I don’t think that word means what you think it does.

Scott Walker for President 2012

People should accept less if they feel good about what they’re doing? That’s exactly the kind of reasoning that corporate management loves. Now, if you could say, “This company is like a family” just before you lay somebody off, you could have a great future as a corporate manager.

That’s damn scary.

I’m ready to make my guess…

You are Scott Walker. Can I claim my 5 pounds?

Walker/Paul 2012

THEY HAVE AGREED TO THE CUTS.

THEY ARE NOT ASKING FOR MORE MONEY.

We’re talking about 8.5% of the budget here.

What is going on is a lack of revenue. Tax cuts to corporations and the top 2%. And more tax cuts, and more tax cuts. Heck, are you aware Walker has stated that he will forgive back taxes on 60% of all businesses in Wisconsin?

The working poor through the middle class are now being asked to bear the entire burden of all expenses. In both the private and public sector their wages are not so hot, and they’ve been screwed by Wall Street ten times over, impacting everything from home equity to what little investment they might have.

You’re afraid of public unions? You think that’s the problem?

It’s a revenue problem. The top 2% and corporations are no longer contributing to the system.

Just in case you weren’t sure that I was telling the truth about that whole “they said they’d take less money, but the governor wouldn’t take it unless he took their right to collective bargaining as well” thing… I give you:

February 19, 2010. The day that (in less than a week!) the unions agreed to take less money.

http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/102636.html

Yep. All Walker wants is their right to bargain. Nothing else will satisfy. He won’t even talk. So with over 100,000 people present in the capitol in active protest of a rushed bill, it’s now two weeks later, and he’s threatening to arrest democratic senators who’ve had to leave the state because their presence – not their vote, their PHYSICAL PRESENCE – would have passed the bill that he won’t go to the table and talk about before it goes to vote with open public protest opposing it.

That’s what I know.

Hiya, sally_j here. It just so happens that I’ve worked as an archivist in both the private sector and for the state of Wisconsin. Right now I work for the Wisconsin Historical Society, an agency of the great state of Wisconsin.

Before I get to the numbers, I want to make clear that I support my union conceding on the monetary parts of Walker’s “Budget Repair Bill.” One of the reasons why our collective bargaining rights are so important is that it’s kept the peace for multiple generations. Unlike Walker, I am willing to negotiate and concede. Just sayin.

Am I overpaid? With the 12.5% cut in pay via higher contributions to pension and health care, my salary will be in perfect parity with my private sector wages. Seems fair, right?

Except that it’s equal to my corporate pay back in 1998, when I was hired as Image Researcher / Assistant Corporate Archivist mere weeks after I received my master’s degree.

Ouch, right?

And yet I chose state service. Even with the pay cut. Willingly. Gladly. Am I a chump? Some might think so. I don’t. There’s a long list of reasons why I’m willing to work for $35k/year even though I need a Master’s degree to do my job and I run a small digitization business as part of my day job. Reasons are including-but-not-limited-to:

1. Health insurance. I am more grateful for this than I can possibly express. I love my primary health care physician. She is also the doc for both my kids. In fact, she delivered both of them. Plus, how do you put a price on not having to worry about being bankrupted by injury or illness? I don’t like having to worry. My job could suck and this would still be a big incentive. Lucky for me, my job does NOT suck.

2. Pension. A real one. Not a 401K that evaporates during a financial crisis like, oh say this photo from our family vacation to Denver a few years ago.

3. The collections I care for. Hoooo, boy. Maybe someday when I grow up I’ll be able to put into words what kind of value I put on #3. Until then, I’ll tell you that I’m in charge of some pretty important collections, including my first-ever Big Digitization Project. I can’t put a dollar amount on this, but it’s part of my personal calculations for sure. Plus I get to solve problems like: “How the #*$&% are we going to digitize Rod Serling’s dictabelts if we don’t have a dictabelt player?”

OK. Enough with the list. There are plenty more reasons, including my insanely talented and lovely coworkers, the fact that work is a 20 minute bus/bike ride away (depending on the season), working on the campus of the UW-Madison (even though I work for the state which means I make less than my other campus colleagues), being allowed to wear jeans to work — since I don’t have a front line job. Blah blah blah-di-da.

As far as my union bankrupting the state of Wisconsin, I have one point and one question:

1. I have given back for years in the form of 8 unpaid furlough days per year for two years. That’s a 3% pay cut. (In comparison, a 3% tax increase is considered socialism.)

2. Why is *my* union bankrupting the state — but the sheriff’s deputies, the cops and the firefighters’ unions are not? And if it’s about public safety workers needing a different deal than the rest of us, why not prison guards? That seems like a pretty basic public safety issue.

Hey, BoingBoingers! Thanks for listening to me blather. We’d be coming out to protest in Madison regardless, but it’s super duper nice to know we have support. Which reminds me! THANKS FOR THE PIZZA! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME, MWHA!!

CITATIONS

My Online CV: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyjacobs

http://www.epi.org/newsroom/press-entry/news_from_epi_epi_study_finds_wisconsin_public-sector_workers_under-compens

Of particular interest: “Wisconsin state and local governments and school districts pay college-educated workers on average 25% less than do private employers.”

My real problem here is this: why do unions have to prove that unions help student performance, but budget cutters don’t have to prove that changing the rules will help student performance?

The reason the reaction is so visceral is that there is a real shortage of facts about, research projections about, or educational impacts OF these cuts. It’s about money, it’s supposed to be about education.

If it looked like sound long term thinking, people would support it. Since it looks like partisan hackery, people are in the streets.

Your confusion stems in part from the results of our last elections, and funding from a new political party called the Tea Party. During our last election, Republicans won many seats based on economic problems in America. Some candidates labelled as “Republican” were financially backed by Tea Party funding (as the Tea Party is basically an extreme version of Republican) and were more conservative than voters probably realized. A very successful, and well-backed campaign gave republicans a strong victory, and so, several extremely right-wing politicians gained office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement

Walker ranks among those.

He’s fairly extreme, and his tactics have already shown to be bad for those he’s in charge of, but that news broke a week AFTER he was in office as governor.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/117276913.html

Walker is part of a group of Republicans that are nationally trying to break unions’ collective bargaining rights. They’re using our current recession as a way to try to claim “economic crises” to pass legislation that far oversteps any real attempt to balance budgets or solve immediate monetary problems (note that if you’re claiming a crisis, the solution HAS to work immediately as well as long term). Just so you know, this isn’t a generally popular idea. Most people realize that bargaining rights and funding are separate things. In Wisconsin, it’s clear that the public is not okay with stripping rights. Several polls have been taken on the subject. I’ve attached a link to one from NBC (a national news station) which says 62% are against stripping rights and only 33% say it’s acceptable.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/02/6171265-nbcwsj-poll-62-against-stripping-public-employees-bargaining-rights

My answer to your last three statements is D: All of the Above.

Walker does seem to think he understands free market economy. Unfortunately, the U.S. is not a totally free market. Due to the 2008 crisis, we’re currently a partially-managed economy that’s supposed to be in a state of re-growth. (Also unfortunately, Republicans are currently doing their best to slow it.) It’s an economic belief that free markets do break down, and when they do, government’s supposed to do things like encourage spending, otherwise new jobs never appear. Walker’s basically acting like a supporter of a really, really healthy free market. He needs to speak with some really honest economists, rather than take advice from billionaires with an agenda.

Walker has already shown himself to be in someone’s pocket. He was recorded in a prank phone call where he believed he was speaking with David Koch, a billionaire contributor to his campaign. (It was an impersonator.) During that twenty minute call he discussed laying off 5000-6000 workers (part one 4:57) and his plan to trick the democratic senators back across state lines to create a quorum with no real intent to talk about resolution (part one 6:43). He also mentions a group of senators nationally that he believes will follow his lead (part two 1:21) including Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan. Later “Koch” mentions planting “troublemakers” in the crowd (protests have been so peaceful they’ve gotten thank you’s from police) and Walker admits that “we thought about that…my only fear would be is if there was a ruckus caused is that, that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor’s gotta settle to avoid all these problems.”(Part two 4:25)

Since that phone call was made public, Walker locked down the capitol building. Protests have only continued to grow. It was a huge embarrassment for Walker, and really showed that his target was bargaining rights all along.

Call part one: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBeastvideos#p/a/u/1/WBnSv3a6Nh4

Call part two: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheBeastvideos#p/a/u/0/Z3a2pYGr7-k

Last bit: you’re dead on with the blue-red to red-red idea. I actually heard an interview with a senator from Ohio who said exactly that. The thing is: most people aren’t really red-red (or blue-blue) most people do fall someplace in the middle, and all this extremism has been a serious misstep. People are angry about the work that isn’t getting done while something they say they don’t want is being pushed for. BTW, I’m talking about multiple states here.
In the end, it is a tactic to win elections. Business almost exclusively (to the 90th percentile) supports Republican interests, so the unions are the biggest contributor for Democrats. Part of the reason this is happening now is recent deregulation in campaign funding. As of January 2010,
the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 “that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment.” (source: wikipedia, link below) That opened up all sorts of funding for advertisement by corporations and unions which used to be unable to contribute directly to a campaign in any way. Since only unions can compete for air time with corporations, it’s hardly surprising that this argument’s happening now. Our next presidential race is in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission

How is it unsustainable? The government can sustain it with taxes, that’s how government works. The budget as a whole is “underfunded” and that’s where the government has to choose to either fund it or adjust the budget to suit the current income (Econ 101). Walker has already cut taxes and intends to continue with more tax cuts for businesses. So he is negatively affecting the states income and now must make adjustments for that. Regardless of which side you’re on “unsustainable” is not an accurate description of the current situation.

And if there’s such an issue with finding money why is Walker including needless road construction projects and other additional expenditures in his budget?

American jobs go overseas because there are other human beings out there who work harder and deserve the jobs more than we do.

No, American jobs go overseas because American companies can pay people in other countries less, regardless of their work effort or quality.

I say this as someone who was laid off a week ago. My manager said I was a great worker who produced excellent output (software developer), but he had to let me go because a manager three levels up had determined they could pay two guys in Argentina less than what they paid me. My manager argued that the two guys in Argentina would never produce the quality or quantity that I did, but they didn’t care about that. All that mattered was that they would be able to reduce their budget, and that in turn would be reflected on their own compensation.

Astroturf more, mate.

Both my parents are teachers, Mom in public schools for over 30 years and Dad at one of the most prestigious private schools in the country for 25 year, Head of the History Department in fact. And yes, we received campus housing as part of his contract in lieu of pay but that also meant that he was on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Additionally, the housing was questionable. In one apartment (in a converted house which housed about 10 people) we had the septic system was defective for over a decade, every spring we would have to endure a backed up cellar or the yard would be unusable but as long as it looked good on Parent’s Day everything was great.

The point of all this is, that it is hard out there for all teachers. Private schools have captive employees with low wages and public schools have employees who often have big debt from paying out for the additional degrees and certifications they need. Public charter school can hire anyone they want and still take public funds to pay for it, there is no certification oversight.

It’s just a fact, teachers don’t have cushy salaries anywhere. It takes more education to get into the field and much longer to reach the top pay ladder rung which is about equal to the starting pay for and MBA, and then they get dumped on at every turn.

You are absolutely correct, “Again… teachers working for 9 months for 6 figure packages are hardly Appalachian coal miners.”

Especially since the average coal miner’s pay is just under 60k, not figuring benefits with a management position potential of up to 108k as an operations manager or mining superintendent whereas teachers, K-12 (both typical classroom and special education specialized) all get paid about 40k.

I’m a teacher now but really I think I should shift into coal mining.

p.s.
1. National medians are really easy to research, try it before you spout nonsense.
2. Teachers work more than 9 months a year, administration responsibilities dictate that teachers don’t get out before mid June and go back in mid August in most states now, so where are the 3 months vacation?
3. If teacher’s got 6 figures we would have a surplus not a shortage in the field.

Actually if you click on the first link you get a story detailing how Walker is lying.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php

The people of Louisiana voted to amend the state constitution to eliminate state sales tax on food, utilities, and pharmaceuticals. The amendment replaced revenue by adjusting income tax tables for individuals making $80K or more per year.

Those individuals didn’t like paying taxes, so they got the state legislature to repeal the tax. This resulted in a $358M in lost revenue, which was immediately followed by $341M in budget cuts, mostly coming from healthcare and education. It’s this lost state revenue that has resulted in recent rounds of budget cuts.

As a personal note, I work for the state and take home hourly pay that is less than the federal minimum wage with no benefits. When my employer closes for its several holidays, I don’t get paid. My job description is listed under civil service and budgeted within my department. I’ve been temping for five years, while my employers leave the civil service positions open for budgetary savings (i.e. playing politics). If I were civil service, I’d be able to say no to some of the supervisory and technically-skilled work (HTML, computer maintenance, etc) above my job description, and I’d be paid $45-50K solely for my administrative work. In the private sector, I’d make more than that. My wife works a similar job for the same pay, also with the state.

We are two college-educated public servants searching for a fifth steady income between us so we can try to eat and pay some bills, maybe start a family. This is what a history of union-busting and a right-to-work state gets you: a race to the bottom. There is power in a union.

If teachers are poorly paid, isn’t that because their unions have negotiated contracts that made sense 30 years ago, but make little sense today? Being paid on an hourly basis? What kind of craziness is that? That’s a recipe for resentment about not being paid for 1/4 of your day. Having to buy your own supplies?

Pensions are frankly antiquated. Matching 401K contributions sure, but a pension based on salary is fundamentally unfair to every male teacher (they die sooner).

Not being able to reward good teachers is silly. Not being able to fire bad teachers even with support of every other teacher in the school? Ridiculous.

I don’t know. I think my fundamental problem with public sector unions stems from the idea that unions are supposed to protect employees from exploitative companies. Governments aren’t supposed to be exploitative.

The reason why I say I think Walker believes he’s acting correctly is that he was taking these actions and had these beliefs before he had billionaires backing him. They chose him as someone who would fight against the unions because he already had. Now, please realize, I’m not saying he isn’t a lying, sneaky, underhanded jerk. He is. I just think he honestly believes he’s right, and he’s willing to bend and break all sorts of laws to get his way.

Now in response to your questions (and none of it is good):

#1 “How do the(y) justify themselves to themselves?”

Well, up until they decided to take all financially-related items out of the bill, hold a special meeting with no notice (state law according to the Republican Attorney General requires 24 hours notice) and then send a stripped bill only containing the now “non-fiscal” item of collective bargaining (to get rid of that pesky quorum) through for a vote (passed http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20041840-503544.html ) they had a weak leg to stand on because they lied consistently.

They swore, “Collective bargaining is a fiscal issue.” (Not really a direct quote, but a paraphrase.) OK, so they justified their actions by saying that without collective bargaining (a fiscally-necessary portion of the proposed budget bill) they could not let the bill pass.

Once they (illegally mind you) passed that bill with no supposed fiscal implication, but the collective bargaining included (a budget bill, with no fiscal implication?!?), they really could only be called big, fat liars. They really can’t justify themselves to anyone.

#2 “What do they think will ultimately come from this?”

Well, now they’re probably hoping that, like our bankers, we’ll forgive (!?!) our politicians for corrupt acts (meaning that they’ll escape jail time and end up with even higher paying jobs after pulling something like this). Unfortunately for Walker, people started out this argument angry and disenfranchised. The lies that the Republicans are telling are bold-faced and the actions they’re taking are criminal. FYI, they’re currently trying to change the laws that will let them be removed from office – while they’re in office.

Basically, “free market economy” is being used as window dressing here. Similarly, the terms “budget crisis” and “job killing” are watch words for the Republicans who are trying to let a poor economy be the key to let them into a lot of places they were soundly kept out of until now.

Fortunately, the U.S. news has not decided to go to sleep while this is going on. People are finally starting to notice that similar events are occurring in multiple states, all under the claim that “budget crises” require drastic measures. In Michigan, the budget bill would allow the governor of any town declared to be in a state of financial emergency to replace elected officials with a governing body that could be a corporation.

http://tsandi.newsvine.com/_news/2011/03/09/6226993-michigan-governor-replacing-town-governments-with-private-corporations-sb-0153

I’m afraid the 400 people who have as much money as the rest of the U.S. combined believe they ought to be able to physically play with all of it as well.

Wow. That’s… well, that’s creative, I’ll give you that.

That might be the dumbest argument that I have seen someone make in the last week. Maybe in the last month.