Democratic House candidate Matt Varilek makes a strong case against Rep. Kristi Noem when he points out that she has repeatedly voted to end Medicare as we know it. The South Dakota GOP tries to change the subject, but Noem enablers never address the facts: the Paul Ryan plan that Noem eyes and ayes would smash Medicare into voucherized bits that lots of seniors could not afford.

The Medicare-over-millionaires argument can have legs for Varilek, quite simply because there are a lot more folks counting on Medicare than there are millionaires who can afford to opt out of it. Noem and the Medicare privatizers try to dodge the bullet by saying they won’t change Medicare for folks currently 55 and older. That’s clever politics (old folks vote the most), but it’s shortsighted policy. As technology increases increases, we may need fewer workers. As the chart here shows, the U.S. economy is currently putting just 68.5% of those between the ages of 16 to 54 to work, a low not seen since just after the recessions of the early 1980s. That employment rate dropped and stayed lower after the 2001 recession throughout the Bush Administration; the 2008 recession may have brought another hard reset to an economy that can meet consumer needs with fewer workers.

And if the economy can do without over 30% of workers in their prime, those shed workers are going to be a lot more nervous about a Congresswoman telling them to save up to pay for their own health care when they reach age 65. They will need a guaranteed safety net, not a long old age still at swim in a private market that already is telling them, “We don’t want you.”

Keep beating that Medicare drum, Matt: today’s nervous workers will hear it.

Verifications Inc. surprised 140 of its South Dakota employees yesterday by telling them they will lose their jobs by November:

According to Verifications employee Becky Jacobson, employees in Mitchell were asked to attend a mandatory meeting Thursday, at which they were informed of the closures.

“It was horrible,” said another employee who asked to remain anonymous. “We walked into the room and there were Kleenex boxes on the table, so we knew.”

Mitchell employees were shown a video of Verifications President and CEO Curt Marks announcing the closures, Jacobson said.

“There was a lot of crying,” she said of the reactions. “It seems like we had been kept in the dark” [Chris Mueller, "Verifications Closing Mitchell and Aberdeen Locations," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2012.04.26].

Note that the bosses could have driven over from corporate headquarters in Wayzata, Minnesota, to break the news and maybe offer their thanks and their apologies in person. But no: to declare 140 South Dakotans a hindrance to the company’s profits, corporate sends videos and boxes of Kleenex. Not exactly an expression of the company’s Values of Solidarity, Commitment, and Courage.

Spread some irony on your toast: on its Testimonials page, Verifications cites unnamed clients as lauding their employee background-check and drug-testing services thus:

“I hate surprises. VI is proactive, not reactive.”

“It’s simple why we’re with VI: they never give us a reason to leave.”

South Dakota didn’t give Verifications any reason to leave. We actually worked pretty hard to bring them here, using state and local loan funds to build the Mitchell facility Verifications leases. We appear to have made similar efforts ten years ago for Verifications in Aberdeen. The company simply found cheaper labor in Arizona, India, and the Philippines.

These closings come on top of layoffs in Aberdeen last year of 15 employees who became obsolete because of technology.

Mitt Romney’s trip last week to the Ohio drywall factory that closed during the Bush Administration speaks volumes about the GOP’s disconnect from economic reality. Romney and the Tea Party (there’s an odd couple) need you to believe that President Barack Obama is killing jobs by expanding the government.

Actually, President Obama is killing jobs… by shrinking government:

Compare President Obama’s first term to President Bush’s, and you see a phenomenon we’ve discussed previously: Contrary to crazy cries of creeping socialism, President Obama has overseen a steady decrease of folks working for the government, with the predictable exception of the Census hiring spike. The Obama decrease in public payrolls is so far almost 3%. At this point in President George W. Bush’s first term, we had seen an increase in government of over 3%.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, President Obama has been gaining ground on private-sector job losses. As of February, the net private-sector job losses under President Obama stood at 274,000. At the same time in President Bush’s first term, the private sector had lost ten times as many jobs, 2.7 million, since inauguration.

If President Obama had simply behaved like that socialist President Bush and raided the private sector to hire lots more government workers, President Obama could right now brag of a net increase in jobs under his administration. Let’s see Mitt Romney drop by a closed Extension office and campaign on that issue.

Hat tip to Mark Thoma!

Quick breakfast quiz: Which of the following countries has the highest unemployment rate? And which has the lowest?

1. United States
2. Australia
3. Canada
4. France
5. Germany
6. Italy
7. Japan
8. Netherlands
9. Sweden
10. United Kingdom

According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which converts the data to reflect U.S. concepts and seasonal variation, France has the highest unemployment rate among these ten countries. Japan has the lowest.

And what about the United States? We’re third highest. For a couple years, the recession actually kicked us into first place:

That’s just one more reason Mitt Romney should pivot and argue that America needs to be more like Europe.

Bonus Free Association: Honest-to-goodness Socialist François Hollande outpolled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in the first round of France’s presidential election yesterday. Voter turnout was 80%. In the May 6 run-off, Sarkozy will tack right to draw the votes of France’s right-wingnut National Front, whose candidate polled 18%. Hollande will respond with his calls for higher taxes on corporations and millionaires, more teachers, and a lower retirement age.

South Dakota employers are struggling to fill 10,000 skilled jobs. The lack of workers is costing businesses like Trail King in Mitchell and Sioux Steel in Sioux Falls the chance to fill more orders and make more money.

What’s holding back our economic development? Low wages and low organized labor leverage:

One factor making it harder to attract workers are wages that rank among the lowest in the country, said Bill Adamson, an associate professor of economics at South Dakota State University.

South Dakota was second to last among states, behind Mississippi, for its average weekly wage in the third quarter of 2011, paying $684. That was just over half of the figure for the highest, Connecticut, at $1,118 a week, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Greater competition for workers isn’t enough to lift South Dakota’s wages because of factors that have kept them down for decades, including low union membership and a small population and modest cost of living, said Reynold F. Nesiba, an associate professor of economics at Augustana College in Sioux Falls.

“There is something to be said for work ethic and culture,” said Nesiba. “People in South Dakota don’t do much protesting or organizing. Instead, they get second and third jobs to pay their bills” [Jennifer Oldham, "Worker Shortage Dogs Trail King as S.D. Jobs Go Beggine," BusinessWeek, 2012.04.09].

The latest data I find at BLS pegs South Dakota’s median hourly wage at $13.78 and mean hourly wage at $17.01. Nationwide, the median hourly wage is $16.57 and the mean hourly wage is $21.74. South Dakota’s median wage is 83% of the national median; our mean is 78% of the comparable national figure. In Q4 2011, South Dakota’s cost of living was 99.4% of the national average.

You know all those stories about how strong labor unions propelled middle-class prosperity and economic growth in the 1950s? “Right-to-work” (read: “Right-to-fire-your-sorry-butt”) state South Dakota appears determined to serve as the flagship example of the inverse, that if you don’t have strong unions, you don’t have a strong middle class or economic growth.

Last week, I showed how an anti-union group’s shady statistics don’t support its own teacher-hating thesis that unions make it harder to fire bad teachers. Dr. Newquist responded with a blistering assault on those shady stats themselves. He finds Teachers Union Exposed‘s purported sources mistagged and fraudulent. He then argues quite colorfully that even if TUE had verifiable sources, their numbers on teacher firing rates wouldn’t tell us much about teacher quality:

There are problems with such statistics.  Not the least of which is that the firing rate is used by the uninformed as an indicator of the quality of teaching in the systems.  Most teachers who are fired outright are done so because of gross misconduct, such as having sex with students.  In many, many cases the teachers who like to get naked and otherwise chummy with students are rated as very effective at teaching.  There is no correlation between effective teaching and f***ing students, so that the firing rate is a false indicator of whether young minds or young genitalia are being stimulated [David Newquist, "Those Jesus Christ Moments and Phony Data," Northern Valley Beacon, 2012.04.05].

Whether we’re talking sleazebags or simple laggards, the due process rights for teachers that our state wants to eliminate with HB 1234 do not prohibit schools from getting rid of bad teachers. Conservative writer and teacher Mike McDaniel bashes unions, but even he agrees that continuing contract rights are not part of the problem in recruiting quality teachers:

For teachers, earning “continuing contract” status after three years of probation means only that instead of having no reason to fire them, a principal must have some reason, and if they disagree, they have a right to have his decision reviewed in some fashion.  This does not, for a moment, mean that they will win a review, or that a principal’s reason for firing them must be particularly rational.  In fact, such systems are commonly biased in favor of school principals and administrators, and only the most egregious lack of judgement or misbehavior on their part will allow teachers to prevail.  This reality, for millions of American teachers, does not sound like the job for life situation suggested by Mrs. Charen, does it?   I have never worked under any other, and millions of American teachers are in the same boat.

…Giving principals unlimited power to fire teachers, competent or incompetent, for any or no reason, is as likely to cause schools to be filled with incompetent, corrupt cronies of corrupt, unprofessional principals as highly professional educators.  The problem is teacher unions and those that abet them, not the kinds of minimal working conditions and due process reviews that help to encourage idealistic young people to spend huge amounts of money and many years in college and after to earn far less than their degrees can elsewhere command [Mike McDaniel, "Education: The Inability to Fire Incompetent Teachers: Whose Fault?" Stately McDaniel Manor, 2012.03.27].

The minimal labor protections South Dakota teachers enjoy, from their union and from current statute, do not hurt teaching quality. In the case of continuing contract, our labor protections improve teacher quality.

Bonus Conservative Support for Madville Times Party Line: Hard-working teacher McDaniel also opposes merit pay as unworkable.

Rapid City Journal columnists Jim Shaw and Janette McIntyre have made clear that the preferred response the referral of Governor Daugaard’s education reforms will be the ad professionem attack on teacher unions. Assuming Shaw and McIntyre ever stop talking to themselves and look for real evidence to substantiate their wishful thinking, I suspect they and fellow apologists for HB 1234 will be drawing ammunition from anti-labor propaganda outlets like TeachersUnionExposed.com, a project of secretive pro-industry front group Center for Union Facts.

Teachers Union Exposed offers state-by-state information on teachers unions and teacher firing rates. They tout these numbers as showing that unions protect bad teachers. But let’s compare TUE’s data on the firing rates of experienced teachers with the percentage of teachers belonging to unions in each state:

I don’t have an explanation for South Dakota’s anomalously high firing rate… but if that 11.37% is accurate, it suggests that South Dakota has the least need of laws to make it easier to get rid of teachers.

But let’s test TUEs overall conclusion about the relationship between union power and teacher firing rates. Look at Nevada and New Hampshire. Both have total unionization, suggesting more union power to protect teachers from firing. Nevada has one of the lowest firing rates; New Hampshire has one of the highest. South Carolina and Texas have the lowest unionization rates, but their firing rates are lower than those in highly unionized Minnesota and Michigan.

Run the numbers, and you will find the simple mathematical correlation between the two columns above is zero, –0.00868 to be unreasonably exact. In English, that means you cannot conclude, even from data offered by an anti-union agitators, that a strong teachers union means teachers don’t get fired at a lower rate than in less-unionized states.

Thanks for your help, TUE.

Related: Table 8 in this “Teacher Attrition and Mobility” report from the National Center for Education Statistics finds that among teachers who left the public school system to work in other industries, 28.2% said they had better job security in teaching than in their current positions. 19.4% said their current positions offered better job security. 52.3% said their job switch brought them neither better nor worse job security.

Hmm… so despite this rumbling I hear from conservatives about “tenure” and “jobs for life,” over 70% of the people who’ve actually done the job in the classroom and now are working in other fields don’t feel like their jobs were all that secure in public education.

Custer columnist Janette McIntyre keeps the ball rolling on the teacher-hate-fest that will constitute the primary line of defense against the referral of House Bill 1234, Governor Daugaard’s really bad education reform law. Read McIntyre’s March 28 anti-teacher polemic in the Rapid City Journal, and you will find that out of 46 sentences, only three address the actual workings of the policy:

There were two focuses: merit pay for teachers that includes the incentive for science and math teachers and elimination of tenure….

The Pierre SDEA bosses created these petitions… to stop a bill passed by your local legislators that gives teachers raises!

Teachers who circulate the petitions are shooting themselves in the foot by slowing down the process to actually get some of their colleagues a pay raise [Jannette McIntyre, "Don't Allow SDEA to Run Our Schools," Rapid City Journal, 2012.03.28].

McIntyre’s only three comments on policy specifics are inaccurate: HB 1234 doesn’t give anyone a raise. It provides bonuses that not one teacher can bank on getting each year. And there is no tenure in K-12 education.

With the practical policy advantages thin to non-existent, apologists for the Governor’s plan must resort to attacking teachers, which the title of McIntyre’s column makes clear is her intent. Let’s do some line-by-line:

Everything is about the money or lack of it in South Dakota educators’ opinions.

Has anyone ever looked at states that spend more and have worse results? No one wants to address that statistic. The establishment would undoubtedly point to minorities or children of less ability in those statistics. [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Twice in a row, McIntyre makes up arguments. She cites no examples of South Dakota teachers arguing that everything is about money. Teachers’ opposition to HB 1234 disproves McIntyre: if we thought money was everything, we’d embrace the money HB 1234 promises. She then conjures some “establishment” response, again without citing anyone who’s actually made that argument. I can certainly acknowledge that money does not produce automatic improvements in education. The cost of doing business and offering competitive wages varies from place to place for numerous reasons. But the variability of the results of increased spending does not lead to the logical conclusion that you can decrease spending ad infinitum and still get sufficient results.

People need a place to live, so they either rent a home or buy a house. Either way, property taxes are paid and a significant portion goes to the education of children.

Taxpayers pay South Dakota teachers. We get that. Teachers then pay the SDEA to represent them.

It is you, the taxpayer, paying the SDEA to argue that the teachers are not getting enough money [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Yes, and McIntyre and I both pay taxes that pay the salaries of Dennis Daugaard, Angie Buhl, Kristi Noem, and Tim Johnson. Does that mean those public figures are not entitled to identify policy problems and advocate for solutions?

Here’s the interesting part. Everyone falls back on local control. We always say that local control is best for the teachers, the administration, the boards and ultimately the children.

It’s always one of the complaints about the Legislature year after year. They tell those who are in the trenches how to run a school.

The teachers have a point. So does it make sense to take your marching orders from SDEA in Pierre? [McIntyre, 2012.03.28]

Now McIntyre is weaving all over the place, trying to cobble together what must sound in her echo chamber like clever little sound bites. There is a profound difference between state government passing statutory dictates on the operation of local schools and teachers working together statewide to stop bad policy. SDEA can’t force any teacher to join (I haven’t), and it can’t force even its members to follow its orders. More importantly, even when they cooperate with their colleagues in other districts, your local teachers have no authority over your school board’s decisions.

So if it wasn’t interesting before, here’s my question: Why are we letting an organization based in Pierre, the SDEA, the stepchild of the NEA in Washington, D.C., dictate how we run our schools? [McIntyre, 2012.03.28]

Again, pure ad hominem. McIntyre needs you not to view SDEA as real people, as teachers who bust their chops for your kids and buy groceries and pay taxes in your community. She needs you to believe they are the evil “stepchild” (oh, the insulting language!) of a big bad Washington D.C. monster (which again, has no authority to dictate anything to local school boards in South Dakota).

The Pierre SDEA bosses created these petitions with help from their well-paid lawyers (again you taxpayers are footing the bill for this) to stop a bill passed by your local legislators that gives teachers raises! [McIntyre, 2012.03.28]

The weaving gets worse here. Notice how McIntyre characterizes SDEA leaders as “bosses” in Pierre, even though the organization is led by educators from around the state, including Sandy Arseneault, who is McIntyre’s neighbor in Custer. McIntyre then characterizes HB 1234 as coming not from government officials in Pierre but from “your local legislators.” McInctyre clearly chooses her two-faced descriptions to bolster her weak case.

And “well-paid lawyers”? Ha! These petitions required more time at the copy machine than at the lawyer’s office to create. The petitions have one standard sentence at the top declaring the intent to refer HB 1234, followed by a copy of the bill title and the July 1 enactment date. McIntyre’s rhetoric disconnects her from reality.

This isn’t rocket science. There will never be enough money in the union’s opinion.

The only way the union will ever be happy is when the state gives them a blank check. They will then tell the administrators, the teachers and the taxpayers how the money will be spent. That makes perfect sense to them [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

McIntyre shouted “Lawyers!” Now she shouts “Union!” hoping voters will ignore policy and reality in favor of anti-labor bias. Unions have no power in South Dakota to tell anyone how to spend money. I’m not in the union, and I’m not asking for a blank check. My position (and even that of some non-union Republican legislators) is that South Dakota doesn’t spend enough on education. If we can find more money to spend, I want us to spend that money on policies that work, not the ideological hodgepodge of HB 1234.

I’m not sure why they feel that a referendum will help anyone. It certainly won’t help the taxpayer [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Yes, it will: the referendum can stop Pierre from wasting money on policies that don’t work.

It won’t help the teachers [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Yes, it will: the referendum can stop Pierre from imposing counterproductive policies on teachers.

And ultimately, it won’t help the students that they profess are their primary focus [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Yes, it will: the referendum can spare students from becoming the subjects of even more standardized testing and a rat-race competition that objectifies them and distracts teachers from providing the best education possible.

The bill may not be perfect, but it was a start [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

McIntyre now resorts to the same diversionary tactic as HB 1234 supporter Rep. Steve Hickey and her fellow RCJ columnist Jim Shaw. When she can’t defend this flawed policy, she pretends that doing something is better than doing nothing.

They will spend more of our tax dollars running the depressing and vindictive “South Dakotans hate educating children” campaign this fall [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

Wait a minute: what tax dollars are we spending? The taxes you paid for my salary are no longer your dollars; I’ve earned them in exchange for services rendered, meaning those dollars are mine to do with as I see fit. I’m not getting a subsidy to go door-to-door with petitions, and I won’t get a subsidy to campaign against HB 1234 in the fall. We’re having a big election with numerous other items on the ballot, so the marginal cost of one more referred item is minimal (and Janette, you really don’t want to say that letting people have the right to vote on important issues costs too much, do you?).

And it’s much more likely that the thrust of the campaign against HB 1234 will be to say that because we love educating our children, we stand against bad policies like HB 1234 that won’t help us educate those children better. The only depressing and vindictive language I hear is McIntyre calling teachers names.

McIntyre’s screed falls in line with the desperate ad professionam baloney we’re going to hear from HB 1234 apologists. Watch for it. Be ready to rebut it with reality… over and over again.

Bonus Rebuttal: McIntyre can’t even start her essay off right:

The South Dakota Education Association is circulating petitions to stop Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s latest attempt at revamping the education system [McIntyre, 2012.03.28].

“Latest attempt”? To what other attempts does McIntyre allude? Governor Daugaard’s only other major education “reform” was the 10% budget cut he advocated in his first budget last year.