Co-released by the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, the authors of the study sought to demonstrate teachers are not underpaid, contrary to popular refrain, and when factoring in health and retirement benefits, earn 52 percent more than “fair market levels.”

Many progressive voices in the teacher-pay debate show the obverse to be true. The Economic Policy Institute publishes an ongoing policy brief on the gap in wages between public-school teachers and better-paid private-sector workers with similar college degrees. Since 1996, that difference, or “wage penalty,” has increased from a 4.3 percent difference to 12 percent last year. Among men, the wage disparity increased from 15 percent to 23 percent in the same period.

Researchers for the same organization wrote (PDF) in September 2010 that public-employee compensation in general lags behind the private sector, to the tune of nearly $23,000 for bachelor’s holders and $33,600 for those with a master’s.

But the authors of the AEI-Heritage Foundation report eschew the whole idea of education experience forecasting a worker’s earning potential.

“Public-school teachers earn less in wages on aver­age than non-teachers with the same level of education,” the authors write, “but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar ‘paper’ qualifications.”

Jason Richwine, co-author of the 26-page report who holds a doctorate in public policy, spoke to The American Independent about the paper.

“The cognitive ability [portion] is just one part in trying to explain why traditional measures, like education, are not adequate to capture teacher skill,” he said.

The authors point to research spanning 50 years indicating degrees in education are easier to obtain with high marks. They include a recent study by economist Corey Koedel in which he examined grade-point averages of graduates at three large research institutions, and found education majors finished with an average GPA of 3.65, while math, science and economics majors graduated with a 2.88.

Meanwhile, the researchers also looked into a robust data set dating back to 1979 called the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that surveys the same 9,964 men and women biennially on questions relating to education, wages, health and other characteristics. Relying on a military-designed cognitive exam called Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), the authors of the report concluded teacher scores lagged behind private-sector professionals with similar academic backgrounds.

The authors did, however, note teacher pay lines up with an equally educated private-sector employee when cognitive scores are similar.

“The takeaway is that we should not trust just years of education,“ Richwine told TAI. He also cautioned his analysis included all teachers, including gym, art and music instructors, who may sag the cognitive scores of subject-oriented teachers in math and science.

Federal education law under No Child Left Behind has stricter knowledge requirements for educators teaching core subjects.

Sara Mead, an education policy analyst with Bellwether Education Partners, told TAI, “using IQ tests is less common than looking at college entrance exams.” She did say current teachers are, however, “disproportionately drawn from the lower end of the spectrum relative to their peers who pursued a different career path” when comparing SAT and ACT scores.

But a 2004 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality indicates (PDF) soft attributes, like motivating and energy, are the most telling characteristics of how prepared a teacher is for the profession, while SAT scores “account for only a small portion of why some teachers are more effective than others.”

Still, Mead says whether teachers are underpaid or overpaid is a “silly conversation in the sense that there’s a huge variation in teacher pay geographically.”

She added, “If you make generalizations, you’ll be wrong about something.”

Voicing that criticism, during a presentation of the paper’s findings that included its authors at AEI yesterday, guest panelist and economist Robert Costrell, of the University of Arkansas department of education reform, said, “I’m not so wild about this over-under payment exercise.”

The country’s largest teacher unions objected to the report findings. The American Federation of Teachers statement read, in part, “[this study is] the reason many Americans pay no heed to what goes on in Washington, D.C. The AEI report concludes that America’s public school teachers are overpaid—something that defies common sense—and uses misleading statistics and questionable research to make its case.

“Rather than rehashing AEI’s previous anti-public worker reports, let’s spend time heeding the lessons of top-performing nations, which invest heavily in recruiting, developing, supporting and compensating teachers.”

And Kim Anderson, director of advocacy for the National Education Association, said in an email, “not only should we question the reliability of this study, but we should also consider the source.

“The study is funded by the very same groups that are trying to eliminate the right of workers to have a voice in their workplace all together.”

During the media event at AEI, the authors of the report pointed out their methodology attempted to account for summer vacation and the higher job security teachers enjoy during non-recession years, something they called a “separate benefit value.”

They also explained the Bureau of Labor Statistics omits public-sector retirement health plans in its calculations for total teacher compensation, a benefit many public-sector workers receive. Conversely, the authors noted only 18 percent of private-sector workers have employers who foot that bill.

Jindal joins a host of GOPers including confirmed presidential contenders Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Georgia business owner Herman Cain, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

Other confirmed speakers include House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Steve King (R-Iowa). Among the unconfirmed speakers are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Every candidate or current congressional leader invited to attend the Values Voter Summit, scheduled for Oct. 7-9 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, is a Republican.

FRC Action — and co-sponsors American Family Values, the Heritage Foundation, Liberty University and Liberty Counsel — have invited several anti-abortion-rights activists including Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, Live Action President Lila Rose and former Planned Parenthood Clinic Worker Catherine Adair.

The three-day conference will include a presidential straw poll and breakout sessions that cover topics such as using religion to impact policy, mobilizing minority communities, and defunding Planned Parenthood.

As The American Independent sister site The Minnesota Independent previously reported, past Values Voter Summits (this is the sixth) tend to create controversy. For example, in 2008, vendors sold “Obama Waffles” with packaging many viewed as racist. Past summit speakers have claimed the anti-Christ will be a gay man, and a preacher made the case that it’s okay to call gays “faggots.”

Reps. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) and Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) responded to AUL’s recent request to consider a taxpayer-funded investigation of the national reproductive health services and abortion provider, according to an AUL press release issued Wednesday.

AUL CEO and President Charmaine Yoest will be in attendance to the noon press conference along with Reps. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) and Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) to discuss implications of the group’s report and the possibility of an investigation.

“I invite my colleagues to review the findings of this Report and to join us on Thursday as we voice our concerns about the issues raised by AUL’s Report and express our renewed commitment to seeking accountability for taxpayers and for investigating whether taxpayers are funding an organization that misuses government funding and violates state laws,” said Ellmers in a letter to House members, according to the release.

Planned Parenthood has disputed AUL’s allegations that it has misused federal funds and violated state and federal laws, calling AUL’s report an ‘ideologically driven” publication. AUL has since rebutted Planned Parenthood’s rebuttal (PDF) and resumed its call for an investigation with the end goal being to defund Planned Parenthood on a national level.

“A lot of people see Planned Parenthood as just an organization down the street,” said AUL staff counsel Kellie Fiedorek at a Heritage Foundation-sponsored Bloggers Briefing Tuesday. “They are unaware of [Planned Parenthood's] lack of concern health and safety.”

The newly-elected lawmaker will be focused on his Senate duties that week then “return to Florida for a working weekend capped off by the Pinellas County Lincoln Day Dinner,” on Feb. 12, spokesman Alex Burgos told the Buzz.

Sen. DeMint’s spokesman said the senator declined to attend because several conservative organizations — including the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation — pulled out due to the inclusion of a small gay conservative organization, GOProud, at CPAC. Rubio’s spokesman denied GOProud’s status at CPAC was the case with the Florida senator’s decision.

Rubio gave a barnstorming speech last year at CPAC, when he had not yet pulled ahead of Gov. Charlie Crist in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

Awkwardly, he is still in the headline image for CPAC:

“If [Democrats] bring up a food safety bill, we’re going to have a vote by every member of the Senate on whether or not we believe in earmarks or not,” Coburn said, alluding to a vote on a food safety bill that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has scheduled for Wednesday. “And the greatest criticism I have for those that want to earmark is that they’re basically lazy. They really do not want to do the hard work of oversighting the federal budget.”

Coburn’s comments were in many ways a rebuttal directed towards his fellow Oklahoman, Sen. James Inhofe (R), who has argued that abstaining from earmarks will simply empower the executive branch and federal bureaucracy to make all the decisions about the way the federal budget gets spent.

“The reason bureaucracies can get away with what they’re going is we aren’t doing our job,” added Cobrun. “We could cut the federal government by a third and nobody would know the difference. There’s that much waste.”

DeMint, for his part, remained optimistic about the chances of his vote passing in Republican conference tomorrow, but he allowed that the secret nature of the vote could cause some members to defect silently. He argued that no conservative, however, can logically stand for limited government and still advocate earmarks.

“If we believe that it’s our job to pave local parking lots and build local sewer plants and museums, then we can’t believe in limited federal government,” he said. “Earmarks are a way for us as Republicans to show that we’ve gotten the message, and also a way to take our eyes off parochial interests and focus on national interests, the general welfare. It’s not our job to be directing money to local projects that don’t have national significance.”

With the quick publication and subsequent tour for his book following his re-election to a fourth term as Texas governor, many have speculated that Perry is in the early stages of a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Even though the book and its title seem tailored to to conservative primary voters, Perry has insisted that he has no plans at mounting a presidential campaign. Today, he pointed to the book as evidence that he does not have grand national ambitions.

Perry focused his speech on national entitlement programs as the central issue facing the nation, and one where his frank views would exclude him from running for higher office.

“There have been a lot of political figures totally and absolutely afraid to talk about that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,” Perry said. “My eldest child is 27, my baby is 24, and they know that Social Security is not going to be there for them. So let’s talk about it, what are some of the options that are out there.”

Perry also highlighted other social support programs that he would like to see addressed by state governments rather than through federal initiatives. He spoke positively of recent suggestions by Texas Republicans to remove the state from federal Medicaid and administer the program at the state level instead.

“The fact is many of us [state governors] would like to be in charge of those pension programs,” Perry said. “Medicaid is a good example of just last week, right after the election, our Texas House had a study group on how to better deliver those health care costs.”

But Social Security received the brunt of Perry’s criticism.

“We have to address these issues and not be afraid and tell the truth, and push back on those who would do nothing more than be fear mongers for the standpoint of ‘Oh, they’re going to take your Social Security away,’” Perry said. “They don’t have to tell that to my children, they already know that, there will be no Social Security for them if we don’t stand up as a people and address this issue.”

Perry railed against federal government intervention broadly, going back in history to criticize the 16th Amendment’s introduction of the federal income tax, with his heaviest scorn reserved for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

“The fact of the matter is it is a legacy of glut, glut of federal programs, including a Social Security program that is not only bankrupt, but also had very little to do with America’s emergence from the Great Depression,” Perry said. Instead, Perry held up the Tenth Amendment as the ideal of how the government should operate. National defense was the only federal spending cast in a favorable light during the appearance.

As the book tour and appearances at prominent organizations like the Heritage Foundation indicate, Perry is positioning himself as one of the prominent voices of the party. Entering his fourth term in the governor’s office, Perry risks the establishment label that Republican grassroots have revolted against recently, but thanks to his primary campaign against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and his consistent anti-Washington rhetoric, Perry has been able to take up the mantle of the Tea Party while maintaining his credibility as an experienced politician.

As Republicans return to power in the next session of Congress, Perry has taken the lead in pushing the national party to stay true to its message of minimal federal intervention, with the majority of government power invested in the states. Rather than calling for the complete dissolution of entitlements like Social Security, Perry has said he prefers to see the power over the programs in the hands of state governments, a sentiment he has already relayed to the new congressional leaders.

“Saturday night, presumptive-elect Speaker Boehner and I had a meeting. We spent a couple hours together talking about how the governors can be more engaged with this process,” Perry said. “The message from John Boehner is very clear, that he was listening Tuesday night, and that finding the solutions to the challenges that face us as a country emanate from the states, and not from Washington, D.C.”

Patrick Caldwell is a reporter for The American Independent.

“It’s my view that Americans are no more interested in a Republican platform for using government to re-engineer society than they were in the Democratic plan to do so,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a speech to the Heritage Foundation yesterday. “Republicans will focus on doing a few things and doing them well.”

Apart from job creation, reducing the deficit and repealing health care reform, it’s hard to discern much else in the way of an agenda from the Republican brass — but even those items don’t hint at much legislative action. Republicans have consistently argued that, apart from cutting taxes, there’s little else government can or should do to promote job growth. Repealing health reform will be limited to a large, symbolic vote to undo the whole thing and several minor scuffles over funding for implementation.

The likely second-in-command in the House, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), hinted at a similarly light legislative approach in a 16-page document he released yesterday called “Delivering On Our Commitment: A Majority to Limit Government and Create Jobs.”

“I believe we need to return to a committee-driven legislature that investigates problems, listens intently to the citizenry, and proposes well thought-out solutions when necessary,” the proposal reads. “Just because we’re in session, does not mean the House floor needs to be utilized. Repetitive floor votes and filling time with half-baked legislative proposals – as is currently done by the Democrat majority – is not a suitable answer.”

On the surface, a proposal to do next to nothing might seem like a risky strategy. The Congress that’s wrapping up had one of the most productive legislative sessions in the last several decades, yet most Americans still believed that it was either lazy, mired in partisan gridlock or ineffectual. But as The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait points out, if any cooperation with President Obama on policy issues will inevitably boost his stature, the GOP’s strategy makes sense as the most logical — albeit cynical — approach:

It’s probably always been true that the fundamental role of the minority is to oppose the majority and pave the way to winning reelection. America’s long history of ideologically amorphous parties, a relic of Southern Apartheid policies, created a tradition of cross-party cooperation. Those social norms persist, and both Washington elites and many Americans expect the two parties to work together as if they aren’t engaged in zero-sum political conflict.

But the truth is that, when the minority party cooperates with the majority party president, it generally makes the president and his policies more popular. The difference is that the Republican Party of 2009-10 is probably the first opposition party to fully recognize the dynamic and make this the core of its legislative strategy from the very outset. [...]

In the media you’re seeing a lot of familiar claims that the two parties need to work together. There is no incentive for the Republicans to do so. Even on issues where they can get a pure win, handing a win to Obama reduces their ability to gain the presidency in 2012. So why would they pursue an ancillary part of their agenda and reduce the chance to achieve the core elements of that agenda?

The trouble, of course, is that our political system isn’t set up to handle this reality. It was not designed with parties in mind. That’s another reason we have strong social norms dictating that elected officials ignore their political interests, at least for some period after elections. But that norm is dead. Meanwhile, we’re left with a political system that doesn’t work.

An isolated incident in a small city government election? Hardly, notes Fox News, which trots out its favorite former Department of Justice lawyer Hans von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to comment:

“Absentee ballots are now the weapon of choice for people who want to commit voter fraud,” said Hans von Spakousky, a former Justice Department attorney who monitored voter fraud. “Campaigns will order absentee ballots and then follow the postman door to door on the day they are delivered to pick them up and control the vote.”

“Any time you get large numbers of absentee ballots being issued, it should be taken as a sign that trouble is brewing,” he warned.

The story is already getting churned up on right-wing websites with other incidents concerning possible phony voter registration forms in Harris County, Texas, and dire warnings that many states have not sufficiently purged their voter rolls of dead people. RedState, for instance, expounds upon the threat posed by absentee ballots:

Some of the tactics employed in voter fraud and perpetrated by individuals associated with a special interest supporter of a candidate include Pressuring and coaxing first-time voters or those who were “less informed or lacking in knowledge of the voting process, the infirm, the poor, and those with limited skills in the English language” to vote by absentee ballot; Paying voters in cash for casting absentee ballots; Instructing people applying for absentee ballots to phone the candidate’s campaign when the applicant received his or her ballot so that the candidate’s supporters could go to the applicant’s home and “though not authorized by law to do so, ‘assist’ the voter in completing the ballot;” Illegally keeping a stockpile of unmarked absentee ballots and delivering ballots to voters; Lying about whether the person applying for an absentee ballot would in fact be absent on the day of the primary.

All these hypothetical scenarios represent legitimate issues of concern that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent should they occur, but aside from reports out of Daytona Beach and Harris County, it’s hardly clear how “rampant” this phenomenon is, or, for that matter, what kind of impact a couple hundred dead people being left on a state voter roll or a couple dozen absentee ballots being stockpiled by a city commissioner will have on the outcome of the impending midterm elections. It’s worth noting that these stories, intended to stoke fears of stolen elections, are often linked to districts with a high percentage of minority voters.

“The enemy is Islamic terrorism. It’s not an amorphous extremism….It’s Islamic terrorism which opposes the very fiber of what we stand for,” Rep. King said.

Earlier this year, right-leaning media jumped on a decision by President Obama’s advisers to leave out terms like “Islamic extremism” and “jihadist” from the National Security Strategy. But as Spencer Ackerman wrote for TWI at the time, language matters: “You hear from Muslims all over the world [that] calling al-Qaeda ‘jihadists’ pays them an ill-deserved tribute,” Ackerman wrote.

Here’s the video of Rep. King’s remarks:

Some of his arguments sounded familiar. Take, for instance, his point that dinosaurs got by just fine in an carbon dioxide-rich environment. It’s the same argument that Marc Morano, spokesman for climate change skeptic-in-chief Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), made last February and that Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) made last March. He also echoed Tea Party rhetoric in claiming that legislation to regulate carbon emissions would cause us to “lose liberty” and help Nancy Pelosi further her United Nations-driven agenda.

Video after the jump: