Similar comments from the Madison Mayor, Dave Cieslewicz:
Governor Walker is a pathetic and corrupt bureaucrat.
Today in Wisconsin students rise up and protest!
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Similar comments from the Madison Mayor, Dave Cieslewicz:
Governor Walker is a pathetic and corrupt bureaucrat.
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Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
The words of the former Republican in this video make me smile. 
I respect his views previously, but I am glad to know there is room to realize the facts and not let pride get in the way as so many of my Rep. friends and family do.
We Are Wisconsin on Vimeo
I respect his views previously, but I am glad to know there is room to realize the facts and not let pride get in the way as so many of my Rep. friends and family do.We Are Wisconsin on Vimeo
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
A good editorial from a Door County news site. Raises many excellent questions and just makes me more frustrated.
Locked Into The Wrong Debate
Why is it that any mention of taxing the wealthiest Americans is shouted down as class warfare, but cutting wages and benefits of middle-class Americans working in public service is not?
Locked Into The Wrong Debate
Why is it that any mention of taxing the wealthiest Americans is shouted down as class warfare, but cutting wages and benefits of middle-class Americans working in public service is not?
yolland
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^ It's a good response to the scapegoating of public sector unions for shortfalls well beyond their power to create, though from a fiscal standpoint it offers little in response to the the question of, So what should Wisconsin do now?
I'm surprised how little of the coverage I've read on this crisis mentions Medicaid, which accounts for half of Wisconsin's projected shortfall. Federal stimulus funds supplementing Medicaid have kept a lot of states afloat during the last budget cycle, but when those run out in June, a lot of states are going to be totally f*ed (if they weren't already).
I'm surprised how little of the coverage I've read on this crisis mentions Medicaid, which accounts for half of Wisconsin's projected shortfall. Federal stimulus funds supplementing Medicaid have kept a lot of states afloat during the last budget cycle, but when those run out in June, a lot of states are going to be totally f*ed (if they weren't already).
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
just a small observation, and this probably isn't as relevant in Wisconsin, and it is anecdotal and it comes from a small window, but i'm noting some distinct racial resentment towards those "freeloading" civil servants.
in the south, or even the mid-Atlantic, what color are the people who, say, work at the post office, generally?
in the south, or even the mid-Atlantic, what color are the people who, say, work at the post office, generally?
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
Anger brews over government workers' benefits
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
When Erin McFarlane looks at public workers, she sees lucrative pension benefits she doesn't ever expect to get. And it makes her mad.
"I don't think that a federal employee or government employee is worth any more than anybody else who does their job and does it well," said the Slinger, Wis., woman. She's been working a couple of bartending jobs since January, when she was laid off from her job at a Harley Davidson plant after almost a decade.
She's not alone in seeing public servants as public enemies in some ways. For some everyday Americans, it's a case of pension envy.
For McFarlane, 36, it's part of a ubiquitous discussion, at the bars where she works and on Facebook. And it's the center of some of the biggest political battles playing out in state capitals across the country as governors say their states can no longer afford the benefits that public employees have been promised.
Government workers in McFarlane's state have rallied for weeks against Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to take away many collective bargaining rights, saying that would amount to killing the middle class.
A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found that Americans largely side with the employees, though about two in five that want government pay and benefits reined in.
Tony Christoff, a 38-year-old stay-at-home dad in Perrysburg, Ohio, said he believes public workers such as police officers and teachers — including his wife — should be rewarded.
"They go over and above and deserve the pay they get," he said.
That's not a unanimous view, though.
Barbara Davis, a retiree from Cherry Hill, N.J., has been watching public workers in rallies in Madison, Wis., as well as Trenton. She says the protesters are wrong about tightening benefits hurting the middle class.
"I'm sorry, but what they're doing is telling off the middle class," said Davis, 76, and a co-chairwoman of the Cherry Hill Area Tea Party. "The middle-class people don't get all the goodies that they do."
At its heart, the issue is this: Some public workers get a sweet deal compared to other workers. And it's taxpayers who pay for it.
That's set off resentment in a time when economic doldrums have left practically everyone tightening their belts. Many people have found their tax bills rising even if their earnings haven't.
In Davis' case, it's the property tax that smarts. She and her husband pay about $12,000 per year for the house she describes as a three-bedroom "tract home." That's a high tax even in New Jersey, where the average property tax bill tops $7,000 and where the Tax Foundation has found homeowners pay three and a half times the national median.
A half century ago, industrial jobs at car and steel plants provided high salaries and rich benefits. But as manufacturing moved overseas, many formerly well-paid workers had to take lower-paying jobs. By the end of the Great Recession, the economic order was undeniably changed.
"It's the government sector worker who's the new elite, the highest-paid worker on the block," said David Gregory, who teaches labor and employment law at New York's St. John's University.
For instance, most non-uniformed public employees who have worked in New Jersey for 30 years with an ending salary of $85,000 can look forward to retiring at 55 with an annual pension of about $46,000. Working until age 60 and a salary of $90,000 can bring a pension of $57,000. And many of the New Jersey's public-sector retirees have no or low premiums for their health insurance.
For a private-section worker who retires at 55, relying solely on a 401(k) without an employer match, it would take a $100 contribution to a plan every week for 30 years and getting an annual return over 7 percent to get to the same level of pension benefit as the public worker retiring at that age. Those benefits would run out after 25 years for the 401(k) retiree.
To be fair, most public-sector retirees don't get such rich pensions. New Jersey's Treasury Department says the average annual pension due state workers who retired between July 2009 and June 2010 was just over $30,000 per year; for local government employees, it was about $20,000.
And the members of the state's two biggest public employee retirement systems are required to pay 5.5 percent of their base salaries into the pension funds.
St. John's Gregory says the rest of the benefits are deferred compensation promised to workers instead of better salaries.
National data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that public-sector workers do better when it comes to pensions and benefits.
As of last September, professional and management workers in the private sector were making $34.91 in hourly salary; public sector professionals made $33.17 an hour.
The government entities spent 1.7 times as much on health care per employee-hour worked and nearly twice as much on retirement costs. Public-sector workers — who are more often represented by unions — are far more likely to have defined-benefit pensions with promises to pay for the retirees' whole lives.
Olivia Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says the data aren't perfect. They don't compare workers with the same education or experience levels, and they cover a broad range of jobs. Also, she said, they don't take into account that about one-fourth of public workers aren't covered by Social Security.
There's one clear downside for the public employees: "We also know that the public-sector pensions are in deep trouble financially," Mitchell said, pointing to studies that suggest that they're underfunded by a total of $3 trillion, largely because governments have skipped payments. "Exactly what will be done about that, nobody knows."
Unchanged, those retirement systems could eventually stop paying entirely.
"One way or another, if we don't make changes, the government will collapse," said Abel Stewart, of Toledo, Ohio.
Stewart, 36, the director of contemporary worship at a Methodist church in suburban Toledo, says he has a hard time conjuring sympathy for the government workers he's seen protesting because of all the time he has spent working with struggling immigrants.
"These are middle-class people who have a house, who have enough food, who are complaining they don't have enough," he said. "Instead of fighting for their piece of the political pie, they'd be better looking at how to live within their means."
Jeff Nash, a Democrat elected to the county freeholder board in union-heavy Camden County, N.J., has come to believe that public employees need to sacrifice.
"The days of government workers receiving free benefits and pensions without risk, those days are coming to an end because everyone else who pays for government services is paying more for their health insurance, like myself, and running the risk of a 401(k) as part of their retirement savings. Government is changing to match what the rest of middle-class America is enduring today."
"It's not a matter of fairness," he said. "It's a matter of evolution."
Hetty Rosenstein, the New Jersey director of the Communications Workers of America, which represent New Jersey government workers in several fields, says she gripes about her members' pensions are misplaced.
"There's pension envy because people who are working in the private sector, they're being denied pensions," she said.
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press
When Erin McFarlane looks at public workers, she sees lucrative pension benefits she doesn't ever expect to get. And it makes her mad.
"I don't think that a federal employee or government employee is worth any more than anybody else who does their job and does it well," said the Slinger, Wis., woman. She's been working a couple of bartending jobs since January, when she was laid off from her job at a Harley Davidson plant after almost a decade.
She's not alone in seeing public servants as public enemies in some ways. For some everyday Americans, it's a case of pension envy.
For McFarlane, 36, it's part of a ubiquitous discussion, at the bars where she works and on Facebook. And it's the center of some of the biggest political battles playing out in state capitals across the country as governors say their states can no longer afford the benefits that public employees have been promised.
Government workers in McFarlane's state have rallied for weeks against Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to take away many collective bargaining rights, saying that would amount to killing the middle class.
A USA Today/Gallup poll last month found that Americans largely side with the employees, though about two in five that want government pay and benefits reined in.
Tony Christoff, a 38-year-old stay-at-home dad in Perrysburg, Ohio, said he believes public workers such as police officers and teachers — including his wife — should be rewarded.
"They go over and above and deserve the pay they get," he said.
That's not a unanimous view, though.
Barbara Davis, a retiree from Cherry Hill, N.J., has been watching public workers in rallies in Madison, Wis., as well as Trenton. She says the protesters are wrong about tightening benefits hurting the middle class.
"I'm sorry, but what they're doing is telling off the middle class," said Davis, 76, and a co-chairwoman of the Cherry Hill Area Tea Party. "The middle-class people don't get all the goodies that they do."
At its heart, the issue is this: Some public workers get a sweet deal compared to other workers. And it's taxpayers who pay for it.
That's set off resentment in a time when economic doldrums have left practically everyone tightening their belts. Many people have found their tax bills rising even if their earnings haven't.
In Davis' case, it's the property tax that smarts. She and her husband pay about $12,000 per year for the house she describes as a three-bedroom "tract home." That's a high tax even in New Jersey, where the average property tax bill tops $7,000 and where the Tax Foundation has found homeowners pay three and a half times the national median.
A half century ago, industrial jobs at car and steel plants provided high salaries and rich benefits. But as manufacturing moved overseas, many formerly well-paid workers had to take lower-paying jobs. By the end of the Great Recession, the economic order was undeniably changed.
"It's the government sector worker who's the new elite, the highest-paid worker on the block," said David Gregory, who teaches labor and employment law at New York's St. John's University.
For instance, most non-uniformed public employees who have worked in New Jersey for 30 years with an ending salary of $85,000 can look forward to retiring at 55 with an annual pension of about $46,000. Working until age 60 and a salary of $90,000 can bring a pension of $57,000. And many of the New Jersey's public-sector retirees have no or low premiums for their health insurance.
For a private-section worker who retires at 55, relying solely on a 401(k) without an employer match, it would take a $100 contribution to a plan every week for 30 years and getting an annual return over 7 percent to get to the same level of pension benefit as the public worker retiring at that age. Those benefits would run out after 25 years for the 401(k) retiree.
To be fair, most public-sector retirees don't get such rich pensions. New Jersey's Treasury Department says the average annual pension due state workers who retired between July 2009 and June 2010 was just over $30,000 per year; for local government employees, it was about $20,000.
And the members of the state's two biggest public employee retirement systems are required to pay 5.5 percent of their base salaries into the pension funds.
St. John's Gregory says the rest of the benefits are deferred compensation promised to workers instead of better salaries.
National data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that public-sector workers do better when it comes to pensions and benefits.
As of last September, professional and management workers in the private sector were making $34.91 in hourly salary; public sector professionals made $33.17 an hour.
The government entities spent 1.7 times as much on health care per employee-hour worked and nearly twice as much on retirement costs. Public-sector workers — who are more often represented by unions — are far more likely to have defined-benefit pensions with promises to pay for the retirees' whole lives.
Olivia Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says the data aren't perfect. They don't compare workers with the same education or experience levels, and they cover a broad range of jobs. Also, she said, they don't take into account that about one-fourth of public workers aren't covered by Social Security.
There's one clear downside for the public employees: "We also know that the public-sector pensions are in deep trouble financially," Mitchell said, pointing to studies that suggest that they're underfunded by a total of $3 trillion, largely because governments have skipped payments. "Exactly what will be done about that, nobody knows."
Unchanged, those retirement systems could eventually stop paying entirely.
"One way or another, if we don't make changes, the government will collapse," said Abel Stewart, of Toledo, Ohio.
Stewart, 36, the director of contemporary worship at a Methodist church in suburban Toledo, says he has a hard time conjuring sympathy for the government workers he's seen protesting because of all the time he has spent working with struggling immigrants.
"These are middle-class people who have a house, who have enough food, who are complaining they don't have enough," he said. "Instead of fighting for their piece of the political pie, they'd be better looking at how to live within their means."
Jeff Nash, a Democrat elected to the county freeholder board in union-heavy Camden County, N.J., has come to believe that public employees need to sacrifice.
"The days of government workers receiving free benefits and pensions without risk, those days are coming to an end because everyone else who pays for government services is paying more for their health insurance, like myself, and running the risk of a 401(k) as part of their retirement savings. Government is changing to match what the rest of middle-class America is enduring today."
"It's not a matter of fairness," he said. "It's a matter of evolution."
Hetty Rosenstein, the New Jersey director of the Communications Workers of America, which represent New Jersey government workers in several fields, says she gripes about her members' pensions are misplaced.
"There's pension envy because people who are working in the private sector, they're being denied pensions," she said.
yolland
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Canadiens1131
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I wonder whether there will be a larger backlash against the new Tea Party candidates, especially after Walker going "full-retard".
kramwest1
has a
It's about the budget deficit. 
(or making harder for Obama to carry Wisconsin in 2012)
(or making harder for Obama to carry Wisconsin in 2012)
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
kramwest1
has a
I can't find the quote online from the Republican WI state senator, but he went off-message and admitted that suppressing the unions will hurt Obama financially in WI in 2012.
Obviously the people of Wisconsin are energized. I just hope it's a majority of the people and that they stay energized.
iron yuppie
ONE love, blood, life
I think that they will. Recall efforts and court challenges are already being prepared - not to mention similar bills being considered in Ohio and Indiana - so this whole fiasco is going to remain in the public eye well into the 2012 election season. There's no sweeping this under the rug for Walker.
OP
OP
Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
This is so great! I love MM! 
He is inspiring.
He was also on Rachel last night.
YouTube - 'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, 2011
This is the article on his website about how he showed in Madison! Great read when you have time!
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/how-i-got-to-madison-wisconsin
He is inspiring.He was also on Rachel last night.
YouTube - 'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, 2011
This is the article on his website about how he showed in Madison! Great read when you have time!
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/how-i-got-to-madison-wisconsin
kramwest1
has a
YouTube - WI Leader Admits His Union-busting agenda is intended to hurt Obama reelection
ThinkProgress � WI Senate GOP Leader Admits On-Air That His Goal Is To Defund Labor Unions, Hurt Obama’s Reelection Chances
This is not about any budget crisis. It is about weakening Democrats politically.
Good to see politicians serving the people before the party.
kramwest1
has a
kramwest1
has a
OP
OP
Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
sue4u2
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Exactly kramwest, It seems a certain group of Rebublicans will do anything including crashing the economy again to keep Obama from being re-elected in 2012.
They are killing the Republican Party and the real party should rise up against these idiots. They don't care about anything but getting theirs and your's too.
Wisconsin is just one of a long line of destruction that will happen if they get away with this.
also the "Welcome to Wisconsin" sign is truly Brilliant!!
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
This is so great! I love MM!
He was also on Rachel last night.
YouTube - 'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, 2011
This is the article on his website about how he showed in Madison! Great read when you have time!
How I Got to Madison, Wisconsin | MichaelMoore.com
Great speech - thanks for posting.
OP
OP
Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Over 200,000 protesting today at the capital in WI!
Susan Sarandon was there too! She was at a peace march in NYC in 06 I participated in, she is a long time liberal who shows up all the time! Love that about her.
YouTube - Susan Sarandon Speaks to Young People At Madison
Susan Sarandon was there too! She was at a peace march in NYC in 06 I participated in, she is a long time liberal who shows up all the time! Love that about her.
YouTube - Susan Sarandon Speaks to Young People At Madison
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Labour is a commodity. The services of which can be withdrawn at any time.
OP
OP
Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Michael Moore hinted that there were talks of a general strike coming soon to the U S of A. We shall see.
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
I'm only posting this link because I always look for a reason to use one of my favorite internet jokes:
THE LURKERS SUPPORT ME IN EMAIL!
Politics | Wis. governor releases e-mails about union rights | Seattle Times Newspaper
Yeah, 8,000 supportive emails vs ... how many protesters were there all told?
THE LURKERS SUPPORT ME IN EMAIL!
Politics | Wis. governor releases e-mails about union rights | Seattle Times Newspaper
Yeah, 8,000 supportive emails vs ... how many protesters were there all told?
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
remember guys, the Tea Party isn't a bunch of racists and homophobes and woman haters.
Walker seeks to stop defense of state's domestic partner registry - JSOnline
Walker seeks to stop defense of state's domestic partner registry - JSOnline
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Christ, what an asshole.
Christ, what an asshole.
I Move in Mysterious Ways
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2001
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- 4,255
We have a few years to go, but we can hope that our next race for governor isn't another feable catfight between two douchebags. Last year was definitely lose/lose.
kramwest1
has a
Now a WI Senate race, too.
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