Free Republic

NBC's Rick Santelli on Sunday compared the budget crises affecting state and federal balance sheets to a Sept. 11-type attack on the nation.

Godwin's Law: When you compare your opponentto Hitler, you lost already. Isn't calling Scott "Hitler", even a tiny bit hateful? We don't hate people.We just don't like Unions sucking us dry.And "rape"? Because WI wants you to pony up a small percentageof the benefits we private citizens pay so dearly for?Please. Doing EXACTLY what they accused us of doing.Except worse.That's no surveyers mark over Scotts face.Those are true crosshairs. Riiiighhhht.You see, Scott Walker isn't a duly elected governor.He's a 30-year dictator.Liberalism truly is a mental disorder. More of the same insanity from the Union Communist Movement.

The following is an open letter to the people of Wisconsin, written by a group of concerned Academic Staff members at UW-Milwaukee: An Open Letter to the People of the State of Wisconsin from Concerned Employees of the State of Wisconsin/University of Wisconsin-System: The last six months, candidates for public office and elected officials have made statements defining State employees as overpaid and overcompensated in their benefits (including retirement plans), thus making State employees the scapegoat for the economic crisis the State of Wisconsin currently faces. A small group of State employees who have dedicated their careers to providing quality...

The Legislature should consider cutting state workers' pay, according to a new, grim review of what Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan means for California's civil servants. The Legislative Analyst's Office notes that Brown says departments won't make about one-third of the cuts required in the 2010-11 general fund budget. Furthermore, the LAO says, Brown's budget plan for 2011-12 contains several suspect assumptions about employee cost savings.

AS politicians at all levels of government look to cut spending, taxpayers need to make sure that public employees don't get a free pass -- particularly when it comes to pensions. Most of the nation's 107 million private-sector workers are forced to accept 401(k) plans and other defined-contribution pensions -- in which the employer makes a fixed contribution to the employee's retirement account, rather than guaranteeing a fixed payout. By contrast, nearly all of the more than 22 million federal, state and local public employees enjoy defined-benefit pensions -- with payouts fixed at some percentage of the individual's pay for...

The mayor of California's second biggest city is proposing to do away with traditional pensions for most new city workers, an effort analysts say will be closely followed by other cash-strapped local governments in and beyond the most populous U.S. state. The proposal has outraged public employee unions. A ballot measure asking San Diego voters to back the idea is in the works, Sanders told Reuters in an interview, adding that he aims for defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s common in the private sector to replace defined-benefit pensions. San Diego can no longer afford its pension plan, Sanders said, adding it...

The old saying goes that good policy makes for good politics. In the case of Washington bailing out spendthrift states, the best policy is for the incoming Republican U.S. House to refuse to give the likes of California or New York a penny. A steadfast "No Bailouts" policy makes for better -- and, perhaps, profoundly transformational -- politics. Unless voter behavior changes, the policies and practices that are leading overleveraged states to default -- or worse -- won't change. Reform in voter thinking and, consequently, in how voters touch screens in state elections is critical to ending the era of...

A recent USA Today story showed the growth of pay for federal workers. It noted that those making more than $150,000 had increased ten-fold over the last five years, and doubled during just the first two years of the Obama Administration. But James Hohman, policy analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said the salaries and benefits of state and local governments should be more of an issue for Michigan taxpayers. "Michigan residents should look much closer to home," Hohman wrote in an e-mail. " Federal workers represent relatively little of total government costs while state and local government...

Here come the howls of outrage. "You are anti-union." Well, you're only partially right. I'm anti-government employee union. I don't have a particular problem with the legality of private-sector unions, so long as: (1) Employees vote by secret ballot as to whether or not the union will be formed; and (2) No employee should ever be forced to join a union nor should they be forced to pay dues to any union. Government employee unions? Those are a completely different matter. These are people who spend millions of dollars to elect their bosses and then demand raises, pension plans and...

TRENTON — State government is on track to shed at least 1,200 jobs in January, Gov. Chris Christie said today. "Whether it will grow beyond that, I don't know," he said at a Statehouse press conference. "That's very much going to be dependent on what the revenue outlook looks like for the state." [Snip] Christie's budget proposal, unveiled in March, called for cutting 1,300 state workers, including union and nonunion employees. He said the cuts would save $8.8 million.

In case you are still not clear why California is broke, here is a fascinating breakdown of public employee salaries. You can search by county, city or population. The population correlation can be especially noteworthy. Take little Indio, for example, a sanctuary city, population 82,000 and average income somewhere below $20,000. It’s not hard to see that the city is grossly over staffed and overpaid: The city manager alone earns well over $200,00 per annum. Which explains why residents are constantly asked to vote new taxes for themselves. To their great credit, the city did cut that from the previous...

Nearly 200 Los Angeles County employees earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in 2009. The list of the county's top earners reported Monday in the Los Angeles Times was in response to a public records act request from the newspaper. Many of the workers named on the list include physicians, county firefighters and a handful of top sheriff's employees. Topping the list is Elaine Yang, a senior physician at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who earned $430,909 in 2009. The county counsel's office had delayed the release of the information to the Times, saying it needed time to give...

Steven Greenhut may be the most annoying man in America. No, it’s not because he’s a mean guy or that he has created some silly reality show like Jersey Shores. It’s because Steve, a former Orange County Register columnist, writes books that you need to read, but are totally infuriating and raise your blood pressure a good fifty points. Even though I met Steve while he was covering a variety of political events in his pure journalism days, he didn’t inform me when his first book, Abuse of Power, was published in 2004. I actually learned about it when it...

Chris Christie gets it -- and he didn't need the Tea Party to inspire him. Christie has been shaking up New Jersey since Day One, and now he's done it again -- proposing an unprecedented tightening of pension and health-care benefits for public employees, in order to shore up a system that's teetering at the edge of bankruptcy. He wants to raise the normal retirement age for teachers and most state and municipal workers to 65, requiring 30 years service for early retirement instead of 25. Police would have to work 30 years for full retirement, but could retire early...

By at least one measure, government is playing an unprecedented role in the economy: In recent months, more than 30 cents of every dollar in personal income came directly from the government, new Commerce Department data show. That’s equal to about $3.8 trillion of $12.5 trillion in total personal income on an annualized basis.

At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade. Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available. The federal compensation...

MEXICO CITY -- A top drug gang enforcer said he ordered the killing of a U.S. consulate worker because she helped provide visas to a rival gang in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, federal police said Friday. Jesus Ernesto Chavez (aka El Camello), whose arrest was announced on Friday, leads a band of hit men for a street gang tied to the Juarez cartel, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of anti-narcotics for the federal police. Pequeno said Chavez ordered the March 13 attack that killed U.S. consulate employee Lesley Enriquez and her husband as they drove through the violent...

'Government in New York is too big, ineffective and expensive," the candidate's Web site proclaims. "We must get our state's fiscal house in order by immediately imposing a cap on state spending and freezing salaries of state public employees as part of a one-year emergency financial plan, committing to no increase in personal or corporate income taxes of sales taxes and imposing a local property-tax cap." A Tea Party candidate? Some right-wing Republican? No, it's Andrew Cuomo, son of three-term Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo. Interestingly, he's the only Democrat with a significant polling lead in the governor races in our...

We have reached a potential turning point in the relationship of public employee unions and the electorate they ostensibly serve. Over the past year there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism focused on public unions and the havoc they have wrought on our public finances. Governments -- city, country, state and federal -- are drowning in red ink. Our taxes are flowing to ever voracious government workers (whose own ranks are growing steadily while the private payrolls shrink); they are better compensated than private workers in comparable positions. What is to be done? We -- taxpayers, tea partiers and...

Out of Balance? Comparing Public and Private Sector Compensation Over 20 Years Analysis May Shed Light on Government Hiring Difficulties, Despite Economic Conditions This new report, commissioned by the Center and the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS), provides an original analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Key findings include: Jobs in the public sector typically require more education than private sector positions. State and local employees are twice as likely to hold a college degree or higher as compared to private sector employees. Only 23 percent of private sector employees have completed college, as compared...