Three Card Pogey

I used to see them pretty regularly on the Congress El train in Chicago, on my way home to Oak Park. They'd set up shop in the back of a car, as far as possible from the conductor. There would always be the guy with the cards, a guy who would pretend to win and another guy, usually a row or two away, who would be on the lookout for CTA personnel or the occasional Chicago gendarme who might be riding back to his house on The Island, the neighborhood just south of the Eisenhower and east of Austin Boulevard where a lot of Chicago police officers and other city employees who were required to live in Chicago had homes.

The game was always the same. The dealer would be playing the cards and the so-called winner would be winning money by picking the right card. Eventually someone would let their greed and gullibility get the best of them and would ask if they could get in on the action. Of course they could play. The mark would sit down, win a hand or two but then something weird would happen and they'd be out the money they'd won and whatever else the stake had been initially. Usually it wasn't a lot of money -- $10 or $20, but the occasional refugee from Happy Hour would keep playing and would eventually go home out $100 or so and needing an excuse for the wife. You can't win in the game, of course.

I don't suspect that Larry Pogemiller is a card sharp, but his victims in the Minnesota Senate are certainly easy marks. The proposal came down last week from the Democratic leadership indicated that the powerful teacher's union lobby was actually going to get nicked a bit. Pogey said that up to $1 billion (with a b) of funding would be cut. As the breathless dispatch from Minnesota Public Radio had it:

What is most notable is that Senate Democrats are proposing $1 billion in cuts to early childhood education and K thru 12 schools. K-12 funding is required under the Minnesota Constitution and lawmakers have been reluctant to cut those programs for fear of angering voters. Senate Education Finance Chair Leroy Stumpf, of Plummer, said the depth of the budget problem, along with a sputtering economy, mean all programs have to be on the table.

Early childhood education and K-12 spending are sacred in Minnesota. It was extraordinary that the Democrats would actually propose cuts. It was a real Nixon to China sort of thing.

If the Republicans were smart, they would have immediately recognized this as a ploy and would have pocketed the proposal as the baseline number for more cuts. A clever Republican would have said something like "we welcome this long overdue proposal to bring fiscal sanity to our education system. We'll work to ensure that these painful budgetary changes do not impact the students in the classroom and we'll then pursue existing innovations like Q-Comp to ensure that the best teachers are rewarded for their performance."

As we are too often reminded, Republicans are not smart. Governor Pawlenty immediately followed his baser instincts and tried to outflank the Democrats to their left:

"They're using a robotic approach to budgeting which is across the board approaches when we should be prioritizing," Pawlenty said. "Some things are more important than others. That's why we said even in these challenging economic times we'd put more money into education, not less."

T-Paw's motives are primarily focused on two things: winning the news cycle and keeping Q-Comp, which attempts to bring merit pay to the salary structure in education, on line. Tom Dooher and the rest of his droogs at Education Minnesota HATE Q-Comp. Really, really hate it. They want it gone and because the DFL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Education Minnesota, Larry Pogemiller and the rest of his friends in the Legislature want it gone, too.

Here's what's going to happen. Now that T-Paw, Geoff Michel and the rest of the geniuses who run the Republican Party have ruled out cuts for education, the DFL will groan and suggest other ways to reduce expenditures. I can guarantee you that Q-Comp will be the first thing they cut. And in the endgame that results, they will win. The Democrats will make the choice pretty simple -- if you want to keep Q-Comp, then you will agree to tax clothing in the state. No Tax T-Paw, now boxed in, will have no choice but to kill Q-Comp in order to protect the taxpayers. Education Minnesota will get all the money they want and after the pliant news media around the state publish reports from either the Humphrey Institute (or some other coven along the Mississippi) that show that Q-Comp is ineffective, it will be gone.

But look on the bright side. Tom Dooher and his friends will have so much money after the budget is passed that we'll be able to enjoy another spate of victory lap television ads on the 10 o'clock news. And the KARE Bears and WCCO need that revenue because the car dealers don't have any money to spend on ads these days. It's a win-win!

I do hope that the next ad I see with Dooher on it is filmed in a Chicago El car. That would be truth in advertising.

Cross-posted at Truth vs. the Machine and True North