Posted on 02/24/2011 2:31:10 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
.....As they sang, "Solidarity forever, for unions make us strong," to the tune of the chorus of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," about 35 tea party activists gathered across the street holding their own signs:
"No more free lunch!" and "Scott Walker for President!"
Richard Woods, a retired contractor who lives in Penryn, stood with the smaller group wearing a red visor with "Tea Party Patriots" stitched on the the front.
"I think the unions are right to be running scared," he said. "Middle America is coming after them."
Wisconsin unions have said they'll accept the higher out-of-pocket payouts that together equal an 8 percent cut to take-home pay, but tens of thousands of employees mobilized in the last week to protect their union bargaining rights.
Ironically, an outright win over the unions by Walker would mean less to California government employees than if he and Wisconsin Republicans compromise by taking the money and leaving union bargaining intact.
"If (Walker) triumphs, the same thing won't happen in California. It would be seen as too extreme," said labor historian Daniel J.B. Mitchell of UCLA's Anderson School of Management. "But a compromise … one could see Republicans here saying, 'Well, they did this in Wisconsin,' and it would be taken as a model for California."
Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara, said that a Wisconsin compromise could have a cascading effect as Brown grasps for solutions to close the state's $26.6 billion deficit. Gov. Jerry Brown has been in talks with six unions still without contracts.
"It would give Brown cover," Lichtenstein said. "He could look at Wisconsin and say (to the unions), 'I can take a little more out of your hide.' "....
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Still, efforts are under way to put an initiative on the ballot next year that would strip public employees of their bargaining rights. And, two labor experts say, events in Wisconsin could embolden both sides of the aisle in California to make deeper cuts in state employee compensation." [end excerpt]
------------
And one of their activist judges will immediately call it unconstitutional.
“LOS ANGELES — Members of Los Angeles County labor unions are on their way to Wisconsin to support government workers there who are battling to keep collective bargaining rights.
City News Service says about 160 members of the county Federation of Labor left Los Angeles on Wednesday morning. They’ll join tens of thousands of protesters outside the Wisconsin state Capitol.”
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/02/23/3424335/la-county-unionists-joining-wisconsin.html
Chicago Federation of Labor workers show solidarity in Wisconsin
The state is dead broke.
It was insolvent when they started issuing IOUs.
The budget can't be fixed with further tax increases. Business is already fleeing the state reducing the tax base.
The idiots are trying to defy gravity and will find out the hard way it can't be done while still on earth.
The only question is if the governing class is going to decide what gets cut or a bankruptcy judge.
At least that's my 2 cents...
Another solution: If the public employee union members won’t contribute enough to make the pensions and health benefit promises self sufficient, then make those pensions and benefits subject to a special surtax that balances the deficiency. Say a 50% tax on any benefit payouts exceeding $40K/yr. They can’t claim a tax targeting them is unconstitutional when they’ve targeted everybody else over the years.
There's a law in the universe that anything that will hurt the CA unions will help CA and everybody else in it. Whatever you're doing in WI, please, keep doing it.
Is the 'stimulus' paying for this?
America is not Egypt—we have a tradition of freedom and we have in our homes the means to preserve it.
We know the 2nd Amendment's original intent and even if the Left succeeds in their mission to hand the US over to a tyrant or tyrants—their evil souls will not be on earth long enough to gloat about it.
"Protersters (sic) hold signs and shout as police officers four rows deep protect Governor Scott Walker's office inside the Wisconsin state Capitol. Today is the ninth consecutive day of protests."
[excerpt] Madison - A Madison-based labor union voted to endorse "a general strike possibly for the day Gov. (Scott) Walker signs his budget-repair bill.''
....State AFL-CIO officials said they remained focused on scheduling rallies for Thursday, which they said "will be the largest demonstrations outside of Madison in Wisconsin's history." [end excerpt]
I understand that, but talkers yesterday indicated that stimulus money (and lots of it) wound up in union pockets...
Faculty Association President Don Barrett said Wisconsin bid to end labor rights threatens California unions
[exceprt] “Facing snowstorms and subfreezing temperatures, Cal State San Marcos professor Don Barrett joined a delegation of California union members in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday to support state workers in protesting attacks on organized labor.
We’re here to support the workers of Wisconsin in their efforts to maintain collective bargaining,” Barrett, president of the San Marcos chapter of the California Faculty Association, said in a telephone interview from Madison.
.....Barrett said Walker’s attempts to end labor rights have implications for members of Cal State’s faculty union and other California workers. On Tuesday, California Assemblyman Allan Mansoor, R-Costa Mesa, introduced legislation which would eliminate collective bargaining on state pension benefits.
“We need the ability for labor to have power,” Barrett said. “We need the faculty to be able to have a voice when the administration tries to increase our workloads to the point that we can’t provide a quality education.” [end excerpt]
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/san-marcos/article_2a39b96c-2487-513d-824b-2411e3ae6828.html
Yes! It went to shore up their benefits packages!
Is that a THREAT, a PROMISE, OR a crystal ball forecast?
The whole STIMULUS and UNION Barganing thingie is a huge SCAM.
The DEMS steal for UNION BENEFITS, the UNIONS take a per centage and pay the DEMS.
BREAK this and the UNIONS and DEMS all rot in hell where they belong.
Yes! It went to shore up their benefits packages!<<<
Rush explianed it this way - The stimulus, which was sold as a shovel ready job creating funding went to saving public
sector union jobs - Teachers, municipal employees, etc. by preserving their jobs the stimulus insured that the union dues were collected and funneled back to the election war chest of Democrats and our Dear Reader! Our hard earned tax money pays to re-elect The criminals who are robbing us blind!! It is a money laundering scheme that would make any Chicago tug proud!!
read - thug
read - thug
A peak behind the curtain. This has been a long time in the making.
Follow the social activism instilled in our children and financed with OUR (never enough) Money. Americans have had enough!
School bond formula faltering - (worried school construction companies campaign for votes) Taxpayers fought back: Winning enough votes for multimillion-dollar school building programs used to be easy for school districts that followed a few simple rules:
•Schedule the election on a day when there's nothing else on the ballot, ensuring low voter turnout; •Hit up school construction companies for campaign donations and spend the money on big newspaper ads and yard signs; •Use school buildings for polling locations and encourage teachers and parents to vote. It worked perfectly for the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District's $713 million bond election Dec. 11, in the middle of the holiday season. School construction companies and other Cy-Fair vendors gave more than $70,000 to Citizens for Cy-Fair Bonds. Voter turnout was 4 percent, and the measure passed handily with 75 percent of the vote.
The people who run the Spring schools did all those things before last weekend's vote on a $385 million bond proposal that included eight new schools, a competition swim center and a laptop computer for every high school student. It would have cost the typical homeowner an extra $100 next year and $200 the year after.
But when the ballots were counted, Spring ISD voters had handed the school district a lopsided beating by a 3-1 ratio. Voter turnout was 10 percent, high for a bond election…..”
A CLASS STRUGGLE: Tenure of Avowed Marxist Controversy jolts TX College"In a nutshell, it means I have a fundamental disagreement with capitalism," he said. "I think that capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression and domination and racism and war and lots of other things.
"So I'm totally opposed to capitalism, and I think that the majority of the people of this country ought to get together and transform the system," he said. "I think we need to replace capitalism with some kind of democratic socialism."
2003: GOP bill draws teachers' angerTALLAHASSEE -- Florida's teachers union is getting a taste of political payback.
After bankrolling the unsuccessful gubernatorial bid of Democrat Bill McBride last year, the Florida Education Association is coming under attack by some Republican legislators because dues paid by its members help run political campaigns.
"I do not oppose the choice of people belonging to unions," said Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. "But teachers came to me with complaints of their money being spent to support candidates they didn't support."
The GOP-dominated Senate Governmental Oversight and Productivity Committee on Tuesday approved Fasano's proposal (SB 1652) to limit payroll deductions only for the cost of collective bargaining and grievance adjustment. The committee split along party lines, with six Republicans supporting the measure and three Democrats opposing it.
"This bill is telling me to shut my mouth," said Maureen Dinnen, president of the teachers union, who was visibly shaking with anger after the vote. "We voted to support candidates who were chosen based on their educational positions. "
WorldNetDaily ^ | July 14, 2005 | Joseph Farah Are These Your Teachers "The National Education Association recently concluded its annual meeting in Los Angeles - and you might be surprised what the largest teachers' union in America talked about and decided.
I mean, let's face it. The state of public education in American today is not exactly state of the art. You might think falling test scores, higher drop-out rates, and functional illiteracy of graduates - despite ever increasing taxpayer commitments - would be causes for concern and debate at a forum like this.
You would be wrong. Here are some resolutions adopted by the representative assembly of the professional association responsible for educating your kids: .............
To participate in a national boycott of Wal-Mart (Two resolutions); To fight efforts to privatize Social Security (nine separate resolutions); To add the words "other" and "multi-ethnic" in addition to "unknown" in the category of ethnicity on all forms; To commemorate the "historic merger of the National Education Association and the American Teachers Association, which occurred in 1966"; To expose health problems associated with "fragrance chemicals"; (I assume this means perfumes. Another resolution called for designating areas of NEA meetings as "fragrance-free zones."); To fight indoor air pollution (two resolutions); To make health care an organizational priority; To expand efforts to elect pro-public education candidates to Congress in 2006; To promote the designation of April as National Donate Month to promote organ and tissue donation; To push for a commemorative stamp honoring public education; To push for more collective bargaining; To study the feasibility of a boycott of Gallo wine (A separate resolution banned the serving of Gallo wine at any NEA functions.); To develop a strategic program to help NEA Republican members advance a pro-public education agenda with the party; To defend affirmative action and oppose the Michigan Civil Rights Amendment; To oppose the annual observance of "Take Your Child to Work Day" during the regular school year; To oppose all forms of privatization; To investigate the establishment of affordable housing programs for members; To respond aggressively to any inappropriate use of the words "retarded" or "gay" in the media; To fight the "regressive taxation practices of the federal government"; To support education programs for prisoners and former prisoners; To support research on women and heart disease; To push for an "exit strategy to end the U.S. military occupation of Iraq"; To oppose the Central American Free Trade Agreement; To push for debt cancellation in underdeveloped countries; To teach children about the "significant history of labor unions"; To develop a comprehensive strategy of support for homosexuality; To educate the public and members about identity theft; To explore alternatives to using latex balloons and gloves at NEA functions. That's a fair synopsis of the actions taken by the largest "education" association in America - the only union and lobby group that is actually tax-exempt by an act of Congress."
An oldie but a goodie and good links to more: NEA challenged on political outlays - Teacher's union fields "army of campaign workers"
Pasadena teacher who assigned politically charged letter writing to resign*** Williams, a member of the teachers association and president of the Pasadena Educators Association, took the letters to Austin in March. Many of the students pleaded for legislators to spare field trips, textbooks and teacher salaries from the budget ax.***
"persistently dangerous" - School-safety rankings - or just black marks?***At the heart of the discrepancy may well be a reluctance on the part of educators to report campus crime fully. A survey by the National Association of School Resource Officers found that 89 percent of school police believe crime is already underreported. "It's the scarlet letter in education today," says Mr. Trump. "Administrators have said to me privately that they would rather be academically failing than be a dangerous school." ***
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