Woody's Place

Tsunami Hits Japan

Am I the only one who expected to see Godzilla rising out of the sea this morning?

Collective Bargaining 101

Check out this new video from The Heritage Foundation on public employee unions:

I don't know who makes these videos, but they deserve a fat raise and three times the staff.  Nobody breaks these issues down and does a better presentation than Heritage.  Their "Tax Day By The Numbers" was great too.  The RNC and future Republican candidates should take lessons from these guys.

The Sierra Club Vs. The Wyoming Ranchers

The Sierra Club and the U.S. Forest Service were presenting an alternative to Wyoming ranchers for controlling the coyote population.  It seems that after years of ranchers using the tried and true method of shooting or trapping the predators, the Sierra Club had a "more humane" solution to this issue.  What they were proposing was for the animals to be captured alive.  The males would then be castrated and let loose again. 

All of the ranchers thought about this amazing idea for a couple of minutes. Finally an old fellow wearing a big cowboy hat in the back of the room stood up, tipped his hat back and said:

"Son, I don't think you understand our problem here... these coyotes ain't fuckin' our sheep... they're eatin' 'em!"

The meeting never really got back to order...

Iowahawk On Wisconsin Vs. Texas Education Rank

Saw this meme floating around on Facebook last week:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

Then it was repeated in a column by vaunted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. 

I knew something wasn't right with this comparison, but was too busy to dig in.  Thankfully Iowahawk stepped out of satire mode and stepped up to the plate:

[...] a state's "average ACT/SAT" is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion's share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students - regardless of state residence - tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.

He goes on to state the obvious, that the minority test score gap is primarily due to socioeconomic and cultural issues that have nothing to do with the quality of teachers or schools.  If a kid doesn't think education is important, you'll never be able to get him to participate, union or no.

Then we see the comparison broken down in a way that's actually useful (for something besides advancing the MSM/DNC Cabal agenda):

2009 4th Grade Math

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

2009 8th Grade Math

White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)

2009 4th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)

2009 8th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)

2009 4th Grade Science

White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)

2009 8th Grade Science

White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)

This turns the left's cute little factoid on it's ear!  You can clearly see that students, especially minority students, fare better in non-union Texas than they do in union utopia Wisconsin.

Major hat tip to Iowahawk for taking the time to shine a little light on the left's lazy, biased, and/or intellectually dishonest comparison.