how many senior citizens are forced out of their homes. we do not have children in the schools. it is the home owner...not the apartment dwellers who get the property taxe
we live on limited income and have to support the RICH SCHOOL TEACHERS....
get personal income tax. that spreds out .....to most every body.
or put sales taxes on every thing you all buy at the stores.

i do not feel sorry for the rich school teachers.....I FEEL BAD FOR THE HOUSE OWNERS THAT DO NOT HAVE THE MONEY TO BUY GROCERYS. AND STILL HAS TO PAY THE DAM SCHOOL TAX. OR LOSE THERE HOMES.

So what do you propose... that teachers don't get paid??

I don't mean to but in and Pennsylvania is not my business at all. But i must state that I live in Maryland and hear our tax assessments are re-figured every 3 years not every year. My assessment was just re-figured and the assessment went down substantially with that said the county and city that i live in just raised my property tax to compensate. I am not sure how Pennsylvania's property taxes are configured but i have been trying to understand it because my wife and i are thinking of moving to what seems to be a wonderful state in the near future. We are having the same problems hear as you are having there and our state just moved some of the teachers pension responsibility to the county's and in the near future will transfer more to the county's. This is causing problems for everyone but what can we do? If we don't fund or under fund Teacher pensions then we as a country stand to loose the best of our public school teachers to private schools. Then the children will pay and sooner or later so will the tax payers. I for one do not know what we should do.

Teachers work more than 8 months in a year, I don't know any districts in PA that have a 4 month summer break.

Anonymous, teachers are on schedule 187 days of the yr. We get a full school calendar for brandywine, students have 180 days, teachers have 187. What average person works 187 days and brings homes over 65 grand a yr? And teachers do not want to teach anymore they have made it the parents responsibility, even citizens without children say that too but yet we should still fund them more than the average hardworking person.

And what about the thousands of people who will lose their jobs??? The government already taxes them a lot adding a 500% tax would cost more that its worth. Raising taxes doesn't solve the problem of overspending.

Although I agree that we should tax the daylights out of cigarettes, the problem with that is that there are fewer and fewer people smoking every year. There will only be a short term gain from this.

More and more people are quitting because they are either thinking they are helping their health by quitting or they cannot afford them. I can say I still smoke them, and even if I quit the food the fda tampers with will kill me, so instead of eating more and gaining weight I will keep smoking and contibute to the schools.

Bill,
You're right. But beware...if you dare question anything about the curriculum, teachers, or materials you will be demonized, ridiculed, threatened, and stonewalled (quite possibly for more than 2 years). All that happened for questioning the use of just one book in one class.
The school board is bullied by the administration and the EAEA. That then gets passed down to any citizen who dares to question their superior knowledge and intellect. The biggest problems are spending, the EAEA, and most recently the board shutting down public comment during a meeting.
But don't let all that stop you from trying. We will need to remind the board daily that they work for us, not the EAEA and that when the contract comes up for negotiations again they had better be on our side this time.

I think we should have a lot more choice with tax money. I do not want any of my money being sent to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia and I do not want to pay for the Sr. presscription drug plan because we cannot afford it and nobody in my househould is a senior.

Some private schools do better because they have no special eduation students and they can throw out any unmotivated trouble maker while public school must educate all. The vast majoirty of Lehigh Valley Public Schools are getting terrific results: East Penn, Salisbury, Parklan Southern Lehigh, Saucon Valley etc.

TRUE School choice, though not perfect, would improve education in this state and country tremendously. I am talking about being able to choose between public schools as well as having private, Parochial, and charter schools also on the menu to choose from. One size education does not fit all children.

Plenty of teachers with tenure are losing jobs. Tenure does not guarentee a job, it's something you achieve to be considered a "permanent teacher". The first 3 years of working for a district you are considered a temporary teacher until you get 6 satisfactory observations. The only difference is non-tenured teachers get terminated and tenured teachers get furloughed. Performance standards is fine when performance is based on how you teach by an unbiased observer. Currently teachers are being assessed on how well their students can pass a test and we all know how many different factors go into how a student performs under pressure situations such as a test. Wealthy districts will always outperform underprivaliged districts because of the nature of the students' home lives and amount of parent involvement. Lazy teachers don't get rewarded the same as hard working teachers because the real reward is seeing your students leave your classroom with a sense of excitement about learning which will not happen with a bad teacher. Perhaps if the public could see all the types of students walking in through the doors, they would realize that teachers deserve a good pension and retirement plan. We're a very important public service...you're welcome! Teaching used to be respectful, now apparently we're not important unless we make an "8 month salary" of 20K without a retirement plan.

Couldn't have said it better Bill

Teachers are benefiting? 1 in 5 teachers in my district have been terminated or furloughed. We took freezes in pay because it was supposed to prevent this from happening and we got basically lied to. How am I benefiting?

One thing you can count on Wilfredo: All of these outraged tea nut bags will never demand that we trim the defense budget. That is not on their leaders agenda even though it is by far the area where most of the overspending is happening.

Truly wise leaders would look not only to cut defense spending but would look for waste and overspending through out the government. I don't think it is wise to balance the budget only on the back of defense spending or education spending alone. And the education spending should be more of a local issue and the Defense spending a federal one.

Education IS a national issue, hence, the federal government should step up and fix what ails this particular crisis in whatever way possible...Hire back the laid off teachers...This is money well-spent.

Yup...you're right. The federal government runs such a tight ship and has a ton of money sitting around to hand out. Using your logic, why don't we just hand out a couple thousand dollars to everyone and then they'll have plenty of money to spend and we'll be out of this recession before we know it...oh wait, we tried that a couple years ago!

JS
Giving money to everyone is a bit extreme, and two years ago, the stimulus agenda did not fare so well because it was a half-assed job by a very timid administration so scared of the tea party's clamor for small government....Now we are seeing what that got us into...This is not the time for austerity...Greece and other countries tried it and are failing handsomely...Hand out money to the States so they can hire more teachers, police, and other public service people, who in turn will spend this blessings and help the economy move along...With better economy, corporations will start hiring again.

It amazes me that anyone can look at the history to of the last three years and say that the problem is that the stimulus wasn't big enough, but I know you are far from alone in that view. I'll just say that the fact that the federal deficit during the Obama presidency to date has been almost 5 TRILLLION dollars, and the fact that the mediocre recovery aided by the stimulus is falling apart as soon as the stimulus is removed certainly doesn't support your view.

The problem is the stimulus was given to school districts with so many restrictions that prevented adequate planning for when it was removed. Funds were specifically given to build unneeded buildings that now need to be maintained, and funds were specifically earmarked to prevent teachers from being laid off for a certain period. There was no option for School Districts to use the funds as they saw fit to ensure long-term stability of their districts. As a result, the system is collapsing when the stimulus is removed, and the decisions that were postponed for two years by stimulus spending are all coming due at the same time.

Apparently, your view is to mortgage our future by continuing the unsustainable spending. My view is that we need to make the tough decisions now, before we dig ourselves an even deeper hole and put spending on a sustainable path for the future.

The stimulus brought us out of the recession. Over the Obama years it created over 4M jobs. Every month have been an increase in jobs. The magnitude of the stimulus was too low, hence as many economists predicted the effect was minor. However, the effect considering that congress did not pass one job bill after 2010 it is remarkable that we have done so well. The deficit is due primarily to the Bush tax cuts. Without them, we would almost be in balance with the small increase in deficit due to the recession benefits and loss of income and the war. We are mortgaging our future not only with an increasing deficit but more importantly with the loss in productivity of our new graduates. The loss of GDP is to be seen for a long time. We are a second rate nation now plunging further every day. If everybody is cutting back or saving where does income come from? We fall behind. How will be able to recoup. The defict is a red herring that hides the real agenda to cut back on government programs for the middle class.

Wilfredo, I'd ask why your proposed distribution point for government stimulus appears to be government employees? Why not make it a tax cut (or even just slow the rate of tax increases!) for everyone, which will have the same stimulus effect that you are describing, but won't just be limited to the privileged few?

The stimulus should have been used to help the districts on a path to financial stability, not as a way to delay the inevitable changes that need to occur in the system, including teacher compensation/benefit/pension reform. IF a small stimulus was offered now by the state or federal government as a way to ease the transition through these difficult steps, I might find a way to make myself support it. However, "blank check" stimulus spending, and systematic deficit spending such as been happening in Greece to support a "nanny state" that many, apparently including yourself, seem to want to bring here, is just putting off today's semi-manageable problems and allowing them to grow into tomorrow's unsolvable ones.

Limeport Resident - I'll just say "wow" and leave it at that. You have apparently drunk the Obama "kool aid" full strength and have gotten drunk on it! You actually managed to hit the Obama campaign points so well I'm convinced you must be on the payroll. Let's summarize...

1) The "Bush Tax Cuts" are the cause of the deficit, instead of admitting the fact that Obama has spent like a drunken sailor and we've gotten very little economic stimulus out of the spending.
2) The stimulus had "created" over 4 million jobs, instead of recognizing that the stimulus artificially derailed a normal economic correction and has actually resulted in lost jobs, especially now as the economy has to cope with loss of stimulus spending (which is one of the primary causes for the teacher situation).
3) Blaming the "Congress since 2010" for all of the lack of progress...conveniently ignoring the fact that the Democratic Party run congress between 2008 and 2010 accomplished nothing except to pass the failed stimulus bill and jamming a unwanted Health Insurance Reform package through that will be declared unconstituitonal within a month. You also conveniently forget that many jobs bills have been passed by the Republican House since 2010 that are no more palatable to Senate Democrats or Obama than their proposals are to the House. Yes, we have gridlock in Washington, and blame for it can be equally placed on both parties.

democrats controlled both houses of congress from 2006 to 2010

Truth seeker,
As your name implies, you should actually attend a Tea Party meeting and spend just a few minutes with any one of us talking specifically about that subject. You'll find out just how wrong you really are...if in fact seeking the truth is more than just a name for you.

"Careless fills" - you are right of course. I was limiting my comments to the Obama years since that's what was being talked about in the post I was responding to. It appears that both you and I are of the opinion that a lot of the roots of the 2008 recession, commonly blamed on Bush, actually came from the activities of Congress from 2006-2008. While I agree, I didn't want to get derailed into that side argument as only weak Presidents blame the actions of others for what is occurring on their watch. I think we can all think of one particular President who qualifies here...and he hopefully will not see a 2nd term.

JS, of course. The combination of the Pelosi Reed congress and a lame duck president was disasterous. This all could might have been stopped in 2007, but the dems had a point to prove.

I just played "cloture" in Words with Friends for a 57 point triple-triple.

Delete
John
5:21 pm on Sunday, June 3, 2012
I was with you for the first part, that greed is the new morality. So when a system is unfair, benefitting the few, and requesting all to pay for it, I would agree, that is GREED. How do teachers pay more in taxes? Are you suggesting they are taxed more than others? Is there a double secret tax for the teaching profession? The fact that the taxpayer, or who you suggest the one in the mirror, is the problem is the pot calling the kettle black. Taxpayers finance education. Suggesting taxpayers are greedy by finally taking a stand against the financing a special deal for educators, politicians and law nforcement is ludicrous. I don't understand your reference to a contract, as I am securely n the middle class, yet I have no contractual agreement for employment. Look around, we all have people n our neighborhoods from all walks of life who have lost their jobs. Welcome to the world that the rest of us are dealing with, as we cannot simply raise taxes for our fiscal incompetence.

John - bill was complaining that he made less than teachers. If so, then teachers pay more (in dollars) federal & state income tax. They also pay the increases in real estate tax. If, as is the trend in USA, people who make more live in bigger houses. Then it follows teachers pay more real estate tax than their less well off neighbors.
I am not suggesting that taxpayer is greedy for taking a stand in negotiating a new contract. They are greedy when they want to change the existing contact unilaterally, especially when teachers have given them a break. If you have no contract for employment,then you should work towards getting one by organizing. The rich have contracts. I don't know of a single doctor, corporate executive that doesn't have one. One should seek to improve his lot rather than try to take away from others who have more. Teachers live in the same world as we do.. They just seem to cope better than those who want to break contracts because of their fiscal incompetence. To paraphrase Exxon CEO, even if teachers gave up all their benefits and cut their salary in half, the taxpayer would still find a way to lose their money!

John where do you get the 20% number. I hope this is not per capita income again.

John.. How much should a teacher earn? If giving you an extra $100/mo would give my kids a better education then that wouldbe a good deal. The wealthier people do that by sending their kids to private schools-- schools that the average taxpayer will never afford even with vouchers. Look at tuition at Moravian, Hill or others of that ilk. Teachers at these schools has pensions and benefits and have contracts.. It is just that people sending their kids there know what a good education consists of and demand results. Most people sending their kids to public school don't have a clue what a good education is and how to get it.

The lowest paid teacher in easton makes $42,000. Thats the lowest the highest makes $82,000. Over 115 teachers make over $70,000. The average teacher in Easton makes $58,000. It can all be found on the internet. I have the whole school districts payroll on my computer. Name a teacher and I will tell you how much they make. http://www.openpagov.org/header-test2.asp?m=k12

Reality is... the average salary for a teacher in Allentown is supposedely $59,599. Period... you can't support your cause by inflating the number because teachers "don't work" for 2 months out of the year. And the average salary is going up not just because there is a raise every year but because the young teachers (who bring that number way down) are getting terminated and furloughed.

The school district only pays for days worked. Rates and extrapolated hours worked have no relavence. Parents do not seem to care. Go to any school board meeting and you see few people there. Boards are normally elected without opposition. Parent involvement matters. For example, Upper saint Clair is best school system in Pa. It is a viable school system because parents will not tolerate poor results. Your idea to negotiate better is great. That means involvement. I realize there are bad teachers. That does not mean that all salaries should be lowered. I don't think parents are too stupid to recognize a good education. I don't think they understand what a good education is. The key is to hold our legislators at all levels to a high standard to get value for the dollar. In regard to the imbeciles, they are getting paid high salaries by the same companies that maximize their profit by minimizing wages and benefits for those who are not organized or who are willing to work for less to support thir families. Their kids will be able to afford the higher taxes. The ones who want salaries lowered for teachers because their wages are lower will continue to have difficulty.

In Easton the teachers have it written into their contract that they cannot work more than 1400 hours a year plus you subtract sick days and vacation days which is ridiculous and they work way less than the 1400 hours. Normal taxpayers work 2080 a year. It will only take me a few minute to read thru the allentown teachers contract to see whats written in your contract.

I am tired of reading about how teachers are overpaid. My wife is a teacher who brings home 40K a year. Annually she puts 2K of her own money towards supplies for the classroom and another 2K towards development (a requirement for her career). Mind you this development training is done during her "10 week vacation". Tell me of another "industry" that requires their employees to pay out of pocket for development training every year. Everyone barks about taxes going towards education, my response is simple - stop being selfish! I am a home owner and proud to do my part, we have no children and would pay twice more in taxes gladly if that would prevent schools from having to put 35+ children in one classroom. I say, imagine teaching 35 of your colleagues for 6+ hours a day at your current pay. As we bicker back and forth about teachers pay and taxes isn't it really about the children? Children deserve the best available education and tools. Let's give it to them already!

Carl, there are plenty of careers out there that require a lot of continuing education and training that employees have to pay for. The fact that you feel teaching is unique in this, as well as the fact that you apparently feel teaching is so much tougher than any other job, shows how insulated you are.

Teaching is a tough profession, and I am NOT going to put down teachers, who I respect greatly. It's not something I would like to do personally or that I'd be particularly good at. However, please don't insult us by falling back on the "it's all about the children" argument. Arguments about feeling entitled to pension benefits that simply don't exist in private industry or whether teachers should receive raises have NOTHING to do with the children - they're employer/employee issues that should be settled fairly. Individuals, such as myself, who feel that (in most cases) teacher's compensation is at or above a fair level can point this out without being attacked as "being against children". In fact, I'd probably argue that those calling for a continuation of the current teacher benefit system could much more easily be called "anti-children" because of the fact that school district budgets are being sucked dry by these extravagent benefits. Every dollar that goes to teacher pensions is a dollar going somewhere other than directly towards student education.

JS, you obviously have been misinformed about teacher unions and the environment surrounding teachers and students. I am sorry for you. Calling others "insulated" shows your inability to reason and have compassion for such a topic.

Carl, I'm not at all trying to make this a personal attack, but do you know what the word "insulated" means? It means that your post is showing that you are only able to see things through the mentality of a teacher (or spouse of a teacher). I am viewing the situation through the eyes of all involved (kids, teachers, and taxpayers) as well as using my real world experience on how things operate outside of the insulated world of the public sector. That's not exactly something I'm ashamed of, and it's something you might want to try before posting further.

By the way - we may have an area we can reach common ground on - if you are willing to double your taxes, we don't we go ahead and do that and use them to pay for everything you feel your wife is entitled to? Try telling a senior citizen that you think taxes should be doubled to accomplish the same thing, and you may just get clubbed over the head with their cane!

It's very simple - there is a pot of money created by taxes that can only grow by so much each year. You can take the money from that pot for things that directly affect students (hiring additional teachers at reasonable salaries/benefits to reduce class sizes, books, computers, etc.) or you can throw the money at the current teachers through additional pay/benefits and hope you somehow magically get a positive educational result. We've tried the 2nd for far too long now.

Bottom line, right now

Carl teachers get reimbursed for continuing education. nice try I'm a CPA I have to pay every year to learn the new tax laws out of my own pocket. Also lawyers and doctors have costs to maintain their licenses blame the government for this not the taxpayers

Starting pay for teachers in East Penn is $45,185, which is competitive and near the middle for the Lehigh Valley.

The present system cannot survive if the state continues to crawl away from funding its responsibility, operate without a funding formula, demand districts go above and beyond federal education laws, stick to a cyber/cyber charter funding formula that overcharges etc. This is a manufactured crisis born of state policy. Medicine is recongnizing this? Look at the ever increasing cost of medical coverage. Are you kidding me? You lose your mind because of a salary increase? They start low during first year and increase in small increments. The raises are smaller or frozen during bad economic times. Every district is a little different. Oh my dear lord what an outrage!

Agreed....it's all about rate! As I look at @ Careless' last point, STARTING salary at $45,000....about at the middle. A beginning teacher, assumingly with a bachelors degree starting salary at $45,000 working 10 months? If we continue to look at RATE, thats a starting salary of $56,250...not a salary of 56,250, but a RATE. Thats $27/hour. And thats the starting salary, with an over-the-top pension plan. Not a bad start!

Ditto. As I suggested, Don't cut teacher's salaries, simply freeze them (administrators, police, etc as well). Take the monies that sit in pensions, roll them into 401 or 403's and match investments up to 5% like many other companies. I dont see this as being 'unfair'. Once the school boards can gain control of their budgets, then they can provide salary increases. The fact is that our teachers, police and politicians are all working for companies in the red. There has to be corrective action within the system, or the system will fail. I concur that teachers, police and politicians will not leave the profession causing a vast black hole if these changes were made. 1 step into private industry, they would run right back to where they are!

Simple answer...in the private sector, the free market determines the value for a position. In your example, if Tulsa could find someone just as good in what they do for $200K, they should (and would) lower their salary. If they believe having the $500K specialist is worth the investment, they make it, and so would Hopkins. While this is a different type of position (obviously) is very different than what we're dealing with, it illustrates perfectly the difference between union and non-union environments. In the example you cite, the market can self-correct and pay people what they are worth. In the case of public unions, you have janitors making $70k per year not because of what the position is worth, but because union rules demand it.

I have no objection to paying teachers (or anyone for that matter) a reasonable wage, and I'm open to considering exactly what that is in a case by case basis. If there was a shortage of teachers, I'd also agree with you that wages would have to be higher in ASD than in Parkland, for example, to attract quality teachers (very few people would want to deal with the problems of inner city schools if they had a choice!). However, in the current economic environment, there is an oversupply of teachers, and quality teachers will be forced to consider any open positions. In this market, raising compensation by any reasonable amount isn't going to have any major affect on the quality of applicants they can choose from.

I agree with your logic, but answer me this: WHY, if Parkland is such a great place to work, is it also one of the highest paying districts? Using your logic, there remains a sense of prestige working at Johns Hopkins, who can afford to keep their costs lower than Tulsa, who must over-pay to attract the same talent. But thats not how it works in our school systems. The wealthier systems attract everyone because they are paying higher. Again, stop the gravy train, and maybe, just maybe teachers will stay at these 'preferred schools' thereby decreasing the inequalities both in quality and financially. There is no supply and demand factor when the best places to work are also offering teh highest salaries. The follow-up question is, are these teachers there for the facilities and the resources or the pay?

John, my main point is that right now the exact rate being paid to teacher's isn't affecting the job market. There are so many teachers looking for work (either due to layoffs or excessive graduates) that I firmly believe that most districts have far more qualified applicants for open positions then they could ever think about hiring. You could drop teacher salaries / benefits by 25% tomorrow (not something I'm advocating), and that situation would not change for at least 5-10 years (at which.time you'd start to see the effect of less college students choosing Education majors on the market).

Regarding your specific question, I kind of surprised at your "gravy train" statement and will tell you I totally agree. If, as you state, Parkland is paying more for teachers than "market value" their taxpayers should be demanding the practice change.

JS - How does the free market determine the value of a position? Arguments like that make me begin to think that the occupy folks may have a point.

Let's use your logic. There are thousands of qualified CEO candidates who would work for less than half of the salary of the current CEOs who took government money to bail out their failed banks and companies. These same CEOs then say that folks should work for $10 per hour or they will move to Asia or some other third world country. I ask two questions.

1. How does the free market determine CEO salary that is unrelated to performance?
2. How does "accept my demands or I'll go to Asia and you'll starve" represent a free American market?

John, I agree 100%. I agree that "the deal" must be changed, not out of spite or "envy" of teachers, but because it's no longer sustainable. My personal solution would be to leave salaries unchanged (or adjust them up or down if they are out of line), but institute reasonable, private sector equivalent benefits. Stop the pension system now - honoring previously made committments, but not making any new ones that we can afford. Implement realistic co-pays for insurance coverage.

It's a pretty simple recipe for a fix...now we just need politicians with the political will be carry it out, and taxpayers with enough intelligence to demand it.

really? we pay $672 for single coverage. The present value of such a benefit retiring at 53 is well over a quarter million.

Unions is what gave the good contract. This country was strongest when unions got fair pay for the middle class. Rather than try to drag them down to the level of unorganized people rapidly dropping out of the middle class, why not look at ways to get a fair shake from what is becoming an oligopoly run by corporations? Americans have always been winners. The last decade has slowly made uscowards and losers fearing the corporations and fearing fighting for our country leaving the dirty work to the poor then betraying them.

Limport Resident, while I freely admit I dislike unions in general, I have no reason to object to unions inprivate industry (except when they drive up unemployment by forcing companies to shut down or move elsewhere with their often ridiculous demands). However, when public unions artificially drive up the cost of government services, and result in all of us having to pay much higher taxes than would otherwise we necessary, I (and every other taxpayer) have the right to question what we are getting for our money. I have no problem with supporting teachers at a fair wage with appropriate benefits. Don't ask us (taxpayers) to support lifetime healthcare and ridiculous pensions and expect us (taxpayers) to support you when teacher positions have to be cut because there's no money left!

Limeport... Unions worked when there was no global competition. The days of making $36/hr sweeping floors at the Steel are gone. The days of getting $34/hr to put nuts on wheels at Mack are gone. For good.

Dead wrong. In the US Senate, Its take 60 votes to stop debate, not start it. And even then, after cloture is invoked, up to another 30 hours of debate is allowed.

In the US House, the situation is quite different, where the majority party controls how the rules will be applied to a given measure. From 2007-2010, the majority was the Democrats and they controlled the rules committee, the length of discussion, and the amendments, and rolled the Republicans at will. The opposite, of course is in place in the House today, but not in the Senate.

Lime, what on earth are you smoking? From 2008-2010, Obama had a rubber stamp, and still got nothing notworthy accomplished! You even agree that the Healthcare Bill is inadequate (not to mention will be proven unconstitutional!). Your guys had COMPLETE control, and its was rammed down the throats of the American people. Healthcare today is not better, its choking on the massive amounts of cost for technology and governmental intervention, yet another service that government needs to walk away from! If you dont get it, try going to a doctor and not filling out greater amounts of paper, talking to the side of a doctor's head as he/she puts data into a computer, and then when they actually want to do something for you, they have to sort through the massive rules book to see if it's allowed. It wasnt this screwed up since a woman plotted with her college buddies to vow to fix healthcare in the 90's. Gee, guess that didnt work either! And finally, I recommend you go to any of those 'other' 36 countries next time youre feeling sick and see how you like it? Report back and give us the details!

John, Obama was not President in 2008.

@JS. I agree. In the spring on 2008, I have vivid memory of studying the Whitehouse website in a room in a place that I lived for less than a year, on the topic of home loans. It certainly didn't predict any of what happened, but it had several common sense changes to lending, including changes for Fannie Mae and other government and quasi government problems. I'm not saying that any of that woukd have been enough to stop this from happening, but all of it was blocked by the Congress, and they went the opposite way and did nothing, exacerbating the problems to come.

btw, at this moment i'm watching cxpan-2. Orrin Hatch (R-utah) just finished a long talk about the massive tax increase on medical devices contained in Obamacare and Christopher Coons (D-Delaware) is now talking about MLP's for renewable energy as we speak. Senators can talk about aby subject they want to at almost any time in the senate. Limeport's assertion that you need 60 to "even talk about an idea" is dead wrong.

JS, do you feel the Iraq war(s) which cost this country trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, the wars that were promoted by lying Republican presidents and their scheming warmongering corporate connected liar-advisors were a good idea?

Andrew Wilt: If the Iraqi war was so bad, why did George W Bush get re-elected in 2004?

Haven't we gone a bit far from the topic of education? It's kind of amusing to watch liberals approach this election as if they were still running against George Bush. I'm kind of surprised you're not spouting off "no blood for oil"! If you and your party don't wake up and realize that blaming everything on the past is ringing less and less true every day, we'll be welcoming President Romney into the White House in about 7 months.

For the fun of it, though, I'll take a stab at your question and give you my personal opinion. A decision to go to war is about the most serious decision a President can make, and it is made based on the best intelligence available at the time, some of which always turns out to be wrong. I believe Bush made the decision to go to war based on a belief that 1) there were WMD's in Iraq, 2) that Iraq was a threat to the US, both regionally and at home, and 3) that removing Saddam Hussein would improve the region. The first one obviously wasn't correct, but I think the 2nd and 3rd ones are obvious. There's no doubt that the Middle East is better off with Hussein removed from power and the roots of the "Arab Spring" began in Iraq. What's open for debate is whether the cost to the US was worth the benefits - with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the answer is probably no, but I challenge people such as yourself who spout off party lines about "lying" "scheming" "warmongering" Republicans to think about this as deeply and honestly as I have.

Andrew do you just pull statistics out of your ass???? Show me where the Iraq war cost trillions of dollars????

Good luck trying to get tea party bill to care about the real tax payer waste of money in this country. I admire the attempt. Too busy hating teahers to see the billions wasted I guess.

Truth seeker, No one hates teachers. Truth is truth and that is exactly what we should all be looking at in order to come to decisions and conclusions on these issues. Whether they are republican or democratic. Passing judgments and assuming what groups of people think is very counter productive. The Wars are more than just an really big number of financial cost. And the value of curtailing Terrorism in the world also has to be factored in there somewhere. We will never know if these wars kept another tragedy like 9/11 from happening. I thank all the people in our Armed Service for their sacrifices.

I agree with John that the shift in the way we pay taxes does not greatly change the burdens to the taxpayer. However, if the sales and income taxes were spread evenly across the state, there would be redistribution of funds in favor of the poorer districts. I wonder how well that would be accepted. It is not very helpful when the right throws numbers around that have no relationship to the real world. One problem with so many school districts is that there is a disparity in philosophy, income, cost, and results that blur conclusions we draw. The only solution seems to be a wider discussion on how achieve an effective education most efficiently. As long as we have parents with poor educations making pronouncements on what books to read in school, hating teachers unions because they counterbalance government giving their members a better life, and listen to rhetoric that is more to minimize government than benefit our students, a rationale study is not likely. Firing a teacher making $60K in a district of 10000 families saves $6/household. One can easily see that you would have to decimate the staff to get reasonable tax break. When a district spends $5K per student on capital outlay and $6700 on teaching, it is difficult to get substantial savings by cuts in teaching only. Maybe we should have Walmart build our schools!

Limeport... what does this mean ?????

"hating teachers unions because they counterbalance government giving their members a better life"

Meaning the union works to give the teachers a better life? ya, at the expense of the taxpayer. That's why people hate unions.... and because every time democrats gain control, they pay off their union buddies with benefits and raises nobody in the private sector sees.

John and Limeport make good points:

1) John’s calculation personalizes the effect of the proposal on an individual taxpayer, while my posting earlier looks at it for the entire state. Our results are similar. The proposal to raise sales tax and personal income tax by 1% each falls far short, providing less than half (and probably closer to 30%) of the revenue need to eliminate the school real estate tax. And you still have the municipal and county property taxes.

2) Limeport makes a good point about wealth redistribution. Some of that may be good for the state and society in general, but almost any form of state taxation or revenue enhancement from the state will hurt the residents of EPSD. I’ve published in other forums here studies that show that EPSD receives less than $0.50 on the dollar for every dollar compared to the state average of moneys from income tax, sales tax, and gambling property tax rebates.

John and Limeport make good points:

3) However, I must disagree with two points by Limeport:

3.1) At EPSD, where the budget is pushing $120 million for 8,000 students, or $15k each, the capital costs are approaching $16 million per year, or $2k per student. EPSD’s debt load is actually quite high compared to most, so I really doubt that any district comes close to $5k per student cited.

3.2) I wouldn’t call Mssrs. Maddonna or Young or Rep. Cox members of the right who are throwing numbers around, though the are tossing around a proposal that simply doesn’t work out. Madonna even was appointed to a board by former Gov. Rendell. The proposal still might be helpful if it reduced the school tax by a third, but don’t hope for more than that. The only crummy number I see is identified in my last paragraph.

really John? So when corporations set up fake holding compaines in Delaware to avoid paying taxes, we have a governor that will not tax an insdustry that has a severance tax everywhere else including W.Virginia, Gov Corbett gives additional tax breaks to corporations despte claiming we have no money, we pay 6-10 million on voter ID despite having no voter fraud, do you blame the union for that to??? I guess when you are fighting perceived evil (unions) than any argument is justified. All Americans are taxpayers and very little of the workforce is unionized anymore. Spending money in PA and nationally is about priorities and those are set by those in power.

@Limeport - I apologize if I misinterpretted your statistic of $5,333 per student capital outlay for 2008-09 at SLSD. I usually think of debt service (recurring payments for P&I for previous capital spending) and a number like that seems too high for annual amortization, but it is possible for a school district to spend that much in one year on a large project, funding it either from capital reserve or by bonds. At EPSD, the current indebtedness of about $160 million is about $20,000 per student, but that includes projects at nearly every school over many years.

With regard to you second paragraph, I don't see anything in the discussion started by John Shubert referencing my earlier remarks about the inadequacy of the Cox/Madonna sales tax/income tax increase for elimnating the school property tax even hinted anything about blaming unions for anything. In fact the only two references about unions came in your two postings. So I'll leave it at that.

John I'm sorry but people like yourself fail to go after the real abuse of taxpayers in this country by the military and big corporations. You will lose your mind because of a good health care policy for a police officer or a 1.5% raise for a teacher but say nothing about building another aircraft carrier, bailing out a bank, sending a tax break to an oil company, allowing a corporation to set up a fake business in Delaware to avoid taxes etc. etc. etc. I know police officers, teaches and firefighters and they are not rich. They are middle class. It is legal to form a union in both the private or public sector so until the law is changed I will support that right. I'll make you a deal though - start advocating for real tax justice in the state/country and I will suppport all sides (including labor) making concessions. Until then, I see you as either a corporate mouth piece or somebody who has fallen prey to the propoganda that eminates from such entities.

John, I agree with everything you say except for the point about pensions. While the ultimate decsions were made by the legislature, it was heavily influenced by school boards who urged it to pass Act 38 of 2002 (and later Act 40 of 2003), which deferred pension costs to the future (now).

More specifically, in 2002 after PSERS actuaries recommended raising the employer contribution rate from 1.09% to 5.64%, it was later foolishlly reduced to only 1.15% of payroll after complaints from school boards and other lobbying groups about raising the rate by and "unprecedented" 460%. Unprecedented my foot - the contribution rate was close to 20% for most of the early 1990's when I was on a school board. It didn't have to go that high again, but probably it will now after the extended pension cost holiday that both the state and local districts enjoyed.

At the time (in 2002), I commented publicly about how that this would be disasterous, both at an EPSD school board meeting and also in the MC letters to editor page, not to mention several other school boards, including some in other counties. I was shocked by this action since the normal pension cost was about 8%, but people were complaining about 5%, and I could see trouble coming down the road. I even suggested that the money saved by avoiding contributions should be reserved rather than being spent, but of course that didn't happen.