“Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also those which it necessary to foresee.”
~ C. Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850

Randi Weingarten’s interview in the Wall Street Journal was disappointing but not surprising.  As the leader of the American Teachers’ Federation, the second most powerful teacher’s union in America, Weingarten revealed herself to be a staunch  defender of the status quo.  She doesn’t argue that kids are getting a sufficient education (that is becoming increasingly difficult), but she stood firmly against anything that might reverse the trend.

Earlier today the Pennsylvania School Choice bill (SB1) cleared a major hurdle, passing the Senate Education Committee with a bipartisan 8-2 vote. FreedomWorks put out the statement below.

FreedomWorks cheered the passage of SB1, The Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act, which was passed today in the PA Senate Education Committee by a vote of 8-2. Pennsylvania currently has one of the worst SAT score averages in the nation.

Though no one would think it by watching the media’s coverage of Wisconsin, reining in out-of-control spending on public employee unions is a bipartisan issue.  Though only the Republicans have taken reforms far enough in an effort to limit collective bargaining, but it was not a Republican but rather Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo who stated in his inaugural

No real surprises occurred during the Chicago mayor’s race, but the election was a landmark in the sense that the city elected a candidate who was not named Daley. It is hard to see any other way that this election was transformative; conservatives had virtually no chance of electing a mayor in a city which has been ruled by a single party since the Great Depression.

Public union supporters in Wisconsin have tried to portray the controversy as though limiting their union’s power is an assault on the notion of any union, whether private or public, while Conservatives  and moderates and <A href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02

It was inevitable that attempts to trim government at the state-level as well as the federal level would offend some sensibilities.  What was not inevitable was that the offended parties would do such a poor job making their case.  In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, Harold Meyerson resorted to hyperbole, comparing Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, to Hosni Mubarak and writing:

Today, a huge crowd of tea party activists headed to Columbus, Ohio to rally support for SB5, a bill that would end collective bargaining by government unions in Ohio. The bill would deal a major blow to the corrupt unions that force workers to pay dues, and use those dues for union power and political power instead of actually helping workers.

During the rally for SB5 in the state capitol today, the tea party folks were joined by some especially obnoxious union people.

After three months of the unemployment rate holding steady at 9.6 percent, the newest Labor Department’s jobs report reveals that the unemployment rate increased to 9.8 percent in November. The economy only added 39,000 jobs this month. The official unemployment rate does not even factor in the 1.3 million discouraged workers who have given up searching for a job. The Labor Department chart below shows the rise in the unemployment rate over the past two years: