Talking Points

The following letter, written to Gov. Dayton by a Metro State colleague, has been circulated to all of us at Metro.

I thought I'd post it here, in case anyone is reading this blog, so that Minnesotans can see a straight-forward expression of what's wrong with Republican budget proposals.

I just don't understand why greed is starting to sound normal and not like the vice it is. Anyone remember the Seven Deadly Sins? Seven Cardinal Sins? Seven Capital Vices? Greed is on all the lists, as are a bunch of other things that have started to seem normal or even good, like Pride, for instance, probably due to the PR campaigns of Bernays et al., as introduced in the previous blog post.

Anyway, here's Don's letter:

From: Doug Rossinow
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 11:20 AM
To: mark.dayton@state.mn.us
Cc: ifo.org
Subject: the disastrous health-care pay-cuts in SF 1047

Dear Governor Dayton,

I want to thank you for the leadership you’ve shown—even when others are going wobbly—and for your plans to visit the Metropolitan State University campus tomorrow. I am chair of the history department at the university. I am leaving the country tomorrow morning to participate in an international conference, so I will be unable to attend the forum we are hosting. I am disappointed not to personally thank you for your leadership, but I thought I would send you an e-mail message as second best.

Everyone knows you’ve taken a courageous yet sensible stand in favor of tax progressivity as a necessary part of a reasonable solution to the terrible State budget situation. Taxes only make sense if they are levied based on the ability to pay. The top 1% of income earners in this country now take about 25% of national income. Yet the highest earners in the State actually pay a lower effective State tax rate than middle-income earners. And, of course, high income earners have gotten one tax cut after another in recent years and decades. Bringing back sensible tax rates on those who can most afford to pay them and have reaped the benefits of recent changes in our economy and tax code is the path to a robust, balanced, and sustainable economic future for the State.

Unfortunately, the State legislature is taking a different path: just gut public services, including education. This is what SF 1047 is about. It contains numerous really terrible provisions. But perhaps the cruelest and most unfair is the enormous shift in health-care premiums it would push onto public employees and their families. For those who have family health-care coverage through State employment (like my family), this would amount to a legislatively imposed pay cut of perhaps $10,000. This is simply outrageous.

It’s outrageous on the merits. Who with a college degree or postgraduate education would even consider taking a job with the employer paying 0% of health-care premiums, with a $5,000 family deductible?

It’s outrageous in terms of the process. Terms of health-care coverage are supposed to be negotiated through the collective bargaining process. This effort to impose a punitive health-care system on public employees through legislation is an attack on collective bargaining. It’s no different than what was done in Wisconsin in that respect. At least the Wisconsin governor and his supporters had the courage to openly say they wanted to do away with collective bargaining.

What’s really at stake here?

It’s whether we will continue to have high-quality public services in Minnesota.

It’s whether public service in Minnesota will continue to be a viable career option for committed professionals.

The State can’t get good public services for nothing. We’re not asking for the moon. Sure, there will have to be shared pain and sacrifice to get out of this mess, and we’re prepared for that—just as we ourselves proposed a salary freeze two years ago.

But we are asking not to be scapegoated and viewed like a pool of dedicated money (as with the State’s tobacco settlement money) that can be drained to fill a budget hole. We’re people and it costs money for us to live decently.

When I moved to Minnesota from California in 1997 to take a job teaching in the MnSCU system, I did so only because I believed Minnesota would be a good place to teach in a public university system. That will no longer be the case if this incredibly extreme, punitive, and unnecessary set of measures becomes law.

I fear that some in the legislature really want to make our public universities places where proud and accomplished professionals will not want to work. Some are ideologically opposed to all public services, period—they deride public schools as “government schools” and hope to turn all public services over to for-profit enterprises. By making the terms of employment in MnSCU ones that strong job candidates will find alarming and unsustainable, provisions like those in SF1047 can help these ideologues in their quest to make public services shrivel. But, of course, if public services are greatly weakened, this will leave the middle class and working Minnesotans out in the cold, without the low-cost option of high-quality university education they now get in MnSCU.

We know you understand the facts. What we’re asking is that you not treat totally unreasonable and punitive legislative proposals as a reasonable starting point in negotiating an eventual higher education law. “Compromise” between sanity and insanity is no real compromise at all.

If you stand up for sanity and fairness, millions of Minnesotans will stand up with you and for you.

Thanks for your attention.

Doug Rossinow

Professor and Chair

Department of History

Metropolitan State University