some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

[dcarrigg]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

dc?
whats your take here?

(i gotta git, am in RDU for a wedding and no can blog no mo)

Might be right. I don't see what a U.S. Senator will do about public sector unions, though. That's for the state level ax.

But it doesn't take a Republican or a man to go chopping down public sector unions and benefits like Paul Bunyon. After all, it was a diminutive democratic treasurer just south of the border in true-blue RI who ended public sector pensions and shifted everyone onto 401(k)-style plans.

And the WSJ cheered and the checks from Wall Street flew in at the rate of $200k in a day. Now she's lined up to move up the ranks. We'll see how it all works out in the next election. She'll have more money than everyone else. I'm waiting until the unions figure out her connection with Bain Capital.

Well what was the result? Most of the public thirsted for blood. Her polls were good overall. And most will thirst for more. I think you could fire every single public school teacher in this country and there'd still be a loud group of angry am radio hounds calling for them to be drawn and quartered.

I think that any time public sector workers lose their jobs, or pay, or benefits, there will be a majority that are glad. And there will be a vocal minority that screams for more.

I think it's somewhat foolish for the Chambers of Commerce to put their dogs into this fight too. Because it ends up looking like business actively wants to ruin the lives of teachers and cops. And then the segment of the left that actively hates business grows. In reality, business will not be effected by any of this, except mutual fund managers, who will probably stand to earn about a thousand bucks a year from every schmoe that ends up with a crappy old 401(k).

Immigrants and public sector schmoes are the scapegoats this recession.

And while there is always some truth to the fact that they can be expensive, and truth that some unions and immigrants are criminal, and disgusting anecdotes of taking advantage of the system, they're not at the root cause of this recession.

Those who are the cause are fairly well known. But they never have to face up.

The real questions no one asks are the following:

1) If public sector workers lose pay and benefits and jobs, why do your local and state taxes keep going up?
2) If cutting public sector jobs helps the private sector and is good for the economy, why is it that the economy is not improving?
3) If unions are driving the problem, then why has their total membership decreased and the share of unionized workers stayed flat as problems increased?

But since nobody is asking those questions, we end up with the public crying for blood. Teachers will earn less, be laid off, or leave for other jobs. Then, when the public school rooms have 50 children per teacher, 5 of whom have severe developmental disabilities, these same people will say "public schools suck!" Well of course they do. You voted for them to suck. And what's the NCLB (W. Bush) and the RttT (Obama) solution? More tests. More administrators. More consultants. More middlemen. More empty suits.

Frankly, at this point, public sector unions have not won a good battle in decades. And they cause a target to be painted on the back of every public sector worker. It might be worth renouncing them just to get the political target off of your back.

In fact, if everyone de-levered their cash from the political fight, we'd probably all win. This won't happen while the hate is there.

But it won't leave, will it? Even in un-unionized districts, they call for more and more public sector layoffs. And property taxes go up anyways.

So ask yourself, who benefits?

[c1ue]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Doug Henwood's take seems pretty spot on to me - essentially that the way the labor unions act is more in line with carving out benefits for its members than acting as a voice for labor - and that this behavior isolates the union movement from any chance of being a popular movement.

http://lbo-news.com/2012/06/06/walke...-sugar-coated/

Democrats and labor types are coming up with a lot of excuses for Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin. Not all are worthless. But the excuse-making impulse should be beaten down with heavy sticks.

Yes, money mattered. Enormous amounts of cash poured in, mainly from right-wing tycoons, to support Walker’s effort to snuff public employee unions. While these sorts of tycoons—outside the Wall Street/Fortune 500 establishment—have long been the funding base for right-wing politics, they seem to have grown in wealth, number, consciousness, and mobilization since their days funding the John Birch Society and the Goldwater movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

But lingering too long on the money explanation is too easy. Several issues must be stared down. One is the horrible mistake of channelling a popular uprising into electoral politics. As I wrote almost a year ago (Wisconsin: game over?):

It’s the same damn story over and over. The state AFL-CIO chooses litigation and electoral politics over popular action, which dissolves everything into mush. Meanwhile, the right is vicious, crafty, and uncompromising. Guess who wins that sort of confrontation?

Please prove me wrong someday, you sad American “left.”

At this point, few things would make me happier to say than I’d been proven wrong. But I wasn’t.

There were several things wrong with the electoral strategy (beyond, that is, the weakness of electoral strategies to begin with). Barrett was an extremely weak candidate who’d already once lost to Walker (though by a slightly narrower margin than this time). Potentially stronger candidates like Russ Feingold refused to run, probably out of fear of these results. And the bar was very high for a recall. Only 19 states have recall provisions, and Walker was just the third governor to face one. Well over half of Wisconsin voters think that recalls should be reserved only for misconduct—and less than a third approve of recalls for any reason other than misconduct (Wisconsin recall: Should there be a recall at all?).

Suppose instead that the unions had supported a popular campaign—media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize on the importance of the labor movement to the maintenance of living standards? If they’d made an argument, broadly and repeatedly, that Walker’s agenda was an attack on the wages and benefits of the majority of the population? That it was designed to remove organized opposition to the power of right-wing money in politics? That would have been more fruitful than this major defeat.

It is a defeat. It is not, as that idiot Ed Schultz said on MSNBC last night, an opportunity for regroupment. (Didn’t hear it myself, but it was reported by a reliable source on the Twitter.) Because in the wise and deservedly famous words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” When you don’t, you look like a fool if you’re lucky. More likely, you’ll find your head in a noose.

And as much as it hurts to admit this, labor unions just aren’t very popular. In Gallup’s annual poll on confidence in institutions, unions score close to the bottom of the list, barely above big business and HMOs but behind banks. More Americans—42%—would like to see unions have less influence, and just 25% would like to see them have more. Despite a massive financial crisis and a dismal job market, approval of unions is close to an all-time low in the 75 years Gallup has been asking the question. A major reason for this is that twice as many people (68%) think that unions help mostly their members as think they help the broader population (34%). Amazingly, in Wisconsin, while only about 30% of union members voted for Walker, nearly half of those living in union households but not themselves union members voted for him (Union voters ≠ union households). In other words, apparently union members aren’t even able to convince their spouses that the things are worth all that much.

A major reason for the perception that unions mostly help insiders is that it’s true. Though unions sometimes help out in living wage campaigns, they’re too interested in their own wages and benefits and not the needs of the broader working class. Public sector workers rarely make common cause with the consumers of public services, be they schools, health care, or transit.

Since 2000, unions have given over $700 million to Democrats—$45 million of it this year alone (Labor: Long-Term Contribution Trends). What do they have to show for it? Imagine if they’d spent that sort of money, say, lobbying for single-payer day-in, day-out, everywhere.

So what now? Most labor people, including some fairly radical ones, detest Bob Fitch’s analysis of labor’s torpor. By all means, read his book Solidarity for Sale for the full analysis. But a taste of it can be gotten here, from his interview with Michael Yates of Monthly Review. A choice excerpt:

Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi-autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces, systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast majority who ignore the union as none of their business.

Bob thought that the whole model of American unionism, in which unions were given exclusive rights to bargain over contracts in closed shops, was a major long-term source of weakness. I find it persuasive; many don’t. But whatever you think of that analysis of the past is rapidly becoming irrelevant. Collective bargaining has mostly disappeared in the private sector, and now looks doomed in the public sector. There are something like 23 states with Republican governors and legislative majorities ready to imitate Walker who will be emboldened by his victory. And there are a lot of Dems ready to do a Walker Lite. If they don’t disappear, public sector unions will soon become powerless.

That means that if unions ever want to turn things around—and I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that we’ll never have a better society without a reborn labor movement—they have to learn to operate in this new reality. Which means learning to act politically, to agitate on behalf of the entire working class and not just a privileged subset with membership cards.

[photon555]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Somehow people have been led to believe that more money equals better education. What we really need is dedicated teachers and much fewer administrators, etc. When the budget cuts come down from on high it is all too often the teachers, police patrol officers, and firemen that are cut, not the over-staffed and overpaid administrative and executive positions. As the level of spending on education has relentlessly increased, the quality of that education has fallen. If you want a first-hand account of what makes for good education read "The Thread That Runs So True" by Jesse Stuart. The answer isn't money or political influence or power. It's dedication on the part of teachers and discipline on the part of students. You need both for true education to happen.

[Master Shake]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Interesting. When those on the left talk about government workers it's teachers, cops, and firemen. For those on the right, it's surly DMV workers, unresponsive, unproductive government bureaucrats, and lazy city maintenance workers, you know, where they need six men to watch the one guy take all day to fix a pot hole. Of course, when it comes time to cut, the Dems go straight for the teachers, cops, and firemen, and leave the second assistant adminsitrator to the vice adminstrator in charge of putting things on top of other things alone, along with all the other surly bureaucrats and lazy, can't-be-fired-unless-they-shoot-heroin-right-in-front-of-the-boss AFSCME bums.

Want to make school perform better? You don't need unions. Instead, bring back reform schools and Special Ed classes for the unruly, disturbed, and just plain stupid and stop the insane practice of "mainlining" the cognitively impaired. Kick out the kids who have no interest in learning and are disruptive in class. Purge every school system of anyone with the word "diversity" in their job description. Stop being delusional that every kid needs a college education and bolster vocational training. Hell, a kid on his way to becoming a qualified electrician or plumber is going to end up in a better position than some kid getting a B.A. in Theater, Communication, or Queer Studies.

[dcarrigg]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Interesting. When those on the left talk about government workers it's teachers, cops, and firemen. For those on the right, it's surly DMV workers, unresponsive, unproductive government bureaucrats, and lazy city maintenance workers, you know, where they need six men to watch the one guy take all day to fix a pot hole. Of course, when it comes time to cut, the Dems go straight for the teachers, cops, and firemen, and leave the second assistant adminsitrator to the vice adminstrator in charge of putting things on top of other things alone, along with all the other surly bureaucrats and lazy, can't-be-fired-unless-they-shoot-heroin-right-in-front-of-the-boss AFSCME bums.

I'll give you this: The DMV worker and maintenance worker are probably union. The pot hole? If it's a main road it's more likely a contract with a private contractor. The cop is getting paid overtime for standing near it, though. The administrators and assistant administrators? They're non-union. Sorry, bub, but that's the reality of it.

It's not to excuse the DMV worker who can't use MS Word. It's not to excuse the maintenance worker that can't trim a tree on the sidewalk in 4 weeks. Unions actually do protect people who screw that up, and I've seen it first hand. I'm not here to apologize for everything they do. I'm here to point out that they are not what led us into this recession.

Prove me wrong.

Want to make school perform better? You don't need unions. Instead, bring back reform schools and Special Ed classes for the unruly, disturbed, and just plain stupid and stop the insane practice of "mainlining" the cognitively impaired. Kick out the kids who have no interest in learning and are disruptive in class. Purge every school system of anyone with the word "diversity" in their job description. Stop being delusional that every kid needs a college education and bolster vocational training. Hell, a kid on his way to becoming a qualified electrician or plumber is going to end up in a better position than some kid getting a B.A. in Theater, Communication, or Queer Studies.

I never argued this, nor would I, even if I wouldn't put it in the same terms as you.

As per usual when I get into debates with my friends on the right, I think we are not as far off in worldview as you might expect. I agree with the spirit of this paragraph. But killing the American Federation of Teachers won't fix the problem. And I'll stand by that statement.

Do you know why? It's the person with a B.A. in queer studies that teaches history at the charter school because they don't have to take teacher certification exams.

I absolutely welcome more vocational training into the education system. If it got rid of the private college 'mechanic' and 'carpenter' B.S.'s, it would be all the better.

In fact, that qualified electrician or plumber might end up being *gasp* union.

If and when empirical evidence proves me wrong, I'll gladly admit it. I have been wrong many times before. I expect to be wrong many times again. I voted for our president after all, and I thought things would change. Silly me. Dumb me.

But W. was just as bad. Maybe worse. After all, Iraq was an unequivocal farse. Prove that wrong. Even Colin Powell won't do it. This after his unconvincing black and white powerpoint to the UN that had me yelling at my TV screen.

I'm done with both party lines.

And so I won't just buy the "unions ruined this country" argument until someone can show me macro-economically how that statement is true. Until then it is simple hate spread by a.m. radio wind bags. The same windbags said Saddam was a "clear and present danger." But anecdotes do not a trend make. All macro data I see points to FIRE being the main culprit for our woes, with the clueless taking bad loans as it's main source of oxygen. I don't see any data that says unions did it. I may not be in Missouri, but I do like their motto. Show me.

Prove me wrong. I will gladly convert.

Until then, I will consider splitting the populous amongst the private/public sector divide merely a tool of of FIRE to make us eat each other before them.

They're more than 20% of the economy now and they produce nothing. How big do they have to get?

[lakedaemonian]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Also check the non teacher salaries. Principals, shrinks, administrators, etc. My wife teaches at a school currently laying off teachers. But not a single administrator was let go. Principal has two Asst Principals. Most schools this size have one. This "wonderful" principal made a teacher about to get the ax wait around on her all day on the last day of school. The teacher arrived for her appointment that morning with the principal only to be told she didn't have one.( despite a confirmation email) It turned out the principal lost her nerve and got in her car and was driving around town, trying to get up her nerve to fire the teacher. So the poor lady had to sit in the office all day waiting on the gutless principal. The receptionist called her and was literally told to stall. When she finally arrived she made the teacher sit through a pep rally, a party, and other silly stuff before she finally broke the news, presumably while running out the door.

Same principal had been going around earlier, encouraging teachers to dig up any dirt they could on fellow teachers that might justify their firing. Nice Soviet style approach.


Moral is bad at many schools because the teachers feel they have no one on their side. Or even the kids side. Public schools are run by petty, career ladder climbing bureaucrats, who's main interest is hitting test scores that kick in bonus pay. And this is one of the best systems in the country. Shudder to think how bad morale is at the mediocre schools.

That's where a lot of your money is going. That and the problem children the law makes them coddle and hire extra staff to deal with. Oh, and the Ipads handed out to my wife's class despite the fact they never asked for them. Come on its free anyway. Its just taxpayer money!!!!

Same thing has occurred across the board in Western Militaries.......VERY top heavy in comparison with 20/30/50/60 years ago when looking at "tooth" to "tail" ratios.

[Woodsman]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

[Sutter Cane]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

"All macro data I see points to FIRE being the main culprit for our woes, with the clueless taking bad loans as it's main source of oxygen. I don't see any data that says unions did it."

Agreed and well said.

I must admit, I felt my heart skip a beat when I read this thread. One of the reasons I find iTulip so valuable, putting aside EJ's research and perspective for a moment, is the emphasis on fact and... well, reality. I appreciate this most in the private forums (and the civility, praise the maker), especially considering the degeneracy of similar venues across the Internet.

One thing that I understand as being most definitely in the realm of fantasy are analyses framed according to partisan political lines. Left and Right or Republican and Democrat have ceased to have any useful meaning, in this country at least. When I hear someone positing an argument from the perspective of party politics, I have a sense that they don't really understand what it is they're arguing about. Moreover, experience tells me that they most likely haven't given it much thought themselves and are uncritically parroting someone else's line without having spent the time to understand if their master's voice indeed aligns with their own personal interests. That used to irritate me, but now only makes me sad knowing what we all might face in the years ahead.

Please don't think I'm referring specifically to anyone on this thread, as I'm most definitely not, but I'd hate to see this precious space fall into that sort specious trap. We get enough of it for free in the media, thanks.

I died a little inside when I saw the Democrats called "demorats" on another thread on itulip awhile back. Luckily, nobody jumped in to take a stab at "rethuglicans" in retaliation. Can hilarious use of "Obummer" be far behind?

If I want to read partisan political bickering, I can read the comment section of virtually every news story on any "lamestream media" website. I expect more from itulip, but frankly I have been visiting here a lot less lately, only checking in for new EJ pieces...

[Raz]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

I died a little inside when I saw the Democrats called "demorats" on another thread on itulip awhile back. Luckily, nobody jumped in to take a stab at "rethuglicans" in retaliation. Can hilarious use of "Obummer" be far behind?

If I want to read partisan political bickering, I can read the comment section of virtually every news story on any "lamestream media" website. I expect more from itulip, but frankly I have been visiting here a lot less lately, only checking in for new EJ pieces...

Sorry to hear that you're reading and posting here a lot less. I hope you'll contribute more often.

It could have been me. I've refered to them individually as Demonrats and Repukelicans, and collectively as Republicrats. Nothing partisan intended - they're both destroying us.

From my posts two things should be clear: (a) I'm clearly conservative (Paleoconservative, that is), and (b) I'm no Republican. And at least one "liberal" on iTulip has managed to change my opinions on health care and public financing of elections. Facts did it, along with patience and the civilized delivery of his argument.

[LazyBoy]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right





Regardless of any preferred outcome, I find the out-of-state money disturbing.

How would you feel if this % of out of state money flooded into your state to influence an election?

[Master Shake]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Regardless of any preferred outcome, I find the out-of-state money disturbing.

How would you feel if this % of out of state money flooded into your state to influence an election?

Does Barrett's total include the time and money donated by the unions?

[LazyBoy]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Does Barrett's total include the time and money donated by the unions?

Why do you automatically suspect that it doesn't?
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012...ll-money-stats

[Raz]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

June 7, 2012, 5:50 p.m. ET

What's Changed After Wisconsin

The Obama administration suddenly looks like a house of cards.


By PEGGY NOONAN


What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into "one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever," as the Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey and Dan Balz reported in a day-after piece. Fifty thousand volunteers made phone calls and knocked on 1.4 million doors to get out the vote against Gov. Scott Walker. Mr. Walker's supporters, less deeply organized on the ground, had a considerable advantage in money.
But organization and money aren't the headline. The shift in mood and assumption is. The vote was a blow to the power and prestige not only of the unions but of the blue-state budgetary model, which for two generations has been: Public-employee unions with their manpower, money and clout, get what they want. If you move against them, you will be crushed.

Mr. Walker was not crushed. He was buoyed, winning by a solid seven points in a high-turnout race.

Governors and local leaders will now have help in controlling budgets. Down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all. The big meaning of Wisconsin is that a public injustice is in the process of being righted because a public mood is changing.

Political professionals now lay down lines even before a story happens. They used to wait to do the honest, desperate, last-minute spin of yesteryear. Now it's strategized in advance, which makes things tidier but less raggedly fun. The line laid down by the Democrats weeks before the vote was that it's all about money: The Walker forces outspent the unions so they won, end of story.

Money is important, as all but children know. But the line wasn't very flattering to Wisconsin's voters, implying that they were automatons drooling in front of the TV waiting to be told who to back. It was also demonstrably incorrect. Most voters, according to surveys, had made up their minds well before the heavy spending of the closing weeks.

Mr. Walker didn't win because of his charm—he's not charming. It wasn't because he is compelling on the campaign trail—he's not, especially. Even his victory speech on that epic night was, except for its opening sentence—"First of all, I want to thank God for his abundant grace," which, amazingly enough, seemed to be wholly sincere—meandering, unable to name and put forward what had really happened.

But on the big question—getting control of the budget by taking actions resisted by public unions—he was essentially right, and he won.


By the way, the single most interesting number in the whole race was 28,785. That is how many dues-paying members of the American Federation of State, County and Municiple Employees were left in Wisconsin after Mr. Walker allowed them to choose whether union dues would be taken from their paychecks each week. Before that, Afscme had 62,218 dues-paying members in Wisconsin. There is a degree to which public union involvement is, simply, coerced.

People wonder about the implications for the presidential election. They'll wonder for five months, and then they'll know.
President Obama's problem now isn't what Wisconsin did, it's how he looks each day—careening around, always in flight, a superfluous figure. No one even looks to him for leadership now. He doesn't go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker's place, where the money is.

There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration.

It became apparent some weeks ago when the president talked on the stump—where else?—about an essay by a fellow who said spending growth is actually lower than that of previous presidents. This was startling to a lot of people, who looked into it and found the man had left out most spending from 2009, the first year of Mr. Obama's presidency. People sneered: The president was deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture! But you know, why would he go out there waving an article that could immediately be debunked? Maybe because he thought it was true. That's more alarming, isn't it, the idea that he knows so little about the effects of his own economic program that he thinks he really is a low spender.

For more than a month, his people have been laying down the line that America was just about to enter full economic recovery when the European meltdown stopped it. (I guess the slowdown in China didn't poll well.) You'll be hearing more of this—we almost had it, and then Spain, or Italy, messed everything up. What's bothersome is not that it's just a line, but that the White House sees its central economic contribution now as the making up of lines.

Any president will, in a presidential election year, be political. But there is a startling sense with Mr. Obama that that's all he is now, that he and his people are all politics, all the time, undeviatingly, on every issue. He isn't even trying to lead, he's just trying to win.


Most ominously, there are the national-security leaks that are becoming a national scandal—the "avalanche of leaks," according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that are somehow and for some reason coming out of the administration. A terrorist "kill list," reports of U.S. spies infiltrating Al Qaeda in Yemen, stories about Osama bin Laden's DNA and how America got it, and U.S. involvement in the Stuxnet computer virus, used against Iranian nuclear facilities. These leaks, say the California Democrat, put "American lives in jeopardy," put "our nation's security in jeopardy."

This isn't the usual—this is something different. A special counsel may be appointed.
And where is the president in all this? On his way to Anna Wintour's house. He's busy. He's running for president.

But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be.

It just all increasingly looks like a house of cards. Bill Clinton—that ol' hound dog, that gifted pol who truly loves politics, who always loved figuring out exactly where the people were and then going to exactly that spot and claiming it—Bill Clinton is showing all the signs of someone who is, let us say, essentially unimpressed by the incumbent. He defended Mitt Romney as a businessman—"a sterling record"—said he doesn't like personal attacks in politics, then fulsomely supported the president, and then said that the Bush tax cuts should be extended.

His friends say he can't help himself, that he's getting old and a little more compulsively loquacious. Maybe. But maybe Bubba's looking at the president and seeing what far more than half of Washington sees: a man who is limited, who thinks himself clever, and who doesn't know that clever right now won't cut it.

Because Bill Clinton loves politics, he hates losers. Maybe he just can't resist sticking it to them a little, when he gets a chance.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...html#printMode

[bart]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right

Just voted for Walker this morning. Felt good. Real good.

Polls were packed. I think the silent majority is waking up.

Indeed, there is a far off light at the end of the tunnel... and it's far from certain that it isn't a train.

[bart]

Re: some goodnews for 'a change' WI Got It Right



Source: BLS





Also,Total compensation - revealed