Ridiculous left wing hacks, Rachel Maddow, Shepard Smith, and Juan Williams agree...this is a political game that has nothing to do with any sort of budget crisis in Wisconsin.
There are times when the system has to be tweaked, and times when it has to be remade. This time it's one of the latter. We can no longer afford the government that exists. There's no amount of tweaking, no tax increase that will fund the pensions and health care of all these government employees. We can debate all we wish and try to nibble around the edges, but the central truth remains. I understand that change is difficult for people. There's a grieving process. Right now, government workers are in denial. Soon there will be layoffs that focus all the pain on a few instead of spreading it around and making it more managable. Later, these pensions will force the states to default on their bonds and look to a bailout from the Federal Government; it won't come. The Federal Government is in worse financial shape than the states. Then the pensions will disappear and the promises made will not be fulfilled; the well will be dry. At that point, the unions will have no one to blame but themselves.
It's like saying, the cost of dissension is high, so let's take away the freedom of speech. Otherwise we'll have to lay some people off. Union members answer, go ahead. It's far more important to retain the right to talk (bargain). You can find a lower-paying job than what you had, but you can't replace a right once it's legislated out of existence. Threatening laborers with job loss for some of them, fails to scare them into surrendering their negotiating rights. I read that the Wisconsin budget was balanced till the new Governor pushed through a $140M bill to help his rich campaign contributors. Then he used the tiny $140M deficit as reason to destroy the unions.
Shep Smith has always been the best thing on Fox by a long shot. Maybe if you mute Megyn Kelly and just stare at her its close.
The problem with being a gimmick poster is that you'll never be taken seriously. Now is one of those times.
And the ends justify the means? Because the problem with this tactic is once it's used, it can be justifiably be used to stop all kinds of things with which you may agree. Kind of like the technicality used to pass Obamacare. What happens when that tactic is used to pass something like privitization of Social Security? Be careful what you wish for.
I know, because political debate on an Internet sports forum is one of the most respected & highly regarded forms of intellectual discourse. Not being taken seriously on one might very well ruin careers and/or cause miscarriages(even in men) from the shame. Goodness me sir, doth we have a "gimmicky poster" on these boards? Such strong words, yet put forth so elegantly! Doesn't sound like a personal attack at all good chap. I do believe there are enough questions surrounding the Governor's desire to crush the union, as well as letting his Koch Industry pals in on no-bid sales of public power plants, that it should merit some debate. At least the stand off is bringing to light some of the icky background info on the Governor.
Thanks for your opinion. There are actually those of us who from time to time engaging in a conversation about real ideas. People are free to post anyway they'd like; I'm also free to take people seriously or not. I think debate is good. So where are the Democratic members of the WI Senate to make these points? The people of Wisconsin spoke loudly and clearly in their vote this past November. I find it ironic that the party with the root word "democracy" are the ones seemingly afraid of it.
I hope people debating on an Internet sports forum go out and vote with even a tiny bit of better understanding of the issues.
From what I understood(perhaps I am wrong) is that the Democrats technically could vote completely against it and it would still have passed. It was being "rushed" through. The only real way to try to get a debate going was to walk out. I am not sure what no-bid power plant purchases has to do with balancing the budget, nor does removing collective bargaining actually equal any immediate monetary gains. It's an idealogical victory. What's probably going to happen is that they will lose collective bargaining, take a pay cut & still see large layoffs. If the economy picks up again, they will no longer have the ability to negotiate higher salary & more cream can rise to those at top. A lot of times when this stuff is taken away, you'll probably never see it again. "The Man" is quick to take & slow to give.
The way this plays out will be an excellent demonstration of this. It seems to me that the Wisconsin Governor is way too ideologically driven (as you can tell by the prank phone call) and is exerting more power than he should be. If this guy ever became president I would worry about some serious Fascism.
I don't know, I'd say that the "ideological" aspect is that maybe the ideologues think that, in a state with a 3.6B deficit, they shouldn't spend money running power plants. Maybe they should spend money running the government, and let whatever corporate interests pay down the deficit with their power plant purchases do so in accordance with private market principles? I'm not saying it's right or wrong, or that I know the loss/profit margin of said plants, but I don't know that it's on the high road to fascism to try to balance the budget. Again, correct me please if I'm wrong, but the gov't wanted to invoke the 7% "pay cut" to pay for services, and the union said that the gov't couldn't do so without bargaining. So they decided that removing the ability for the union to block budget decisions was an immediate monetary gain. Again, I'm not advocating whether it's right or wrong (that's for the posts above), but that to say it doesn't equal immediate monetary gains is not correct.
Democracy sucks sometimes. The vote would likely go against the teachers' union, and likely by a party line vote (19-14). The answer isn't to take your ball and go home. For the record, the WI House (or whatever the lower chamber is called) just finished 58 hours of debate on the issue. Only now will it be presented to the Senate. You're falling for Democratic talking points. I'm right of center, with Libertarian leanings. I took it in the ass on Obamacare. If the GOP would have walked out and denied a vote in the House and the Senate, I would have called them out as well. That's not how a representative government is supposed to function. I can't say what no-bid contracts do, other than to say I'm against them. However, I can tell you specifically what removing collective bargaining for benefits and pensions do: it diffuses the ticking pension time bomb. Are you aware that with collective bargaining that the State of Wisconsin can only purchase health insurance through the WI state teachers' union? De-linking them allows WI to competitively bid health care. And by de-linking collective bargaining from pensions, you get rid of the easy giveaways union-supported politicians have been giving to the unions that create future benefits that the taxpayer doesn't see for decades in the future. Finally, the government will no longer be responsible for withholding union dues from teacher paychecks. The union will have to do it themselves. Since when is government responsible for transfering money to a private organization that doesn't provide a direct benefit? WI is not getting rid of collective bargaining for salaries; it's only for benefits. I can't for the life of me figure out how that's unreasonable. Right now the union is putting itself in front of the rank and file. WI will have to lay off a few thousand workers because union-supported Democrats are willing to sacrifice rank and file jobs to maintain their power and their cash flow. It's shameful behavior. The answer for the Democrats is to get back in the fight. Have the debate in the chambers of the state house and on the campaign trail. All they have to do is win back the majority they had before November and they can repeal everything this Governor and state legislature is trying to do. THAT's how our government is supposed to work.
just as a reference point: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/boeing-layoffs-in-long-be_n_811605.html
What part of "we're broke" don't government employees not understand? It's not like we don't want to pay them; we can't afford it. It's not one school district, it's not one state, it's coast-to-coast. The public unions are going to have to come to the table and make some serious, and permanent, concessions. One of those concessions will have to be to move from a defined benefit to a defined contribution retirement program. They're going to have to contribute to their health care. And their pay will have to be tied to CPI. If they don't like it, they can try to find a job in the private sector.
The problem with that example is that the downsizing that is needed is due to a 29% drop in demand. You can't really compare it to the teacher situation in Providence. A more apt example would be if if they cut those same 1100 workers, but production needed to remain flat, or more likely go up. Sure, you can cut here and there and won't see any ill effects, but if you slash your work force by that much, while increasing your output, the quality will suffer immensely.
