The Wisconsin Cheese Showdown

[opebo]

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.

One would also hope you are fired soon for 'making too much money', Torie. Or even better, jailed.

[opebo]

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.

[opebo]

I have already done jail Opebo, and for some reason the sheriffs did not get the good news that I was an owner lawyer, who probably should have been just let go immediately, or at a minimum, well say, be treated like something other than human vermin for starters, since as you say, these guys are really working for me. Is that any way to treat your boss?

And I am doing my best about "making too much money" by moving my life style closer to yours, and am making quite amazing progress actually. Obama suddenly cares a heck of a lot more for me now, and I can just feel the love beaming towards me all the way from DC. So at least give me an "A" for effort Opebo.

Just pointing out your hypocrisy, T.  Nothing wrong with being a hypocrit, any more than being a crossdresser, but you can't expect people to pretend your not standing there in a tu-tu and a tiara.

[opebo]

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

Mostly because there's no money to pay them.

So raise taxes.

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.

No, you are lazier and less useful than them, but you are not fired. (see how fun subjective judgements can be?)

[opebo]

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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.  

Dude, the economy in which you dwell has already collapsed from underpaying of nearly everyone, and yet you continue to chase the same destructive policy choices.  I'm sure you'll still be rich, but certainly less so for this neo-liberal nonsense.

[opebo]

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

Torie, your entire society is being eaten alive by the owners, not by these petty individuals.  You're barking up the wrong tree, falling for a scapegoat intended for your social inferiors.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[opebo]

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.

No, you've got that backwards - the rich exact their privileges from a gencide upon the poor.  Even if one prefers to be an exploiter (who wouldn't?), the whole system rests upon the back of the tortured worker, so he is absolutely necessary, and hence 'valuable'.  Happily 'poor people spring up out of the ground like mushrooms', as the old Thai saying goes, and so there are always more to use.  But there's the rub - they are useful, something a rich person by definition cannot be.

[opebo]

Not fired for making too much money... fired for skipping out on their jobs.  Did you really need to resort to a strawman argument to attempt to prove a point?

They're striking, Inks.

[opebo]

Freedom fighters!

[opebo]

Apparently some people are pinning for the good ol' days of the Gilded Age. You know, before this socialist scumbag FDR allowed the unwashed masses to obtain rights and privileges.

I really can't stop laughing at the idiocy of this statement.

You mean because inequality is already worse than in the Gilded Age?

[opebo]

Your over-the-top socialist propaganda makes no sense.  There is no genocide on the poor.  That is, unless in socialist doublespeak, genocide means ever-increasing life expectancy and living standards.

Their lives are used up to pay for the privileges of their owners, cinyc.  They're only killed immediately if they get out of line.

And how can you see no difference between a government that takes money from its citizens at gunpoint and a the private sector, which only takes money from those willing to spend it?

Private property is enforced at gunpoint, kinyc, with all the prisons to back it up.

The day of reckoning has arrived.  Those who pay the bloated salaries and pensions of public sector employees are sick and tired of it.  That's what Wisconsin voters said in 2010.  The governor is doing the work of the people who voted for him.

Of course, but the point is that those people are know-nothing dupes.

[opebo]

Your over-the-top socialist propaganda makes no sense.  There is no genocide on the poor.  That is, unless in socialist doublespeak, genocide means ever-increasing life expectancy and living standards.

Anyway its only because of unions and government redistribution that there have been, in the past, some increases in life expectancy and living standards.

[opebo]

Did you know the teachers that are striking, calling in sick, whatever, make no contribution to their health or pension plans, zero?  Did you know that what is being proposed is that they pay for 12.5% of their health insurance premiums, and contribute something like 5% of their salary or something to their pension plan?  That is their pay cut. Oh the horror, the horror. Anyone in private industry getting that deal would have an orgasm.

Everyone in private industry should get that deal. It should be mandated for them by law.

[opebo]

The idea that we only pay the salaries of public employees, but that those of private employees are no concern of ours or are not in any way borne by us is quite mind bogglingly illogical to me, quite frankly.

Why is it any concern of yours again as to what some private client of mine and I agree will be my billing rate?  Why is it any concern of yours, or the public, whether we agree on $250 an hour, or $500 an hour?  And why is it any concern of yours whether I make 200K per year, or 600K, if all paid by private clients?

Because they're not 'private' at all, Torie.  The public/private dichotomy is an utterly false one.   You are being paid many times what teachers are paid because they State mandates that you be paid more, and empowers your clients to be aristocrats controlling segments of the economy.  This is all absolute State control, its just masquerading as a 'market'.

[opebo]

... I really don't see why do people that spend workdays picking their noses and surfing the interwebz need to unionize anyway.

The rich aren't unionized, fellows; as you point out they don't need to be.  We're discussing public servants here.

[opebo]

wow, the Dems are forcing a losing hand.  here's to hoping they keep upping the ante

Its far from certain it is a losing hand, jmfcst.  People are rapidly getting poorer, so leftism may have its day.

[opebo]

... calling in sick when you're not really sick is unnacceptable.  If I did that 3 days in a row and didn't bring in a doctor's note, I'd be fired.

That's terrible.  Where do you work, you poor man?  Some warehouse dock?

At my work I frequently leave for days at a time without telling anyone.  Just show up when I have classes or a meeting. 

[opebo]

... I really don't see why do people that spend workdays picking their noses and surfing the interwebz need to unionize anyway.

The rich aren't unionized, fellows; as you point out they don't need to be.  We're discussing public servants here.

How about major league baseball players?

Or movie stars.

Or "fire fighters aka 90% of the time paramedic parasites" in all too many zip codes in CA. Making 300K-600K is "rich" isn't it?

In the first place, your just repeating fictions, but regardless, only if your income is sourced from owning are you a rich, Torie.

[opebo]

Food service department at a historical attraction.

So how do you survive?  And don't you find your poverty would tend to serve as an argument near-at-hand in favor of unions?