Don't Let Wisconsin Divide Us ... Conservatives and Liberals AGREE About the Important Things

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Don't let Wisconsin divide us.

Conservatives and liberals actually agree about the most important things.

In fact, most Americans - conservatives and liberals - are fed up with both of the mainstream republican and democratic parties, because it has become obvious that both parties serve Wall Street and the military-industrial complex at the expense of most Americans.

In reality, all Americans - conservatives and liberals:

• Want to break up the unholy alliance between big government and big banks

• Want to break up the giant banks (and see this)

• Agree that the Wall Street criminals who committed fraud should be thrown in jail

• Agree that the Federal Reserve should be audited

• Are against corporate socialism

• Are against rampant inequality

• Want to stand up to the ruling class

• And are against unnecessary imperial wars

The powers-that-be try to divide us and demonize the "other side" so that we won't realize how much we all agree on. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

Don't let them.

Debunking Myths

Before we can honestly look at what's going on in Wisconsin, we need to dispel some commonly-accepted myths.

People who think that debts and deficits don't matter are wrong. As two top American economists - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff - demonstrated in December 2009 :

The relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies...

As I wrote in January 2010:

Al Martin - former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors and retired naval intelligence officer - observed in an April 2005 newsletter that the ratio of total U.S. debt to gross domestic product (GDP) rose from 78 percent in 2000 to 308 percent in April 2005. The International Monetary Fund considers a nation-state with a total debt-to-GDP ratio of 200 percent or more to be a "de-constructed Third World nation-state."

Martin explained:

What "de-constructed" actually means is that a political regime in that country, or series of political regimes, have, through a long period of fraud, abuse, graft, corruption and mismanagement, effectively collapsed the economy of that country.

Forbes noted in December:

Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we're at 840% of GDP.

Boston University economics professor and former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Laurence Kotlikoff says that the real federal debt is $202 trillion dollars, and that the U.S. is bankrupt.

And see this, this, this, this and this.

So we have to reduce our debt.

And yet the government has been spending like a drunken sailor ... while slashing taxes.

Not Liberal or Conservative ... But Redistribution of Wealth Up to the Ultra-Rich

As I noted last December:

Ronald Reagan gave big tax cuts to the wealthy.

So it is dramatic that Reagan's director of Office of Management and Budget - David

Stockman - calls the Bush tax cuts "the biggest fiscal mistake in history".

Specifically, Stockman told Dylan Ratigan that Bush's advisers forecast a $5 trillion surplus over 10 years. But "two unfunded wars and a Fed engineered housing bubble later", we're in a $ 5 trillion cumulative deficit. So Bush made a $10 trillion mistake.

Stockman said extending the Bush tax cuts won't stimulate the economy, the fact that the tax cut extensions will expire on the eve of the 2012 elections will panic politicians and force them to renew them yet again, and that "we're destroying the economy on Uncle Sam's credit card.

Indeed, Moody's and other rating services are threatening to downgrade America's credit rating due to the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy:

The rating agency said in a report Monday that last week's agreement between the White House and congressional Republicans should bolster economic growth in the next two years – but at the expense of the nation's already perilous budget position down the road.

The agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years and trim workers' payroll tax contributions for one could raise the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio at 2012 to 72-73% from around 62% now, Moody's said. It said that without the tax package, that number might have been around 68% in 2012. [These numbers are low, as discussed above.]

***

"Unless there are offsetting measures, the package will be credit negative for the US and increase the likelihood of a negative outlook on the US government's Aaa rating during the next two years," Moody's said.

The comment comes as the bond market seems to have reached very much the same conclusion. The yield on the 10-year Treasury has soared to 3.32% from around 2.4% two months ago, as investors bet on a stronger recovery and rising inflation.

At the same time, our leaders are spending like they just won the lottery.

As I wrote last March:

Why aren't our government "leaders" talking about slashing the military-industrial complex, which is ruining our economy with unnecessary imperial adventures?

And why aren't any of our leaders talking about stopping the permanent bailouts for the financial giants who got us into this mess? And see this.

And why aren't they taking away the power to create credit from the private banking giants - which is costing our economy trillions of dollars (and is leading to a decrease in loans to the little guy) - and give it back to the states?

If we did these things, we wouldn't have to raise taxes or cut core services.

And see this short video from England.

The same thing is playing out on the state level.

For example, if the Wisconsin governor was proposing cutting pensions because everyone needed to share in the sacrifice, that would be understandable. But as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein points out:

The Badger State was actually in pretty good shape. It was supposed to end this budget cycle with about $120 million in the bank. Instead, it's facing a deficit. Why? I'll let the state's official fiscal scorekeeper explain (pdf):

More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).

In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

***

Update ... The $130 million deficit now projected for 2011 isn't the fault of the tax breaks passed during Walker's special session, though his special session created about $120 million in deficit spending between 2011 and 2013 -- and perhaps more than that, if his policies are extended. That is to say, the deficit spending he created in his special session is about equal to the deficit Wisconsin faces this year, but it's not technically correct to say that Walker created 2011's deficit. Rather, he added $120 million to the 2011-2013 deficits, and perhaps more in the years after that.

And according to Madison's Capitol Times:

To the extent that there is an imbalance -- Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit -- it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes -- or delay their implementation until they are offset by fresh revenues -- the “crisis” would not exist.

The Fiscal Bureau memo -- which readers can access at http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf -- makes it clear that Walker did not inherit a budget that required a repair bill.

The facts are not debatable.

Because of the painful choices made by the previous Legislature, Wisconsin is in better shape fiscally than most states.

***

[Walker] has proposed a $137 million budget “repair” bill that he intends to use as a vehicle to ...

Pay for schemes that redirect state tax dollars to wealthy individuals and corporate interests that have been sources of campaign funding for Walker’s fellow Republicans and special-interest campaigns on their behalf. As Madison’s Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey notes, the governor and legislators aligned with him have over the past month given away special-interest favors to every lobby group that came asking, creating zero jobs in the process “but increasing the deficit by more than $100 million.”

Actually, Hulsey’s being conservative in his estimate of how much money Walker and his allies have misappropriated for political purposes.

***

“Since his inauguration in early January, Walker has approved $140 million in new special-interest spending that includes:

“• $25 million for an economic development fund for job creation that still has $73 million due to a lack of job creation. Walker is creating a $25 million hole which will not create or retain jobs.

“• $48 million for private health savings accounts, which primarily benefit the wealthy. A study from the federal Governmental Accountability Office showed the average adjusted gross income of HSA participants was $139,000 and nearly half of HSA participants reported withdrawing nothing from their HSA, evidence that it is serving as a tax shelter for wealthy participants.

“• $67 million for a tax shift plan, so ill-conceived that at best the benefit provided to ‘job creators’ would be less than a dollar a day per new job, and may be as little as 30 cents a day.”

State Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, sums up this scheming accurately when he says: “In one fell swoop, Gov. Walker is trying to institute a sweeping radical and dangerous notion that will return Wisconsin to the days when land barons and railroad tycoons controlled the political elites in Madison.”

State Senator Jon Erpenbach says that the unions have already agreed to cuts:

"The
state employees have talked about the money and giving up the money,
and that's fine. But what they have a problem with - and what a lot of
us have a problem with - is the fact that Governor Walker is taking
decades of union law and throwing it out the window and trying to bust
the unions altogether, and that's just not the right way to go."

***

"The public employees have said you can take the money - the money isn't the issue. The issue is their right to collectively bargain their contracts. And that's where we all have to draw the line."

Economist Menzie Chen argues
that Wisconsin public workers make less than their private
counterparts, even when pensions are included. Pulitzer prize winning
journalist David Cay Johnston says that Wisconsin's governor is really trying to bust unions as a first step in driving down everyone's wages ... both in the public and the private sector.  Mother Jones alleges that the billionaire Koch brothers - the ones who Supreme
Court justices Scalia and Thomas hung out with before deciding to
allow unlimited foreign money to pour into American political races - funded the election of Wisconsin's governor. And Forbes' columnist Rick Ungar claims
that the Kochs are behind the crackdown on Wisconsin unions, as they
have business interests in Wisconsin. Whether or not these claims are
true is beyond the scope of this discussion, and I haven't researched
them enough to weigh in one way or the other.

On the other hand, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation argues in the New York Times:

“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

That
wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was
George Meany -- the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O -- in 1955.
Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once
thought the idea absurd.

***

When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

***

Government
collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public
policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending
and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic – a
fact that unions once recognized.

But whether or not you think public union workers are whiners and public
labor unions harmful or beneficial, the fact is that the governor of
Wisconsin is trying to do exactly what the federal government is trying
to do: throw money at their ultra-rich friends, and pay for it by
shafting the little guy. It almost appears as if the federal and state
governments are using "shock doctrine" tactics as an excuse for imposing
"austerity measures" which benefit the wealthy at the expense of the
little guy just like failed third world countries.  (Remember, Reuters claims that republicans are trying to bankrupt states in order to weaken unions.)

Indeed, Governor Walker is a true conservative to the same extent that President Obama is a true liberal ... not very much.

Again, if everyone - giant banks and corporations as well as workers -
were being asked to share in the sacrifice, that would be completely
different. I'm all for shared sacrifice (I work for the private sector,
but I'll sacrifice a little if we can also claw back the ill-gotten
gains from Wall Street CEO's. See this, this and this.)

But that's not what's happening. Instead, federal and state policies are making the rich richer and everyone else poorer.

And if you still think that this is a conservative versus liberal issue, listen to what tried-and-proven conservatives (re-read Stockman's statements above) are saying.

For example, Paul Craig Roberts, whose conservative credentials are impeccable - former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, one of the people who most widely promoted "trickle down" economics, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, listed by Who's Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, and PhD economist - writes:

Obama’s new budget is a continuation of Wall Street’s class war against the poor and middle class.

Wall Street wasn’t through with us when the banksters sold their fraudulent derivatives into our pension funds, wrecked Americans’ job prospects and retirement plans, secured a $700 billion bailout at taxpayers’ expense while foreclosing on the homes of millions of Americans, and loaded up the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet with several trillion dollars of junk financial paper in exchange for newly created money to shore up the banks’ balance sheets.

The effect of the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” on inflation, interest rates, and the dollar’s foreign exchange value are yet to hit. When they do, Americans will get a lesson in poverty.

Now the ruling oligarchies have struck again, this time through the federal budget. The U.S. government has a huge military/security budget. It is as large as the budgets of the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security budgets account for the $1.1 trillion federal deficit that the Obama administration forecasts for fiscal year 2012. This massive deficit spending serves only one purpose--the enrichment of the private companies that serve the military/security complex. These companies, along with those on Wall Street, are who elect the U.S. government.

***

The U.S. is determined to create as many enemies as possible in order to continue its bleeding of the American population to feed the ravenous military/security complex.

***

With a perpetual budget deficit driven by the military/security complex’s desire for profits, the real cause of America’s enormous budget deficit is off-limits for discussion.

***

The U.S. military/security complex is capable of creating any number of... events in order to make these threats seem real to a public whose intelligence is limited to TV, shopping mall experiences, and football games.

So Americans are stuck with enormous budget deficits that the Federal Reserve must finance by printing new money, money that sooner or later will destroy the purchasing power of the dollar and its role as world reserve currency. When the dollar goes, American power goes.

For the ruling oligarchies, the question is: how to save their power.

Their answer is: make the people pay.

And that is what their latest puppet, President Obama, is doing.

***

These goals [of propping up foreign dictators who serve U.S. interests] are far more important to the American elite than Pell Grants that enable poor Americans to obtain an education, or clean water, or community block grants, or the low income energy assistance program (cut by the amount that U.S. taxpayers are forced to give to Israel).

There are also $7,700 million of cuts in Medicaid and other health programs over the next five years.

Given the magnitude of the U.S. budget deficit, these sums are a pittance. The cuts will have no effect on U.S. Treasury financing needs. They will put no breaks on the Federal Reserve’s need to print money in order to keep the U.S. government in operation.

These cuts serve one purpose: to further the Republican Party’s myth that America is in economic trouble because of the poor: The poor are shiftless. They won’t work. The only reason unemployment is high is that the poor had rather be on welfare.

A new addition to the welfare myth is that recent middle class college graduates won’t take the jobs offered them, because their parents have too much money, and the kids like living at home without having to do anything. A spoiled generation, they come out of university refusing any job that doesn’t start out as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The reason that engineering graduates do not get job interviews is that they do not want them.

What all this leads to is an assault on “entitlements”, which means Social Security and Medicare. The elites have programmed, through their control of the media, a large part of the population, especially those who think of themselves as conservatives, to conflate “entitlements” with welfare. America is going to hell not because of foreign wars that serve no American purpose, but because people, who have paid 15% of their payroll all their lives for old age pensions and medical care, want “handouts” in their retirement years. Why do these selfish people think that working Americans should be forced through payroll taxes to pay for the pensions and medical care of the retirees? Why didn’t the retirees consume less and prepare for their own retirement?

The elite’s line, and that of their hired spokespersons in “think tanks” and universities, is that America is in trouble because of its retirees.

Too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that America is in trouble because of its poor and its retirees. America is not in trouble because it coerces a dwindling number of taxpayers to support the military/security complex’s enormous profits, American puppet governments abroad, and Israel.

The American elite’s solution for America’s problems is not merely to foreclose on the homes of Americans whose jobs were sent offshore, but to add to the numbers of distressed Americans with nothing to lose the sick and the dispossessed retirees, and the university graduates who cannot find jobs that have been sent to China and India.

And Ron Paul - who has very strong conservative credentials, and who won the Presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference two years in a row - recently said in his CPAC speech:

We’re going to continue to bail out, we’re going to continue to spend the money, nobody wants to cut. I am sure that half the people in this room won’t cut one penny on the military, and the military is not equated to defense. Defense spending is one thing, military spending is what Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” and we have to go after that.

***

But let’s say government, as you all, I am sure would agree, is out of control, and it’s very hard for us to get a handle on it. So let’s say we even theoretically, and a miracle happens and we balance the budget where we are today, it would be still a disaster because we’re spending too much money. But it wouldn’t change a whole lot. When a crisis comes, guess what happens? Guess who does the bailing out? The Federal Reserve used $4 trillion to pass out without congressional approval and most people say “Oh, well that’s the Federal Reserve’s job to do that.” No, it is our job to check up and find what the Federal Reserve has done, audit them, and find out who their buddies are that they’re taking care of.

***

The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air, they can loan to banks, central banks of the world, to other governments and international financial institutions and we’re not even allowed to know. They resent the fact that when I ask these questions, that they don’t have to give us information. That’s why the bill to audit the Fed is the first step to ending the Federal Reserve.

***

I think and I believe that we have had way too much bipartisanship for about 60 years. .... It’s the bipartisanship of the welfare system, the warfare system, the monetary system, the challenge to our civil liberties, it all goes through with support from both parties. So there’s way too much bipartisanship. This should be a challenge of the issue of philosophy – good philosophy versus bad philosophy.

***

But where I think we go astray on this exceptionalism is there are some people and sometimes they’re referred as neoconservatives and they’re sort of neo-Jacobins where they believe that we have this moral responsibility to use force to go around the world and say, “You will do it our way or else.” Well force doesn’t work, it never works.

Paul is also against welfare. Given his views on ending the warfare
state, bailouts, and reining in the Fed. I think, on balance, he would
make a much better president than Obama.

Comments

[Confused]

Out in full force today. Pay no mind. 

[nmewn]

No they won't...cockroaches bitchez!...LOL.

[topcallingtroll]

Dont expect many replies!

[flattrader]

Why bother to explain?

He's got Stockholm Syndrome.  He's identifying with the enemy.

He fell for Walker's false flaeg operation.  (Give $140M away to coporate cronies and then claim there's a deficit...Lie about a $6B deficit that doesn't exist.)  Ignore the fact that Walker is owned by the Koch Brothers.

Our poster is the perfect stooge.

[flattrader]

Why bother to explain?

He's got Stockholm Syndrome.  He's identifying with the enemy.

He fell for Walker's false flaeg operation.  (Give $140M away to coporate cronies and then claim there's a deficit...Lie about a $6B deficit that doesn't exist.)  Ignore the fact that Walker is owned by the Koch Brothers.

Our poster is the perfect stooge.

[topcallingtroll]

Sorry but I don't buy that we libertarian types have to necessarily support the teacher unions on this one.

The deficit was increased by Scot Walker's budget choices, but those choices were about changing the tax structure to help improve the business climate and create more jobs.

Still about 46,000 per year in salary and 43,000 per year in benefits is probably too much.  The republicans are merely asking that there be some distributive justice here in relief of the taxpayers.  The government unions should accept a small increase in employee contributions to their benefits.  This still puts wisconsin state employees well above average.

If it were me I would have immediately had them pay for half of all their benefits or cut their benefits in half, but that is just me.

The teachers have made all the parents in Milwaukee and other places very angry.  These parents had to leave work, some without pay, in order to supervise their kids at home.  Not everyone can find or afford last minute babysitters.  They know the teachers are still drawing their salary while they are protesting at the statehouse.  The backlash will be tremendous.

The republicans will not back down on this.  The dems can hide out in ILlinois all they want, but this bill will pass and the majority in Wisconsin support it.

[Lord Koos]

How many jobs did George Bush's tax cuts create?

[MachoMan]

How many durable jobs has any stimulus created?  All we got for a couple trillion were less people being fired...  of course, we've also got rising input costs as a result, which will lead to more cuts given the need for profit margin...  I'm really not seeing much historical perspective nor analysis of the present environment in your partisan rhetoric...

[pvmuse]

do you hear the sound of crickets?

[MachoMan]

Going to +1 this, despite generally disagreeing with you.  What public employees don't seem to understand is that there is a pent up america out there without jobs and without hope of a better way of life.  These pent up people, sitting at home, are PRIVATE employees who have been the sole brunt of the depression...  it's time for public employees to take their lumps and quit whining.  They have the largest backlash because they took their jobs thinking they would be secure in perpetuity and not have to do a damn thing...  great retirement...  short years...  short days...  good perks...

Guess what....  no free lunches.  You need other people to be productive so as to pay for your salaries...  and they're sitting at home.

[djrichard]

I'm all for taking lumps.  As long as the lump-taking is done by everyone, not just the working stiffs who are unemployed or who are in the public sector and are about to be stiffed.

I propose we have a true depression that wipes out bad debt and gets the process done as quick as possible.  No one will be spared, except those who are savers.  But a suitable safety net will keep everyone from falling through the cracks. We can get through that much quicker than this prolonged agony we're going through instead.

Short of that, we should let the Fed Gov print its own currency to pay its way forward and to eventually pay off its debts going backwards.  That solves the Fed Debt problem.  If we want to do this quicker, let's nationalize the Fed Reserve and wipe out that portion of our Fed Debt.

[Rick64]

 Yes let all of them take the lumps, but lets start at the top. Let the governor and top state politicians take cuts and reduce their benefits. Stop using taxpayer dollars for unneccessary expenditures. Lead by example.

 What really irritates me is that we have these politicians willing to cut pensions, entitlements, ect... but can spend millions (many using their own money)on getting elected to a job that pays hundreds of thousands. Now that just doesn't add up, unless the benefits outweigh the costs?  On a Federal level its even worse. Hundreds of millions of dollars for Obama's trip to India, $56,000 an hr. to fly Air Force One, $450,000 for SuperBowl flyover by the Airforce. Trillions of dollars spent on a manufactured war. WTF

[Bringin It]

If we want to do this quicker, let's nationalize the Fed Reserve and wipe out the Fed Debt.

I like that.

[StychoKiller]

But a suitable safety net will keep everyone from falling through the cracks.

Sorry, but your "safety net" is crushing the life out of our economy and ALL tax-payers.

No other person, or group of persons owns your life nor do you own the lives of others.

A product of your life and liberty is your PROPERTY.

The exercise of choices over life and liberty is YOUR prosperity.

Ask yourself, "why, in the 21st Century, are we STILL allowing the Govt to educate our children?  Why is this industry not privatized?"

[pvmuse]

When has privatization worked at anything?

Are rethuglicans still beating this worn out horse?

Privatization has never worked in any form, perhaps government is inept, but add the profit motive, to like say prisons, and all you do is create a new slave class of workers.

So after we privatize education, will the new corporate masters use indian call centers to educate our children? 

How rich will they get with their Reaganesque/Bush tax breaks?

Wow, beats paying unionized teachers all day long.

[MachoMan]

The question isn't whether privitization has worked, the question is whether anything has ever worked and, if not, then which is the least evil?  I hope you do not overlook the fact that with the expansion of the size and scope of the government, we already developed the slave class to which you were referring...  In short, it is unfair to hold private actors to higher moral standards...

My vote is to shake everyone off the dole and see what happens...  The saddest part is that people think it isn't going to happen anyway...

[Confused]

+1

Corporations will do whats in their best interest, which always seems to be in direct contrast with the interest of the people. Jobs of all types have gone overseas courtesy of corporate savings. Yet the rhetoric about illegal immigrants "stealing" jobs gets louder and louder (not to say it doesn't create problems). Profit motive certainly plays its role in the problem, although I cannot be sure it is the sole driver. 

[Bringin It]

Stycho - Yes  your "safety net" is crushing the life out of our economy and ALL tax-payers.

But we give $Trillions to the Banks in what amounts to welfare for the wealthy.  Let's get that money back.

[MachoMan]

Absolutely, we'll only be $13T in debt then...  I think the answer is to not only take that back, but shake off all parasites, regardless of systemic importance.

[Victor Berry]

Did anyone catch Michele Bachmann's not-so-veiled threat that Governor Scott Walker should fire all the Wisonsin school teachers like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers?

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/bachmann-on-wisconsin-invokes-greece-reagan-firing-air-traffic-controllers-video.php

The ruling elite have always understood one thing and one thing only ... VIOLENCE!  Just ask King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette or Czar Nicholas II and his Romanov family.

If the people don't inflict violence on the ruling elite, then you better believe the ruling elite will inflict violence on the people.

Remember, the Golden Rule ... do unto others before others do unto you!  Or else it's business as usual ... he who has the gold, rules!

[Buckaroo Banzai]

OF COURSE the wisconsin teachers should be fired. Public-service unions have gotten out of control. Public-service unions need to be outlawed. Anyone who serves at taxpayer expense deserves no bargaining power whatsoever, as that is completely antithetical to the democratic process. When the receivers of tax money can organize and influence politicians at the expense of the taxpayer, democracy is sunk.

[Milestones]

It's the givers not the receivers of wealth you had better be afraid of you village idiot!!!    Milestones

[SRV - ES339]

But you're OK with International Corporations buying elections all over the country to install their Tea Party minions?

[oldmanofthesee]

Yes, I'm OK with that, and for one reason. They are not doing it with the taxpayer's money.

[A Nanny Moose]

Two wrongs will make a right? Is that it?

These are public servants, who are not selling their skill on the open market. Taxpayers are their bosses.

[Calmyourself]

No, I am not okay with that just as I am not okay with Unions supporting their chosen candidate whom they then negotiate their pay and bennies with, unholy alliance indeed.  How about me and 10,000 of the employees of IBM have the ability to hire the CEO with a pay package of 20 million.  You think he will asset strip that company to keep us happy, damn right he will..  Use your head.

[SRV - ES339]

Without unions (and I'm hardly a fan but appreciate what so many have fought for) you'd be working 60 hours a week for peanuts.

p.s. your argument is just so wrong (they don't lobby to elect their management) I wouldn't know where to start.

[StychoKiller]

Before the creation of the Federal Reserve (and BEFORE you were born!), the majority of people in the USA were self-employed in their own businesses.  Unions are a response to the predation of Corporations.

[Bringin It]

Nice StychoKiller - The Fed has to go.

[SRV - ES339]

Not trying to be funny with this, but how... how does she get elected to anything?

[pvmuse]

she doesn't, she can't be elected to anything and she isn't even entertaining like the other rethuglican wack-job Palin!

[New_Meat]

SRV-gaze into your navel, consider the dialectic of your misunderstanding of obvious fact vs. the actuality of her support.

Gaze carefulliy, or otoh, have another hit and back to your lair.

sssssh, your mother is coming down the stairs, better dump the ZH page.

Yours,

- Ned

[SRV - ES339]

I'm a 60 year old retired aerospace executive (retired as President)... so what have you done with your life that finds you enamoured with the likes of the "deer in the headlight twins" (sorry, but Sarah comes with the package)?

Cheers,

SRV

[Confused]

Your knee jerk reaction in offering this information is both revealing and amusing. Your intention was to show superiority. But what you have done is signaled to the rest of us which members opinion we can skip.

Please reconsider your tactics when dealing with others. It will help move us forward, together.  

[SRV - ES339]

Dear Dazed and Confused...

I went after a jerk who went after me personally, and shut him up... nothing more, nothing less. I've been a ZH member for over a year and have never discussed my background before... but many thanks for the advice "Grasshopper."

[nmewn]

"I'm a 60 year old retired aerospace executive (retired as President)..."

Well, there you have it...someone with his finger firmly on the pulse of the middle & lower class...LOL. 

[SRV - ES339]

I was born dirt poor... I do not forget where I came from, and understand how hard it is (absolutely impossible for most) to get out... I believe that gives me a pretty good perspective (happy to give you a chuckle though).

[nmewn]

"I was born dirt poor... I do not forget where I came from, and understand how hard it is (absolutely impossible for most) to get out..."

So was I, born dirt poor. But you and I got out without government assistance I suspect.

And yes, it was meant as a chuckle.

I would ask about your aerospace background but you're probably not at liberty to say.

[SRV - ES339]

no offense taken sir... cheers!

[SRV - ES339]

no offense taken sir... cheers!

[Lord Koos]

So I assume you never took advantage of any public education or any other government resources on your path out of poverty?  

[nmewn]

You know what got me out of poverty Koos?

Being raised by parents who were viciously independent, who had a work ethic and who instilled it in me and by actually working for a paycheck.

We never accepted food stamps...that's what EBT cards were called back then. We never lived in public housing. We never accepted rent subsidies. We never accepted utility bill subsidies. We didn't have a TV until my fourteenth birthday. We didn't have a window unit air conditioner until I was sixteen years old and it was for only one room, the rest of the house stayed hot in the Fla. summers.

There is a reason why I don't post most Mondays-Fridays in the daytime (EST)...because I work Koos. And, I have paid in far more than I will ever get back out of this fucked up system.

And another thing Koos.

There is a reason why I'm an over generous tipper when I dine out with my family now. One of my parents (my Mom) had a job as a waitress when I was an infant. She had one customer, an old man, who always sat in the section where she worked, who always left the same tip day after day...twenty five cents.

She said that twenty five cents is what bought my baby food for six months...that's how tight things were.

And still one more thing...this time on education.

There is a reason why squire nmewn gave the introduction speech for his kindergarten teacher's Teacher of the Year Award. My wife taught him (in fact, all our children) to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide and was working on fractions before they ever set foot in a public school. And the teacher acknowledged same during his speech.

So don't presume you know shit about my background or how I came to be what I am now...because you have no idea.

[Bob]

Let me make it three people who rose from dirt floors.  I find that people who do that often seize credit for their mighty achievement as self-made men who did it on nothing more than hard work and dedication, i.e., their own wondrous characters. 

They ignore the advantages they typically enjoyed within that "poverty" they knew: Educated or nonetheless intelligent parents and well-run families, their own above average intelligence, their predilection for activities that lead to success (e.g., school), their own natural appeal to people who guided them, and a whole lot of dumb luck to hold the thing together all along the way.  Note that none of those things were by any stretch of the imagination earned.

[SRV - ES339]

So right, and well said Bob, but I'm not so sure about people "often" forgetting where they came from (once is too often though). I know my exposure to the "real" world was a gift (corny I know, but true), especially in dealing with social / class issues.

Cuts both ways though... it's tough to hear the well worn "I did it, so why can't you," or much worse, listening to the elite "get off the couch" crowd that are convinced the poor are responsible for their fate, when you've lived the truth and know better.

Back to the issue at hand though... it's hard to understand how so many can't see how they, their friends, and loved ones have benefited from the blood, sweat, and in many cases loss of life, of countless brave men and women who have fought for basic rights through the collective bargaining process over the last 100 years.

We are watching class warfare in living color every day... if they (the Koch crowd) get their way, we can say goodbye to the middle class within this decade (there is a direct correlation between loss of collective bargaining rights and "universal" working wage regression... it's a fact).

[Bob]

Completely agreed.

[nmewn]

The discussion is public sector unions...not private sector unions.

Unions comprise a whopping 7% of the private sector workforce, meaning 93% of the workforce is non-union...which is a part of the tax base (the private sector) to provide government employees their salaries & benefits.

The bright and shiny object we are looking at here is simply this, every dollar spent by a government employee has to first be confiscated from private sector pockets through taxes or the Bernank's printing press.

Yes, they earned that dollar for their labor...but that dollar came from the private sector to begin with...with the appropriate government handling charges of course ;-)

[DiverCity]

+ 1!

[yabyum]

Michele Bachmann sounds like a chicken on crack.

[pvmuse]

Michele Bachmann, we could only hope this nut job was a chicken on crack. Instead it looks like there are one or two people here who actually listen to this freak.

[Bringin It]

Michele Bachmann is a big fan of foreign wars for Israel.  How can she pretend to be a fiscal conservative when she's in favor of the continued shipping of American wealth and blood overseas?

Some of you Michele Bachmann fans who junked my friend here.  Why don't you share with us why you're such fans?