Wisconsin Revolt

Who do you support in the Wisconsin Revolt?


  • Total voters
    118

Carne Seca

Well-Known Member
Isn't constantly voting along party lines a form of collective bargaining in itself?
more like herd instinct. The same instinct that had hundreds of Buffalo falling to their deaths off a cliff or Lemmings following each other to drown in the sea.
 

Deximus

Active Member
Haha, I wish it were true.

You get what I'm saying though, right? Party A doesn't like legislation proposed by party B, so party A collectively votes it down unless concessions are made... sound familiar? It can't be though... because "I really don't think that collective bargaining has any place in representative government" - Sen. DeMint. LOL
 

mindphuk

Well-Known Member
Just to set it straight... Every dollar a teacher earns comes from the taxpayer. So technically the taxpayer does pay for their pensions and health care.
Technically the taxpayers at large then also pay for the enormous contributions that unions provide to the Democratic Party. This is why they are battling so hard because if they lose the public-sector unions, the Dems will lose a large chuck of their campaigning dollars. Currently, the only thing they have to do to increase their finances is to increase the size of government so more workers are required that will have their dues taken from their paychecks to be funneled into the Dem coffers -- wash, rinse, repeat.
 

Carne Seca

Well-Known Member
Even though this administration has the the lowest number of government employees since the 60's.... But keep up the spin..

Highest number of government employees were during the Daddy Bush administration. So much for smaller government.

Once again.. Unions and Government employees are not the reason we're in this mess and getting rid of their bargaining rights isn't going to HELP this mess. It's only going to add to it. More lay-offs, more people unemployed. More people on unemployment insurance. Laid off people get really tight with their money. No spending. Downward spiral. Kaboom.
 

Johnnyorganic

Well-Known Member
Even though this administration has the the lowest number of government employees since the 60's.... But keep up the spin..

Highest number of government employees were during the Daddy Bush administration. So much for smaller government.

Once again.. Unions and Government employees are not the reason we're in this mess and getting rid of their bargaining rights isn't going to HELP this mess. It's only going to add to it. More lay-offs, more people unemployed. More people on unemployment insurance. Laid off people get really tight with their money. No spending. Downward spiral. Kaboom.
That crack about Poppy's administration only rings true if one considers it applies to Executive Branch Agencies ONLY. Funny how you left that out.

Looking at the TOTAL number of Federal employees paints an entirely different picture.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/ExecutiveBranchSince1940.asp

And it only goes up to 2009. Once the figures for 2010 and 2011 are reported, we will see the true impact of the Democratic vision of what government should look like.

I don't know where you heard that little gem about lowest since the 1960s. Since you neglected to provide a source to back up your numbers, I may never know.

The Wisconsin legislation does not seek to end collective bargaining, only limit it to pay. Truth: It does an argument good.

However, if that WERE the case, you would not hear a complaint from me.

Government employee unions are part of the problem. A big part.

Bloated government is another big part.
 

Rob Roy

Well-Known Member
After 57 pages nobody seems to want to answer why if it's okay for public workers to negotiate shouldn't it also be okay for the people paying the tab to choose to go in a different direction?

A free market negotiation to be fair allows either party the option of stating what they will or will not accept, compromising or walking away. Yet the people that foot the bill don't have the option of seeking another service provider or not using the service at all do they?
 

DelSlow

Well-Known Member
It's not ok rob. But the thing is the system doesn't work that way. We get to vote every 4 years. That's about it. Nothing really changes. REAL change will never happen in this country unless the American people go All Out like the people in the middle east. And asking anything that requires the American people to get off the couch will never happen. Sad, but true..
 

green bean

Well-Known Member
Wisconsin is another example of a state that gives generous tax cuts for corporations to lure private investment to their state. In principal it sounds great except it reduces revenue that the state collects for its budget. The governor is asking for the teachers to pay for the shortfall (which they have agreed to do). The fall of organized labor in this country is a huge reason for the destruction of the middle class. Real wages(adjusted for inflation) have been on the decline in this country since the late 70's along with health care and pension benefits. A man could go to work and support his family back then. Nowadays the husband and wife work full time with no pensions and no healthcare with lots of personal debt. Since the big companys pay such meager wages, banks have loosened lending standards so that our quality of life remains high--Until the housing market collapses and millions of people go bankrupt. The companys of the S & P 500 are sitting on up to 2 trillion dollars of cash right now. I think it would be best if they shared the wealth with their employees. We should all support teachers, their wages and benefits are mostly fair. They seem excessive because the rest of us are so used to getting screwed.
 

UncleBuck

Well-Known Member
We have thrown a lot of money at problems and unemployment hasn't budged.
you might want to take a look at the latest jobs report. you might not want to because it contradicts what you just said.

your choice.

CEOs using tax payer money for bonuses ...yeah that's real dick. But in the grand scheme of things...it doesn't amount to shit.
as i recall, the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer money that gave bonuses to the very people who crashed the economy amounted to more than what the teachers have agreed to forgo.

what was fox news saying back then in support of those bonuses?

oh yeah, it was promised to them in a contract.

well fuck.
 

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
Even though this administration has the the lowest number of government employees since the 60's.... But keep up the spin..

Highest number of government employees were during the Daddy Bush administration. So much for smaller government.

Once again.. Unions and Government employees are not the reason we're in this mess and getting rid of their bargaining rights isn't going to HELP this mess. It's only going to add to it. More lay-offs, more people unemployed. More people on unemployment insurance. Laid off people get really tight with their money. No spending. Downward spiral. Kaboom.
Wrong again http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/02/burgeoning-federal-payroll-signals-return-of-big-g/
 

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
you might want to take a look at the latest jobs report. you might not want to because it contradicts what you just said.
How much money you wanna wager that they "Revise" those numbers? They ALWAYS do, and not in the good way. Those numbers are about as reliable as Carne Seca's
 

UncleBuck

Well-Known Member
How much money you wanna wager that they "Revise" those numbers? They ALWAYS do, and not in the good way. Those numbers are about as reliable as Carne Seca's
if they 'revise' the numbers so much, why didn't dubya revise the shit out of them so that we didn't see 700k jobs pissed away each month?

end point: they may be revised, but they are a decent start, and mesh pretty well with reality. more people are getting jobs, new unemployment claims are dropping, the economy is coming back...slowly.
 

Ernst

Well-Known Member
Didn't the Gov. cut $100 million in taxes for the very wealthy and then create this problem?

So he manufactured the whole thing.
 

UncleBuck

Well-Known Member
Didn't the Gov. cut $100 million in taxes for the very wealthy and then create this problem?

So he manufactured the whole thing.
not only that, the unions are willing to concede every financial demand.

and the governor is on record in a prank call admitting all this to someone he thought was david koch, billionaire oil exec (it was all given to him by his daddy).

yet the pawns in this thread just keep beating the stupidity drum.
 

NoDrama

Well-Known Member
if they 'revise' the numbers so much, why didn't dubya revise the shit out of them so that we didn't see 700k jobs pissed away each month?

end point: they may be revised, but they are a decent start, and mesh pretty well with reality. more people are getting jobs, new unemployment claims are dropping, the economy is coming back...slowly.
LOL and you believe it. any "recovery" is just inflation doing what inflation does best, but in the end inflation makes us all beggars in the street.

This whole Wisconsin Conservatives vs Liberals, Government vs Public employee has pretty much dragged out into a thug vs thug scenario.
 

Rob Roy

Well-Known Member
LOL and you believe it. any "recovery" is just inflation doing what inflation does best, but in the end inflation makes us all beggars in the street.

This whole Wisconsin Conservatives vs Liberals, Government vs Public employee has pretty much dragged out into a thug vs thug scenario.
Very well put. They are wrestling over the "right" to hold the gun in the room.
 

Rob Roy

Well-Known Member
Wisconsin is another example of a state that gives generous tax cuts for corporations to lure private investment to their state. In principal it sounds great except it reduces revenue that the state collects for its budget. The governor is asking for the teachers to pay for the shortfall (which they have agreed to do). The fall of organized labor in this country is a huge reason for the destruction of the middle class. Real wages(adjusted for inflation) have been on the decline in this country since the late 70's along with health care and pension benefits. A man could go to work and support his family back then. Nowadays the husband and wife work full time with no pensions and no healthcare with lots of personal debt. Since the big companys pay such meager wages, banks have loosened lending standards so that our quality of life remains high--Until the housing market collapses and millions of people go bankrupt. The companys of the S & P 500 are sitting on up to 2 trillion dollars of cash right now. I think it would be best if they shared the wealth with their employees. We should all support teachers, their wages and benefits are mostly fair. They seem excessive because the rest of us are so used to getting screwed.
We should all support that which we want and that which we use. If we are made to pay for something we do not want or support, our "support" is not given, it is taken as a form of theft. If fairness is of concern to you, step back and recognize ALL the forces at work here.
 

Coolwhip

Member
LOL and you believe it. any "recovery" is just inflation doing what inflation does best, but in the end inflation makes us all beggars in the street.
Inflation was negative in 2010. Deflation caused the great depression. Inflation isn't some monster coming to eat us all, it's just the money supply growing, it's normal and in most cases intended. Right now our problem is not inflation, our problem is that we can't cause it no matter how hard we try.(and believe me, they are trying) Deflation is much much much worse than inflation, we know how to stop inflation in it's tracks(although it can be economically painful). No one really knows how to stop a deflationary cycle, the last time the US ended up in one it took MASSIVE, never before seen or even imagined government spending to pull us out of it, it was called WWII, and it's what proved Keynes was right the whole time.

We could have built every bomber, ship, tank, gun, etc. we could have taken every one of them and sank them in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and it would have had the same effect on our economy. WWII was a GIANT public works project, thats all. It was the only thing that could get the gov't to spend the amount of money necessary to pull us out of the GD, without it FDR just didn't have the political power to spend money fast enough.

The only reason FDR's New Deal was working so slowly(and the reason Obama's stimulus generally failed, Romer(head of CEA at th time) recommended $1.2 Trillion in NEW SPENDING, the Stimulus package only contained about $400b in new spending, 1/3 the needed size), is because it was too small. But in both cases it would have been much much worse without them. We needed more spending then just like we do now.

Of course they go back and revise numbers all the time, they do it when they receive new information. Works like this, they get 90% or
so of the data, enough so that the figures they come up with once they do the calculations will be close enough to accurate, and since lots of people are waiting to see what they release, they release them. Then, once the rest of the data comes in, they revise their calculations.
 
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