5 thoughts on “Sunday funday open thread

  1. Zach, thanks.

    Would like to see Democrats push for a federal job guarantee.

    “The government could serve as the “employer of last resort” under a job guarantee program modeled on the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, in existence from 1935 to 1943 after being renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939) and the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942). The program would offer a job to any American who was ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage, plus legislated benefits. No time limits. No means testing. No minimum education or skill requirements.

    The program would operate like a buffer stock, absorbing and releasing workers during the economy’s natural boom-and-bust cycles. In a boom, employers would recruit workers out of the program; in a slump the safety net would allow those who had lost their jobs to continue to work to preserve good habits, making them easier to re-employ when activity picked up. The program would also take those whose education, training or job experience was initially inadequate to obtain work outside the program, enhancing their employability through on-the-job training. Work records would be maintained for all program participants and would be available for potential employers. Unemployment offices could be converted to employment offices, to match workers with jobs in the program, and to help private and public employers recruit workers.”

    http://ineteconomics.org/blog/institute/plan-all-detroits-out-there

  2. I think the media hasn’t adequately covered the cuts imposed on the two-year colleges, and the current plans for reorganizing their administration.

    They plan to zap the majority of the administrative positions from the deans on down. Deans, associate deans, finance, veteran’s help, marketing, recruiting, etc. They plan to regionalize all these positions in an attempt at cost savings. One centralized position replaces three to four positions at three to four campuses.

    How is one new position expected to do the work of three to four old positions? How will campuses function without staff, especially with travel and communication overhead increasing because they’ll be trying to serve three campuses instead of just one? What happens when the connections to the local community disappear?

    The two-year schools are the most affordable way for many students to enter the UW system. The savings by attending a two-year first, then transferring, can pay for your junior year. They’re colleges of access, meaning they rarely turn away applicants. Class sizes are smaller, so students get more attention. They’re already as lean as can be. Compared to the tech schools, they educate students for a fraction of the cost. Their budgets are a tenth of their local tech schools. (For example, UW-Rock County is about 7 million, Blackhawk Tech about 70 million.)

    Let’s take recruiting for example. If a two-year college is expected to meet certain requirements for finding new freshman (indeed, that their future funding depends on it both in direct tuition revenue and in other general system funding based on head count), how will one person with a desk in Madison serving three or four campuses (each 50-100 miles from each other) be able to recruit the same number of new students? If someone in Madison wanted to shrink one campus, they could do it by manipulating the recruiting.

    Note that this centralization plan may take place regardless of what happens to the budget.

    It looks to me like there’s a series of yet-secret plans in motion to decimate and demoralize the two-year schools, build greater fiefdoms centralized in Madison, and probably combined with some sort of long-term plan to fold together the two-year schools and the tech schools.

    Beyond this, I think the tech schools will be the next wave of targets, as the Republicans (and many others) have never liked their taxing authority and sky-high teaching salaries.

  3. How is it possible that Scott walker and the Republicans can, in your eyes, ruin wisconsin in 5 short years. Yet nearly every major city in America had been run by democrats for decades and nothing ever gets better?

    1. So we’re comparing entire states to individual cities now? I’m waiting with baited breath for you to bring up Chicago or Detroit.

  4. Baited breath huh. So now the standard is major city leaders have no say, no control over progress or lack there of in the city they lead. Got it! Ha!

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