26 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:40 am (UTC)From:The schools are rewarded/penalized for the % of improvement in ISTEP scores. When you are a school with higher ISTEP scores to begin with, it is immensely difficult to raise the scores by a % enough to merit the kudos for good rankings. The lower level schools can raise their % by a larger margin and earn better ratings.
Now they're trying to pass merit pay based on a the teacher's students performance on the ISTEPS. The idea is that teachers won't try to get their students to succeed unless they receive a $1000 (or whatever) bonus for it. So to motivate the teachers of the poor-performing schools, the merit pay is seen as the business community's way of running the schools like a corporation. Too bad the merit bonus isn't $128K like those wall street guys are getting.
Music is not a tested subject so I am not able to get a merit pay bonus under this system. And I won' get yearly steps up on a salary schedule either. Guess I should've been a math teacher.
Many of these one-size-fits-all ideas are NCLB ideas and are encouraged by the federal government by pushing the state governments to comply or lose federal funding.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 05:50 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 06:45 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 10:49 am (UTC)From:Now, I don't know much about public sector employees in the US, not living there myself, but I do know that here, all public employees (Manolo included because he is a professor at a state/public university) have taken a 7-10% pay cut across the board (last year) and their salaries are also frozen this year. Benefits for public employees here suck, generally speaking.
The people you were being sarcastic with do not get sarcasm.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 11:45 am (UTC)From:That's exactly it. They don't. They think you're agreeing with them. And also, sarcasm does not communicate well online unless you use emoticons or something. Someone has to know you really well to know that you couldn't possibly mean what you're saying.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 06:46 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 09:05 am (UTC)From:If I had read what you wrote I would have been furious because I would have thought you were serious.
The written word is so different than the spoken one.
They are trying to cut benefits, etc. for us oldie retired folks too. It scares us a bit to say the least.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 01:49 pm (UTC)From:The original civil servants were the publically-owned slaves of ancient Rome. That ultimately what the Koch brothers want to bring back.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 02:57 pm (UTC)From:Also, while they're at it they can put all those pesky wimmin back in the kitchen, so you can watch 'em close. I mean, they might try to miscarry on purpose or something, and we can't have that.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 06:45 pm (UTC)From:There's a name for this...
Date: 2011-02-25 09:29 pm (UTC)From:Re: There's a name for this...
Date: 2011-02-26 01:57 am (UTC)From:I've done it before on Facebook, where the people involved either knew me, or had enough context in the thread to figure it out. It didn't work, this time.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 06:20 am (UTC)From:I don't know when this Brave New World took form around me, but I hate it, and I'm going to kick it in its tender bits.