How the Left Sees the Union Crisis in Madison
We live in two different worlds. Try looking at the situation in Wisconsin through the eyes of the American Left. They are, as my colleague Roger L. Simon so aptly puts it, thoroughly reactionary. For the Left, there is no real fiscal crisis. The states can easily afford to give the public sector unions everything they ask for. There is one easy answer: tax the rich.
Because the great right-wing conspiracy has been so effective, due to its funding by the Koch brothers, the masses have been manipulated to vote for their own worst enemies. Marx’s theory of “false consciousness” has been proved once again. “What’s the matter with Kansas?” indeed. If only they all read The Nation there would be no problem. And evidently, they don’t even read Paul Krugman. If they did, they would see that the great economist explained it all: the Right doesn’t care about reality; they just want power. Their real goal, says Krugman, is nothing less than “to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.”
Let us pause for a moment to ask whether Krugman is serious. The Wisconsin voters, having heard Governor Walker campaign on a promise to rein in the public sector unions and do something about Wisconsin’s debt crisis, not only voted him in, but voted in Republicans overwhelmingly in once Democratic districts. So democracy did its job, but not to Krugman’s liking. The people want an oligarchy.
For the entire Left, the budget is simply the excuse to gain power and crush the unions. The academic leftists, as expected, are also weighing in. On the History News Network site, leftist historian Mark Naison looks back nostalgically at the Flint, Michigan, sit-down strikes in 1936-37, seeing today’s Madison events as the modern equivalent — a watershed moment for the labor movement. Not even pausing to address the major differences between this era’s public sector unions and the assembly line industrial unions of the Depression era, Naison sees the strikes as simply about “dignity and respect,” not income.
Naison reminds readers that the auto workers, helped by “numerous left-wing organizations,” occupied the factories, ending their occupation only when GM and U.S. Steel agreed to bargain collectively with the recently formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). So Naison calls for a similar movement today — urging delegations from every state in the union “to join the occupation and the protests and give whatever financial aid and legal support is necessary to teachers who are keeping the local schools closed.”
Of course, no sooner did his article hit the web than the union asked teachers to return to work. Their leadership realizes that their action has produced a huge backlash among working men and women in Wisconsin, who can’t go to work because they have to stay home to watch the kids. Besides resenting that kind of behavior at their own jobs, they have nothing compared to what the public sector workers have in their contracts with the state.
Joining him in a similar assessment is the socialist labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein. At least Lichtenstein realizes that the nation is talking about public sector unions, not industrial unions of a bygone age. He acknowledges the real question: “Who will pay for the budget deficits that bedevil so many states?” But he also knows the other question is whether or not “the unions [will] continue to be a backbone of the Democratic Party….” He also acknowledges another truth — that “public employees are far more likely to be unionized than private-sector workers.”
Lichtenstein, however, does not comprehend the nature of what has become a real sweetheart deal for the public sector unions. Union PACs use member dues to support and elect Democrats. Then, the same unions sits before these elected officials to negotiate contracts. These elected politicians then do all they can to give the union reps everything they ask for. It worked for a long time, especially in large urban cities like New York, until that city found its own books ready to collapse.
Good article. I’m liking Ron more and more, even though he is a squish.
For me, the most important point is that the left doesn’t even agree that there is a fiscal crisis, just an unwillingness to tax the rich enough.
It’s more evidence that the divide is truly fundamental. They demand socialism, we demand freedom.
The problem isn’t even so much the political difference. The problem is that they are willing to do anything to get their way.
Don’t forget those Fat Cats on Wall Street, you know the ones who enjoyed a huge bail out to save everyone’s 401K acct. and the Union’s investments But there the ones to blame yep uhuh, And the Rich why certainly and don’t forget the Pentagon they spend wayyyyyy too much to protect us all so we can enjoy the Freedom we have everday and so we all can sleep & not worry if our home will be bombed or our Strip Mall or City Hall is about to be blown up yep there spending way to much go get’em Union Whiners !!!!
Ron may come across as a squish, but he’s a very good guy to have writing at PJM. Remember, he’s a former Red Diaper Baby Marxist CUNY professor. IIRC, his disillusionment with Marxism began after he witnessed political prisoners being lobotomized while he toured a Cuban mental institution with a group of fellow traveler professors from the U.S. Not unlike David Horowitz (or even PJM honcho Roger L. Simon himself), his years spent running in Leftist circles provided him with an understanding of certain Leftist elements that are more or less foreign to most conservatives.
All too often, the conservative blogosphere is dominated by two distinct groups: blue blazer and khaki-clad grandsons of the old Northeastern WASP Republican establishment — for whom most blog posts serve as set-ups for “witty” Python references and citations of “God and Man at Yale” — and Southern/Texan cultural conservatives (even if they’re only Southern/Texan in spirit) who fill their bandwidth with rants against coastal liberals, Alinskyites, Chicagoans, RINOs, gun-grabbers, Palin-bashers and otherwise solid conservatives who happen to fall short on one of any number of conservative litmus tests. That’s an over-generalization, of course, but it’s based on a lot of truth. Unfortunately, those conservative voices usually do little more than preach to the choir. It’s always good to get some different perspectives. What’s more, any war effort is aided tremendously by intelligence gleaned from defectors. Ron Radosh, Roger L. Simon and others like them help on both of those counts.
Excellent analysis! The situation in Wisconsin causes me to think of the old trope “Generals always fight the last war.” In this case the public sector union “activists” are not only ignoring the economic realities staring them in the face but using the same tactics that were getting sort of old when John L. Lewis was using them.
The Left are always the ones harping about how they “welcome change.” Well things HAVE changed and they haven’t. I expect the protestors in Madison will soon be breaking out the famous photo of Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen (beaten and bleeding after being attacked by Ford goons in 1937)and attributing it to Governor Walker.
“MSNBC reports that President Obama is no longer meeting with his cabinet members and is instead seeking presidential council elsewhere. Who had his ear? Union boss Richard Trumka said, “I am at the White House a couple of times a week…two, three times a week.”
This was on Rush and Beck….Why is our president meeting with Trumka on a regular basis????? TWO, TREE TIMES A WEEK…WHY???
SOMETHING STINKS IN WASHINGTON AND IS SPILLING OVER INTO WI..OHIO ETC..We need to know the why of this whole thing with Trumka.
Hey, don’t give them ideas! Ron
It is amazing to me that no one has suggested that public unions, if they are allowed to continue to exist, should be legally banned from making any kind of political contribution of any kind as it is a clear CONFLICT OF INTEREST!
Personally, I think the entire notion of public sector unions is a very bad idea! Public sector employees should engage in collective bargaining the same way all other narrow interests are required to do. If they don’t like the wages their elected officials have set for them, defeat them at the ballot box.
Of course, union goons hate the idea as they would have to convince a majority of the voting populace that their pay, benefits and job security, all of which are already better than their private sector counterparts, just isn’t HIGH enough and we all must join forces to elect representatives who are in favor of making their system of spoils one notch better.
I actually know a lot of teachers. Interestingly, they generally have NO IDEA that their benefits are anything special. They think that everyone gets generous pensions, “Cadillac” health AND DENTAL insurance. When I explain that people in private industry have nothing close to this, the response is usually “Really??”
Great article. You did not make the failure so many commentators, on both the left and the right, have made to connect this issue with education. Because while the money and changing the power relationship between unions and politicians is important, the real issue isn’t how much we spend, its what we’re getting for our money. The teachers unions stand in the way of any reform to improve education, from merit hiring, firing, and pay to vouchers and charter schools. The negotiate for rules that ensure that the crisis in American education goes on, then demand more money to solve the crisis. My parents spent enormous sums to keep me out of public school. They were horrified when they sent me one year, and that was it. The fact of the matter today is that teachers come from the very bottom of college GPA distribution, and a majority don’t have the moral backbone not to take advantage of the cushy rules. I can’t really blame them either, its hard to motivate yourself when there is no prospect of gain or fear of loss.
It didn’t have to be this way, but the teachers unions are not backing down, even one iota, in any state. They must be annihilated, for the sake of the children. People may not like the public employees unions, but start pointing out how the unions are hurting their children and the people will be enraged.
I think all of this leftist hullabaloo from the likes of The Nation and the NYT are less about the unions than the fact that the “elite” in academia depend on them.
The famous “coalition of the overeducated and the undereducated” needs that governmental backstop to provide funding to their institutions. The moment people think that free-market educational solutions are better in primary education, they may think twice before spending $50K a year on the cartelized hive-mind known as “academia.”
Ron: You could have ended the article after your first sentence. Liberalism is a mental disorder, end of story. You cannot reason with or take a contrary position with a liberal as they will soon degenerate into calling you a nazi-neanderthal-racist-sexist-greedy-homophobe.
I’m a public sector union employee for NYS. I had my own business for ten years prior to this job. I make three times as much now. And that’s good. In my line of work I met numerous, numerous rich people. I do paralegal work. When I freelanced, I made X and now I make 3X. The people I worked with and for were loaded, like $40 million in their bank accounts; rich arbitrage types. No matter who I work for or who pays me, they will continue to have a monopoly with their line of work.
No one, not you nor I can buy Euro Dollars or any of the other commodities or currencies or paper that the truly wealthy play monopoly with. The Bloombergs and the Bushes and the Kennedys are all the same. I am a registered Conservative in NYS and a life NRA member, but I know damn well that this whole public union busting wave is a Machiavellian project to drive down overall wages. This is not because I am a Marxist. I had my own business for ten years, a corporation, as a matter of fact and I did this myself. I outsourced. I drove down wages to my subcontractors.
Might does in the case of my paycheck make right. Most of the people I know and hear on the radio and read daily on various websites who hate unions are not in them. They are either wealthy themselves, retired and living on the largess or some golden parachute or incapable of getting high paying work, and thus jealous. I cannot think of one reason why teachers, who deal with the mealy mouthed offspring of parent who refuse to read to their children growing up, and I say “parent” intentionally, and who get cursed at and then held liable for the failure of these kids to become Japanese or Chinese should not be paid well. Their situation is impossible, and if the taxpayers want to force them out of the job and put someone in who will work for half as much they’ll get just what they pay for. The same is true of the police, who nowadays are generally respectful, well rested, and much better educated than ever.
I wonder how many union haters live in fire districts with all volunteer fire departments? Ask yourself that question. Of course there is severe abuse and corruption with many if not all public sector unions. But it is certainly no worse than the corruption in Congress, the White House and most of our large corporations. Unions are being singled out because it is unprecedented in modern history that working people, who collect trash, catch burglars and teach kids make a nice living, and somehow, the Bloombergs and the rest of the billionaires have some kind of compulsion to stop it now. State budgets can be balanced going forward with reasonable cuts and changes without the need to cremate the right to collective bargaining.
Anyone over 50 probably remembers the quality of police and other public sector employees back when these were jobs of last resort versus jobs with good pay. I’m prejudiced, of course, because my paycheck is on the line but nonetheless, I feel that we’re being beat on just because the stock brokers and their ilk broke the system trading worthless paper for the last 20 years. I feel like this is just scapegoating.
Rick, NYS
Something about this guy’s story sounds like a fraud to me. Anyone else think this is just some troll taking us for a ride?
…”Of course there is severe abuse and corruption with many if not all public sector unions. But it is certainly no worse than the corruption in Congress, the White House and most of our large corporations…”
Good theory Rick, but will it survive practice? And no, I don’t live in an all vol fire district in Sun City AZ. Neither do I believe your bio. In fact I think its a cannard for pushing a position nobody who reads here would buy into – not necessarily in a million years – but for anyone with an institutional memory on the subject that drifts back for more than thirty years.
Why do I say this as a son of a son of a trade unionist? Because if Lane Kirkland was alive today he would ring your neck & set you straight.
I don’t know if Walker really has the stones to carry through the #$%tstorm he has unleashed, but I do know this. He’s righteous. Because Trade Unionism is dead in America. It’s death is less about globalism or anachranism or any ism other than this; liberalism.
And Ron Radash has nailed it with this post. One of the best articles he’s ever put on PJ. Thank You Ron.
When I was 5, and Kennedy was shot, on my fifth birthday, and I was living in my parents home, in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio, my father was a non-union worker, living in a home he bought that year with the first mortgage any member of his family EVER purchased, a linage that went back to around the Jackson administration. About half of our street (some 20 families) were either teamsters or fitters or even then communication workers, not to mention the majority steel workers. This was a middle class neighborhood by the way, and the only reason we got there was because my mother was in her 6th year working in management at Ohio Bell – she made almost double the old man.
By the time my father got into the fitters, late ’68, he was one of two inductees, and after that, the federal government, in the name of affirmative action and equality, basically took over the local at the root – dictating how and who would be considered for membership into the future. Thank you Bobby Kennedy. Thank you Jimmy Hoffa.
And thus began the slow agonizing death of trade unionism.
Instead of trade unionism being a path to a productive life, almost always moving a family away from working poverty and into the middle class in America, it became subsumbed in the muck of LBJ’s Great Texas Two-Step. All apochraphal and filled with white guilt good intentions. A real toxic stew.
For the next twenty years after my father became a fitter in Cleveland, many many thousands, in compliance with these federal guidelines, would find their way into union membership. With something like five or at best maybe 10 percent ever finding gainful employment. {let that food chain sink in – all the ‘investment $$’ to make all these pretend fitters – the perfect world for chicagoland prez Obama – a la la land of empty and wasteful gov}
The best shot during the 70′s into the 80′s at landing a job and being in that 5% range – GET A JOB AT PARRY NUCLEAR – OR SOME OTHER GOV PROJECT!!!
By the time Reagan fired the PATCO jerk offs – America had invented a new labor movement for it’s industrial needs – TEMP AGENCIES – Manpower proving the most successful.
And the vestiges of what once begat solid middle class families became the vipers nest of public unions – cross-polluted by the very pirates who now claim to be labor leaders like Andy Stern – born as they were from acadmeic departments where the very articles by the very authors Ron Radash quotes made up the lionshare of theorists who cherished the monumental achievements of Trade Unionism while missing the very point of it’s existance after we won the great war.
The essense of Trade Unionism is that it once created value. It made for highly skilled industrial workers. (Who, in turn, helped create highly desired products) It produced a real work ethic – NOT A CULTRE OF GRIEVENCE – be it racism or sexism or homo-whatever-ism. It was real! Not drawn up on a blackboard in college – or worse – an MBA thesis.
We are now living with the consequences of this parasitic rot. While Firefighters and Police can, both proudly and correctly, point to how their ability to serve has become both more proficent and effective, they alone can do so. Overwhelmingly they earn their living and do us proud.
But their exceptional performance is the exception. The flip side is education – and they don’t just ‘cancel’ each other out. For the past thirty years we have been getting what we pay for and expect from the police and fire. For the past thirty we have been getting angrier and angrier at what educrates have been wreaking – thus making it payback time Rick.
And if your thin skin is chafed now? Well move to Norwary buddie, cause it’s gonna get a lot hotter than a few well produced sit ins at a few state capitals. The great subsidy is over. It just so happens that during lean economic times people are fed up and connect ending this subsidy with…restoring fiscal sanity – rightly or wrongly.
Deconstructing public unions into oblivion is surely a movement whose time has arrived.
Look at NY, at Ill, at NJ or Cali. With NJ and NY, and to a lesser degree all up and down the eastern seaborg – you have legacy unionim – taking us back to the last time America wrestled with the degree of corruption we are dealing with today – namely the 1890′s. Then it was the ‘civil service’ – and like today that corruption literally threatened the solvency and the commercial viablility of America.
Then we were an emerging power. Now we are fighting to remain on top.
Cali on the other hand is the perfect post war model – OF HOW NOT TO GOVERN -and how the takeover from within by envioro-wackos can team up with the grievance monsters who controlled public unions. Their brazen abuse of public trust when raping taxpayers is worthy of the endemic cultural corruption that took a short generation in Greece as well.
Our local professor Victor David Hanson has been describing this decent into governmental hades for years now.
In any way, by any measure, Americans know this is a fight we have to have, and yes I said fight. It’s not a debate. It’s a fight. It’s a matter of whether we alow thugs like Trumpka to destroy this country or we rescue it and prevent such a travesty.
In such a fight there is no room for sentimentality. And sentimentality is about the only wepond those are trying to defend the public unions have left. Having already destroyed what little decent remained of unionism, the best they can do is produce shouting lunatics like the fool on TV last night in Wisconsin – screaming FOX LIES as the best substitute for ME ME MINE and screw you and your grandkids.
This is not a winning argument when presented to the American people. And neither, Rick, is yours.
“he Wisconsin voters, having heard Governor Walker campaign on a promise to rein in the public sector unions….”
Really? Did Walker promise to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights (except those unions that supported him in the gubernatorial election)?
JosephLawrenceMatthewDwightBill,
Your talking point has been flatly repudiated by Republicans in Wisconsin.
There were one or two county police associations that supported Republicans. The statewide organization and all of the other counties supported the marsists.
But not to worry, we don’t believe a thing you say anyway.
Joe,
If you dont like the outcome of the election, you need to convince more people to vote your way in the next one…
You see Joe, its called “criminal anarchy mob rule by thugs” to prevent the ELECTED MAJORITY of a legislature from voting in bills when YOUR SIDE LOST THE RECENT ELECTION. Whatever the bill, whatever the issue. The debate was over, you guys lost, better luck next time.
What on earth would you have said, Joe, if the Republicans fled Washington, and the Tea Party gang occupied the Senate and the house, in order to PREVENT VOTING AT ALL on the Heath Care bill when YOUR SIDE won the most recent election that enabled it to come to the floor?
What would you have said? Criminal act? Treason? Trampeling of the democratic process? A dangerous precident? Racism?
We Republicans lost the Election to Obama, and to the Democrats. Their vote on Heath care proceeded. I disagreed with it, but it proceeded as it should have. We had no “right” to lock up the entire process because WE LOST THE ELECTION.
We dealt with the electoral setback to our preferred outcome like AMERICANS, We campaigned to get our people, and ideas to pevail in the NEXT election….
Now its your turn, Joe, to do the same in WI….and how do you guys act?
Like COMMIE THUGS…
Even the left-leaning PolitiFact has debunked this canard, Joey.
Go find another sock to put on your hand and try again.
Let’s be honest. Even if the police and firemen didn’t endorse Walker they belong to a demographic that votes heavily Republican and he knows it. Trying to solve the budget crisis while exempting the highest paid workers because they are his people while going after Democratic constituencies makes this look like a power play. Now if he is following a divide and conquer strategy it makes sense. Time will tell.
No, it’s probably because when there are not police or firefighters on the job, people are very likely to die. How many fatalities are there gonna be because teachers aren’t in the classroom?
Your furious attempt at spin isn’t doing anything more than making yourself dizzy. It’s time to change socks again.
Ya know, I was thinking about it in the shower, and your argument is even worse than it appears on first glance.
If we accept your premise that most police and fire personnel are really Republican, then the unions supporting the Democrat candidate really indicates that the union isn’t paying attention to the members’ political views, and is using their dues payments for purposes that they wouldn’t agree with. This doesn’t exactly put the unions in a positive light, now does it?
On the other hand, if the unions do accurately reflect the political leanings of most of their members, then most of them are Democrats… and therefore, Walker had absolutely nothing partisan to gain from exempting them. All he stood to gain was public safety, a rather altruistic motive, wouldn’t you say?
Either way, your statement actually cuts against your own argument. Better go check with Andy Stern and get some new talking points… this one hurts your cause rather than helps it.
Sorry to re-post most of this again, but it bears mention, again.
The left is simply evil. They are “socialist wannabees” only because every corrupt regime has its elitest insiders, with perks to stoke their greed and a cuccoon of smugness to stoke their ego. Thats where they see themselves, on the inside.
With Teachers Unions, Its never about the children….
In previous local strikes, (yes, ours strike almost evey contract year) our local Bucks County PA Teacher Union Bosses said the following:
“I dont represent the children, I represent the teachers…when the kids start paying union dues, then I’ll represent their concerns”
Of course, in the recent “contract negotioations” the Union order was to:
1) Take down all artwork, posters and projects in the K-8 halls and classrooms, because its “extra, beyond contract” work. Stripped the walls bare to “show just how much extra they do”
Yes, but to WHOM, Dear Leader? The parents are at work everyday, you are upsetting THE CHILDREN with this!
2) No letters of recomendation for any student (unless their parents worked for the district), because that was also “not a contract obligation”.
Wonderful. Negatively effect the college aspirations of children, but only the NON-connected slobs that pay your salary
3) Skip parent the teacher conferences, and back to school night, because they dont get “paid” to be there. Great, so why again was I there?
4) Issue “reading homework” to 5th graders that include a story about a poor $25,000 a year assistant teacher, dismissed for budget reasons, and how the kids rally together to convince The Board to get her re-hired. Complete with the study questions: “Should teachers today be paid more or less? Why?” and “How does underfunding education hurt YOU? Explain”
This, in a district where the AVERAGE teachers salary is $100,000. No contributions to health care or pensions. Plus a 401k plan that, when the market turns down (like in 2000 and today) they have the NERVE to ask for a “cash enhancement” to make it “whole” again. They ALL chose the “high risk, high potential growth fund” option, yet ask US to pay them back when the risk didnt pan out in their favor.
Other past gems from the Union President oncerning over taxed seniors struggling to keep their homes before the housing bubble burst:
“They are sitting on a ton of equity that, quite frankly, is due in large part to the quality and reputation of the local schools…people know this is a very desirable place to re-locate to….they could easily get a home equity line of credit at affordable rates to meet their financial obligations”
See? She not only FEELS you should go into debt to pay her salary, she has no problem with SAYING so to the local newspaper.
Or this one, when asked how long the strike could last:
“We know it takes two incomes to live here…one parent or the other is going to have to use sick and vacation days to stay home with the kids, so I think we can outlast them on that”
Nice concern for the kids, huh?
The most recent noteable quotable is this one:
“Its not the teachers fault the parents cant keep up in the economy, why should we give up our standard of living?”
This, from the BITCH we entrust with our kids.
The Teachers Union…They regularly takes our kids hostage, and demand tribute….
We eventually pay, because WE love our kids…WE dont want them stuck in a depressing, stripped bare classroom full of cold, angry socialists who treat them like dirt, and fuck with their futures whenever contracts are due.
But most of us cant afford to pay for private school AND be forced to support their six-figure ransoms at the same time, so we’re stuck…
They know this, and they rub our faces in it every chance they get.
Pennsbury, Neshaminy, Council Rock, Central Bucks,
Criminals all
I remember that strike five years ago- I was a junior in High School at the time, and Pennsbury has considerably deteriorated since then. The union was utterly shocked when the community didn’t support them, but the Friday before the strike was declared, I joined a large group of students who walked out of school during lunch to protest the decision to strike. What did they think was going to happen?
The best math teacher at the High School resigned in favor of Community College. Every scheduled break, save for Thanksgiving Day and the two days after Christmas, was canceled. The whole thing was nuts, and on net, the teacher’s forfeited about a week’s pay.
Sorry for your troubles at school, you deserve better from the most expensive Education System on the planet…
My son is now enrolled in the Cult Of The Superiority Complex District, known as Council Rock. The arrogance of those people knows no bounds…
We have to provide the following information on our household to the School district every year in order to enroll our son:
Name, age, social security number and LEVEL OF EDUCATION OF EDUCATION ACHIEVED BY EVERY ADULT RESIDING IN OUR HOME.
Like, MY education level…my WIFES education Level….Grandma and Grandpa’s education level, should they live there too…The Teachers Union needs to know that, its a REQUIREMENT to enroll my son…
So, if I just happen to do my “Christian Duty” and perhaps take in my brother who got laid off, or a sister involved in a bitter divorce, or whoever I chose into my home for a few months to help them get back on their feet, the school district DEMANDS I INFORM THEM I HAVE ALLOWED ANOTHER PERSON TO STAY IN MY HOME.
Can anyone say “privacy rights?”
Not only do I have to report there mere PRESENCE (which should be none of their fucking business) I also have to report their “EDUCATION LEVEL”….because the Union wants to keep taps on exactly how many “educated professionals” live in the district (working or not!) who can thheoretically “afford” their ever increasing salary and benifits.
The best part is, I was a single unmarried man when I originally purchased my home in the Council Rock School District….Simple “security minded” thinking dictates you do NOT inform people you live ALONE.
I asked the School administation where do they keep this “Domicile Headcount” information, and who has access to it, because with only ONE name listed for my address at the time, ITS PROBABLY SAFE TO ASSUME THE RESIDENCE WILL BE UNOCCUPIED WEEKDAYS BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9:00 AM TO 5:00 PM, PRESENTING A PERFECT TARGET TO BURGLARIZE BY ANYONE INCLINED TO DO SO IF THEY GET THEIR HANDS ON THAT LIST.
They LAUGHED at me when I said, for privacy and security reasons, and especially since I had NO CHILDREN IN THEIR GOD DAMN SCHOOL at the time, I didnt want to provide the information.
“its required” they said, there is no “opt out” provision …
Provide the information or else “we put a lien on the property”
A lien? A tax? A penalty?
For asking for privacy?
Council Rock Schools…
A Facist Totalitarian Cult of Privilage and Control
“It’s scenes like this in WI that make me realize how fragile our nation is. Why is there so much resistance to self reliance?
The union people are willing to put forth 10 times the effort it would require to provide a self reliant life for themselves.
They want my money to support their life style…I say no. I don’t have insurance, a small savings, that I put away all by myslef. I have worked for 35+ years, now laid off…no one is picking up the pieces for me.
> When did entitlement become a principle to stand on with such venom ? Things have changed all over the world for everyone!! everyone…even the teachers.
If they don’t believe there are hundreds of qualified people out here, that don’t need a union, that would take their places in a minute, they are crazy and floating on dreams of tenure..
I think many of them are being goaded into these demonstrations, and if they are that easily led around…I don’t want them near my children.
“…the great right-wing conspiracy has been so effective, due to its funding by the Koch brothers….”
The Koch brothers? What do they have to do with Wisconsin?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22koch.html?src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB
Basically, what the left thinks and says among each other, but won’t say for attribution, is that if the top tax rate in the final years of World War II under Roosevelt could reach 94 percent on incomes of $200,000 and up, there’s no reason not to go back there, and there’s no reason to believe we’re in an economic crisis until the top tax rates are back up at that level. Where they’re surprised right now is ow tepid the support has been, even from people in private sector unions (which is understandable, since like others, they’re being asked by people who make more money on average than they do to pony up even more taxpayer dollars so they don’t have to take any major hits in their wages, benefits or retirement plans).
“Sooner or later, even the Wisconsin teacher union members will come to understand the new reality.”
That’s either optimism or delusion. I will politely refrain from picking one.
And, proreason, your last sentence is correct. The organization “By Any Means Necessary” isn’t a conservative group.
“No wonder that the teacher union protestors in Madison resort to picket signs that depict their elected governor as Hitler, Mussolini or Mubarak. ”
There is no need to wonder, they are reflecting their own image on others.
They are the ones that are intolerant, undemocratic and dictatorial.
Fleebaggers!
The Big Picture…
1. Public union members are represented twice, once at the bargaining table, and once as voters. Meanwhile, taxpayers only get one man one vote; thus public unions are undemocratic at the outset.
2. The government is already required to follow all OSHA, EPA, etc. workplace regulations; therefore public unions have no reason to exist for any such related potential violations.
3. Government does not exist to make a profit, therefore there are no profits to be shared with workers. The only source of money is taxpayers’ money, which by definition is to be spent sparingly, effectively, and efficiently.
4. The very politicians who are “negotiating” with the public unions are most often the ones who have been financed by those same unions.
5. There is no one at the bargaining table who actually has any stake in decreasing costs; thus the taxpayer has effectively no representation, and “bargaining” is a farce at the outset. There is no realistic way (and certainly no inherently repeatable way) to counteract unions’ ever greedier demands and insatiable appetite for more, especially including promises made for future benefits.
6. Since public unions are formulated on the shakiest of theoretical grounds, their members become wildly reactive when confronted and quickly revert to thuggery, i.e., corruption is intrinsic, endemic, and systemic.
7. If an individual government worker does well, then that person should be rewarded individually. However, productivity is anathema to government bureaucracies as a whole, such that public unions have no supporting productivity data and therefore no related justification to exist as a bargaining entity for any group of employees.
Public unions are unjustifiable on any logical, moral, democratic basis; they should be eliminated and never again allowed to see the light of day.
People, please understand something… it is very late in the day to try to save our Republic. The left consists of total lawlessness and immorality; there is no way to reason with their pursuit of raw power, and any attempt to compromise simply means that the rest of us lose again, only at a slower pace. We have very few options open. Where we have any political advantage such as Wisconsin, we need to push it to the limit (so far, I believe the governor has been reticent, and much more could be done by him and the state legislature). Where we don’t have such an advantage, we must now use tools of organized civil disobedience (e.g., withhold payment into an escrow account of taxes going to schools), nullification (ignore any court order from any judge who interprets a “living Constitution”), and if necessary, secession at the state level. No more playing defense… we need a vast right-wing organized strategy and tactics of offense, and we need it now!
Yes.
Times two.
Your post could be a charter for the Tea Party.
Excellent. I’d like to know WHY the public service unions should exist. I don’t see any reason for them and I see a LOT of reasons why they shouldn’t be legally allowed.
First, dispense with the old turn-of-the-century image of unions as allied with the hapless, helpless exploited worker, rapaciously devoured by the Greedy Big Boss. That’s over. Government regulations took care of exploitation, wages, safety, discrimination and so on. So then what happened?
Well, the unions realized that they had a great business scam going on. The unions produced no products or services. Nothing. They took no risks at developing and selling competitive products. Nothing. Instead, they became parasites. They lived off UNION DUES. These public unions take in millions every year. Millions. They pay their executive high salaries.
Remember – they’ve got no overhead, no factories to build or maintain, no equipment to purchase of maintain, nothing to sell. They just – take the worker’s dues. Millions every year. Heh. In return, they promise ‘protection’. Like a GodFather Mafia Boss. Heh.
Second, the unions began to demand more and more and more. Higher wages…because then, the unions got higher dues.
Oh, and what did they do with those dues? They corrupted the politicians. Unions do buy things; they buy politicians. In return, they get the OK to demand higher and higher salaries.
Result? The private unions drove private industry out of America and overseas.
Then the unions, whose only interest is in MONEY – moved into the public sector. And here, they have triumphed. Because the employer that they leech off – is the taxpayer. The unions hold the taxpayer hostage in their demands for more and more and more.
They’ve created an elite Employment – a special set of employees with wages, benefits and pensions far, far out of reach of the private sector. But this sector pays for it all!
As others have noted – the taxpayer isn’t even allowed to come to the bargaining table! To declare that the unions are needed for ‘collective bargaining’ is nonsense. After all, what we have now at this bargaining table are two taxpayer funded agents: the union and the government. The former wants more MONEY via dues; the latter wants more MONEY from the union to purchase its re-election campaign. The taxpayer who funds both – is missing from the table. And is never, ever, asked if he can afford these constant, relentless increases. As the union executive said (outlined above)..the elderly can take out a line of credit or mortgage their home – to pay for the union/public service demands.
There is no need for a public service union. There is no need for collective bargaining in the public service. The very existence of such a union, parasitic on the workers and the taxpayer, is an outrageous affront to the rights of the people of America.
Perfect…
Clear, honest, fair, accurate and rational…
So it will be completely dismissed by the Unions and MSN and their leftie bumber sticker mentality with a simple:
“mean people suck”
Because their side is too unintelligent to discuss the complexity of the issues like adults.
I too hate how teachers, firefighters and policemen are holding our feet over the fire for 50K a year and a pension for a lifetime of service. I mean, it’s not like the provide any services for us..oh, wait. And teachers? If we pay them next to nothing, like we are now, our kids won’t have the critical thinking skills to realize they are getting the raw end of the stick. And those immoral unions you are talking about got us the 40 hour work weeks, payed vacation, workplace safety, etc etc.
While you’re complaining about unions, two-thirds of corporations in Wisconsin don’t pay taxes. Meanwhile, according to Citizens United, they are “people” that can support political candidates, so why aren’t they paying taxes? Oh, right they have to create jobs… that they aren’t creating.
And as for unions being “unjustifiable on any… democratic basis”, I’m pretty sure the right to assembly is in the Constitution.
My question is; Where is the pathetic President of the United States when there is an earthquake in a friendly country, and a murderous dictator in another country, killing his own people, because he doesn’t like their demonstrations?
Why, he’s in the “war room” planning his assault on the government of the state of Wisconsin, of course.
What a man!
The United States doesn’t mean squat to this bum.
Striking, isn’t it?
The union rank and file may “come to understand the new reality”, the union leaders never will. If the public unions were completely eliminated, and that should be the goal, the union leaders will continue frothing at the mouth about their “civil rights” for decades.
The Right is left to clean up this financial mess. However, you can count on us to not use a “socialist mop”. I don’t mind doing it, but I sure don’t want the Left to do a lot of… whining, protesting, screeching, tantrum-throwing, name-calling, and other forms of incivility.
Actually, on second thought, I hope they keep it up. The more folks see them revealed for what they are, the more disgusted the folks become. Independents are moving rightward in droves.
“The Right is left to clean up this financial mess.”
Oh, you mean the mess that the Right caused? It is strange to me how easily convinced the Right is that the Left is to blame for the deregulation, tax cuts to the rich, wars that can’t be payed for, etc…
The bottom line is, historically, when the rich is taxed at higher levels than they are now, the economy booms. As soon as Reagan cut taxes, the income inequality grew and the middle class disappeared.
It ain’t just Wisconsin… and it ain’t just Indiana… it’s in the opening stages to Idaho as well.
The Idaho “Superintendent of Public Instruction” has had his mother visited and his truck vandalized, as well as a public confrontation in a coffee shop.
His proposed changes–which are in the state senate and probably gonna pass, because the Idaho legislature is very heavily Republican–are very similar to Wisconsin’s.
(Please forgive the self-referential link… I don’t do it very often.)
Excellent article. You know these people extremely well. I bet you are as weary of them as I am. Columnists wearing blinders and recycling Marxist pablum for the gazillionth time are so boring.
The Real Reason the Left Wants Public Employees to be Unionized
By: didjaknowthis
If you don’t want to hear the truth, don’t click here.
The truth is the greatest enemy to many people. I’ll back this up with anecdotal story about who are hired to be teachers in some places, but bottom line is the reason that they want to unionize public employees is… (sigh) How can I say this? That’s how you get around having to hire good people, and it’s how you get around not having to get rid of failing or underperforming people, ’cause it’s not about hiring the best. It’s about strength in numbers and loyalty to the Democratic Party.
Unionizing teachers, unionizing state employees is not about better teachers. It’s not about better employees. It’s about more power for the Democrat Party. It’s about institutionalized Democrat Party membership as state and federal workers and employees. How could you get them more loyal to the government than to make ‘em union members? That’s all that’s going on here.
Why would governments want to unionize state workers, why would people that work in a state want to be unionized? I can remember my whole life, since I was in grade school, junior high particularly is when I first started being cognizant of the whole notion of we need to pay our teachers better to attract better teachers. And in fact my father was involved in efforts to pay teachers more in our little town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I remember I had a junior high history teacher. What was her name, David? That’s right, Kathryn Sackman. She was short. Well, when I was in junior high everybody looked 80. I’m sure she wasn’t 80. She had this unique way of speaking, but she was a good teacher, and she loved my dad. I got good grades. She loved my dad because my dad was very vocal in teacher’s salaries needing to be raised. He was involved in the community in his own ways, and so I was always cognizant.
As I’ve grown older I’ve heard all the arguments, how come we pay idiots like athletes all that money and teachers who are “incredibly more important, Mr. Limbaugh, you must agree with this,” they say, so little? And that involved detailed explanations of how capitalism works, capital formation and all that. But now this argument, you know, many, many moons hence my junior high school days, we gotta pay our teachers more if we’re gonna attract better teachers. Now, as we have learned, look at what teachers are making in Wisconsin, in some places teachers are now paid enough money where a lot of businesspeople would like to teach. There are some businesspeople who have retired and who have applied to be teachers in public schools and they’re most always turned down, they can’t be hired. There’s hardly any way a school will hire them because they don’t have education majors; they don’t have a certificate; they didn’t go to school to be teachers. Even though they spent a lifetime doing something in business, they still can’t be hired to teach that. But I think the whole notion of wanting better schools is something that we could challenge the left on.
Look at Obama himself. There was this brilliant voucher program going on in Washington. If you go to poor neighborhoods, inner city neighborhoods, you talk to responsible parents in those neighbors and they will tell you the thing they want most is their kids out of those schools and into better schools. They know that education is the ticket out for their kids. So they set up this great voucher program that allowed poor inner city kids to go to great private schools. And Obama canceled the plan. One of his first acts as president was to cancel it, just let it die. After its current funding perspired, he just let it die, and this was because he had to be loyal to the NEA. He had to be loyal to inferior schools because that’s where the working strike force is, the unionized teachers, they’re Democrats, they vote Democrat. Certainly most of them do. Certainly the leadership of these unions spends money on Democrat reelection campaigns.
So the whole notion of wanting better schools and wanting better teachers is not the objective. What is wanted is more power for the union. It’s not about better teachers. That’s why they unionize as many public employees as possible. You in effect are paying them to be Democrats. You are paying them to be loyal campaign workers. It is not an accident that since Obama’s regime took office that there have been an additional 200,000 federal workers hired in various federal unions. It’s not an accident. So it’s not about being the best, it’s not about finding better teachers, it’s not even about paying them more. I take that back. It is about paying them more to keep them there. But it’s about loyalty to the Democrat Party, pure and simple. Rush, ALWAYS RIGHT about the LEFT!!!!!
Who is he meeting?
Emerging from his favorite couch potato spot for Nick at Nite, Mark announces to all, “Never fear — Penn is here!”
The Unions are the real Robber Barons. Their outrage is that the gravy train is slowing down. The private sector long ago had to deal with the fact that the world is a very much smaller place than it was 40 years ago.
Jobs go where labor is cheapest. Consumers are very attuned and adept at finding the best value. To compete with the world (China, Poland, India, South Africa, Japan, Brazil…) we have to be more flexible and smarter in all the work we do. Unions want high pay no matter what level of productivity their people display. I’m sure every union member in Wisconsin has consumer goods made outside the US. Is it because the Koch brothers forced them to buy them? Of course not, they got them because they weighed the purchase and found them to be the best value for their family. Every other consumer does the same thing.
The market place is driven not by some cabal of corporate overlords somewhere, but by billions of consumers around the world making billions of individual decisions every day about what they will buy. There are plenty of laws to protect workers safety, work hours, etc. Thankfully Wisconsin has made a start at removing laws that force us all to pay more for work from a privileged few.
Whenever you have a society that is fundamentally separated along ideology and then a new reality requires power to be wrested from the one and transferred to the other, you’ve got a tinderbox that is ready to explode.
We should be very much aware that we are close to a violent tipping point with the left. There is already a story out of a NH Democrat who is advocating bloodletting.
The left has its own set of facts that feed their own set of beliefs. Please pray for peace in America.
Well Scott Brooks you can let the unions keep getting pretty much what the want. That means fewer jobs for everybody, our big time union bosses are already setting up unions over seas to make up for your lost revenue. The union bosses could care less about my family, me or you. Or they would not be over seas organizing unions over there to take your job from you. Wall Street had and has nothing to do with this crash, it was our lovely politicians that set up the crisis that we are in. 90% were the people you gave your union dues to!
Rick NYS is not making up a story. The rise of unions improved conditions throughout the country from end of child labor to safety on the job. Individuals were at a distinct disadvantage against corporations without collective bargaining. Once the Madison unions agreed to Walker’s proposal regarding benefits he could have accepted it and argued his tough line had brought them to the table. But he made it clear his purpose was to end collective bargaining rights for benefits. That is not a deficit first approach. That doesn’t mean that some of the proposals such as having the union dues collected by the union not the state are unreasonable; nor is it unreasonable to end the PAC system but that should end too for business. Neither corporations nor unions are individuals with free speech rights in reality despite the legal somersaults that have been made to assert they are. Yes some unions are bad and some are good; same with businesses and corporations. But collective bargaining is good for working people and has helped increase the middle class. The Left has been hypocritical on the civility issue, to wit, the Walker-Hitler (as previously the Bush-Hitler) comparison while bemoaning a phony connection between conservatives and the crazed Tucson shooter. But if the issue is deficits, sit down now with the unions, Governor Walker, and if you think they are bluffing, call their bluff. Let’s get to the deficits and subordinate the ideological war to economic needs. Meanwhile, it’s time for conservatives to refocus on foreign affairs where the Obama administration is depleting national security-START will give Russia nuclear superiority; our non modernized Navy will make China close the gap faster; slow down of missile defense will leave our carriers vulnerable to Chinese sinking, our strategic backyard in Latin America is falling, we are in danger of losing access to space and the world’s choke points are in danger from the Mediterranean to the Panama Canal. btw large military investment and space and nuclear weapons investment will have positive economic effects ala WW II pulling us out of the depression. It’s a win win in the long run and the Left isn’t going to do it; will the Right revert to isolationism or get going before US power and our nation’s security in a world no longer protected easily by two oceans is dangerously diminished?
People think I’m a fake? A troll? Sorry, not web wise so I’m not sure what a troll is. I’d love to give my last name and address, but I’m sure it would somehow affect my job with the court system. I’m assuming perhaps incorrectly that I made at least some compelling argument since I’ve been called a fake. The truth is, I was a shop steward in Laborer’s Local 32 in NYC before I got involved in paralegal work. I had my own agency for 10 years, from ’89 to ’99 and then I passed the test to work the state court system. I am a member if CSEA.
Why would I make up stuff? Do the other writers really believe someone in a union cannot make a cogent argument or that someone in a union cannot have private sector experience? The fact is, I graduated from SUNY Buffalo State College in ’86 with a degree in communications. I am who I say I am. And if you guys shut down my union, I’ll come up stronger in a few years, and then the people who still have no money will complain about whatever line of work I am then engaged in. It’s sour grapes. My experience is that most bloggers are not doers. Doers are busy doing, which is what I’m going to get back to doing.
Rick.
PS, the public sector unions are chock full of people with advanced degrees who are smart enough not to get told that they A. do not need a union and B. should be happy to work for less. I personally know a cop in Norwalk Ct. who has a law degree, several unionized teachers who have medical degrees and almost everyone in this courthouse has an advanced degree, including the clerical personnel. We apparently had the wherewithal to figure out that the fat cats were making it impossible to make a living in this country, and we saw our opportunity to make one ourselves. The rest of you can move to right to work states and be greeters at Wall Mart.
Once again, I reiterate, I am quite conservative. Unions have been part of America for over 100 years. They are a traditional political institution. Be traditional, start a union.