1.) Supporters of Wisconsin teachers get basic facts about teaching completely wrong — The Democratic Party of Wisconsin and other supporters of the state’s teachers union need to check their math: In Facebook posts and twitter messages, union supporters have been “promoting statistics that would suggest that collective bargaining for teachers is correlated with higher scores on standardized academic tests,” according to Politifact. More specifically, union supporters claim that the five states that do not have collective bargaining for teachers have the following SAT/ACT ranks: South Carolina -50th/ North Carolina -49th/ Georgia -48th/ Texas -47th/ Virginia -44th,” and that Wisconsin ranks second. According to Politifact, the claim is completely bogus. For starters, the data used to assemble the ranking is from 1999. In data from 2010, Virginia places higher (34th) and Wisconsin places slightly lower (3rd) on the SAT. The rest of the non-union states do much worse, but not because of collective bargaining. More likely, it’s because only 4 percent of Wisconsin students took the SAT in 2010, compared to 74 percent of Georgia students, 67 percent of Virginia students, 66 percent of South Carolina students, 63 percent of North Carolina students, and 53 percent of Texas students. Hell, every state in the country would have a shot at the podium if it excluded 96 percent of its students from standardized test rankings.
2.) Huckabee tells Romney how to apologize for Obamacare — “Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that potential White House rival Mitt Romney should offer an apology for the health care overhaul he oversaw as Massachusetts governor,” reports the AP. Huckabee even suggested some things Romney could say when he’s ready to express his regret. “‘We gave it our best shot and I’m proud we tried it because — in a world where we all agreed something needed to be done — we thought this might be a way to fix the crisis we had in health care. Our experiment did not turn out as we had hoped. It cost more, waiting times were higher, quality of care went down, people were greatly dissatisfied and it ended up having almost the polar opposite effect of what was intended.'”
3.) House GOP blinks — House Republicans have been caught between Barack and a hard place. If they don’t agree to yet another continuing resolution, the government will shut down, and everyone will hate them. If they do pass a continuing resolution without serious budget cuts, Obama wins (and everyone will hate them). Guess which one they chose? “House Republicans are drafting a two-week continuing resolution to keep the government operating after the current CR expires on March 4 and will file the bill on Friday,” reports Major Garrett. “The measure will contain about $4 billion in spending cuts and will merge cuts approved last week by the House and several taken from President Obama’s list of program terminations and savings. Three senior House GOP aides said the strategy is designed to avert a government shutdown and limit the ability of Senate Democrats and the White House to portray Republicans as unreasonable or inflexible.” Apparently, “Boehner and Cantor have pleaded with the freshmen to take the long view of the budget war and not risk a political backlash over the CR dispute.” And the freshmen listened.
4.) Big Unions and Big Business might as well be the same thing — “The notion that Big Labor is cancelling out Big Business — well, that’s a Big Lie,” writes the Examiner’s Tim Carney, in response to wild and heartfelt claims that the unions in Wisconsin and Indiana are the only things standing between us and a Banana Republic. “The 10 industries that contributed the most during the 2010 elections — from Wall Street to government unions — all gave more to Democrats than to Republicans.” Oh! There’s also this: “The top donor to House and Senate campaigns in the 2010 elections — the Service Employees International Union — is otherwise known as ‘Obama’s Union.’ The company that spent the most on lobbying in 2010 — General Electric — is also known as ‘the for-profit arm of the Obama Administration.'” But hey, progressives! Keep flogging that dead horse!
5.) Congratulations on your huge public pension problem, Rahm! — “He reportedly dropped the “F-bomb” in bailout negotiations with the United Auto Workers during the U.S. auto industry meltdown two years ago,” writes the Washington Times. “Now, labor proponents in economically troubled Chicago are left to wonder what things will be like for them under mayor-to-be Rahm Emanuel.” According to the Times, Rahmbo “takes charge of a city facing an immediate budget shortfall projected at from $500 million to $1 billion and with its long-term pension promises to city workers underfunded by as much as $15 billion.” Will Rahmbo pull a Walker? Probably not: ““I reject the way Wisconsin has approached this …,” he said. “I think when you give people the opportunity to be partners in reform, you’ll find that they are willing….They have to be asked, and I solicit their ideas because reform is the order of the day.” Let me guess: The order of tomorrow is “Shut up and go home,” right?
6.) Obama inflates NASA pensions — “As the Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad today at Kennedy Space Center, the Washington, D.C. future does not seem rosy for NASA, which for years was a crown jewel of American ingenuity and achievement,” writes the AJC’s Jamie Dupree, who adds, “When I started covering the space program in the 1980’s, NASA’s budget was about 1% of the overall federal budget. Now it is less than one-half of one percent – and threatening to get even smaller.” A fraction of that fraction–$548 million of the $18.7 billion budget– “would be used to boost the pension fund of workers at United Space Alliance,” because a lot of them are getting fired now that our space program is collapsing. Not a bad “constellation” prize!
VIDEO: Union thug assaults Tabitha Hale