Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Democratic campaign strategist Garry South knows elections, and all the proposed tax hike initiatives headed for the ballot remind him of 1996:

In 1991, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Democratic Legislature installed two additional state tax brackets for “the wealthy,” 10 percent for those making from $115,000-229,999 per year, and a top rate of 11 percent for those making more than $230,000. But these tax hikes had a sunset provision and expired in 1995. The next year, a primarily labor-funded effort put a measure on the ballot to re-instate these higher tax brackets, Proposition 217.

Bear in mind that 1996, just like 2012, was a presidential election year, when the turnout of Democrats and minorities almost always spikes. In addition, there was a sitting Democratic president of the United States, popular in California, who was running for reelection. It also would have allocated most of the revenues to the ever-popular education. And Prop. 217 was on the November general election ballot, not the primary ballot or a special-election ballot. Does this not sound like a very close cousin to the electoral circumstances in 2012?

But although Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole that year by 13 percent in California, Prop. 217 went down to defeat (albeit barely, 49.2 percent to 50.8). According to the Los Angeles Times exit poll, Democrats constituted 45 percent of the turnout in the ’96 general election, and self-described liberals and moderates comprised 68 percent of the voters. Also, voters earning less than $75,000 a year were 74 percent of the turnout – and hence would not even have been affected by the higher tax rates. So much for the 99 percent taxing the 1 percent.

Raising income taxes on other people has been a time-honored American tradition since 1913. Somehow, everyone’s tax bill keeps rising. How can that be?

Why should the vote be limited to those who are real and alive? Don’t the fictional, imaginary and dead deserve a voice, too?

That apparently is the view of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, which stated that petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker with signatures such as Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler will be counted as valid.

“We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge,” [board elections specialist David] Buerger said after being asked whether Mickey Mouse’s signature would be counted. He noted that in previous recall petitions, Adolf Hitler’s name was struck because the address given was in Germany, not because of the name itself.

Not only can Hitler sign, apparently he can sign as many as 80 times.

Ohio was just a warm-up.

Yesterday’s communiqué featured NEA’s plans to target 16 states in its efforts to bring about the re-election of President Obama. Today we learned from a new USA Today/Gallup poll that the President and the Democratic Party are losing ground in many of those same states.

Consider the math: In 2008, when Obama carried the swing states by 8 percentage points, Democrats there swamped Republicans in party identification by 11 points. Now, that partisan edge has tightened to a statistically insignificant 2 points.

And the “enthusiasm gap” that helped fuel a Democratic victory last time has turned into a Republican asset. Sixty-one percent of Republicans say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president next year, compared with 47% of Democrats.

Eleven of the 12 states surveyed by Gallup overlap with NEA’s 16 states. Since NEA itself is experiencing an enthusiasm gap relative to 2008, I expect Educators for Obama won’t spend too much time talking about Obama, but on the myriad weaknesses of the GOP field.

Click here to read:

1) For NEA and Affiliates, It’s Already 2012

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Lots o’ Quotes of the Week

While researching something else, I stumbled across a March 2011 post on NEA.org headlined, “Just the Facts, Please!” It was part of an issue of NEA Today devoted to showing that the union’s positions on controversial education reforms are fact-based, while those of its opponents are based on fallacies.

That’s NEA’s prerogative, but I found it humorous that the piece begins this way:

“It isn’t what we don’t know that hurts, it’s what we know that ain’t so,” said Will Rogers. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things about public schools that many pundits and politicians “know” that aren’t so. Here’s the truth about key areas of contention.

That quote, in various forms, has often been attributed to Will Rogers and others. However, it most certainly originated with 19th century humorist Josh Billings. Strangely enough, I used the frequent misattribution as the basis of a post on ignorance in February 2011.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Check out page 3 of The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes and you’ll find the explanation there. It might be a good idea to run the rest of NEA’s claims through the verifier, too.

Under the new collective bargaining laws in Wisconsin, unions must annually receive a majority of unit member votes in order to remain the exclusive representative. Locals under contract – about two-thirds of the total – are exempt from this provision until the contracts expire. Others opted not to seek recertification under the more restrictive rules.

However, 206 locals decided to go ahead, and 177 received the necessary majority to retain their status. The recertification elections covered 23,091 of the state’s 172,444 education employees (13.3%). The results aren’t unexpected. Few locals would seek a recertification vote they didn’t feel confident of winning. Also, the stakes aren’t very high, since the powers of a certified union are greatly diminished.

Nevertheless, the election procedure seems insufficiently protected against fraud.

The law provides that “all elections are to be conducted by secret ballot and under the supervision of the commission or impartial agents designated by the commission, with the commission determining on a case by case basis whether the secret balloting shall be conducted on-site, by mail or automated telephone system.”

For this initial election, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission chose the automated phone system. The commission posted the phone script online. It requires the caller to punch in the first four letters of his/her last name and the last four digits of his/her Social Security number. The caller then votes by pressing “1″ in favor of recertification or “2″ against. That’s it.

The school district, of course, has access to each employee’s name and Social Security number, meaning there are any number of people who could cast fraudulent votes in a phone election. I don’t have a copy of a Wisconsin Education Association Council membership application, but I do have one from about a dozen other NEA state affiliates, and each of them asks for the applicant’s Social Security number. If the same is true in Wisconsin, it means the union also has access to all the necessary information to cast fraudulent votes.

I suppose with each side having equal ability to cheat, it creates a sort of balance of honesty. There is no reason to believe any fraud occurred in this election, but it would probably be a smart move for the state to institute better safeguards for the next round.

The National Education Association held a press conference this morning to announce a “new three-part action agenda to strengthen the teaching profession and improve student learning,” based upon the recommendations of the unions’ Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching.

More qualified commentators will address the educational worth of the proposals – I, for one, have always liked the idea of a tiered career ladder for teachers. Principals and vice principals have taken on the dual roles of facility/personnel managers and instructional evaluators, to the detriment of both missions. Teachers should be evaluated by the best teachers, although I’m not sure NEA realizes this necessarily ties evaluators more to management than to labor.

But what strikes me most is the historical aspect of the latest of NEA’s periodic new directions.

“The education system we created in the 20th century served our nation well,” said NEA president Dennis Van Roekel. “We led the world in universal high school attendance and in higher education attainment. But this is a different century, and we must respond with the tenacity and conviction required to meet the needs of all students…. If we want to create an education system for the students of the 21st century, we must transform that system, including the teaching profession.”

To lead public education through the 21st century, Van Roekel and his commission appear to have worked their way back to 1997, when NEA president Bob Chase was touting “new unionism” as the answer to help professionalize teaching. And nowhere is this more evident than in the inclusion of peer assistance and review (PAR) programs in the recommendations.

I realize it’s ages ago now, but PAR was one of the hot education topics in 1997. Stories about Columbus and Toledo were everywhere, and the idea was considered to be proof that NEA was moving away from its hidebound image.

But there was significant opposition to these concepts internally. The staff didn’t like them. The state affiliates didn’t like them. There was even opposition on the NEA board of directors. When Gov. Gray Davis instituted statewide peer review legislation in 1999, the California Teachers Association’s locals treated participation as a management demand that required offsetting benefits in other areas. Ultimately, Chase spent a lot of time reassuring his own state affiliates that they could continue to do whatever they had been doing all along.

Times do change, and this is a different generation of teachers. So I don’t want to fall into the trap of immediately predicting a slow, gradual disappearance of this entire episode from the public and teacher union consciousness, but I admit I have already sent the following Van Roekel quote to FutureMe:

“Five years from now, we want people to look at NEA as a major catalyst for bringing about the kind of education all Americans want, all teachers can deliver, and all children deserve.”