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Scranton Mayor: Minimum Wage For All Or Become Stockton
The infamous city of Scanton, PA has had financial troubles for a couple of decades - losing population since the end of WWII - but as NPR reported this weekend, the $16.8 million budget gap that Mayor Chris Doherty is trying to fill (and the disagreements between his taxation proposal and the city council's borrow-more-money view) has driven the mayor to an incredible action. Doherty has reduced everyone's pay - including his own - to the state's minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In an ironic choice of words, the desperate mayor noted: "I'm trying to do the best I can with the limited amount of funds that I have," Doherty says, "I want the employees to get paid. Our people work hard — our police and fire — I just don't have enough money and I can't print it in the basement." NPR continues, After paying workers Friday, the city had only about $5,000 left in the bank. More money flowed into city accounts that day, but it was still not enough to pay the $1 million the city still owes to its nearly 400 employees.
This is, of course, stressful on the union workers affected as one notes: "[The] kids aren't going to be able to do certain activities this summer — maybe we're not going to be able to go on vacation" (to Italy we wonder?) adding that (via HuffPo), "With Scranton and Pennsylvania being such a hot bed for the next election, we want to make sure that they know there's a Democratic mayor that's not taking care of his public safety unions,". The unions plan to be back in court first thing Monday morning to ask the judge to hold Doherty in contempt. It seems municipalties across the country are increasingly turning to austerity measures to tackle their budget gaps and protect bond-holders (until they finally become Stockton, CA).
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My daddy taught me if a deal sounds to good to be true ... it probably isn't.
In life you need to have a plan b, c and d. Just in case plane A falls through.
They should be thinking the gettin was good while it lasted. Plan B.
I managed to make plan E work so far, while stacking plan F.
So what! A lot of people in that town are in the private sector and out of work as well. Just because you bagged a public union job doesn't make reality disappear.
Is there several Ferrari dealer ships in Scranton, I think Scranton is a slum. Minimum wage might be a little high.
You're implying the evil ".1%" somehow had MORE of a role in the rape of this municipality than your beloved band of highwaymen the union "workers"? ... the ones who had no qualms ethical or otherwise with taking jobs which anyone with 2 brain cells could see had massively inflated wages? Yes, keep blaming the enablers for the addicts' behavior.
Today's unions are mafias. They are every bit as corrupt, rent-seeking, scamming, fraudulent, deceptive, manipulative, and cheating as any multinational corporation or "1%"er you love to blame for all the world's problems.
"The money" was never there. Bankers told the politicians, "There'll be PLENTY of money in the future! Just take it from then! Look at these charts!"
But it was always a lie.
It never existed in the first place.
It's all a damn delusion.
Delusion (particularly self-delusion) is the foundation upon which all statism is built, including paternalistic cradle-to-grave welfarism.
it's like a dad promising his kid a Ferrari if he graduates from High School. When the kid finally graduates, the mom says, "Your father's high. We don't have the money for that."
The kid then gets mad at mom, 'cause she's the one who told him "No". He should be mad at the person who lied to him for years.
Same with the public: They'll take it out on the people who tell them that there is no money when they should go after the people who lied for years.
Well that kid was delusional as well much llike most Merikans that just want to "get theirs." Could be his upbringing or the meds his parents put him on or the bath salts to escape the horrors of actually living.
There you go. Without real consequences for the THEFT and LYING, trust is dead. Goodbye dollar, possesion becomes the law.
Got Physical?
Maybe that's why Ron Paul doesn't want to be the guy holding the bag at the end of the election.... because it will be "the libertarians destroyed our economy".
(I know, as if they aren't already blaming it on the "free" market and "capitalism")
So there are NO CONSEQUENCES for lying? A few people may have a problem with that.
There needs to be REAL FUCKING CONSEQUENCES for lying politicians and lying fucking paper-pushers. Bull fucking shit, it doesn't matter.
Time to get fucking real, time to get the fucking guillotine mother fucker.
Bust your ass your whole life, only to hear that your retirement "isn't there" FUCK YOU!!!!!
On the other hand, if "we the people" are dumb enough to entrust our retirement to anyone but ourselves, then perhaps it's not a bad thing that the majority of us are wiped off the face of this planet. The ass-spanking for humanity is going to be extremely severe, but there will be some who survive. But yeah, we need to bring back CONSEQUENCES for lying, I agree.
Consequences WILL come back. One thing that something like this WILL do is insure that INFLATION kicks into high gear. If I provide a REAL SERVICE, and you are telling me that I have no retirement or banks and the politico are theives then I am going to make sure I get paid up front, and most likely in silver or gold. The price will be triple for credit or fiat.
Go ahead open pandora's box, fine with me. Fucking bring it.
The Prancing Horse smashed records last year for vehicle sales and total revenue, as it readies the launch of a new "extreme" 12-cylinder supercar to replace the 599 GTB Fiorano. http://www.insideline.com/ferrari/ferrari-reports-record-sales-in-2011-p...
I go for the Mollers myself. At least you can fly those.
I see so many people on the public dole pretty much sitting around all the time. One of my family members says she plays cards on the computer for a couple of hours a day.
I am thinking minimum wage might be a bit high ...
I've worked in the private sector my entire life with the exception fo one summer when I worked for a U.S. Congressman. Regardless of your view of public versus private sector, every private company I've worked had plenty of people who sat around and did nothing for a couple of hours a day (or more). Unless you intend to hire robots, it's just part of humanity.
Are you saying useless people follow you around?
I heard that sensible people and robots hate him.
Wage deflation, the central bankers won't like that. He better stay away from open windows for a while. Does this mean he will reduce their mortgage payments as well.
Cue housing, round two.
The next bubble has already been Inflated. It's the Financial sector.
Scranton...I thought a truck load of Bananas tipped over there a long time ago....
Well boys you can either cut your expenses....or raise revenues...guess which one will work in the long term....that would be cutting expenses.....because if you raise taxes on those nasty rich people...they will leave and not be rich anymore...and their companies, workethic, and ideas will leave too...and you will be left with the scum...the people who live off of others ..and they think they have the right to do so..
Minimum wage for all...coming soon to a municipality, town, city, state, country...near you
Problem with that is that they will raise the minimum wage to $100,000 a year....plus all the goodies...
You can't hire cops for minimum wage. You can probably get criminals who'll carry a gun for that rate, though.
Would that be an improvement?
Cops have ways of supplementing their income - on the job. This will likely increase if they aren't paid. Another thing about cops -- they have stuff on the politicians. That's one of the reasons they get compensated so well.
No kidding. Clocking 200 hours of overtime for a few dozen actual extra hours worked? You betcha! Overtime for mandatory training and routine meetings? Yes sir! Making white-collar arrests at the end of the shift so you get overtime? Yep! Sending out cars to serve as a personal car service for the well-connected? Better believe it! Taking the ENTIRE summer off? Absolutely!
It's a total free-for-all because the police unions are unbreakable and because all they need to do is cry "fewer patrol cars on the streets!" and the fawning politicians immediately bow down and throw more Other People's Money at them.
In many cases I fail to see the distinction.
vacation? many will not eat.
Foodstamps to the rescue.
It's just not fair. The Government should do something.
Everything's hard... sob ... print.
And in Chicago their budget is great and everyone will get everything they ever wanted and were promised by politicians...
Rahm Emanuel Still Hates Democracy; and Other Sequels from Five Months of Columnizing"But meanwhile, back to Rahm.
Hizzoner's mighty display of authoritarian muscle, the Chicago NATO summit, came and went to decent local reviews. No matter the nearly six dozen reports of police brutality, his cops still got to enjoy a free White Sox game, mingling with the players on the field as general manager Kenny Williams praised their "bang-up job" (unfortunate language!), "an exercise in patience and tolerance at every level." Chicagoans' patience, however, may be coming to an end.
There's been an astonishing, astronomical increase in murders in the city this year, for which the mayor scapegoats liquor and convenience stores while cutting $9 million from youth anti-violence programs. Cutting is Emanuel's bag – which may be why I saw, for the first time ever in front of my tranquil Chicago building five blocks from the Obama family's home, a schizophrenic ranting and shrieking up and down the street. Rahm has closed six of the city's twelve public mental-health clinics – and his cops have been arresting people protesting on the sidewalks in front of them without charges.
He says he's doing it all for the children. Like, for instance, when he says, "Without pension reform, we'll be forced to mortgage our children's future." Because, as you know, pensions don't help support any children. Last month he traveled to the state capitol in Springfield to bark that unless he was able to increase the retirement age for public employees by five years, suspend their cost of living increases, increase their pension contributions, and give them a "choice" between having defined-benefit pensions or those failing 401(k) plans beloved of Wall Street, he'd have to increase property taxes 150 percent. And, of course, he shut out the unions from these discussions of their members' fate. That's his bag, too."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/rahm-emanuel...
In contract talks, Emanuel targets firefighter salary perkshttp://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-24/news/ct-met-fire-departmen...
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Releases Salary Information for Every City Employee"There are also some more surprising figures, such as the 31 employees who put boots on cars being paid $62,000 a year and 23 caulkers paid $91,500 each."
http://abcnews.go.com/US/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel-releases-salary-info...
Deflation.
"we want to make sure that they know there's a Democratic mayor that's not taking care of his public safety unions" Too bad they can't print money like the federal government.
Maybe there's some retirement accounts they can plunder? That'd make everything alright to "take care of the public safety unions". (Nevermind shafting people in the future, but that's probably ok with the unions)
Why can't people understand, no money in the bank means you can't spend any money.
I'll bet the retirement account is underfunded, thats the next surprise they will get. Hello social security and food stamps.
The facts of the story need to come out and they wont in the liberal media, I live in a PA town not far from Scranton around 5,000 population and 14 full time officers and another dozen or so part timers. We havent had a capital crime in more than 10 years, on top of that we have a county sherrif and state police...... Figure about a million dollars in salary fringes and retirement we shouldnt be paying...... I would suspect that scranton could easily get by with a quarter to half the cops it presently has.....
I live in Scituate Mass, town of 17,000...30 full time cops, three fire stations...two of them are about 1.5 miles apart...all stocked with big expensive trucks. very little crime, lots of wasted money. Town I grew up in had an all volunteer fire dept...don't notice a lot of houses burning down in either spot. The ones that do burn down are covered by private insurance transactions.
The public sector pension timebomb just gets bigger.
even with a minor traffic accident you get two large firetrucks, an ambulance and four police cars showing up to block all the remaining traffic.
Heroes.
so I guess you would have gone in tower 1 on 911 you pussified cocksucker
Yeah lets climb up 70 stories in a burning building to evacuate people, including ourselves after climbing those 70 stories. Makes a lot of sense to me....
I call them the thundering herd. All leaches.
leach on this you sniffing momma's pussy boy
I live in a County with about 80,000 we have about 600 sworn on call at any time.
Ammunition and Castle Doctrine takes care of the rest.
So the unions are pissed because the mayor is trying to keep them employed? Would they rather have the mayor just shut everything down because they are out of money and (HORRORS!) don't want to borrow?
So many people out of work and this union rep would rather have them take unemployment without health benefits than be employed for minimum wage and keep benefits intact.
What does that say about the survivability of the millions of folks who work for minimum wage? Let's see, in 1964, minimum wage was $1.25. In the SILVER quarters of that time, that would make minimum wage today the equivilent of.....$25.00 per hour! (Wha, what do you mean, $7.25?!? Are you nuts?!?)
Even with overtime how can one boost ones retirement now?
You could try saving money. Horrors!
Buy physical, put it in a safe, in your possession. Or invest in a property or asset that you can touch that generates revenue (like a rental of some sort).
Reminds me of the airline for which I used to work. Promised all sorts of things rather than take a crippling strike but there comes a point when the bills come due and the money is all gone. RIP Eastern, Pan Am, TWA, Brannif, and oh so many others. The city should unincorporate aand send everyone home. There aren't that many people left there, anyway.
Scranton? That's next to Allentown, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHnJp0oyOxs
Mr Mayor - simple solution (borrowed from California). Issue I.O.U. (revenue anticipation notes) to your employees which will be payable when sufficient funds are available. Interest will accrue on the notes.
Who can complain - where else are you going to get 10-12% interest? Only problem, of course, is if the funds won't ever be available in which case it is the bankruptcy court's problem.
It just might work if we combine it with a debt JUBILEE!!
The mayor should remind city workers that their jobs could be outsoursed to India or China just like the private sector. I think $7.25 is way too much for what these leaches produce.
Maybe are new landlord(China)will snatch up Sranton.Then Harrisburg.
Outsource sewage, water, and electricity to China? How's that going to work exactly? LMFAO!
Never doubt the power of the inscrutable.
if city owns some farmlands it can grow food and pay wages with food give-aways
I have been trying to bring back sharecropping for years, are you saying now I can talk about it without being called a racist? Curious.
Just refer to it as Federal Reserve Farming. Debt backed collards are the new FRN.
Pa is a big gun state.Badges,we don't need no stinkin badges.
The main function of city government is to hassle people for building permits, tax them for improving their property too much and to prevent new small businesses from starting up.
The central bankers will make sure to keep city government around to fulfill these missions.
Don't get me started. I've been in GC since 1976 and these government employees have been a hindrance along.
Their just like gremlins.
i am sure they are hindrance to your shotty ass construction practices where you build shit that lasts about a month then falls down after you finally get finished over budget
I wanted to comment about what a fuckhead you are but I decided you weren't worth it
Anyone else get the feeling this is all going to come to a grinding halt....SOON
Ich bin ein Mayan!
No not yet, this is where the printing comes in.
send the public takers their checks .......................and let them BOUNCE !
It's amazing how many municipalities cancelled 4th of July fireworks this year. Food for thought.
It's got to suck to be in the Fireworks business.
especially in San Diego
So the average pay in that town for a public employee is $120,000 a year? THAT IS TOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!
i call bullshit on you post
ha, ha, we might not be able to go on vacation. I had a small business and I haven't had a vacation in nearly 12 years. My vacation is moving out of Cali and not looking back!
You sound like a hard worker. We'll take you in Ohio.
Maybe thats the solution. Instead of tax incentives to corps productive new citizens should get deals to move to a state.
you must be a shitty businessman
Your lack of understanding is only exceeded by the extreme ennui produced by your entry into this conversation.
average patrolman's salary in Chicago suburbs is 90K with full pension of 85% of final years wages for life including medical dental eyeglass etc for life after 25 years working. We all love cops but come on, fireman are the same wages and retirement plan ,,, come on,,,
And it costs way too damn much to live there.
Down here you can get by with 20K.
Everyone listen up, move to Texas.
You should clarify who you mean by everyone lol. Your southern neighbors might take that as an open invite.... not that they need one
Free your people. Repudiate the debt.
idiots.
How long did you guys figure it would take before americans started getting paid what they are actually worth?
Human value in america will reach parity with human value in china, its just a matter of time. Do the math.
How long can the expected inflated wages , salaries and standard of living be supported by ingrates, gold bricks, cubicle workers surfing the internet, face stuffing sows, etc. producing little or nothing in tangible assets??
paybacks a bitch, and the bill has already arrived.
If the mayor replaces them all with mexicans, he can save another 40%. I can assure you will have a better work force.
And Mexicans don't need no stinking badges, either. So that's an additional savings.
This is the best government-related story I've seen in years. They should cut all their pay permanently and maybe some of these parasites would have to get productive work in the private sector.
Where? Maybe private schools that cost even more than public ones?
Private schools aren't expensive. They just aren't funded by tax money. If you did a cost comparison and peope had the decision to go to private schools instead of the government controlled waste of times you would find more money is blown on the public school system than the private one. Its just another part of the Commie USA system. Seriously I would rather go to a private school and learn skills that would help me instead of the garbage cirriculum they forced me to learn. What a waste.
A judge has ruled that scranton must pay their salaries, the judge didn't say how they were going to get the money. Things will get good in a couple of days.
The mayor may have to lay off 75% of all workers, that would balance it out.
That's all govt workers should make, they are doing the community a service so they should be independently wealthy before committing to govt service. Every unemployed bum should be given a govt job instead of welfare.
Sorry but hasn't that policy already been implemented?
Get rid of the IRS.
2500 bucks each. What is that their weekly pay?
"...and I can't print it in the basement."
we need to get you in touch with the chairsatan....then you can print it anywhere you want....
Scranton can build a mint and establish it's own money such as was done back in Colonial times.
Mint worthless IOUs like Californa. Or bars of tungsten like those in Fort Knox.
More communism from the USA. Government controlled labor and rates.
It's no wonder Germany kicked Marx the hell out and Britains dumb Rothschild stooge asses let him in. Germany Triple A, USA not.
I DO NOT LIKE THE PATH THIS COUNTRY IS GOING DOWN.
Here are the 10 tenets of Communism and my analysis of the features we have in the USA.
Central banking system - Check
Government controlled education - Half Check
Government controlled labor - Half Check
Government ownership of transportation and communication vehicles - Half Check
Government ownership of agricultural means and factories - Half Check
Total abolition of private property - Half Check
Property rights confiscation - Half Check
Heavy income tax on everyone - check
Elimination of rights of inheritance - Half Check
Regional planning - Uncheck
Well at least US politicials have the guts to do what they have to do. Imagine Van Rumpuoy or any other euroclown for that matter even raise the subject let alone lower his salary to $7.25/hour.