RAISE TAXES YOU MORONS

49 South Bend teachers getting pink slipped, says the South Bend Tribune.

Calculator time! Using the article's own estimate ($50k per teacher), the cuts save the school corp $2.45 million. Calculating by households (42,908 of them in the city of South Bend), it would cost $57 per household to keep all the teachers next year, or about four dollars and 75 cents per household per month. Two dollars and 37 cents off the primary breadwinner's semimonthly paycheck.

Even in a baby blue city like South Bend, there are only two possible options on the table: cutting teachers and cutting other stuff. Tax hikes don't even merit a mention in the paper. There is no discussion of it, as if it's so horrible a prospect as to be unthinkable. I might as well be suggesting that we cast every third child into Lake Michigan to reduce the need for teachers.

It's $2.37 a paycheck, people. $2.37 to keep 49 teachers in classrooms, 49 neighbors and friends from losing badly needed income in the middle of a recession. When did $2.37 become an unthinkably heavy burden?

What foolish, unserious leadership we have that the clear, obvious, and painless answer won't even be discussed.