Rep. Chris Taylor to GOP: Where’s the “aggressive” jobs agenda?

From my email inbox:

MADISON – Today, State Representative Chris Taylor (D-Madison) called out Governor Scott Walker and legislative Republicans for their post-election out of the gate “aggressive” legislative agenda which seems to fixate more on privatizing public education and making sure the Government Accountability Board is composed of partisan political hacks than creating jobs to jump start Wisconsin’s sluggish economy. Taylor released the following statement:

“It seems that Governor Walker and his Republican legislative colleagues are more focused on issues they did not campaign on, including their obsession with privatizing public education and expanding private school vouchers. But in rural communities and small town after small town, whether red or blue, public schools are the heart of communities across Wisconsin. To take more taxpayer money from our 870,000 public school children to subsidize private school tuition for children already in private school would be a travesty for Wisconsin and hinder long-term job growth.

“Yet, the pro-voucher group, American Federation for Children, led by corrupt former Republican Speaker Scott Jensen, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying local races without focusing on the one issue providing the basis for this group’s existence – further privatizing public education. Let’s hope that Republicans will get serious about job creation and closing the extreme income inequality we see in this state rather than doling out political favors that do nothing but reward campaign contributors while hurting our state.”

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34 thoughts on “Rep. Chris Taylor to GOP: Where’s the “aggressive” jobs agenda?

  1. School privatization will save taxes and ensure a more job ready population. Sounds like a jobs plan to me.

    1. Denis, by definition the average IQ is 100. Where are the jobs in Wisconsin that will allow adults with an average IQ to buy a home, send their kids to college, and have something approaching a middle class life (40 hour work-week, two weeks paid vacation…) ?

      1. Sure. Well educated people typically are productive than the poorly educated. As such it would be best to have additional education options that the voucher system provides. And since vouchers save money for the taxpayers, allowing them to spend more, stimulate the economy etc. The BB demand siders should be all for vouchers.

        1. Evidence seems a bit thin on the ground that charter schools are performing even at par with public schools in Wisconsin. http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/many-independent-charter-schools-miss-mark-on-state-report-cards-b99102550z1-224814982.html

          Also, if 3/4 of the students were already in private school – isn’t the movement then really a handout? http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/75-of-state-voucher-program-applicants-already-attend-private-school-b99274333z1-259980701.html How does this square with Republican desires to limit dependence on government? Those families are now government dependents, yes? And their children are growing up and being taught to live off the tax payers. Thus the cycle of Republican dependence on taxpayers continues.

          1. Emma, you are correct. Voucher families are government dependents. However, since they are getting less from the government than the per child cost of a public education, they are arguably less dependent that those stuck in the socialist government school system. So vouchers, while not ideal, are a step in the right direction.

            1. Except if the outcomes are worse, what are the taxpayers really getting besides a direct transfer of our funds into the hands of the private equity owners of charter school chains and churches? I’m having a hard time understanding how charter schools are doing what you say they are in Wisconsin. Do you have any sources?

              1. Emma, of course not, Denis isn’t going to address or admit the unbroken litany of failed privatization efforts in local schools. That would be like admitting the facts. It’s so much easier for him to repeat the Bradley Foundation’s talking points.

                Speaking of the Bradley Foundation, how are they doing with “Bradley Tech?”

              2. Emma, my source are the thousands of parents, millions if you include the entire country, including President Obama, including myself, who choose to bypass the public school system. This despite the fact that the public school system is free – well not really free – let’s call it prepaid. My sources are the thousands of parents desperately hoping to win the private school lottery who rejoice when they win and despair when they lose. My source are the public school teachers with all their inside knowledge who send their kids to private schools at a greater rate than the general public. My source is the extreme ends to which public school advocates go to eliminate options for poor kids, knowing the would flee for a private school option if only they could. My source is the lack of confidence that the public schools have in their own product, knowing full well that it can’t handle the competition.

            2. Denis,

              What about the “socialist” public airwaves over which you claim to have transmitted?

              Do you use the “socialist” roads too? What about those “socialist” interstates that Republican President Eisenhower built?

              What about Steve Jobs’ iPhone? Name one part of the iPhone that came from anywhere besides GOVERNMENT research.

              1. DRAM cache
              2. Lithium-ion batteries
              3. Signal compression
              4. Liquid crystal display
              5. Micro hard drive
              6. Microprocessor
              7. Cellular technology
              8. HTTP/HTML CERN
              9. Internet
              10. NAVSTAR-GPS
              11. Multi-touch screen
              12. SIRI
              13. Click wheel

              It’s the same way with Big Pharma. Government research does all the heavy lifting, they rake in all the profits. And of course, they hire smart tax lawyers so they “privatize” all the profits.

              Capitalism only “works” with a certain level of co-operation. That’s what our ancestors learned watching wolf-packs hunt.
              It’s the co-operation among higher functioning mammals that enabled humans to take over the planet.

              Do you want nursery schools turning a profit?

              That’s nuts.

              Why aren’t you complaining about the “job-killing-government-regulations” against marijuana? Provided we do it right, it defunds the drug cartels, creates jobs, and lowers property taxes.

              Beating your chest about socialist public schools…., why aren’t you complaining about putting an end the job-killing-government-regulations against ADULTS contracting for non-procreative sex? Are you a dues-paying member of the nanny-state?

              Please, name a FOR-PROFIT education system that actually educates. The “profit” from education has a long and diffuse timeline. It’s a long-term investment that ONLY the government can make. The economy runs on boom and bust cycles. The role of government is to provide a safety net (unemployment insurance, a federal job guarantee,…,) so that workers who get displaced by technology, whatever, can re-tool and rejoin the economy. You can’t have mass production without MASS CONSUMPTION. That means people making decent wages that allow them to get married, by a home and get their kids educated.

              Increasingly, robots will take over and provided we share the productivity improvements they bring with the whole society, that’s a very good thing. We could be looking at a 30-hour work week.

              Education, health care, and infrastructure are the undergirding of the economy. You can’t have a functioning capitalist society without them. PUBLIC funding and regulation for them has always made sense.

              1. John C,

                You are a welcome fountain of knowledge, but as to your second to last sentence, “You can’t have a functioning capitalist society without them.” a minor point to consider.

                One would need to be assuming that a functioning capitalist society is even a desired goal among the fewer than 1% aristocracy. That is the notion that the right wing zealots have been duped into believing with the divide and conquer strategy.

                Wingers equate winning an election as assurance their views are infallible and that they will be recipients of a significant portion of the spoils of war. Absolutely no sense of how they are being played to the benefit of the select few. Beyond having no sense of being used, they will proudly deny that as even a remote possibility, them being duped by anyone that is.

                But geez, I was hoping to get an answer to the productivity of the snow plow operator question.

                1. Regarding the snow plow driver, my point was not to suggest that a good education was the only path to productivity. Furthermore, my point about a good education versus a mediocre one and its effect on productivity was meant to be a general idea that did not necessarily apply to any one individual. If I were to say that conservatives give more to charity than do liberals, it doesn’t mean necessarily that Charles Krauthammer gives more than Rachel Maddow. If you are a plow driver with a CDL license, good for you, be the best plow driver you can be and hold your chin up non!

                  1. Your changing the subject and evading the questions and the whole comment I made yesterday (@10:05 am), now claiming you meant something other than what you wrote, now throwing in another “if, then,” scenario, completely unrelated to anything in your comment or my response to it yesterday is just so much more bullshit and not a response defending or proving your original comment. Still nothing but unsubstantiated beliefs from you. Get real for once, sorry I forgot, that would be impossible considering your previously stated intentions to hound and harass readers here until the submit to your beliefs.

                    Holding one’s chin up, is that a prerequisite to looking down one’s nose at others? That might make it difficult to avoid taking out road signs and mail boxes and pedestrians when operating a snowplow, so no one should follow that advise either.

                    Your response above today to EmmaR is more invented personal supposition. With your reference to supply and demand yesterday and again today regarding “competition,” (that the public schools are supposedly so afraid of) how is it that private/voucher school suppliers, if they are so freaking great, need to beg and buy the government for taxpayer funds to create the demand they couldn’t do for themselves on their suposed merits?

                    1. Re your last question, I am obviously a strong advocate of free markets, but let us look at the facts. The public school system is fully subsidized by government, to the tune of $12k per student or more here in Wisconsin. Private schools until recently, not at all. Imagine running a business where you had to compete with an entity that was fully paid for by government/taxes. Not easy. The fact that any private schools even exist is a testament to the failure of the public school system. Vouchers, not perfect by any means, are a step in the right direction, that being, government out of the education business as much as possible, for the sake of the students and the taxpayer.

                      On a related note, when the public schools “need” more money, do you call it “begging and buying the government?” I would agree to some extent on the buying part, thank God and Scott Walker that Act 10 reduced some of the more flagrant purchasing of the Democratic party.

                    2. @8:41 am, with everyone’s sincerest sympathies to your unfortunate educational plight.

                      Plain and simple, the public school system is not a freaking BUSINESS. None of your free marketeer, unfair economic playing field, lame arguments in this whole thread are valid. Public school is a public funded entity, existing to provide for the public good, was created and has evolved through social efforts to meet a need that the private sector ignored until it became valuable enough to attract those who would steal from and subsume parts of it. It is also saddled with state regulations and requirements that cost money to provide, i.e. student transportation costs, special needs students of several kinds, required curriculum programs, etc.

                      And your private education profiteers, refusing subjugation to any of the same regs, requirements, certifications and provisions providing complete student services, aren’t clever or intelligent enough to create a product that meets a supposed demand at a price that those supposed potential clients can afford, without stealing financial resources from the system they say is holding them back. LOL

                      “The fact that any private schools even exist is a testament to the failure of the public school system.” ROTFLMAO!!!!! Tiny violins, orchestra mode! A genuine three-hanky weeper, boo-hoo. Poor darlings.

                      The fact that private schools exist is that they have the freedom to teach religious or other doctrinal crap-trap that they are not allowed to teach in the socially funded, socially beneficial, state regulated fully public schools that use tax payer supplied funds. Those private schools whose programs meet state requirements, can and do get educational credentials for their student graduates that do carry forward.

                      Appealing to a supreme being as some validation for your ignorance, lies and misdirection, rich. Putting the name of a mythical supreme being in the same sentence as SKW, priceless.

            3. Denis,

              If you want to rant against “socialism,” why aren’t you starting with the biggest welfare queens of all, Wall Street?

              “Bank Of America Dumps $75 Trillion In Derivatives On U.S. Taxpayers With Federal Approval”

              http://seekingalpha.com/article/301260-bank-of-america-dumps-75-trillion-in-derivatives-on-u-s-taxpayers-with-federal-approval

              To put $75 trillion in perspective, US GDP in 2012 was around $16.5 trillion. We blew a lot more than the $6 trillion they’re claiming in Iraq and Afghanistan. Social Security’s Trust Fund is around $2.3 trillion. Bank of America is just one Wall Street bank. They all have derivative exposure. I’ve seen estimates of $700 trillion, but I don’t think anyone knows.

              It doesn’t stop.

              “Fed Reserve to Continue $85 Billion a Month Quantitative Easing”

              http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/18/Fed-Reserve-To-Continue-QE-Stimulus
              AFAIK, it would only cost around $70 billion for the U.S. to guarantee each kid in America a free education through college. I’m sorry I don’t have a link on that.

              The welfare queens on Wall Street don’t know when to quit. There’s just so much, but you want to talk about public schools. smh

              The PUBLIC school system of the United States is the envy of the world. Student from around the globe come to study at our PUBLIC universities. Those are fed by PUBLIC grade schools and high schools.

              1. John, I believe that I have mentioned before that I have been a consistent opponent of corporate welfare.

                  1. A less noxious form of government intrusion into the education system than the fully socialist system we have now. It is incremental movement towards greater freedom in education.

        2. Another list of unsubstantiated personal beliefs that neither explains why or how. A county/city snowplow driver, HS education and CDL is less productive than whom? A real estate agent, a bank manager, a teacher?

          Additional educational options magically equate to better or different preferable educational outcomes. Links please, you are making the claim.

          Vouchers were originally intended to help people with low incomes have different choices for their children, yes? So that same low income family, just enough for food, clothing and a roof over their heads, maybe a older auto, and all that money from the voucher goes directly to the voucher school, doesn’t it. Where’s the “more,” money for them to spend to stimulate the economy? Presumably they are still paying property taxes like most everyone. How does that give them more money?

          Which taxpayers are saving money? The state is still collecting taxes and local property taxes are increased through spending over-ride referendums to cover public schools, technical schools wherever that money was taken from and given to private entities to profit from public tax money. Overall public school operational costs have not gone down, worker compensation costs have been shifted on to, “educated,” people, the teachers, who are according to you, are the more productive people but they are now getting paid less and they were the ones who actually stimulated local economies with their spending of the public money that disappears as profits for a select special interest group.

          Not one credible fact have you provided to back your claims.

  2. Previous comment should read “more productive…” I know some can be sticklers on these matters. First time commenting from new phone.

  3. Christopher ” The Thief” Larson lost his position

    The whiny little blue fister is just the first in a long line of dems at the chopping block after they got their butts spanked last Tuesday.

    1. Trademark,

      When will Gov. Walker and the GOP controlled legislature end the “job-killing-government-regulations” against marijuana?

    2. He was not chopped at any block, he voluntarily stepped aside with the announcement that he would not seek the position and that he would be putting his support behind Sen Jennifer Shilling. First time I heard the reference to thieving. What did he take from the wing nut right fringe of the T-party that bothers you so much?

  4. In March 2000, Larson was busted for retail theft. He was caught stealing from a Milwaukee grocery store and was fined $331. He has been referred to as “sticky fingers Larson” for almost a decade now. I’m a little surprised you didn’t now this.

    1. Larson was 19 when that happened. I’m sure you were an upstanding citizen at that age, right Nemo? No one cares about that incident other than the suburb trash that listen to the poison on AM 620 and AM 1130.

      Heck, Scott Walker didn’t cheat in a student election and get tossed out of Marquette until he was 22. You guys don’t seem to mind too much about that “youthful indiscretion.”

      1. I was just answering nonquixote’s question, but yes Jake, I was an upstanding citizen back then and ever since. Thanks for asking. Sorry you think poison listening suburb trash types can’t supply factual information to an interrogative, but I guess every rose has it’s thorn.

    2. I have a clear grasp of ideas and facts, but as a single parent with much younger children then, and while bootstrapping to successfully stay off the public dole, no doubt a lot of minutia slipped by. Surprised you are surprised.

      My question about how that is important enough for the juvenile rant @2:29 pm still stands. Neither here nor there to any assessment of Larson’s leadership term.

      1. I would agree, nonquixote. If you discount character in an assessment of leadership, larceny is no big deal. A much more important metric would be success. So how did Larson’s 72 county strategy work out for ya? Worked for me. heh.

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