This Land's Not Your Land - Cult of Con Teabagnorance in OUR Rotunda

Photo by Jenna Pope

The photo above taken by Jenna Pope of lyrics used by about 40 The We've Got a Permit Singers in our rotunda on July 19, 2013 (while a couple hundred sang in solidarity outside) exemplifies much of what is sick, twisted and disgusting about Tea Party Cult of Con.

For starters the TPs are always spouting about freedom and oppressive government, until that is Da Gubmint is the Double Authoritarian Scott Walker. Then their worship of authority kicks in and they willingly subjugate themselves to their Ruler's Order to get permission (aka a permit) from the Gubmint to peaceably assemble and exert their right to freedom of speech. That is either cognitive dissonance, the ability to hold two conflicting beliefs and fail to recognize the incongruity, or it is hypocrisy, the willingness to hold two conflicting beliefs and fail give a crap. Both are at epidemic levels in the Cult of Con which of course rests on faith and not reasoning.

To hell with your Fitzwalkerstani permission slip, here are your "permits" boys!
Wisconsin Consitution - Article 1 - Declaration of Rights - SECTION 4. [Right to assemble and petition] The right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged.

Constitution of the United States of America - Bill of Rights - Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Teabaggers Endorse Social Welfare!

IN HAWAII !

I concur with President Obama. The IRS should definitely NOT be political. I mean why would they question Tea Party creds as tax exempt social welfare groups? Everyone knows the TPs are socialistic and all about promoting the general welfare, right? Hell, welfare is practically their middle name! And they loves them some socialists, ya'll! Kenyan, Kansasan, Muslim, Hawaiian, Gnomish, Yeti, any kind.

I mean it's not as if the white, the old and the red of neck sprang up like locusts out of nowhere in 2009 over any particularly dark political event, campaign or election that preceded their emergence! Clearly the sincerity of the teatotaler's social conscience is beyond question. And I'm sure they're hurt and deeply regretful over the current discourteous misunderstanding with their dear friends at the IRS and that they bear no ill will. So don't be TEA'd. Simply smile, sip and point your pinky!

Swillingly Yours,

Seanyanna

The Goods on the WeVote Burlington Part I

American Majority Rally - Madison 2011 with
Their Hero the Late GOPropagandist Andrew Breitbart

Perhaps you've heard me before say things like our communities, civility, rationalism, our educators and not only our public schools, but our public institutions generally, are under attack by the combined forces of greed, selfishness and short-sighted ignorance. While some of you are no doubt aware of what I’m referring to, others may have dismissed it as mere paranoia.

Well now I’ve got the goods on the WeVote Burlington Tea Party and the big money, American’s-for-Plutocracy national agenda behind them and their attempt to take over our local school district. http://americanmajority.org/majority-2/its-time-for-new-leaders-in-our-education-system/

EXCERPT: One of the groups that joined the New Leaders Project is We Vote Burlington. Activists in a local group led by Bonnie Ketterhagen attended an American Majority training and decided to bring some change to their own school board. They recruited two new candidates for the school board elections, trained them using American Majority’s campaign resources, and helped them to victory in the Spring of 2012.

WeeVoter Late to the Parade

Some folks are just late to the parade as exemplified in this letter to the editor from Ms. Catherine Theilen published yesterday in the Standard Press website: http://lab.southernlakesnewspapers.com/?p=8685

She criticizes BASD School Board member Larry Anderson for not using Gubnah Walker's "Tools" to twist the thumbs of our local educators to the full extent possible and ONLY saving the citizenry $1.7 million dollars. How selfish and vindictive can the WeeVoters get with their punitive and myopic Tea Party agenda?

She then goes on to say "My suggestion is put the whole district on Obama care." What does that even mean? Does Ms. Theilen know? Does she mistakenly believe that means free healthcare provided by the federal government leaving taxpayers off the hook? My strong suspicion is that she has been the willing, but unknowing consumer of vast amounts of disinformation and likely knows little to nothing about Obamacare.

But the most entertaining and revealing part is that she turns her ill-informed ire on us wayward pamphleteers advising us as follows: "A helpful hint to the people putting political literature on car windshields: please stop.  You are in violation of Burlington city littering ordinance #200-2 sections A & C."

Norma TP Miller Not Qualified

Burlington School Board Candidate and Tea Partier, Norma Miller in letter published in yesterday's Standard Press opinion section, said; "Right now we spend 85 cents out of every tax dollar on staff wages and benefits. That means 15 cents out of every tax dollar is spent on our children."


Ah NO, it does NOT! That statement alone demonstrates why she is not qualified to be on the Board, with regard to both her attitude toward our teachers and by her lack of understanding of how the funds to support our students are applied.

Apparently, Ms. Miller doesn't understand that the teachers are there for the students. That's not only completely misguided, it's unprofessional and disrespectful. How else are the students supposed to get educated? Education is a people intensive effort, not just in BASD, but in the schools all over our nation. Of course the bulk of the funding goes to teachers and other staff. They are what makes a building a school!

And her notion that only the remaining 15% goes to the children is equally absurd. That 15% goes to run and maintain district facilities. Like the teachers, are not the buildings also for the students? Of course! But apparently Ms. Miller believes that an ediface is more important than an educator to your children's and granchildren's future and that of our community.

I guess by her way of thinking we can cut costs by 85% and give our children nice buildings where they can stare vacantly at an empty blackboard and magically educate themselves.

I my opinion, Norma Miller offers little prospect of good stewardship over our schools or our future citizens!

Ketterhagen's Snake Strangled Banner

The photograph above was taken on the observance of Veteran's Day, November 12, 2012 at the residence of local Teajadists Phillip and Bonnie Ketterhagen. They are flying their American flag upside-down presumably as their response to the Expressed Will of the American People last Tuesday when President Barack Obama was comfortably re-elected.

Maybe they could also try stamping their feet and holding their breath until our democracy is thwarted in their favor. I guess in certain circles it's only "Freedom" when YOU GET YOUR WAY!

But judging by the results of last Tuesday's re-election of President Obama, our first openly gay Senator Tammy "You're Damn Right" Baldwin, the rejection of Mitt's tripling down on the failed trickle-down voodoo economy and the "legitimate rape" agenda, the votes on gay marriage and other progressive victories, it seems the Ketterhagen's have the wrong flag inverted. The Stars and Stripes should be waving proud with the blue on top!

It is the co-opted flag of the venomous Tea Party that should be flapping head over heels. (or should I say, rattling-tail?) Demographics is destiny and the TP would do best to take their angry, old, out of touch, reactionary agenda and slither off into the grass (or should I say astroturf?) from whence they first reared their head.

Another Flawed TP Swipe at Public Education

Last week's Standard Press once again included a vindictive and venomous letter attacking on our public servants by a cohort of the local TP brigade. This time it was Wayne Raisleger, who derided the Burlington Area School District Board of Education and the Citizens that came forward on August 27th to vote their community conscience and support to zero tax levy increase approved by the Board. As if further cutting would have made any difference with regard to Mr. Raisleger's compaints about student standardized test multiple choicing!

We all know that the number one indicator of student success is parental involvement. Yet Mr. Raisleger blames the supposedly sub-par WKCE test scores on the school board and the teachers instead of those who actually took the test (some students) and their key supporters (parents). This of course ignores the fact that Burlington High School's ACT test scores continue year after year to be above the state average, (Standard Press - 9/6/12, page 6)  in a state, which along with its neighbors Iowa and Minnesota, lead the nation in ACT Scores. This result is characterized by Wayne as "poor student achievement". If Wayne likes other district's results better, then maybe he can get their students to take BASD's testing instead. I hear that the students from inner city areas in Wisconsin with high poverty, unemployment, hopelessness and all the social ills that accompany those conditions can be had for testing on the cheap. And Mississippi students? Why they're as free of charge for testing as they are from quality inculcation!

Raisleger called a school board member a "union shill", derided members for executing their constitutuional right as citizens to sign petitions and went on to claim that "it is generally acknowledged that K-12 systems are failing in America." Based on the above, Mr. Raisleger is probably completely unaware that the only places were this is "generally acknowledged" are the self-indoctrinated minds of those who consume FuxSnooze and AM radio GOPropaganda.

But what is really misguided and off the mark is Mr. Raisleger's pronouncement that "These divergent trends (teacher pay/student test scores) were perptuated in the tax levy passed Aug 27 and would only be accepted in a public sector organization." A claim he esentially repeated with "The ugly truth is that, given their job performance, all five (non-TP Board Members) would have been sacked if they held similar positions in the private sector". Seriously? Any casual observer of the private sector in recent, greedy and deregulated times would immediatly recognize the falacy of this Cult of Con profession of faith. This study of CEO pay versus corprorate performance by Forbes adeptly documents the failure of the god of free market forces in America today: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0423/ceo-compensation-12-company-earnings-highest-gravity-defying-pay.html

FORBES EXCERPT: Our report on executive compensation will only fuel the outrage over corporate greed. In 2011 the chief executives of the 500 biggest companies in the U.S. got a collective pay raise of 16% last year, to $5.2 billion. This compares with a 3% pay raise for the average American worker. Go the link above Mr. Raisleger and you will see a graph illustrating an inverse relationship to private sector CEO pay and coporate earnings. So much for the sanctified purity of the private sector.

What is especially disturbing about this three decade long redistribution of wealth from the stagnating/declining American middle class to the ruling political/corporate class, is that these outrageously disgusting and often undeserved tributes to the CEO elitists are subsidized by America's citizens through their tax contributions as documented here: http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/executive_excess_2012

EXCERPT - Among the findings:
•Of last year’s 100 highest-paid U.S. corporate chief executives, 25 took home more in CEO pay than their companies paid in federal income taxes.
•The CEOs of these 25 firms received $20.6 million in average total compensation last year. That’s a 24 percent increase over the average for last year’s list of 2010’s tax dodging executives.
•The four most direct tax subsidies for excessive executive pay cost taxpayers an estimated $14.4 billion per year—$46 for every American man, woman, and child. That amount could also cover the annual cost of hiring 211,732 elementary-school teachers or creating 241,593 clean-energy jobs.
•CEOs have benefited enormously from the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers. Last year, 57 CEOs saved more than $1 million on their personal income tax bills, thanks to these Bush-era cuts.

In recognition of the derisive nature of his pontifications, and the baseless nature of his Cult of Con professions of faith, Mr Raisleger has earned BAP's covetous Forked Tongue & Fangs Award.
Way to go Wayne!

Ketterhagen's Analysis Flawed . . . Again!

I obtained a copy of the Department of Public Instruction spreadsheet with numbers on teacher salaries and benefits state wide, which Teaparty School Board Candidate Phil Ketterhagen kept holding up and waving around at the forum Monday night claiming that BASD teachers averaged $69K in salary and were in the 97th percentile for the state.

I changed none of the original data, but took the liberty of modifying the spreadsheet by adding columns with formulas to yield the following numbers for BASD teachers:

Avg. Total Salary & Bennies: $90,337 = 87.77 percentile
Avg. Salary: $60,563 = 81.37 percentile (NOT $69K/97% as Ketterhagen claimed!)
Avg. Bennies: $29,375 = 69.12 percentile

I'd be happy to provide the original and modified spreadsheets if anyone wants to check my numbers.

I also highlighted the numbers for some other local districts and BASD numbers generally falls in line. Bottom line, once again we see ya just can’t trust Ketterhagen’s numbers or analysis! Nor do I suspect can you trust how nice he was trying to play that night.

On thing that is clear by looking at the spreadsheet is that in metro areas salaries are higher reflecting higher cost of living and as you go further north (where you can by a house for $30K) the salaries drop off. So a statewide comparison is really another apples to oranges analysis, which a specialty of Ketterhagen's. And he didn't get it right in the first place!

Burlington Educators Attacked with Flawed Logic

Philip Ketterhagen must think the readers of the Standard Press are fools and wouldn't see through the apples to oranges analysis of Burlington Area School District (BASD) compensation he included in his letter to the editor last week. Ketterhagen's focus is on money alone as he states that "the BASD staff is in the elite percentile of income." True, but what he leaves out, is that the BASD staff is in an even more elite percentile for educational attainment. Philip says he's a college graduate so I'm going to assume the statistics he quotes are accurate. The way he uses them however, is deceptive and inappropriate as demonstrated below using 2010 census data for education level obtained here: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/Table2-Both.xls and here: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0233.xls for adults 25 years and older.

For his analysis, Mr. Ketterhagen states that he used numbers from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal for the top 128 BASD employees in terms of compensation, skewing his sample right off the bat. He then goes on to compare BASD employee compensation to the of average income for Wisconsin citizens. Now the average income includes people who hold down jobs stocking shelves or driving a delivery van, for example. These jobs are critical to the functioning of our economy and the people who do them deserve our respect, a family supporting wage, family healthcare and a decent retirement, but they're not qualified to educate America's children and naturally they're not compensated as well as those who are and rightly so.

Ketterhagen stated that BASD administrator salaries are in the 76th percentile nationally and in the 86th percentile when benefits are considered, implying that they are over compensated. But BASD administrators have a minimum of a masters degree, putting them in the 92nd percentile for educational attainment nationally (92nd for Wisconsin). They are more likely to have a professional or doctoral degree, both in the 99th percentile nationally! These are management positions where people are responsible for million dollar budgets and hundreds of employees, corresponding to the highest paid jobs in the private sector. People in the 92-99 percentile for their education that are compensated in the 86th percentile nationally are clearly NOT over paid!

Then there are the teachers. First of all it should be recognized that all teachers have continuing education requirements and must obtain a teaching certificate which is an additional requirement beyond a bachelors degree that is not reflected separately in the census data for educational attainment. All of the teachers have minimum of a bachelors degree, which puts them in the 81st percentile nationally and the 74th percentile for citizens of Wisconsin. Fifty-two percent of Wisconsin teachers also have a masters degrees, which places those individuals in the 93rd percentile nationally and the 92nd percentile for Wisconsinites. Assuming the 52% also applies to BASD and aggregating these numbers for teachers with bachelors and masters degrees we come up with a teaching staff at BASD with average educational attainment levels that fall in the 86th percentile nationally and 83rd percentile for our once fair state. And where do the teachers fall in terms of compensation? According to Ketterhagen, the Wall Street Journal says they average in the 68th percentile nationally for pay and the 83rd percentile with benefits included, which they negotiated for in good faith. So BASD teachers are in the 86th percentile nationally for the level of education achieved, but they're compensation falls in the 83rd percentile.

What is Ketterhagen complaining about, why the need for flawed apples to oranges analysis and why his relentless and baseless attack on our educators?

BASD's Frightening Emergency

Greetings progressive residents and friends of the Burlington Area School District, we have a frightful emergency. Our public schools are under a coordinated attack from a Tea Party (TP) group in the form of WeVoteBurlington (WVB). The outcome of the first battle (it won’t be the last) in this attack will be decided on Halloween at the School Board meeting to be held in the BHS auditorium on Monday October 31st at 7:30 where they will try to brow beat the members of the Board regarding adoption of the district’s budget.

I’d like to place this event in the broader context to better understand what is happening and why. Mark Belling has promoted this attack and Charlie Sykes is threatening to bring in bus loads of outside agitators, single-issue anti-tax zealots to flood the meeting. People of goodwill need to be present and ready to speak up (three minutes allotted per person) to provide a counter-balance to this coordinated TP attack and to support our elected representatives on the Board who have gone through the months-long process of developing a reasonable budget for our public schools which are the central organizing, social institution of our community! Please email your Board members regardless of whether you can be at this meeting and let them know your position: http://www.basd.k12.wi.us/boardmembers.cfm

Tea Party Connection: I know that “coordinated” sounds like conspiracy, that “attack” may seem like hyperbole and that representatives of WVB recently denied their TP status in the Standard Press. But I will demonstrate why all three are apt descriptions of what we face. WVB held a legislative night on October 8th at Burlington’s public high school which featured as one of the key guests Tim Dake of the Grandsons of Liberty, a bonafide TP group promoting the “Legislative Agenda for the Wisconsin TEA Party Movement – 2010/2012”. The legislative items listed in this agenda are noted as being sponsored by TP groups from all over the state including: Uninfringed Liberty, Campaign for Liberty, Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, Two Rivers Tea Party, Rock River Patriots, Menomonee/Marinette Sons and Daughters of Liberty, Manitowoc County TEA Movement, Americans for Constitutional Enforcement and the Rock County Voter Education Forum, a pungent brew indeed. The strategy is to have a Wisconsin TP group adopt a piece of legislation and through activism to help push it through our legislature. To see the disturbingly ill-willed TP legislative agenda which precisely mirrors that presented at the WeVoteBurlington event go here: http://www.wisconsingrandsonsofliberty.com/

Attack on Public Education: That takes care of the TP connection, now to justify my use of the words “coordinated attack”. The TP groups cited above are promoting this legislative agenda, but they didn’t draft the legislation. Most of these bills were written by members of the secretive, Koch brother funded, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where global corporations pay big bucks to sit down with Republican State Legislators and draft laws in their interest to rule you from your State House. Although the special interests behind this are narrow, their agenda is very broad and includes the dismantling and privatization our public school systems in the United States of America. Why? Power, including the power to make profits for the “Educational Entrepreneurs” and to destroy unions. For more information on ALEC’s moves to starve public education see this article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-12 and this website: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_Teachers
For information on ALEC in general go here: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

Are the WVB folks aware of the selfish and sinister agenda they’re helping to advance and who is behind it? Probably not. When it comes to public education, they’ve been conditioned to focus on only two things, taxes and thugs (their term for our teachers). But the Tea Party movement has been co-opted and turned from grassroots to astroturf by Americans For Prosperity (Plutocracy), the Club For Growth and other well funded groups founded by one-percent folks like the billionaire Koch Brothers, Dick Armey and others. The agendas of these groups are handed down from on high by corporate sponsored conservative think tanks founded by the Koch brothers and others like them, to serve their self-interest. For some insight on the Americans For Plutocracy and the Koch Bros agenda for our public schools watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJhjCbwo8

Furthermore, the WVB people have probably never even heard of ALEC. After all, it is supposed to be a secret. The likes of Belling and Sykes are certainly not going to expose ALEC and its goals. It was only revealed last spring that local State Representative Robin Vos is also the ALEC state Co-chair, tasked with enacting the ALEC agenda in Wisconsin like his counter parts in the other states. You’d think he’d be proud of such a lofty distinction, but he doesn’t discuss it or campaign on its “merits”. Skirting Wisconsin’s good government campaign laws, Vos even got an ALEC “Scholarship” worth thousands of dollars for airfare and hotel accommodations to be wined and dined in a sunnier clime by the ALEC corporate lobbyists who fund the organization. A “Scholarship”, why that’s a major award to be illuminated and displayed prominently before your constituents! But modest Robin never mentions it. You know what they say, news is what people want to keep hidden, every thing else is publicity.

And now PR Watch has discovered who Wisconsin’s secret ALEC Corporate Co-chairs are: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11031/koch-lobbyist-alec-state-co-chair-wisconsin-scholarships-raise-ethics-concerns Every state has them and guess what, one of Wisconsin’s is a lobbyist for Koch Industries! Such a tangled web! And I’ve connected only a few of the dots here. There are more, many more.

The citizens of Burlington have elected a local School Board to represent our interests in our community. It’s called local control, a principle the Republican Party once stood for. We must not let a few vocal people, acting at the behest of squawk-radio propagandists, force on to us a hidden agenda that comes from selfish, narrow and far away special interests that have no stake in what becomes of our children or our community, other than how it advances their national political goals and their potential for future profits to be reaped at the expense of millions of students across the nation and right here at home. Scary!

Thank you for your attention. You are the 99%! Please make yourselves heard at the Board meeting on October 31st. Boo!

Fux Snoozers Most Misinformed

The University of Maryland conducted a studt after the fall election that shows there is a disturbing amount of misinformation, you know propaganda in the Plutocratic States of America and that it is influencing the what citizens believe (wrongly) and how they vote (ignorantly): http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf

But Fux Snoozers are by far more likely to swallow the bullshit and then regurgitate it all over what remains of our republic. Fux viewers are by:
-14 points more likely to mistakenly believe that the stimulus legislation did not include tax cuts. -13 points more likely to erroneously believe that the auto bailout only occurred under Obama.
-12 points more likely to hold the incorrect belief that when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it.
-30 points more likely to mistakenly believe that most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.
-31 percent more likely to believe the that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States.

Want more clear evidence of the lies the Teabgnorant are more likely to believe? Read it and weep:
-Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)
-Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)
-The economy is getting worse (26 points)
-Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

Plutarch's like Rupert the Murdoch and the Koch Bros don't like bedrock American values like self determination through the INFORMED consent of the citizenry. They're not your countrymen, they're would-be overlords.

Extreme Teabagnorance!

Christine O'Donnell typifies the ignorance of the Teabagger movement as mirror image of Sarah Palincomparison when asked to name a supreme court ruling she objected to. Her response; "Could you give me a specific case?" America, help is on the way to take our country backwards!
This is fricken scarelarious! http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/362219/october-14-2010/transitive-property-of-christine-o-donnell

Teabagnorance

Saw a car this weekend with a teabagger sticker on one side of the back window and one on the other side that said "Government Sucks, Obama Swallows". So clever.

There's no point trying to fathom what that means other than that the driver is an ignorant moron which is emblematic of the Teabaggers.