CapCon responds to teacher's complaint over cut to take home pay by calling her a liar

by: Eric B.

Wed Mar 13, 2013 at 09:47:20 AM EDT

Rightwing journalism at work: Start with the premise that teachers are overcompensated and refuse to budge, no matter what asinine territory you're forced to tread.

A Grand Rapids Public Schools teacher says she qualifies for food stamps and that she could make more money as a substitute teacher, but her claims don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Here's history on this: The district is deducting from its teachers an additional $300 a paycheck to recoup health insurance premiums. The teacher in question says this has reduced her take-home pay -- the money she uses to pay bills and buy food -- to the point where she qualifies for food assistance. The Mackinac Center does some lazy math and then without knowing how much money she actually makes in her paycheck, calls her a liar on the grounds that being a full-time teacher has a benefits package ... ignoring that what the teacher was talking about in the first place was the size of her paycheck.

Ratliff also ignored the cost of her lucrative health care insurance plan and her retirement benefits, which cost the district about $26,000 a year for a teacher with five years of experience. A substitute teacher working the 191-day schedule would make $16,235 and the district wouldn't pay for health insurance or have to make the pension and retiree health care payments.

This reminds me of the time the Huffington Post wanted me to cover the 1st Congressional District race in 2010. They said that they naturally couldn't afford to pay me, but in exchange for the massive expenses I would have incurred in driving the geographically largest district east of the Mississippi and the hours of my time working on their behalf that I'd benefit from wider exposure. It's a perk! ... not unlike health insurance or a retirement plan. I told my landlord that I naturally wouldn't be paying my rent in currency for the two months I was going to devote to this project, thinking that he'd naturally be as eager to accept some of my broader exposure in exchange for money. He just looked at me funny and changed the subject. Later on, I learned that he actually investigated the possibilities of this by contacting the bank holding the mortgage and the city, asking if they'd accept some second-hand Huffington Post exposure in exchange for the mortgage payment and property taxes, respectfully, and was politely told, "No," by both entities.

Anyway, we get the point that CapCon and their main source for the "story" (coincidentally, a Mackinac Center employee) are getting at: When a teacher talks about take home pay not being enough to pay the bills, that teacher ought to feel gratified that she's got the health care and the pension that some of her salary is paying for.

Meanwhile, towards the bottom, we finally get to the bit about food stamps.

Figuring out if a fifth-year teacher would qualify for food stamps is not simple, according to the state.

"Really, it ends up being case-by-case when people apply, and then we go through all of their unique circumstances,” said Dave Akerly, spokesman for the Department of Human Services.

However, welfare recipients do have to meet certain income criteria to be eligible. At the minimum gross salary of $41,443 for a five-year teacher, that person would have to have a household of seven people to be eligible.

The state said determining who qualifies for food stamps isn't simple, but CapCon disagrees. If you take the basic eligibility requirement for a completely different program and apply it to food stamps, you learn that unless our young teacher has spent more time on her back than in the classroom that she's a liar.

By the way, one of the things that the state looks at when determining your eligibility for food stamps is the debt load you carry, which includes loans you have to pay back ... say, loans you might have incurred while obtaining the education required to work as a teacher. It's a good thing the state has slashed support for higher education, forcing people going to school to be teachers to take on an increasing amount of student debt to pay for it. Of course, when they're compelled to pay it back and their employer suddenly starts deducting back health insurance premiums, they might have to ask the federal government to pony up some extra cash every month just so's they can eat.