The Wisconsin Cheese Showdown

[Iosif]

The protesters in Madison are of course heroes, and I hope that they inspire similar protests in other cities.

I hope it inspires the issuance of pink slips to them, myself. Different strokes for different folks.

As do I.

So why should these people be fired for making too much, SS?  You make more than them and are not fired.

They're public employees, lazy as sh!t and don't know anything.

Whereas someone who spends his workdays on an obscure internet chat forum is clearly a productive, valuable member of the workforce.

237 days, 1 hours and 5 minutes online - I'd imagine that be at least triple if you had the good fortune to laze about in a cushy public sector job.

[Landslide Lyndon]

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Ah, divide and conquer. I had not thought of that. Yes, that tactic should be added to the arsenal. Anything to take the public employee unions down is just doing the Lord's work. I really hope the Dems keep doing the public employees bidding - and makes that their signature issue. That should erode them down to their hardcore base - nicely.  

Torie, you disappoint me and I'm not joking. I expected that kind of attitude from a teenage Ron Paul fan who dreams libertarian utopias, not somebody that actually inhabits the real world.

I am hardcore right wing on public employee unions. As Michael Barone wrote, they are cannibals eating us alive. They in general are grossly overpaid, and massively over-pensioned, and as I say, in some arenas, like firefighters, grossly overstaffed. Why should states and cities go broke over that, and why should folks who make less money than they do pay more taxes so that they can be paid way above market?  It's Robin Hood in reverse!

So, I make no apologies on this one. They need a good swiving, and they need it now.

That might be true in states like California, New York and Illinois. But Wisconsin from what I know was always a good government state that faced little if any problems from its public workers and their unions. Wishing their destruction just because you hate your own state's unions is juvenile behavior and shows a level of prejudice that is quite disturbing.

On the bright side, at least you admit that Walker's actions have nothing to do with balancing the budget and fiscal conservatism. He just wants to punish people who opposed his election.

[opebo]

Whereas someone who spends his workdays on an obscure internet chat forum is clearly a productive, valuable member of the workforce.

237 days, 1 hours and 5 minutes online - I'd imagine that be at least triple if you had the good fortune to laze about in a cushy public sector job.

Does Spade even 'work'?  I thought he just lived off the rich family.

[Torie]

Public employees in Wisconsin aren't overpaid and over-pensioned and overstaffed eh?  I must congratulate Wisconsin on its good governance, then. That makes the Cheesehead state one of the the all too few jewels in the US states crown.

Yes, Pubbies are disgusting regarding the firefighters union (aka in CA the paramedic parasites about 90% of the time now - fires are just so yesterday (no, these guys never go into the hills to fight fires; those kids are way underpaid actually)).

[opebo]

Public employees in Wisconsin aren't overpaid and over-pensioned and overstaffed eh?  I must congratulate Wisconsin on its good governance, then. That makes the Cheesehead state one of the the all too few jewels in the US states crown.

Do you really think anyone hired at your non-union dream wage (what is it now in the US?  Most workers get around $12-14 an hour at best) would bother to fight a fire?  If it were me I'd just sit on the side-walk below and vaugely shoot some water up at it from safety.  Why bother for the owner of the building if you can just walk down the street and work at any other of the myriad of below-subsistence jobs which abound in the capitalist system?

[memphis]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

[opebo]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Precisely - it is capitalism which is mal-distributing, not this tiny corner of unionized employment.

[Torie]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those. How much is the compensation of the teachers being cut in Wisconsin, and from what to what? If it were me, my goal would be to cut, and put all the savings into merit pay. I actually do want to spend more on secondary education, particularly in the inner cities, but that requires first cleaning out a lot of the existing detritus.  JMO of course.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those.

I have four letters for you: T A R P.

[opebo]

Taxpayers don't pay those. How much is the compensation of the teachers being cut in Wisconsin, and from what to what? If it were me, my goal would be to cut, and put all the savings into merit pay. I actually do want to spend more on secondary education, particularly in the inner cities, but that requires first cleaning out a lot of the existing detritus.  JMO of course.

Why not clean out the detritus of your class, on which society wastes an enormously greater amount of money?

[Torie]

Taxpayers don't pay those. How much is the compensation of the teachers being cut in Wisconsin, and from what to what? If it were me, my goal would be to cut, and put all the savings into merit pay. I actually do want to spend more on secondary education, particularly in the inner cities, but that requires first cleaning out a lot of the existing detritus.  JMO of course.

Why not clean out the detritus of your class, on which society wastes an enormously greater amount of money?

I am counting on you to do that for me, Opebo. I'm just to busy right now. Get to work! Oh time for my gym training session I see. I wonder how my trainer will make me sweat today (he so enjoys that). See ya later.

[opebo]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those.

I have four letters for you: T A R P.

In point of fact the real 'taxpayers' - the working class - pay all the bankers salaries, and all Torie's privilege.  They pay for it all, and the government/private dichotomy is an obviously false one.

[tpfkaw]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those.

I have four letters for you: T A R P.

...which had nothing to do with hedge fund managers?  Of course, it's not really new that you're an incredibly intelligent person.

[Torie]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those.

I have four letters for you: T A R P.

TARP was great except for one little thing - all of the shareholders of those failed institutions were not zeroed out. The government should have ended up owning them all. Bye.

[opebo]

Why not clean out the detritus of your class, on which society wastes an enormously greater amount of money?

I am counting on you to do that for me, Opebo. I'm just to busy right now. Get to work!

Can't be done.  But one can admit that these poors who slog through the day teaching and fighting fires aren't the problem.   Scapegoating is so unseemly, and really beneath you.  You aren't goading a mob of fascists against the Jews, you're just chat chatting on an internet forum with other outlet-less intellectuals.

[Redalgo]

Some of the protest rhetoric has been inappropriate and I do not know enough about the salaries and benefits public workers in Wisconsin currently receive to have a strong opinion about whether they ought to make big concessions, but what I do have a strong opinion about is workers having the ability to collectively bargain. If Gov. Walker and has party insists on continuing down this path the Democrats will need to make a point of repairing the damage once they retake the legislature.

[Smash255]

The fact that the Police and Firefighters Unions are not included in this is problematic.  Walker could save the same amount of $$$ and reduce the cutbacks to the teachers unions and others if all Unions were involved in the cutbacks and not just those who opposed Walker's candidacy.

[Insula Dei]

I never got why the right deems it necessary to dmeonize public sector workers. Not only is it bad politics (most people will know at least one public sector worker and have a reasonable chance to find out how the 'overpaid and overpensioned' thing is BS), it's also actively  going after the most valuable part of society, the very people we rely on every day and who are in fact ridiculously underpaid when compared to the private sector. I also find it repulsive on a personal level, as almost my entire direct family consists from teachers and othe public sector workers.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I hope that nobody will faint with surprise.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php

Wisconsin's new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker's collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.

The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures -- service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money -- rolling back worker's bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker's doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.

Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state's fiscal bureau -- the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office -- concluded that Wisconsin isn't even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.

"Walker was not forced into a budget repair bill by circumstances beyond he control," says Jack Norman, research director at the Institute for Wisconsin Future -- a public interest think tank. "He wanted a budget repair bill and forced it by pushing through tax cuts... so he could rush through these other changes."

[krazen1211]

Some of the protest rhetoric has been inappropriate and I do not know enough about the salaries and benefits public workers in Wisconsin currently receive to have a strong opinion about whether they ought to make big concessions, but what I do have a strong opinion about is workers having the ability to collectively bargain. If Gov. Walker and has party insists on continuing down this path the Democrats will need to make a point of repairing the damage once they retake the legislature.

Some of the best states in the nation, such as virginia, have public sector collective bargaining bans or restrictions.

[Torie]

We still don't know what they are making, and maybe dealing with collective bargaining rights is just the foreplay before the budget cuts, which would be facilitated. Or maybe Walker just hates public employee unions in the abstract, when really the thing is to make them ineffectual - to wit, unable to raise wages above market. So is Walker a smart or a dumb? To be, or not to be?

[Landslide Lyndon]

We still don't know what they are making, and maybe dealing with collective bargaining rights is just the foreplay before the budget cuts, which would be facilitated. Or maybe Walker just hates public employee unions in the abstract, when really the thing is to make them ineffectual - to wit, unable to raise wages above market. So is Walker a smart or a dumb? To be, or not to be?

According to Franzl he is an idiot. I think I'll trust him on that.

[krazen1211]

I never got why the right deems it necessary to dmeonize public sector workers. Not only is it bad politics (most people will know at least one public sector worker and have a reasonable chance to find out how the 'overpaid and overpensioned' thing is BS), it's also actively  going after the most valuable part of society, the very people we rely on every day and who are in fact ridiculously underpaid when compared to the private sector. I also find it repulsive on a personal level, as almost my entire direct family consists from teachers and othe public sector workers.

What sheer nonsense. The most valuable people of society are the private sector who pay taxes into the government, not the people who take money out.

[krazen1211]

The fact that the Police and Firefighters Unions are not included in this is problematic.  Walker could save the same amount of $$$ and reduce the cutbacks to the teachers unions and others if all Unions were involved in the cutbacks and not just those who opposed Walker's candidacy.

It probably should. If the Democrats want to amend the bill, well, they have to come back.

[Brittain33]

Teachers are overpaid all of sudden? What a load! My mom retired in 2005 after 30 years and made about 35k/year. If you want to cherry pick obscene salaries, you probably want to start with hedge fund managers.

Taxpayers don't pay those.

We do allow them to pay income taxes at a 15% rate instead of standard brackets because of a shameful loophole that they've lobbied to keep open. Check it out.