California Election Proposition

Ezra KIein votes against all California ballot propositions except 79 and 80. I disagree with him on 80: I vote against it.

Ezra Klein: Endorsements Squared: For all you Californians (and particularly Angelenos) bewildered by next week's ballot measures and elections, The LA Weekly is swooping in with a cape and a pen (a pen of TRUTH) to give you a hand.... [I] couldn't find a single recommendation to disagree with...

LA Weekly: News: We Endorse: State ballot measures.

Proposition 73: Abortion notification. NO: If your teenage daughter gets pregnant and is about to have an abortion, don’t you want her to tell you? Don’t you want the physician who is going to perform the procedure to tell you, at least 48 hours before it takes place? Of course you do. But let’s take it further. You don’t want her to get pregnant in the first place. You don’t want her having sex. You and she talk about this kind of thing, and that’s great. So shouldn’t you vote for the “Parent’s Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative”? No, because you and your daughter don’t need it. But girls who can’t talk to their parents, for whatever reason, still need to be able to talk to their doctors about their bodies without worrying that their family will find out and pressure them into bearing a child against their will. Good parent-child communication is essential, but it can’t be legislated.

Proposition 74: Teacher probationary period, also known as tenure. NO: A probationary period for a new hire might not be a bad idea, just to make sure the employee didn’t forget to include something important on the résumé, like “raving lunatic.” Thirty days sounds about right. Unless you’re a teacher, in which case we’ll make it — whoa! Two years! Okay, they’re with kids every day, so let’s play it safe. But to encourage more good people to become teachers, maybe we should change it to — yikes! Five years of job insecurity? That’s what Proposition 74 would do, because Governor Schwarzenegger knows that when schools are underfunded and overcrowded, it’s got to be because we just make it too easy for people to become underpaid teachers. He’s wrong on this one, just like he is with the other ballot initiatives he’s pushing.

Proposition 75: Public worker union dues restrictions. NO: In 1998 Californians rejected a ballot measure that would have blocked unions from spending an employee’s dues money to campaign for candidates or lobby for legislation that labor leaders believe is important. Now we have this one, which is pretty much the same except that it applies only to public employees. These workers currently can opt out of paying their union to do political lobbying and campaigning. Under Proposition 75, they would have to opt in — giving the edge to corporations that do not, after all, give their shareholders the power to opt out of having their investment used for anti-labor lobbying.

Proposition 76: State budget reform. NO: The state budget is a mess. Proposition 76 would make it messier, by giving the governor extraordinary executive powers to cut spending, even under a budget that is already approved and signed into law. And the Legislature would be unable to stop him. It would also permit the governor to roll back Proposition 98, a 1988 voter-approved constitutional amendment that guarantees a spending floor for public schools. This isn’t the way to go.

Proposition 77: Redistricting. NO: The Democrats and the Republicans divvy legislative and congressional seats between them to guarantee each other safe territory at election time. Only a handful of districts are ever really up for grabs, meaning the real decisions are made not by the full electorate in the general election, but by primary voters when they choose their nominee. Or even earlier, when party bosses anoint their candidates. In addition to the lack of choice, voters get districts drawn in the shapes of various circus animals. So why not break up this insiders’ game by giving line-drawing duties to a panel of nonpartisan, pure-as-the-driven-snow superheroes, also known as retired judges? Several reasons. Under this plan, the district boundaries would be set only after national parties spend millions, perhaps billions, to persuade voters to adopt (or reject) a proposal for district lines. Then the court hearings. Then back to the judges to try again, even though they already submitted their best effort. Some repair work is needed on districting, but this isn’t it. Back to the drawing board.

Proposition 78: Prescription drug discounts, pharmaceutical industry version. NO: Hey! This would allow drug companies to give some people discounts on costly prescription drugs, if they felt like it! That would be so very nice of them! The only purpose of this proposition is to cancel more generous Proposition 79.

Proposition 79: Prescription drug discounts, consumer version. YES: Like 78, this one gives California the clout to negotiate deep drug discounts with the big pharmaceutical companies. The difference is that this one reaches far more low-income people who need prescription drugs. It also carries an enforcement stick that in effect locks drug companies out of the discount program if they don’t come through with the best prices.

Proposition 80: Electricity re-regulation. YES: This would finally throw in the towel on the disaster that was the state Legislature’s 1996 energy deregulation program. You know — rolling blackouts, a sudden scarcity of power. There would be some negative consequences, like limiting the options that many institutional electricity purchasers still have when deciding when to buy and how much to pay. But consumers would once again be protected from wild market fluctuations. The measure also requires major steps forward on renewable energy programs.

I disagree with Ezra on Prop. 80: Severin Borenstein is against Prop. 80, and I listen to him:

Borenstein says though the structure of the energy market could use some improvements, Proposition 80 is not the way to make them.... "I would analogize it to the Food and Drug Administration putting on the ballot whether they should okay a certain drug as safe and effective, putting out all the studies and saying 'you decide,' to the voters." Borenstein says 80 includes three largely disconnected ideas.

1. End consumer choice of power provider.
2. Curtail the practice of charging different rates for energy at different times of day during different weather conditions.
3. Require the state to get 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.

(2) is definitely pernicious. (1) and (3) I don't know enough of to have an informed opinion about--so I'll borrow Severin's.

Comments

[Ralph]

Prop 75, the so-called Paycheck Protection initiative, is a repeat of Prop 226, the identical proposition backed by Grover Norquist in 1998. The purpose is to shutdown the labor union voice in politics especially its heavy funding of Democratic party candidates. Of course there is no equivalent attempt to shutdown corporate contributions to political funding. According to the Sacramento Bee, a good news source for politics in Sacto, the public worker unions (there is almost no private union power left in California), are outspending pro-75 sources about $40 million to $6 million. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the publicity consciouse actor-gubernator of California, who is funding pro-75 and other initiatives with his own money ($3 million) as well as speaking out everywhere, is in falling behind in his re-election campaign partly because of the massive opposition of the public unions.

[Matthew Saroff]

Were I in California, I'd vote for 80.

Electricity deregulation has been a failure in California, the UK, Brazil, etc.

It's failed everywhere.

It makes it more profitable to shut down a plant than to run it.

The deregulated markets create efficiencies, such things as "just in time" inventory.

Just in time inventory does not work when you need the power the instant that you flip a switch.

Think about what ended the crisis. The Bush admin grudgingly placed a very high cap on wholesale power, and the problem vanished nearly over night.

Sometimes the market is not the best way to distribute goods and services, and healthcare and power are two cases where this is true.

I do think that variable rates depending on time of day, etc. is a good thing, but forbidding that is not a poison pill to me.

Deregulated electricity is a failure that has been tested dozens of times, and has always failed.

Expecting it to work is insanity.

[ken]

Brad, you are definately wrong about prop 80. There is nothing pernicious (nice word though) about flat rate electricity pricing. Changing rates in the middle of the day, however, depending upon the usage and weather, is indeed pernicious.

Perhaps pointy headed intellectual don't care cause they can always retreat to their taxpayer provided air conditioned offices during a heat wave? Just kidding about the pointy head, but academic economists really seem to be out of touch sometimes.

[trostky]

Every independent commentator agrees that California's redistricting system is rigged and needs to change. Nearly every liberal commentator has shied away from embracing the supposedly "flawed" system proposed by Prop. 77 (even though Dick Armey says it would threaten Republican control of Congress!!!). I can only guess it's because they don't trust Schwarzenegger.

What's that old saw about the perfect being the enemy of the good?

[pgl]

I'm joining Kevin Drum & Mark Kleiman and voting no on everything. Fellow Angrybear Kash says yes on 77. For the 1st time in a long time, I have to disagree with Kash.

[Dubblblind]

A spike needs to be driven through the heart of electricity deregulation. So what if 80 isn't a silver spike, it's still a spike. If you vote this down is there not also the possibility that something worse rather than better will come along? Is it necessary to mention Ken Lay and George Bush in the same breath to give a sense of the potentialities?

[jerry]

IIRC and paraphrase correctly, Borenstein is big (and reasonably so) on price discrimination as a good thing. But it's an awfully big hammer.

Out here in Phoenix, the powers that be, faced with airport parking problems decided that the best thing to do would be to raise prices. Because they all took economics and thus they know that higher prices will lead to lesser demand. Hey that's what they need, less demand! But what it really means is that the poor and price sensitive will have to park far from the airport while the rich and price insensitive get to park nice and close, a good use of our taxpayer funded airport parking! Woohoo!

In his September 7 syndicated column, ABC News 20/20 co-anchor John Stossel defended price gougers, writing that by charging $20 for a bottle of water to a person whose baby needed it to live, "the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it." Stossel added: "It was the price gouger's 'exploitation' that saved your child." He justified this claim because price gougers -- people and companies that charge exorbitant prices for scarce and necessary resources (such as water or oil) -- "save lives" because they dependably provide those necessary goods or services to those who need them, motivated by their own self-interest to make money.

Meantime in the San Fernando Valley, Disney, which can afford the A/C, but didn't bother to install energy saving double-paned windows will keep their A/C on, while my mother on her fixed income, who needs the A/C but cannot afford the $500 per month A/C bills will suffer. And the elderly and sick do die from heat-related illnesses that could be alleviated by A/C.

And backeast, the folks on the corner will complain when even some rethuglicans like Az Kyl ask for the feds to subsidize A/C. But it is different when we subsidize heating.

Free market good, but free market ain't no nirvana.

[jerry]

That's price discrimination based on differentiated services. IIRC.

[harv]

Why do you guys even bother to elect a legislature?

[trostky]

Ahem, Disney, being both sensitive to the need to cut costs and improve returns to shareholders and blessed with the capital to make efficiency-driven investments (such as dual-pane windows, for starters) is likely to be most responsive to the free market's price signals.

[MikeM]

Paul Krugman in a column on 27 May 2002 explained the specific features of the Californian energy market that allowed suppliers to create a crisis, and:

QUOTE
The really striking thing, of course, is that there is excess capacity in the system - yet the price goes sky-high. And with a little realistic friction added, you could easily imagine blackouts and brownouts as part of the picture. Let me also stress that this is a non-cooperative equilibrium - it doesn't involve collusion, let alone conspiracy, among the generators. You don't have to imagine Ken Lay and Dick Cheney sitting in a room, trading sneers, and chortling over the havoc they are wreaking (which isn't to say that this might not have happened!). All it takes is individual firms, acting in their individual self-interest.
END QUOTE

Slight market restructuring rather than reregulation is all that's needed. With introduction of price controls and long term contracts, has this already happened?

Paul's column is at http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/Wolak.html

[a different chris]

> is likely to be most responsive to the free market's price signals.

And yet they have single-pane windows. Explain.

[jacks]

As an economist you should support Proposition 76: State budget reform. Yes, it gives the governor authority to cut spending, even after the budget has been approved. Maybe we don't want to increase Arnie's powers, however, he seems to be the only politician in the state willing to cut spending. The legislature here acts like the Argentinean provincial governments, spending themselves (and us) into bankruptcy. This is a legislature with an infinite capability to find wonderful things to spend our money on.

But just because Arnie wants it, it must be bad ...

[trotsky]

Different Chris,

Well, since we don't have a free market in electricity prices, they haven't gotten the price signal.

[Julian Elson]

I don't have a problem with peak-demand pricing, and I think that banning it might ultimately hurt consumers as well as producers, but at the same time, I really would like to see a profit-draining, regulatory backlash against the energy companies, pour encouragez les autres. I actually am not completely skeptical of industries policing themselves, but I think that industry self-policing must be backed by the credible threat that if they don't do it, the people with guns, arrest warrants, and jails will.

[Julian Elson]

Err... pretend that the "z" at the end of "encouragez" was an "r." It's an infinitive, not an imperative.

[paulo]

Vote against all of 'em ...just to send a message to Schwarzy against governing by
ballot measure.
Of course, that might send the wrong message to the Democracts in the legislature...

[mds]

"Maybe we don't want to increase Arnie's powers, however, he seems to be the only politician in the state willing to cut spending."

Amazing. On Professor DeLong's blog, of all places, someone applies to the Schwarzenegger administration the popular federal canard that borrowing vast sums makes one a deficit hawk.

[jerry]

Ahem, Disney, being both sensitive to the need to cut costs and improve returns to shareholders and blessed with the capital to make efficiency-driven investments (such as dual-pane windows, for starters) is likely to be most responsive to the free market's price signals.

Maybe. Maybe not.

What's the ROI of this investment in the next quarter or the next year?

How is the vice president responsible for this investment incented? Is it on long term cost reductions of energy, or short term cost reduction of capital investment?

What percentage of costs is energy and energy reduction compared to this vice president's total budget? Does it even show up on her radar screen?

Ooh! Ooh! Free Market! Shut off brain.

[Cranky Observer]

> Let me also stress that this is a
> non-cooperative equilibrium - it doesn't
> involve collusion, let alone conspiracy,
> among the generators. You don't have to
> imagine Ken Lay and Dick Cheney sitting in a
> room, trading sneers, and chortling over
> the havoc they are wreaking (which isn't to
> say that this might not have happened!).
> All it takes is individual firms, acting in
> their individual self-interest.

Refresh my memory: was that column published before the tapes were discovered that showed exactly such collusion had, in fact, occured?

I am amused (not really) by how fast that collusion story was buried, and is never commented upon by "maximum efficiency bob" economists.

Cranky

[jerry]

And just to be clear, that was just an example. I don't really know that the Disney Tower off the 101 only has single-pane windows. But how many office buildings have you been in that do? I do know that during the height of the energy crisis, my fixed income mom was paying $500 per month for A/C for her 40 years old, 2000 sq. foot home in the Valley. She didn't have double paned windows either.

[trotsky]

$500 a month in the San Fernando Valley? How hot does it get there?

Perhaps I'm sheltered, living in the socialist-power paradise of Redding, but it's also one of the hottest places in the state outside of Death Valley, and I've never paid more than $100 a month for electricity -- and this in a drafty 50-year-old house with, ahem, single-panes.

Are you sure your mother's neighbors weren't hijacking her power?

[jerry]

Well that's what she told me her bills were. I am sure they were in the neighborhood of $500. However, as I think about it, they may have been two month bills, I seem to recall when I lived there that the DWP billed in two month chunks. But I also know that her bill was average for her neighborhood, and that homeowner bills in San Diego were much worse, doubling and tripling during the energy crisis.

Out here in Az, my monthly averaged bills are $129, that's for an apartment unit, and I don't use the A/C from late October until late April. And then use the A/C 25x8 in August.

[trotsky]

Crazy, but at those prices dual-pane windows pay for themselves in ... oh, about a week and a half.

By the way, this is the last time I'll seize the opportunity to mention that Dick Armey is sending out mail warning that Prop. 77 threatens the Republicans' control of Congress.

[jerry]

Well see that's another data point then. I think Brad would call it an agent problem.

In Arizona my apartment is woefully hot July till September. The central air just cannot keep up. Do we have double paned windows? Nope. Why would an apartment put those in? The incentives are all wrong. They would have to raise rent upfront in a measurable amount, and how would that gain them? They could claim that the monthly e- costs would go down, but they already told me it would never exceed $100 per month.

(They could also put in awnings and probably better insulation in the walls, but again, why would they do that?)

Free market incentives? Yeah, tell me another.

[marquer]

>I do know that during the height of the
>energy crisis, my fixed income mom was
>paying $500 per month for A/C for her 40
>years old, 2000 sq. foot home in the
>Valley. She didn't have double paned
>windows either.

Double-glazed windows are of considerably higher value in retaining heat during the winter than they are in excluding heat during the summer.

The biggest single source of interior summer heat in a standalone residence is typically the reradiated heat due to the sun striking the roof.

White shingles or tiles up top would do much to keep the house cooler. White shingles are readily available at no cost premium, and a roof done with them may well last a few years longer than with traditional black asphalt shingles.

Yet if you drive through hot inland areas of California, you will find endless rows of black roofs. And most homeowners there will react with horror when it is suggested that the color be inverted.

[nate]

Did you read the weekend NYT on voting? (magazine section)

The NYT looked at an economist [I think it was Leavitt (Freakonomics)] and it said something to the effect of why vote.

please check me on this. i skimmed through it while riding an exercise bike.

Professor DeLong: do you have a response to this in the NYT?

[jerry]

Marquer, what kept my mom's home the coolest were the trees my dad planted in the 50s. Because of that, and because I know how hot the attic gets and how the attic and walls need to cool before the interior will cool off, I have long wondered why they don't make roof shades or patios for roofs. A simple, inexpensive, white top, black bottom, replaceable, (perhaps electrically driven and retractable) shade (think pool cover) that would sit 6" - 3 feet above a roof and shadow significant portions of a roof, and provide for lots of shade and ventilation, with the object being to keep the heat off the roof and from heating the house up.

[anciano]

These ballot initiatives are full employment propositions for lawyers and give the state legislature the excuse to avid real work and negotiation. I'm voting no on every damned one.

[afelton]

If the total price that Grandma pays stays the same over the entire year but goes down in the winter but up in the summer, is that OK?

[trostky]

Hmmm ... I'd think comfort would be a non-trivial sales point in Phoenix. I spent the month of June in that city once -- once.

I was delighted once to meet a roofer selling a swab-on, white, superinsulating roof goop -- until I learned it would cost $5,000. Funny thing. Sweating is free.

[proudprogressive]

Here is some more text from Dick Armey's letter urging no on Prop 77:

[In 2001, all 45 Republican state Lawmakers unanimously voted for the district lines that now exist–because they were the best set of lines possible to ensure Republican control of the House of Representatives.]

All California Republican state lawmakers were fine with the current gerrymandering. Lets compare this to what happened during Texas redistricting:

[..The Texas state legislature has wrapped up its second special session on the heated issue of congressional redistricting. Now, members are bracing for a third. Meanwhile, 11 Democratic state senators from Texas remain in New Mexico with their continuing boycott...]
The Tavis Smiley Show, August 27, 2003
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1413514

California Republicans voted yes 45 out of 45, while Many Texas Dems boycotted the vote itself and went to New Mexico. The California Democrats, to thier credit, obviously did not screw the California Republicans like the Texas Republicans screwed the Texas Democrats.

Thus, Democrat voters in California need not fear ending gerrymandering. We never screwed the Republican party out of seats in the first place, and thus probably won't lose seats from proposition 77. But Democrat and Republican lawmakers do need to fear ending gerrymandering. They might have to actually compete to get thier seats.

Brad Delong writes:
[Proposition 77: Redistricting. NO]
Voting yes on prop. 77 will not stop you from voting yes on an even better redistricting reform bill whenever that comes.

[J Thomas]

Proudprogressive, would you explain to us the details of this particular redistricting proposal?

It appears to be primarily promoted by republicans though some of them are making a show of opposing it. Do you have some reason to believe it's more than a trap designed to gerrymander for Republicans?

[Firebug]

Borenstein's argument is fundamentally elitist and antidemocratic. "I would analogize it to the Food and Drug Administration putting on the ballot whether they should okay a certain drug as safe and effective, putting out all the studies and saying 'you decide,' to the voters." Translation: How dare those lowly proles think they can second-guess us, the ECONOMISTS!

Well, fuck the economists. Economists never know their asses from a hole in the ground. It was economists who proposed the electricity "deregulation" that caused the catastrophe in the first place. It is economists who keep talking crap about "free trade" and then say "Waaaa! I don't know why this is happening!" when wages drop and unemployment skyrockets. Fuck the economists. Pragmatism is the ONLY sensible economic policy. "Economics" is no more a science than phrenology was. Anyone who claims otherwise is a witchdoctor.

[proudprogressive]

J Thomas:
[It appears to be primarily promoted by republicans though some of them are making a show of opposing it.]

A "show of opposing it"? So you are suggesting that they are lying and when they urge voters to reject it it's a show? Do you imagine some secret Republican lawmaker meeting where they agree that some will oppose the law just to trick Democrats into voting for it? I'm sorry but that is just a little too looney for me. That would be a risky strategy for Republicans, because some of the base would inevitably listen to it too. Do you have any evidence that dissenting Republicans have tried to only communicate thier dissent to Democrat audiences(how this would be done is beyond me)? If yes, I might listen more to your theory.

I know it's already too late. I just want you to know how wrong you are.

[J Thomas]

Proudprogressive, would you mind dropping that red herring and explain to us how this particular redistricting proposal is actually a reform and not an attempt at gerrymandering in favor of Republicans?

What does the proposal actually propose? Why do you think it's a good thing?

I know you'd rather attack the skeptics for being skeptical. But truly I'll listen to reason if I hear reasons. So far all I've heard is smokescreen.

If you actually understand this proposal and see that it's a good thing, then by all means explain it to us.

Or admit that you don't understand it.

Or go away.

[proudliberal]

I guess I read far too much into your "show of opposing" statement. Maybe I can muster a better argument:

[The first time voters cast ballots for candidates in the new districts, they will also be voting on whether to approve the districts themselves. If voters reject the districts, the process repeats.]
-Proposition 77 makes for strange redistricting bedfellows
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/October/26/local/stories/06local.htm

J Thomas, if the judges drew lines that re-districted in favor of the Gop, voters would have the chance to reject them. California is overwhelmingly Democrat, and thus easily would reject such a Gop stacked redistricting. But since it's 7:00pm, the debate is now only of intellectual importance.

[J Thomas]

Proud-whoever-you-are, I agree that since the proposal failed it's become irrelevant about the details. Next time they'll be different.

But I want to note that even at the end you failed to explain how it might be harmless. You said that after redistricting if the voters don't like the redistricting plan they can vote against it.

But after they've already been gerrymandered is not the best time to vote down the gerrymandering.

Now that the issue is less immediate, we have a good opportunity to think it out. Is there some rational basis to assign districts?

It occurs to me that what would be ideal would be to somehow put people with common interests together into districts. Back when travel and communication over long distances were both hard, it made sense to make counties so you could get to the county seat and back home in a day or two. And rivers were boundaries because high water stopped traffic. But now it would make more sense for local districts to be watersheds. Only that isn't useful for voting because they're different sizes with different populations.

It isn't fair when the public is divided into two obvious opposed groups and the representatives on one side get 100% backing while those on the other side get 51% backing. But then, why should you ever have to be "represented" by somebody you voted against? Maybe some other approach altogether would be better.

[proudliberal]

J Thomas writes:
[It isn't fair when the public is divided into two obvious opposed groups and the representatives on one side get 100% backing while those on the other side get 51% backing.]
I guess you're describing the Gop deck stacking gerry-mandering of Texas.

J Thomas writes:
[But then, why should you ever have to be "represented" by somebody you voted against? Maybe some other approach altogether would be better.]

Proportional Representation, as many European democracies have, seems to be one solution to not having to be represented by someone you didn't vote for. Prop. Rep. could even be modified to encompass people with "similiar interests". A bi-partisan gerrymandering in a winner take all system, as we have in California, seems to be simaliar to Prop. Rep. in some ways, but worse in others.

On the big-picture party level, the outcome is similiar to Prop. Rep.

But as for individuals, if you are a Democrat in a hopelessly gerry-mandered Republican district(or vis-versa), you not only don't get represented by someone you voted for, but that person is likely to be politically extreme. But if districts have as close to a 50-50 Democrat-Republican balance as possible, candidates will naturally move to the center. Thus, for the people who inevitably get represented by someone they didn't vote for, there is at least the comfort that thier representative is relatively moderate.

My preferences from top to bottom are:
1. Fair, gerrymander free winner take all system.
2. "European Style" Proportional Representation.
3. Bi-partisan gerrymandered winner take all system like in California(yuck)
4. Partisan gerrymandered winner take all system like in Texas(double yuck!)

[J Thomas]

Proud, I'm starting to have conceptual problems about gerrymandering. It looks like you have a de facto gerrymandered system when one party has its strength spread out among districts so it has a large minority in many of them. Each of those minorities is badly represented. Of course, the other side of doing that is that the bad guys who set up the districts so they'd have a small majority in many of them, and if they lose enough support they'll lose all those districts at once.

Given a system that creates de facto gerrymandering, we can expect partisan politicians to push it for partisan reasons.

But any system we set up that doesn't do that now, will do it later when things change. Right now it tends to be Democrats in cities and Republicans in suburbs and small towns. But in 20 years will the split be between Libertarians more than 20 miles from a freeway and Greens closer than that? Will it be between people who're close to clean water versus people who aren't? Will we have racial politics with maybe a hispanic party and an anglo party? However we divide things now, they're likely to be de facto gerrymandered 20 years from now when things are different.

I've got some kind of fundamental conceptual flaw here that makes it impossible for me to design a good redistricting system. I haven't figured out what's wrong with my reasoning yet.

[Bread]

It seems that in most professions, the idea of tenure should be expunged. Really, what purpose does it really serve? If those who live under the blanket of tenure were to one day give that up, it shouldn't necessarily matter, should they be worthy of the task. With respect to teachers; yes there are good and there are bad; tenure only allows the bads ones to chance through... the good ones never have to worry about it. Oh yeah... people get fired everyday in every profession.... it would be interesting to see the percentage of fired teachers to the total... I wouldn't be surprised if it was much (much) lower.... so do good and hopefully that is respected.... heck.... I'm thinking of getting my credentials... 2 years of ass kissing sounds good for a lifetime of kicking back later.... oh yeah.