Unions and union members tend to support Democrats. And in this post-Citizens United world, they are one of the few source of large campaign funding for progressive candidates who face the hundreds of millions of nearly unlimited corporate money that now flowed to Republicans (as we witnessed in the 2010 election).

Not only that, Jim. They want Americans to work for $4.00 a day like their foreign based companies pay. It is very well documented in many ways, especially in John Perkin’s books. Shanty towns of box houses, no running water, and it takes an entire day of wages to buy one meal for yourself.

I don’t see any upside for the Thugs on this one unless they win. They clearly miscalculated by going after ordinary people that other ordinary people know personally. I don’t doubt that the medium-term strategy was to cripple the Democrats before their underlying voting strength began to reassert itself. To do this they have to politicize the attorneys-general along the lines that Rove pioneered at the Federal level. This would permit charging political enemies with fictitious crimes, caging the vote and generally doing what it takes to prevent young people and minorities from voting in the general election. The strategy is Jim Crow all over again, but casting a wider net. It in many ways the logical outcome of Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

That’s why it has to be fought here and now, tooth and nail.

In the short term, because the American people side with labor unions in a very public fight over collective bargaining rights, individual Republicans will take a serious political hit. In the long term, though, this short term hit still might be worth it collectively for the party, and this is probably why the top donor class of Republicans with push strongly for it.

Seeing as there are no nationally recognizable POTUS candidates from the GOP, this makes sense. The ruling powers understand that on the national stage they’re going to lose next year. Why not take the hit now and fight the “good” fight in 2016?

$4.00 a day???? That’s outrageous.

$0.40 is more than enough.

I think it became very clear that they care not a jot about what the “lesser people” want during the Public Option fight, when 70% of the American people wanted it.
Frankly, I don’t even think it’s that much about votes. It’s about taking everything they can away from us, being free to make use of the last of our natural resources and turning us into puppets who think it’s all just fine.
I’m starting to call trolls “guided missiles” becasue FOX tells them “who to hate du jour” and they just…home in. Now it’s unions picking their pockets fercryinoutloud.
Tax payer dollars is the new rallying cry. I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t so damned st00pid

Their only goal is to keep the class warfare between the middle and lower classes.

I’d argue that the Republicans are not opposed just to Unions, but to all forms of solidarity that help to secure the well-being of the needy while providing a means by which the needy and weak can present their interests to the powerful. A bit of that argument can be found here.

In three months a poll will show 80% of Americans don’t know what a union is.

Have I mentioned lately how much I detest NPR? All they do is catapult Republicon talking points. I actually hope they lose their funding. Let the savings pay for the home heating credit for the poor.

Upper VS MiddleVS Lower
and Middle VS Lower
Lower always loses

Also to take as much as possible as often as possible

Then they can be polled to see if they know what “serfs” are.

Bluetoe2
If you have the stomach, check out the link.
They fact check NPR

http://www.nprcheck.blogspot.com/

Yes…and that is why education systems have to return to the large class format of “monitor” schools; why churches have to be led by preacher stars and spend money for edifice not community work in the greater world and why businesses grow “too big to fail”.

In general polling, the majority wants nothing cut and a majority wants no more taxes. The problem is that states (unlike the federal) have to balance their budgets and the states are experiencing significant deficits particularly if they depend strongly on income tax revenue (like California) at a time when incomes are down.

Given a more specific question, results may vary.

from a Wisconsin poll:
Given a “school district budget shortfall,” Monday’s poll-takers were asked which option they preferred: Reduce teacher pensions and salaries or cut sports and extracurricular activities. Forty-four percent preferred cutting teachers pensions and salaries; 34 percent said sports and extracurricular activities, while 22 percent said they were not sure.
http://statehousenewsonline.com/2011/02/25/poll-wisconsinites-want-spending-cuts-to-balance-out-of-sync-budget/

The same fundamental financial factors apply, even with collective bargaining, whether it be public or private employment. The UAW collectively bargained a fourteen buck average pay rate for line workers, half of what the existing employees enjoyed, because they had to. So collective bargaining doesn’t necessarily mean no cuts in pay or benefits when the money isn’t there.

Very good points. But politicians will do whatever it takes to avoid losing thier jobbies, and if that means talking out both sides of thier mouths to preserve a status quo, well they are highly skilled at that. I think a bigger long term danger could be in republicans actually appealing to union leaders for support. call it a shakedown. at least some republicans (such as those in states like Ohio), seeing the public opinion writing on the wall, may approach union leaders and say, “look at the spot we’re in, you give all your money to democrats. whats in it for us?” The posionous relationship unions have developed with “moderate” democratic leadership has been destructive enough. they dont need to crawl in bed with republicans.

So collective bargaining doesn’t necessarily mean no cuts in pay or benefits when the money isn’t there

It does, however, involve bargaining, which is sort of the point.

Incomes are way up for the top incomes, not down Plus corporate profits are at an all time high. Check any financial site.

Short version: Since their defeat in 1964, conservatives in the Republican Party have sought an unshakable and permanent Republican majority.

That dream was almost dashed forever by George W. Bush. But the Obama administration’s “bipartisanship” has given them new hope and better than even chances of succeeding.

surely you don’t think any savings from any where will go to keep the poor warm?

With all of this smaller heartless government are “we of citizens of enough income” going to share with those citizens who fall? Or will we, abeit uncomfortabley, say the same thing that Boehner says: “So be it”.

We will nurture the liberal beliefs of humanity or see them as a personal burden. When times get bad will we control our empathy and garner what is our “due” and forget the fallen?

Seems like a “be careful what you wish for” thing to me.

Besides, the support among the younguns just picked up with the OTT wingnut attacks. The Rs were doing so well killing the unions slowly…

I find the hypothesis implausible. Or wrong headed. Or something.

There are two long-term goals I can easily see:

Over the years, both Republican and Democratic governments have underfunded public employee pension funds by perhaps as much as $1 trillion dollars.

In other words, the governing class has stolen as much as $1 trillion dollars from public employees.

(This is much like the federal government raided the Social Security trust fund to pay for wars and bank bailouts.)

So by attacking the public employees in entirety, the ruling class will settle on the “compromise” of allowing the employees to continue to collectively bargain for relatively meaningless issues, while getting their real goal of having the employees simply accept smaller pensions as if the money simply evaporated, instead of having been outright stolen.

A trillion dollars, even with The Bernank running the presses 24×7, is still real money.

So the attack on the unions’ ability to bargain (for whatever crumbs are left) is simply the con-game distraction from the real attack, the theft of the public unions’ pension money.

The second thing, less important but still meaningful, is this is the R’s version of what the D’s did during the health insurance push when the D’s sold the American people to Wall Street like a bond, in exchange for Wall Street’s agreement to politically fund D’s and cut off funding from R’s. The national D’s attacked the R’s funding, now the R’s are just doing the same.

But the big, uncovered story here is how the people will organize and march and finally be granted the false victory of retaining their bargaining rights – all while missing the bigger picture of how the whole thing was just a cover for the theft that has been occurring for years.

(Watch for the same play to happen with Social Security (it’s already started), just like it did with the bank bailouts.)

Yes the Unions in the US were always view as right wing tools by the Unions in the UK.

The unions in the UK has no illusion about class warfare.

Until Blair – who was a product of the Conservative establishment. How was elected leader of he Labor party is a BFM.

A perfect example of top heavy pay scales is Kasich’s cabinet. He has a selected cabinet (not necessarily Ohio citizens as it turns out) and they are gatting as much as $400, 000 dollars pay over the previous Ted Strickland’s cabinet. But the secretaries have been give a hefty cut in pay.

Really the top maybe 10% is doing just fucking fine while the bottom 90% are loosing their asses.. Great system we got here..if ya are the 10%.

so true and so ignored in the MSM

The lower third of the intelligence bell curve is once again the useful idiots of the greediest among the top 1% of the economic bell curve.

Good King Wenceslas last looked out,
on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night,
tho’ the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
gath’ring winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me,
if thou know’st it, telling,

Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain; R
ight against the forest fence,
by Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
bring me pine logs hither:

Thou and I will see him dine,
when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went,
forth they went together;
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
and the bitter weather.

Twas ever thus

The other agenda that might play in is age warfare. Schools are paid for by RE taxes. Oldsters own houses, and resent, or can’t afford, RE taxes going up for schooling, when they have no kids or grandkids (all have moved away) in the schoolz.

However, if that’s part of the hidden agenda, I find it hard to understand how Koch tactics work toward that goal.

the big, uncovered story here is how the people will organize and march and finally be granted the false victory of retaining their bargaining rights – all while missing the bigger picture of how the whole thing was just a cover for the theft that has been occurring for years.

Point well taken, which also goes along with my repeating (ad nauseum) that a lot of the public pension systems pay very hefty fees to Wall Street to manage the funds/investments. Yet I duly note that absolutely no one has suggested that the fee structures, esp for managing public pensions, at least be investigated and possibly lowered. I have no links or proof, but I venture to *guess* that if some/all of those management fees were reduced, the existing underfunding of the public pension systems would be at least somewhat improved.

Yet no one suggests that step, either (sort like no one ever suggests *raising the income cap* for Soc Sec deductions, which would quickly resolve any alleged shorages). It’s all a con game, imo.

Note that Wall Street just gave itself million$$$ in bonuses. One has to wonder who, exactly, is pinning whose “balls” to the wall here??? Or maybe one doesn’t wonder at all…. just the the MOTU don’t want the rubes to riddle that too much.

Everything fits into the “disrupt and divide’ hidden agenda. The more divisions the better.

And that argument (have no kids in school) works. We would rather build prisons(at greater cost) to house the uneducated than to teach them. Sad

or the triple -dipping.

OT question Does that NY rep. who resigned because of eHarmony-not on-line dating, get a government pension for his 2-month service?

And thats where taxes need to be levied and raised.

Walker gave away tax cuts to corporations in the amount the state deficit is running.

“Tax the rich, feed the poor . . . ”

-Ten Years After

Prisons are schools but not cheaper to run.

That happens out here in CA. And we witnessed recently that outgoing Gov Ahhhhnold appointed a lot of his buddies to high-paying public servant “jobs” that really don’t do much at all. I know a very rightwing *Republican* who had one of those cushy sinecures when Republican Pete Wilson was gov quite a few years ago. Said Republican acquaintance could never ever really *explain* what, exactly, it was that he did all day for his close to $200k annual salary, plus great benefits.

But as we know: IOKIYAR

I regularly read letters to the editor from obviously leftie/Dems complaining about these sinecure jobs and the high salaries of “insiders” in State jobs. Funny thing is: I rarely see conservatives writing similar letters to the editor bc they’re too busy endlessly whining about what the “lower order” public servants are paid and/or what teachers or police are paid. Unsurprising but frustrating, to be sure.

Hmmm. I would argue it probably IS part of the agenda, but like other elements, a big mistake in terms of overreach.

They do think they are Masters of the Universe; but they aren’t. They can snatch a lot, but not all of the pie, but believing they can is their undoing.

If they were smart, they would have taking their licking on the last bubble-skimming, since they were bailed out, pretend to be contrite, and paid the tiny portion of tax increases we need. That way they could easily do it again.

But in going for the whole enchilada? That’s proving their downfall IMO. People are rejecting/beginning to reject this whole “austerity for thee but not for me” thing.

Meant for Larue33: “feed the rich, tax the poor” fixed it for ya.

I don’t know if that idiot gets a pension or not, but my *guess* would be no. Usually a worker has to be employed for a set number of years for a pension to kick in. But who knows with elected officials?? It would be interesting to find out.

Here’s a piece of the long-term economic strategy I call the Laogai plan: “Middle Class Misery“

Well done . . .

Good point. If George Will considers high-speed rail collectivism (not government-subsidized high-speed rail, just high-speed rail), then the conservative viewpoint maintains that there are only persons and the state. And that civil society is collectivism. And those persons? Corporations and humans, forgetting that without state guarantees of corporate personhood and limited liability large corporations could not exist for long.

So we have two point of attack: (1) asserting the legitimacy of civil society institutions (such as labor unions) as counterbalancing corporate power and (2) challenging the state’s grant of corporate personhood and limited liability on the grounds that this is unwarranted intervention by the state into the economy (see, we can be libertarians too.)

People are rejecting/beginning to reject this whole “austerity for thee but not for me” thing.

I hope you’re right about that, and I especially hope that US citizens can actually *remember* this a few weeks from now… US citizens have a tendency towards amnesia.

Wisconsin is one of 41 states where public employees earn higher average pay and benefits than private workers in the same state, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-01-1Apublicworkers01_ST_N.htm

Induced amnesia.

Time and media factor into this; people are ground down and tired, and it’s not their own fault.

I guess one could see prisons as schools, but they are very expensive. In CA, the rightwing loves to have very punitive sentencing laws, which end up being unfunded mandates. A ton of money has been siphoned off to support the prison industry, including the very powerful prison guard unions, which traditionally support Republican candidates, like E-Meg Whitman (who promised to slash & burn the CA budget, esp for the poor and downtrodden, but pump up the prison industry) & Carly Fiorina (who incompetently ran HP into the ground, but she also was supported by the prison guards unions).

Makes no sense to indefinitely imprison citizens at great expense, when it would be cheaper to educate and train them to be productive workers. But there you have it.

Bargaining at a time of meager resources often boils down to: We cut pay/benefits or we cut people. Which will it be? And the union usually takes the former. So you might call it a Hobson’s choice, and not really bargaining at all.

I wasn’t feeling that way before Madison, WI took off a few weeks ago . . . but I am feeling that way now . . . . good to see protests taking form in other states . . .

Jasmine is blooming, a spring democracy like hope leaps eternal . . . just the tiniest of a whiff, captured, in the air.

All I need to believe!

Totally mis-leading statement. Read the whole article. Biggests flaw is doesn’t take into account education level. So a teacher is paid more than a Burger King worker proves what?

I’m sticking to 10 Yrs After, n nothin personal to rich folks but fuck ‘em till they pay their taxes (corporations).

*G*

There is no economy in Wisconsin but State colleges and tourism/retail.

An artificially created Hobson’s Choice is no reason to take the right to bargain out of the equation.

The answer to many political koans is “Mu!” as in rejecting the premise of the question altogether.

Sure, and sometimes the Unions do agree to cut pay/benefits in order to save jobs. But Walker wants to eliminate the right to collective bargaining. That’s the real issue, and that’s one of the *main reasons* why everyone is protesting.

Of course that’s so. What is missing is the private sector jobs in that comparison include all the jobs such as janitor or burger flipper or fry chef at McDonalds and Burger King that don’t require a degree.

Now, if the comparison just was against jobs in the private sector that required at least a bachelors degree if not a masters degree as most teaching jobs require, I’d wager the comparison would be much closer if not the private sector making much higher wages.

Whether it is teacher, social worker, or many other jobs in the public sector, far more public sector jobs require degrees.

Prison are a 3-fer: 1) captured “market” for corporate welfare, 2) brainwashing facilities to produce “Rapture-ready” serfs, 3) concentration camps for political opponents and those those that won’t or can’t produce in the factory society run by the rich. One can see the same pattern more of less across most countries as this is the system the IMF/World Bank exported along side the bullets, guns and mercs for the other countries’ ruling elites. It’s quite the turnkey business, isn’t it?

We wouldn’t have “meager resources” if we didn’t keep cutting taxes on corporations and the richest 1%

Heh, the premise begins with reading a piece of shit rag’s disinformation in a poll to begin with.

THEN selectively extracting and editing THAT to post into a comment.

Hogwash, thru and thru.

Way to call out shit for what it is.

N kudos to Kelly@51 also!

*G*

Agree: the USA Today article is very light on where they’re drawing their stats from and how salaries are being compared. It’s comparing apples to oranges in most cases and is totally misleading.

Plus what? We all want to rush to the bottom like Texas (no offense intended to TX residents):

• Texas. The state ranked last in benefits for public employees. The state hasn’t granted cost-of-living increases to most retirees since 2001.

Gee: how *great* is THAT?? Meanwhile, the elites in TX are enjoying their tax cuts at expense of granny & granddad down the street. Good going.

And research also shows that the public sector workers are on average better educated than the private sector workers, thus making sense of the fact that they are better paid.

Funny you should mention the California prison guards union which was politically active many years before Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina came along recently.

This is from an essay I wrote a few years ago regarding the CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.
“The Power this prison guards’ union wields inside our prisons, legislative chambers and governor’s office disturbs me. It should disturb every citizen.” ~ Judith Tannenbaum, formerly an English teacher at San Quentin State Prison

The CCPOA is the biggest contributor to political campaigns in California. The CCPOA gives twice as much in political contributions as the California Teachers Association, yet it is one-tenth its size. In 1998, the CCPOA gave over $2 million to Democratic Governor Gray Davis, $763,000 to the media, and over $100,000 to Proposition 184, the 3 Strikes law. The 3 Strikes law mandated that convicted felons with one prior felony got twice the normal sentence for their 2nd strike, and convicted felons with two or more prior felonies would get at least 3 times the normal sentence or 25 years (whichever is more) for their 3rd strike. The CCCPOA has a vested interest in locking up more and more Californians for longer sentences.

The California prison guards union has grown from a fledgling group of fewer than 2500 members in 1978 to a powerhouse of 31,000 members who contribute $21.9 million dollars a year. The union employs a 91 person staff including 20 full-time attorneys and uses the services of five lobbyists and a team of public relations consultants, housed in the 62,000 square foot CCPOA headquarters. The state hiring office for prison guards brags that the job has been called the greatest entry-level job in California – and for good reason. “Along with the great salary,” one of their ads notes, “our peace officers earn a retirement package you just can’t find in private industry.”

Agree. Good points re prison systems globally. It’s also a way to intimidate the populace, esp certain sectors considered by the PTB to be “undesireable.”

And with all that, TX has a $30B deficit. Would be greater without Fed stimulus funds too, btw.

Makes no sense to indefinitely imprison citizens at great expense, when it would be cheaper to educate and train them to be productive workers. But there you have it.

But but the Rich gotta create jobs don’t they first before we let all them felons outa jail don’tcha know..

The Prison Guards get a waaaaay more salubrious retirement & retirement benefits package than the *vast majority* of the rest of CA public servants, believe me.

To be completely fair, prison guards have a very hard job to do, indeed, and they are considered public safety officers. Traditionally, public safety officers get better retirement pensions/benefits (Police, fire fighters, prison guards, etc) than the “rest” of the public service.

I really don’t know what the benefits package is for the guards’ unions in CA, though. I’m sure they contribute to Democratic politicians, but they give more and more frequently to Republicans.

Wolf Blizter alias Don Bacon

Well, yeah, nowadays jobs are a “problem,” but I’m talking years ago, when there were more jobs… the attitude even then was to incarcerate rather than educate… which is both costly and stupid.

Still is more costly to imprison folks, even when there aren’t enough jobs to go around.

That would be the point of the institutionalized torture-for-profit “product line.” Besides the PTB think there really are too many people on the planet sucking up their resources (e.g. oil, precious metals, other commodities).

“Autocrat Action Figures” (hat tip Mark Fiore)

Mr. Walker, in terms of the diary, your posit is that GOP is gonna lose bad on this short term but the STAKES for the long term are so high the GOP will fight this one harder?

I’m not sure I GET that or agree with it . . .

My contention is that it’s more likely the GOP will call Mr. Walker, meet with him, hand him his resignation paper work and speech . . . now, if Walker resigns under pressure, what’s WI legal say about replacing him?

heh… no kidding…. USA Today?? Really? Who reads that?

And ranks near the bottom in education!

Yep. True, dat. Too bad all those super wealthy Oil & Gas barons simply don’t have to pay their fair share… but then, egadz: socialism!!

Yes, but isn’t THAT the point?? Along with starving granny and granddad?

It was snark ya know…

Unions matter, but right now they are 100% diversionary tactics by the Rovians.

Why are the same teachers, cops, and nurses who bailed out WF, BoA, Citi, and Goldman being expected to have their schools gutted, their pensions looted, and their communities destroyed simply because Congress and DoJ don’t have the guts, brains, and integrity to go after the massive fraud that created this mess?

IMVHO, the union busting is a diversion to keep the conversation away from the sordid, contemptible tale of how Congress and the WH have been suckups and lackeys to the biggest criminal banking cabal the world has ever seen.

Besides the PTB think there really are too many people on the planet sucking up their resources (e.g. oil, precious metals, other commodities).

a little conspiracy fer ya…..

I think your observations are spot on. Call it a “loss leader” to use the business jargon the GOP is addicted to (only less than to military analogies, which are themselves often borrowed from sexual ones – do, let’s penetrate the enemy’s defenses).

Any short-term loss now would be offset by changing circumstances between now and Nov. 2012. Moreover, the long term gains from defeating Democratic Party-voting redoubts in the unions and middle class would be nearly permanent, at least as measured by the political clock. The sense of loss, dejection, defeatism would generate enormous negative inertia it would take years to overcome. The Democratic Party, certainly the corporatist thing it has become, might not survive the transition.

This is about economic warfare against America’s workers, against all but about 10% of Americans. It is a direct assault on the Democratic Party base. You know, the one that Mr. Obama has done so much to succor and care for since his inauguration. Yea, that one.

Even the mob supposedly didn’t hit as far below the belt as Republicans. This is an assault on the families and the blessed children they claim to hold so near and dear. The target is middle class workers, the jobs that are the backbone of big and small towns alike. The jobs that spouses often take to make ends meet or to pay for college or retirement security that would otherwise be beyond them. It is an attack on their children and their futures, which means everyone’s futures.

23

A perfect example of top heavy pay scales is Kasich’s cabinet. He has a selected cabinet (not necessarily Ohio citizens as it turns out) and they are getting as much as $400, 000 dollars pay over the previous Ted Strickland’s cabinet. But the secretaries have been give a hefty cut in pay.

Palli,
That’s a confusing comment because the title for cabinet officers is “Secretary”, do you mean the cabinet officers are taking pay cuts or administrative assistants?

Unfortunately, most of the prisons ARE privatized. So there goes that argument.

The defeat of legalization of pot in CA was funded by the private prison industry and……the Mexican government.
You really can’t come here and troll without learning the facts. Ideology doesn’t cut it here; on either side

Strictly paying attention to the content and not the presentation … yeah, this is 20 year old information. I’ve already commented on about half of the points Jones is making as they came up for conversation here at The Lake previously.

Psssstt they are one and the same.

The richest 1% are the corporations but they still can look pious in church on Sunday this way.

So, lets say the GOP IS doing this as you and Mr. Walker suggest . . . what if they are proven to overreach, GOP is decimated at the polls and in ’12 . . .

This is a likely outcome obvious to many . . . why would the GOP cut its own throat?

Because they MIGHT win, and MIGHT have a comeback in ’16?

I gots too many questions about this . . . I mean, perhaps I’m just to hopeful, but I just don’t see the GOP efforts on all this as having a CHANCE to succeed.

Rather, as dems committed personal suicide by siding with banksters, and GOP had a sure fire inroad for the future (still) then the GOP picks a strategy that can set them back a decade?

By going after families and children thru union busting and elimination of women’s right to choose?

A strategy that has already lit a fuse to the Jasmine and fired up the masses in street protests NO other previous GOP/Dem actions have done?

It’s political suicide for GOP to fight this one at this time!

N thats MY Humble Opinion.

I’m delighted the GOP is over reaching . . . the masses are unifying on it.

Best thing to motivate the masses I’ve seen . . .

Uh, I’d sure like to know some details about Mexican money in the CA Pot Campaign . . .

First I ever heard of that . . . how’s that work?

The only Mexicans who benefit economically from the status quo of US cannabis prohibition are the drug cartels and those eating their scraps. If the Mexican government really took issue with the California prop, following the money it would logically indicate they are doing those cartels’ paid bidding.

David Dayen is upstairs!
House Passes Two-Week Budget Stopgap

conservative viewpoint maintains that there are only persons and the state

Read Hannah Arendt On Totalitarianism on that very point. Also the eminent establishment historian Friedrich Meinecke’s Der Deutsche Katastrophe which he composed on the morrow of the war as a dying man.

I was the salary bargaining agent for my professor’s association at the university. We had no control over the envelope, which was handed down by the state, but we could bargain over how it was to be divided as between merit, benefits and scale. The public employees are in somewhat the same situation. As I said, it’s better than nothing. And we had a back-up. If the university bargained in bad faith, there was always the union, which would be a nightmare for them.

Prisons are replacing welfare for the governance of the poor. America’s prison system is too expensive now. How expensive will it become as America’s high-unemployment economy becomes permanent?

Instead of Guns or Butter well see Guns or Prison?

The objective, is to get rid of unions, and to transform everyone to part time, no benefits labour. And it’s working perfectly.

Thanks. I’m trying to finish a longer article that addresses this point, that the rightwing is actually attacking civil society in the Unites States and has mounted this attack by using the combined power of the federal system and big capital. To me, Wisconsin is the place in which the first major counteroffensive emerged. It’s important for both the reactionaries and for the defenders of civil society that they win in Wisconsin. It’s the context setting conflict.

Cause I liked it:
In a recent FDA study, the United States government doctors who were conducting studies on test drugs administered weekly doses of VIAGRA to an equal number of doctors and lawyers.

While the majority of the doctors achieved enhanced sexual prowess, the lawyers simply grew taller.

The US government researchers are at a loss to explain.

The union covers all, public and private, prison guards – and they all get the standard California police/guard pension – 3% per year and retire at 50 – meaning 90% of pay at 50 – and final pay calculation games means over $100,000 per year police/guard pensions at age 50 are not uncommon. Indeed the “fitness bonus” of $1550 is given everyone – not just the fit – provide they saw a doctor at least once during the year.

In California, actual pay ranges from $54,500 to $74,400, but most get the upper range salary, with additional “overtime” pay (guards average $16,000 in overtime pay, kids getting a lot of “overtime” even after those age 49 folks retiring the next year hog a bundle of overtime so as to get the 100,000 pension).

Other state workers in their unions get pay cuts or freezes – but the guards and police contribute 7 figure numbers to both Dem and GOP and are refused nothing –

The same type of situation exists in Mass – with a bit of salt in the wound because the state is controlled by Dems and the police often go to the media to say they support the GOP.

I am perplexed as to why anyone thinks Republicans will change their mind or realize anything new

95% of America can support public workers and FoxNews would report 95% hate public workers and saying otherwise is treason

They will dismiss any obvious fact as bias and make up their own facts

Nothing changes their mind b/c they are too stupid to come up with intelligent, original thoughts