It’s Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011….but before we begin, a couple of housekeeping items; first, check out the videos on our home page at www.thedailygouge.com.  Second, a quick question: where would America be without a Liberal establishment and MSM to assist her in defining “Blackness”?!?

Though we like Cain more than Romney, Perry or any of the other current GOP presidential hopefuls, we’re still not completely sold on his candidacy.  But our degree of uncertainty regarding Cain’s competence is no more based upon his race, let alone his “racial authenticity”, than is our abhorrence of The Obamao.  We assess individuals on their character and politics….not the vagaries of the melanin level of their epidermis at birth.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the AEI, Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine on….

Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers

The teaching profession is crucial to America’s society and economy, but public-school teachers should receive compensation that is neither higher nor lower than market rates. Do teachers currently receive the proper level of compensation? Standard analytical approaches to this question compare teacher salaries to the salaries of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers, and then add the value of employer contributions toward fringe benefits. These simple comparisons would indicate that public-school teachers are undercompensated. However, comparing teachers to non-teachers presents special challenges not accounted for in the existing literature.

First, formal educational attainment, such as a degree acquired or years of education completed, is not a good proxy for the earnings potential of school teachers. Public-school teachers earn less in wages on average than non-teachers with the same level of education, but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar “paper” qualifications. We show that:

• The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education.

• Public-school teachers earn higher wages than private- school teachers, even when the comparison is limited to secular schools with standard curriculums.

• Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid.

Second, several of the most generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers often go unrecognized:

• Pension programs for public-school teachers are significantly more generous than the typical private sector retirement plan, but this generosity is hidden by public-sector accounting practices that allow lower employer contributions than a private-sector plan promising the same retirement benefits.

• Most teachers accrue generous retiree health benefits as they work, but retiree health care is excluded from Bureau of Labor Statistics benefits data and thus frequently overlooked. While rarely offered in the private sector, retiree health coverage for teachers is worth roughly an additional 10 percent of wages.

• Job security for teachers is considerably greater than in comparable professions. Using a model to calculate the welfare value of job security, we find that job security for typical teachers is worth about an extra 1 percent of wages, rising to 8.6 percent when considering that extra job security protects a premium paid in terms of salaries and benefits.

We conclude that public-school teacher salaries are comparable to those paid to similarly skilled private sector workers, but that more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year. Teacher compensation could therefore be reduced with only minor effects on recruitment and retention. Alternatively, teachers who are more effective at raising student achievement might be hired at comparable cost.

That’s two Liberal union icons down (teachers and firemen), one (policemen) to go!

And in the Follow-Up segment, Guy Benson echoes the sentiments we voiced yesterday regarding the aspect of Hermangate that should give Conservatives pause for thought:

….At this point, I’m inclined to give Cain the benefit of almost every doubt related to this imbroglio.  His accusers are hiding in the shadows of anonymity, and the news organization that broke the story won’t even report his alleged misdeeds.  If nothing else, Cain strikes like a man of character, and I’m not interested in being taken for a ride by the mainstream media in the absence of meaningful proof to the contrary.  It’s entirely plausible that he may have botched his answers about a few hazy recollections on a long-dormant controversy.  He’s human.  What’s troubling from a political standpoint is that the Cain campaign was aware that this story was coming ten days before it ran.  Even a minimally competent political team would have outlined a specific strategy to lock down the narrative as soon as the piece dropped. Instead, Team Cain bobbled the ball badly on Sunday night, then allowed their principal to shift his story throughout Monday’s news cycle.  This was distressingly amateurish.  Cain may be loyal to his inner circle, many of whom are wonderful and bright people, but his team’s broader response to this mini-tempest does not bode well for future crisis management situations.  Is this crew ready to face the Obama/DNC slash and burn Billion-dollar machine?  That’s not an attack on Cain as a man, but it is absolutely a question that Republican primary voters should be asking themselves.

To borrow phrase from Captain Quint:

“That Obamao’s one bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin’ bluegills and tommycods. This shark, swallow you whole. Little shakin’, little tenderizin’, an’ down you go.”

The sooner Team Cain recognizes the no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners nature of the arena they’ll eventually have to enter, the better for their candidate and the country.

Turning to International News, here’s the WSJ‘s take on the Papandreou Panic that set markets tumbling around the globe:

A Greek Lesson in Democracy

A referendum in Athens would be instructive for all of Europe.

George Papandreou became the most unpopular man in Europe on Monday by announcing that his government would put the terms of last week’s EU-IMF bailout package to a referendum, so that Greeks can decide their economic future for themselves. The Prime Minister’s announcement sent markets tumbling world-wide, took Italian government-bond yields to a near euro-era high, and had German officials privately denouncing his behavior as un-European.

An alternative view is that Mr. Papandreou has done his own people, and all Europeans, a considerable favor. Who would have thought the Greeks had something to teach the world about democracy?

Since the euro-zone crisis began in earnest early last year, European policy makers have been placing Jon Corzine-sized bets (as detailed in today’s Money Quote immediately below) on a series of rescue packages for insolvent nations and troubled banks, without much input from the taxpayers who are ultimately on the hook for these ever-more-expensive bailouts.

It’s a method of governance that betrays the contempt of European elites for the views of their own people, who don’t always like where those elites propose to take them. Recall the overwhelming rejection by French and Dutch voters of a proposed EU Constitution in 2005.

For Greeks, their stake in last week’s euro-zone deal could hardly be higher: Their choice is either to sign up for a decade of EU- and IMF-imposed austerity or face the prospect of immediate default and the possible loss of the euro as their currency. That is at least partly why Mr. Papandreou, who has a parliamentary majority of two seats and faces another no-confidence vote on Friday, chose to go for a referendum, currently scheduled for January.

Should Greeks vote yes, Mr. Papandreou’s hand will be strengthened politically. If they vote no, the Greeks will at least be taking responsibility for the consequences. That sounds better than Greeks rioting in the streets against politicians in Berlin or Brussels over whom they have no influence.

As for the rest of Europe, they may eventually come around to thanking Mr. Papandreou and the Greeks, even for a no vote. Today’s conventional wisdom is that a Greek default would spread contagion, never mind that past bailout packages for Athens haven’t exactly contained it.

While nobody can doubt that an Athenian default would be damaging for Greece’s creditors, particularly French banks, these creditors will face a reckoning sooner or later. The real political purpose of the deal agreed in Brussels last week between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to postpone that reckoning past their own (and President Obama’s) elections.

A Greek default would provide a lesson in what happens to countries that can’t live within their means. The sight might even be enough to terrify lawmakers in Italy to get serious about fixing their unfunded pension promises and other antigrowth policies. The serial bailouts sure aren’t doing the job.

Even now—two years into the crisis—few of Europe’s elites are talking about the need to restore growth by means of economic liberalization. Consider Greece: The World Bank recently published its latest annual “Doing Business” survey, and for all of its alleged reforms Greece rose all of one spot to 100th this year in the world rankings in the ease of doing business. That’s just behind Yemen, though still ahead of Papua New Guinea. When it comes to investor protections, Athens ranks 150th.

The only good news in those figures is that Greece has plenty of room for improvements if only its political class had the courage to undertake them. However the Greeks vote in a referendum, this is the only route to an economic future that offers something better than penury or permanent indebtedness.

Our money’s on Greece rejecting the deal due to its enforced austerity; like the Harrisburg city council, we believe the average Greek has yet to be convinced of either the reality of the problem (i.e., no more money, honey), or that the EU cavalry won’t be coming over the hill in the nick of time….again (i.e., the credit well’s run dry).

Similar fiscal irresponsibility is the subject of today’s Money Quote, courtesy of the WSJ and former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs alumni Jon Corzine:

Where Was the CFTC?

Apparently it was too busy writing new rules to monitor MF Global.

“….The MF Global case involves business that was unambiguously regulated by the CFTC long before Mr. Gensler built his new regulatory empire. In fact, the alleged MF Global failure goes to the basic regulatory blocking and tackling that the CFTC is supposed to perform, which includes ensuring that companies aren’t raiding customer funds for their own trading.

It is also no small irony that MF Global was among the cheerleaders for Mr. Gensler’s plans for new clearing arrangements under Dodd-Frank. Maybe if the regulators hadn’t been so busy writing new rules, they would have checked if MF Global was following the old ones.

It was always fanciful to believe that the regulators who failed to prevent the last financial meltdown would somehow prevent the next one. The surprise is that this mirage of regulatory competence has been exposed so quickly.“

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577012220829865292.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Surprise?  No….not really.  But just as certain as death and taxes, the solution, at least in the dim recesses of the Liberal minds on Capitol Hill, will almost certainly be MORE regulations….and regulators!

Turning from the ridiculous to the sublime, here’s the latest from Thomas Sowell:

Payday Loans

California is a great place for studying the thinking — or lack of thinking — on the political left. The mindset of the left was recently displayed in a big, front-page story in the October 30th issue of the San Mateo County Times. It was an investigative reporter’s expose of the “payday loan” business and its lobbyists.

According to the reporter: “In California lenders charge up to $45 in fees on a maximum $300 loan. This amounts to an interest rate of 460 percent, trapping some borrowers into a never-ending cycle of debt.”

Let’s take this one step at a time. Whatever the merits or demerits of the rest of the argument, $45 is not going to trap anyone in a never-ending cycle of debt, even if they are making only the bare minimum wage. Personal irresponsibility in managing money can trap anyone, but that is regardless of whether or not they take out payday loans.

Now to the 460 percent rate of interest. You don’t need higher math to figure out that $45 is 15 percent of $300. How did we get to 460 percent? Very simple: By distorting the actual conditions of most payday loans.

As the name might suggest, payday loans are short-term loans to tide people over until they get their next check, whether a salary check, a welfare check or whatever. Payday loans are relatively small sums of money borrowed for very short periods of time, often by low-income people who want some cash right now, for whatever reason.

Is it worth paying the $45 to get the $300 right now, rather than wait a couple of weeks for your check to arrive? No third party can know that. But taking decisions out of the hands of those most directly affected is one of the central patterns of the political left that make them dangerous to the very people they think they are helping. This is not idealism. It is arrogance — and too often, it is ignorant arrogance, as in this case.

The 460 percent figure comes from imagining that the borrower is not just going to borrow the money for a couple of weeks, but is going to keep on borrowing every couple of weeks all year long. Using this kind of reasoning — or lack of reasoning — you could quote the price of salmon as $15,000 a ton or say a hotel room rents for $36,000 a year, when no consumer buys a ton of salmon and few people stay in a hotel room all year. It is clever propaganda, but do people buy newspapers to be propagandized? (Only if you’re a Liberal!)

What about the $45 that is at the heart of all this runaway rhetoric? Does that do more than cover the risk and the costs of processing the loan? Apparently our crusading investigative reporter did not find that worth investigating, even in a long article taking up another page and a half inside the newspaper.

What is called “interest” by the media includes things that an economist would not call interest. The fees charged must also cover the cost of processing the loan, which is to say the pay of people doing the work, the rent of the premises and other overhead expenses, as well as the risk of default.

But mundane facts like these would spoil the moral melodrama, starring the reporter on the side of the angels against the forces of evil.

Instead, we get the story of how the payday loan industry, like most other industries, has lobbyists contributing money to politicians to try to get spared more regulations. This the investigative reporter calls “protecting” the payday loan industry. Protecting them from what? From the politicians. Some would call their campaign donations “protection money,” in the same sense in which the Mafia collects protection money.

None of this is peculiar to this industry, to California or to our times. When Al Gore was Vice-President of the United States, he phoned businesses from the White House to tell them how much money he expected them to contribute to political campaigns.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s son extorted a $200,000 loan from a grocery chain that was under federal investigation — and he never repaid the loan. Moreover, FDR spoke directly to the head of the chain to seal the deal.

There are not a lot of angels to be on the side of.

Which proves yet again when you believe in nothing, you’ll believe anything….without allowing any of those pesky “facts” to intrude on the telling of a good bleeding-heart faux-morality tale.

Then there’s this week’s winner of the Nancy Pelosi “We Have To Pass The Bill To See What’s In It” Award for Incredible Chutzpah:

Former Bell, CA City Manager Sues City for Failing to Pay $1.5 Million Salary

The former city manager of scandal-plagued Bell, Calif., filed a lawsuit against the city Monday, claiming his contract was breached when the city stopped paying him nearly $1.5 million in salary and benefits.

Robert Rizzo claims he’s owed benefits and wages — with interest — because he hasn’t been convicted of a felony and hasn’t resigned his post, according to court documents he filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. According to the lawsuit, Rizzo hasn’t been paid since a public meeting in July 2010, when the small, blue-collar community of Bell learned of his outsized pay packet.

Rizzo’s lawyer on fraud and other charges, James Spertus, said Monday that Rizzo’s claim is just — even if the outraged public may balk at paying Rizzo his salary. “Thank God judges are not guided by emotion,” said Spertus.

Legal?  Perhaps.  “Just”?  Not on Rizzo’s worthless life.  Justice would dictate Rizzo be drawn and quartered….but only after several days of slow-roasting over an open fire.

And since we’re on the subject of those deserving prolonged torture prior to an incredibly painful form of execution….

Yeah….

Next up, another sign the Apocalypse is upon us:

12-Year-Old Boys Arrested for Dropping Shopping Cart on NYC Mother

Two 12-year-old boys were in police custody after allegedly dropping a shopping cart four stories onto a New York City mother who was out buying Halloween candy for underprivileged children. Marion Salmon Hedges, a wealthy Manhattan real-estate agent, was struck in the head by the falling cart on Sunday while walking outside a Target store with her 14-year-old son in East Harlem, the New York Post reports.

Gaurav Patel, a doctor who witnessed the incident, performed CPR on Hedges, who was later transported to Harlem Hospital where she remains in a medically-induced coma. “We heard a little boy just screaming,” Patel’s wife, Susan Mahoney, told the newspaper. “Guarav said she was [in cardiac arrest] for about a minute. He did chest compressions, and she became responsive.”

The two young suspects were telling jokes and laughing with each other after they were taken into custody, police sources told the newspaper. “They were just doing it for fun,” one law enforcement source said of the alleged crime.

The suspects were reportedly charged in Family Court with assault as juveniles.

Two thoughts come to mind: first, simple assault is the best the Manhattan DA could come up with?  And what does victim’s wealth have to do with the story?  Would it make any difference whatsoever if she were poor and had a shopping cart dropped on her head?!?  Oh,….one more thing; what are the odds the charges might be somewhat more serious had the victim not been….

….and perpetrators of significantly darker complexion?!?

On the Lighter Side (no pun intended)….

Then Sandy Martindale offers a sure fire way to know your mother-in-law dropped by:

Finally, turning to the Crime Blotter, we learn….

Potato salad rage leads to Palm Coast woman’s arrest

A Palm Coast woman was so angry that her 80-year-old father told her she couldn’t eat his potato salad that she threatened him with a large kitchen knife, according to Flagler County Sheriff’s Office officials. Karen Henry, 45, was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and tampering with a witness Saturday after she waved the knife at Hubert Henry, forcing him to retreat into his bedroom, according to an arrest report.

“Karen became very angry that she could not have the potato salad and began throwing and breaking items,” the report states. “(She) then grabbed a large kitchen knife and began threatening Hubert with it.”

Karen Henry complained of abdominal pain while en route to the jail and was first treated at Florida Hospital Flagler, the report states. Deputies heard her on the phone from outside her room as she changed her clothing. Deputies contacted her father who reported that his daughter called and told him to drop the charges against her….

While acknowledging every family has its little squabbles,….we’ve never HAD potato salad THAT good!

Magoo