And Evidence Suggests I'm The Man For The Job

I've stayed out of the Wisconsin union discussion for the same reason I never voted when I lived in Green Bay (or Chicago): It's their state and not mine. But a lot of my friends have been posting this as a status update lately:

"Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators (i.e. “teachers unions”) 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

Wisconsin ranked 2nd in 2010 in combined ACT/SAT.

(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/states/USCHARTsat.html)"

Which is I was tickled to find these two quotes in a book I'm reading about political doublespeak, "Aristotle and an Aardvark: Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes", and thought I would share them for your personal enjoyment.

" 'The 10 states with the lowest per pupil spending including 4- North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee & Utah - in the top 10 states with the highest SAT scores. Only 1- Wisconsin -was among the 10 states with the highest SAT scores. New Jersey has the highest per pupil, an astonishing $10,561, which teachers' unions elsewhere try to use as a negotiating benchmark. New Jersey's rank regarding SAT scores? 39th. ...'

George Will, Washington Post, September 12th, 1993"

"In the Journal of Statistics Education, Deborah Lynn Guber points out that a crucial factor Mr. Will ignores in his analysis is participation rates: the percentage of students in each state who actually take the SAT. It turns out that in North Dakota, state colleges require the ACT rather than the SAT, so only 5% of North Dakota students take the SAT. It is fair to say that among that 5% are a large number of students who want to go to prestigious out-of-state schools (that do require the SAT) and who, because of their proven academic abilities, think they have a shot at it. In New Jersey, by comparison, 79 percent of students take the SAT- certainly a more representative cross-section of the entire population of high school graduates. So the SAT scores of the brightest ND students are being compared to the SAT scores of more typical NJ students."

I think the implication is pretty clear. We can definitely get non-union labor to do George Will's job.

WWGD?

I keep a jar in my closet where I put the change I accumulate each day. Every time it's full I take it to a bank and have them turn it into bills. Today I went to Chase Bank near my work and asked them to count and consolidate the change in my jar.

They wouldn't count it if I wasn't a Chase Bank customer which I think it ludicrious. I was exchanging legal tender for legal tender. I wasn't asking them to cash a check from a different bank or anything like that. All I wanted was for them to use their machine to count the change and to give me an appropriate amount of bills back.

After arguing for five minutes including the particularly strong point that they could've run the machine and given me the bills in the time we'd argued, I left the bank feeling emasculated. I was going over the incident in my head as I walked away when it came to me. The answer to feeling better would be the answer to a simple question.

"What Would Guil Do?"

Guil, for those of you who don't know, is one of my best friends. He lived across the hall from me during our freshman year of college, I stood up in his wedding and ten years of knowing him means knowing he usually comes out on top. Not always because he's right either. Sometimes it's just being a good negotiator and not giving up on your point for any reason whatsoever.

As I walked to the closest Jewel grocery store to use one of their 9% charging coin-counting machines, I started to think about what Guil would've done. As I emptied my jar into the machine, what Guil would've done was forming in my mind. As I sat down at Jimmy John's for lunch, I was smiling. I knew exactly what I should've done.

I should've asked for the supervisor. Once I was talking to the supervisor about how stupid it is and that the cashier was being rude to me and raising her voice to me, I'm sure they would've counted my change and even apologized for inconveniencing me. Despite, of course, me not even being a customer of Chase Bank.

I can't wait for the next time my jar is full.