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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 18, 2011 17:03:39 GMT
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Post by imec on Feb 18, 2011 18:40:32 GMT
Hey, Livaco ~~ what's going on up there? Looks as though our country is cheering moves toward democracy elsewhere, but sliding backward at home. Huh??? The city I live in is facing the very real possibility of its worst spring flood in history. The union representing the largest number of city workers is threatening to strike during this time. So, the right of 5000 overpaid, greedy workers to strike trumps the right of 750,000 taxpayers to safety. This is democracy? BULLSHIT! Unions have seen there day - time to get rid of them!
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Post by mich64 on Feb 18, 2011 19:53:46 GMT
When Unions began, the good thing was that in their contract negotiations they could take that opportunity to fight for issues that needed improvement and for the day to day safety and health of the workers... The unfortunate thing about some Unions is that in their contract negotiations some will use the safety and health of others to fight for their issues. Imec, I do not know if this in place in your Province but, Provinces/Municipalities do impose non-strike legislation for some Unions such as Police/Fire/Ambulance, so hopefully your city will be safe during the spring flood season. In Disaster Relief Contingency planning these 3 groups of employees are relied on wherever needed even if there is a strike by city employees. Wishing you a slow thaw! Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2011 20:19:13 GMT
In France, none of the essential services are allowed to go on strike, certainly nothing to do with public safety. However, there is strong public support for justified strikes, even though France is the least unionized country in the developed world (less than 9%, compared to 30% in Canada and 13% in the United States).
Strike statistics are always very surprising:
five-year average in days not worked per 1000 employees (1996-2000)
# 1 Denmark: 296 # 2 Iceland: 244 # 3 Canada: 217 # 4 Spain: 189 # 5 Norway: 135 # 6 Korea, South: 95 # 7 Ireland: 90 # 8 Australia: 86 # 9 Italy: 76 # 10 France: 67 # 11 United States: 60 # 12 Finland: 55 # 13 Greece: 29 # 14 Turkey: 28 # 15 Hungary: 25
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Post by mich64 on Feb 18, 2011 21:03:45 GMT
Those are very interesting statistics Kerouac. Does this study give a breakdown of any kind of explanations for these days not worked, what factors were taken into consideration, etc.? I spent time as an Attendance Management Facilitator, so these studies interest me.
In wherever, for whatever their reasonings, workers believe their strike is justifiable. How the people affected by the strike can have a difficult time understanding how it is justifiable sometimes.
To go out on strike, the Unions first must take a strike vote from the membership. Those people must make a very difficult decision to vote yes or no.
Being a Union Member and a Manager in my career, I have been on both sides of Union Contracts. Neither side is pleasant, neither side is right, neither side is wrong.
I always hoped for fairness, honesty, civility, and the ability to make compromises in the best interest of the employee's, employer, shareholders, and customers or clients, this never happened, I was always sorely dissapointed one way or another on both sides. I wish I could say different. Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2011 21:27:33 GMT
It's all from www.nationmaster.com which is a fascinating source of statistics of all sorts. I may have to organize a strike in the next month, which is new and scary territory for me. I became the union delegate in October (with no experience, having belonged to a trade union for just 3 months 35 years ago!). My extremely rich company has now decided to lay off 40% of the staff and they are trying to pay the absolute minimum severance package. My goal is to increase it by 300%.
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Post by mich64 on Feb 18, 2011 22:15:00 GMT
Kerouac, you are in for some interesting experiences in the next couple of months. I wish you well with your goals. I am sure your co-workers could not have found better representation than yourself.
Is there provisions in the Collective Agreement for severance currently that you are re-negotiating or do you have a Collective Agreement to work with yet? I always found the clauses in these agreements to have been written in a way that are never clear, always leaving you asking more questions.
In Canada, if a company is a Provincial registered company or a Federal registered company, this makes a difference for non-union employee's severance, but if a company is Unionized these Laws do not apply, unless accepted as the standard in their agreement.
I am sure you will be a fair advocate for your co-workers. Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2011 9:12:45 GMT
My extremely rich company has now decided to lay off 40% of the staff and they are trying to pay the absolute minimum severance package. My goal is to increase it by 300%. Now that's a greedy union member!! "Greedy worker" sounds odd to me. I find that it fit better with bankers, shareholders, Ceo's - but maybe that's just me..
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 19, 2011 18:19:29 GMT
That 300% might actually be modest when you factor in what those workers are losing by having their jobs abruptly taken from them.
Hear, hear, Askar, on your 2nd paragraph! And yes, maybe any government has a great deal of deadwood, but the cuts need to start at the top and work down. In my experience, any government building has a selection of huge, beautifully appointed offices individually populated by well-dressed, beautifully paid officials. Out in front, where the scuffed counters and waiting lines are, you will find harried, not beautifully dressed people, scurrying to do the actual work.
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Post by imec on Feb 19, 2011 18:48:00 GMT
Out in front, where the scuffed counters and waiting lines are, you will find harried, not beautifully dressed people, scurrying to do the actual work. Hard work is performed at all levels within any organization. The tragedy in a union shop is the near impossibility of rewarding good performance and penalizing poor performance. Consequently, the ones that work hard and do their best to please their customers are paid the same or less than the shiftless ones and in fact may be more susceptible to layoff in the event they have less seniority.
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Post by mich64 on Feb 19, 2011 19:18:16 GMT
I agree Imec, there are many many hard working people in all levels. I also agree it is unfortunate that unions spend most of their time defending grievances from workers who have been reprimanded probably with good reasons. It is difficult for employee's to feel their work ethic is to be proud of when they work alongside people who do no more than meet the standards.
This is where creative Management comes into action. A good Manager recognizes the constraints of a union shop but finds inventive ways to increase moral and productivity from the meet the standards workers. I found it important to make the staff aware of each others strengths and not focus as much on the weaknesses. Staff began to realize that yes they may work harder at a task but other staff are better multi-taskers, or keep the work area neater or cleaner, or better at cost savings. When you point out people's strengths, the standards people sometimes understand that they do not have a strength worthy of promoting and begin to try harder. Yes, this does not work in every situation, but it is a way to start becoming an inventive manager.
Kerouac's situation is entirely different, his company has made a bold statement in the amount of layoffs/terminations to come. It is the responsibility of a shop steward/union rep. etc. to ensure the company does their best in providing for the staff they are letting go. There should be fairness on both sides. Unions are a very contensious issue for alot of us. Cheers, Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2011 1:11:23 GMT
There are no union shops in France anyway. Almost nobody is unionized, as I mentioned, but the non members count on the unions to support them as well.
Since I work for a Middle Eastern company that operates exactly the same as the Tunisia of Benali or the Egypt of Mubarak, with tons of corruption but mostly at the upper levels, it is a particularly appropriate time to contest their decisions. My "300%" request is merely to bring the termination package to the same level as what Air France gave 3 years ago -- keeping in mind that I am working for a company that does not have any of the financial or commercial constraints as Air France.
Absolutely any money that the company can save on this deal is going directly into the pockets of corrupt managers who will receive an equivalent bonus. There is no question of any money helping the company financially or the funds improving the situation of the remaining employees (most of whom will be fired in one year, even though nobody has been informed yet).
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Post by mich64 on Feb 20, 2011 16:01:41 GMT
Kerouac I hope you can negotiate with them, you are correct, the right time to do it is now. Your experience in dealing with them on a daily basis and knowing their manoveurs will benefit you. I would not survive in a work enviornment like that, especially who I am now. Good Luck! Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2011 16:06:02 GMT
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Post by livaco on Feb 20, 2011 16:59:04 GMT
Hey guys, I just noticed this post now. Yeah, crazy stuff happening here.
We had a day off on Friday because so many teachers called in sick. I didn't go to Madison to protest because I had too much to do at home. But most of my colleagues did.
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LouisXIV
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Post by LouisXIV on Feb 20, 2011 20:00:16 GMT
Today on Meet the Press Governor Scott Walker was on defending his position in Wisconsin. He said that over 80% of the e-mail he is getting is in favor of his plan to cut spending. Wisconsin has to have a balanced budget by state law and many other states also have to do this. I understand the people who will be affected are not happy, but something has to be done. There are many other states with the same problem; especially California and they are on the verge of bankruptcy. Our Federal government also has the same problem but on a much greater scale. Our president is currently offering a plan to eliminate 60 some billion from the budget, but this reduction is not even coming close to the cuts that are necessary to get or spending in line with the income that comes into the government from it’s various sources. Take a look here and you will see at a glance what our financial picture looks like in the US; www.usdebtclock.org/index.html You can also get some basic information of each state and similar information of other countries in the world. The debt in the USA is growing at a fantastic rate and our country is not even thinking of stopping this growth. In a couple months the congress will have the task of raising the debt limit again. We will probally add another trillion dollars to the debt before the year is over (For those that are interested, here is a video to show how much a Trillion dollars is: ). We are currently over 14 Trillion in debt and paying over 200 billion in interest and the president only wants to cut 60 billion out of this years budget and this year we will not even be coming close to reducing our spending to come to a point where we will not be adding to the debt. Take a look at the Debt Clock again a see how much we take in with the US Federal Tax Revenue and the US Federal Spending, there is over a 1.3 Trillion difference. So by this time next year we will be over 15 trillion in debt. Back to the Debt Clock, take a look at the largest budget items, there are six and they range between 200 and 800 billion dollars each. The biggest items are the Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. The new Obama Care program is really going to escalate those costs and the Social Security program is seeing real problems in the near future. For some reason governments like to exist in a “crisis management” environment. They don’t seem to like looking into the future and see the problem on the horizon and take corrective action to avert the situation – They wait until really hurts everyone to make the correction or even worse. Our social security should be increasing the retirement age to 68 and many other corrections to get back on track. The health care situation is much worse and eventually a lot of people will be hurt. What is the answer, I really do not know, but I am sure in the future there will be a lot of people hurt. To me the problem is that government wants to do things with no idea on how to pay for them before they create the law. And also as Benjamin Franklin said, : When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” And the politicians help this along by giving the people all these so called "freebies" so that they can get re-elected. What governments do not seem to realize is that all these programs extend into the future and no one has a crystal ball to know what it will be like 15, 20, 50 years in the future. They all seem to think there will be dollars in the future to pay for all these things. The last 5 years has shown us that the economy does not always get better every year and the government, business and citizens have found out that they cannot meet the commitments they made years ago. This is the problem in Wisconsin now and in many other states, but the states, unlike the federal government, can’t just borrow billions of dollars as they need to and they do not have the key to the printing press to print more money as needed like the federal government. There are people in this world that think it is the responsibility of government for you all aspects of their life and then another point of view that government should be minimal. I am of the latter opinion. I feel the government should protect me from wars, etc, police to protect me at home and general laws to protect us from each other. The government workers in Wisconsin and other places put their faith in their government and their union. Both of them let them down. The Union when they negotiated for all those great benefits should have taken steps to made sure the money would have been there in the future. It is of my opinion that people should be responsible for their retirement, health care, etc. Yes, there is a small segment of the population that is not capable of taking care of them selves and that is what charities and the churches are for. People should be saving for their retirement and healthcare when they are young, very few do, but they do have a big mortgage payment, a couple car payments, and a balance on their credit cards. But that is their problem, not the problem of the people that make a wiser use of their money and plan for the future.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 20, 2011 21:02:28 GMT
The idea that unions are a significant problem or that public employee unions are bankrupting state governments in the US is ludicrous. One can of course come up with anecdotal examples of stupid work rules or union officials saying idiotic things, but what organization anywhere would pass that test if put under sufficient scrutiny? I'm not defending stupid work rules that make a business or public service less efficient, but I'd reckon in most cases the savings achievable by reforming those rules would be roughly equal to what could be found between the cushions of a typical corporate CEO's or financial sector trader's couch.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the revenue shortfall Gov. Walker cites as the motivator for this attempted unilateral take away of state employees hard won collective bargaining rights is almost exactly the same as the amount he just gave away to businesses in the form of unfunded tax breaks. This is a pretty brazen attempt to take money away from the middle class whom the GOP don't trust to support their political policy ends and reappropriate it to the corporate elite who finance the GOP (and shamefully to a large degree the Dems as well thus their frequent complicity.) This thus has almost nothing to do with budget balancing and everything to do with the ongoing class warfare being perpetrated with astonishing ruthlessness, efficiency and success by a tiny minority of the wealthiest Americans against the middle and lower classes. Wealth disparities in the US are greater than those in Egypt and the US is trending towards Third World status in this regard with wealth inexorably being taken from all but the richest few and concentrated in the hands of a tiny power elite who have corrupted the democratic process with money.
Manufacturing artificial budget crises such as WI's through tax cutting is a cynical ploy to create a situation where they can in the resulting atmosphere of chaos do their dirty work and ram through their policy agenda without it being subject to critical review.
The alleged crisis in WI is politics at its basest and most cynically morally unhinged. If people understood what is actually happening here- and similar tactics are being deployed at both the Federal and various state levels- there would be a real risk of Egyptian-style street protest. Luckily for those perpetrating the scam, they own all the mainstream media and control the flow of information people have access to and to a significant degree write the policies for both viable political parties. There are very few organizational frameworks left for people to organize outside those controlled by the power elite, the unions are perhaps the most significant and dangerous. And that is why they are under the existential threat they currently are, there is almost nothing else between the corporate elite and total unchallenged control of the political and economic battlefields. This is a war, but so far only one side- the haves- has been on the attack. Any structures that resistance could nucleate around must be pre-emptively crushed
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Post by gertie on Feb 23, 2011 22:33:10 GMT
A friend of mine has been going to the state capitol as much as she is able and participating in the demonstrations. She has been showing me her footage from the affair, but has her account set to friends only may view as she fears reprisals, so I can't show them to you. Not necessarily current reprisals, more she fears if she made them public it would harm her job opportunities in future as we all know nothing is ever really gone once it goes public on the internet. I wish I could go help them demonstrate against this whole no collective bargaining business. Way to throw us back to the stone ages!
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Post by fumobici on Feb 24, 2011 1:53:32 GMT
Did you see this? www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150396917690048&set=a.10150200994025048.441676.187063310047&theaterPeople from all over the world are buying pizzas (god I want to type pizze) for the demonstrators in a show of solidarity. Look at some the countries' names. Not where'd you expect to see kindred souls. It's very sweet and heartwarming. And it's encouraging to know that outside the wingnut redneck US there are people who are onto the John Birch Society Koch brothers funded batshit crazy radicalism rebranded as conservatism- that no less a conservative icon than William F. Buckley knew well and called “Anarcho-Totalitarianism”- and can see it as the utter nation wrecking insanity it really is. If the loony Koch brothers and their Tea Party stooges are allowed to prevail the US will be reduced to Third World status. God help us.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 24, 2011 3:08:11 GMT
Wow -- thanks for that! I had not seen it.
Factoid (which I have not checked): the union movement in the US began in Wisconsin.
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Post by lola on Feb 24, 2011 15:47:28 GMT
Thanks for your rant, fumo. What to do? Pizza seems inadequate. It's odd how the haves have brought so many of the have-hardly-anythings over to their cause, while widening the gap.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 24, 2011 16:33:03 GMT
What to do? Good question! That's down to each individual, but it's clear the Koch brothers- who are both crazy radical, being the direct ideological descendants of the John Birch Society, and really the ones bankrolling the worst of the worst- are highly uncomfortable being outed as the end of the money trail underwriting the whole ongoing unsavory propaganda using their obscene wealth tampering with democracy. I think sunshine and publicity will help, so just don't be silent. They want to operate in the shadows. I really think if most of the ordinary people on the Tea Party bandwagon knew who their shadowy masters are and understood what their hateful motivations are and how they have been recruited as unwitting pawns in a cynical war on the average American, they would reconsider. One hopes so in any case.
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Post by gertie on Feb 24, 2011 16:40:43 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 10, 2011 6:17:40 GMT
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LouisXIV
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Post by LouisXIV on Mar 10, 2011 15:12:14 GMT
Finally a state government that has some common sense. Now lets hope the federal government will follow suit and eliminate the out of control spending before we tumble into financial collapse.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 10, 2011 17:53:58 GMT
Louis, look further afield from the red herrings thrown out by certain sections of the media.
Those sections so often make scapegoats of programs designed to help people & thus make the quality of life better for everyone.
However, there are certain sacred cows the hate-mongers never target, such as military spending. This is because they know their audience generally identifies itself as patriotic. But patriotism goes deeper than sending other people's children off to war. It's a concern that ones country care for all its people, that it have the pragmatic utility to copy working models without reflexively labeling them "socialism", and that it hold its elected representatives to account without automatically labeling them "politicians" with evil assumed in that label.
Collective bargaining came about as a way to address injustices to working people and to give dignity to the labor force. Why are you in favor of taking that away and giving all power into the hands of politicians?
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LouisXIV
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Post by LouisXIV on Mar 10, 2011 18:53:34 GMT
bixaorellana, Hi, I had a feeling I would be hearing from you ;D
I am just a beleiver in making my own quality of life and not having my tax dollars being spent where I may not be happy is seeing them spent or having othere peoples tax dollars being spent where I feel it should be spent.
I agree with you that the military spending should be cut way back and that our government would not themselves involved in othere peoples problems around the world. I am really concerned our country caring for all it people in the future. All the goodies the nanny state it trying to give us are very expensive, quite simply we do not have the money. The problem begins when the masses start to rely on all these goodies and then like in the case with Greece and the money is not there and the people are rioting in the streets. The people will find themselves dependant on government and also become weak people.
There is currently a debate on funding NPR. God, this is a no brainer, NPR is not a proirty item. Cut it.
Our social security system is heading from real trouble, but nothing is being done about it. The retirement age should be raised, but the politicians are afraid to touch this sacred cow. Heaven for bid, they might not get relected.
I heard the other day that at current spending levels we will be paying a trillion dollars a year for interest on our national debt by 2020.
I agree that collective bargaining has done good for the worker, but like it seems everything it gets carried away with its self. The alternative in Wisconsin would be to let go a lot of teachers. Is that what they want, no jobs? This state of Wisconsin by law has to have a balanced budget, and the government is just doing it's job. The money for the pension programs is not there and most states have the same problem. Where is the money coming from. The governments have to get realistic and live with in their means. For some reason politicians create the programs and expenses and think the money will apear in the future like a miricle. In the last five or six years we learned again the the futures is not always rosie. you have to put away for the bad years, put the money away for the things you want in the future and when the money is there, then you purchase it. No, we are smarter than that and will pay for the future on borrowed dollars.
The people in this country are allowing the government to take care of them and giving away their power and when times get rough again, and they will, they will have forgotten how to help them selves and be standing in the streets demanding government to solve their problems.
bixaorellana, I would love to have all these wonderful things people what the government to do for us. Would you please inform me how we can pay for it?
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Post by fumobici on Mar 10, 2011 23:04:56 GMT
The deficit can actually be tamed by a number of fairly simple and straightforward (too simple and straightforward perhaps) changes on policy without leaving the poorest and most vulnerable exposed to catastrophic consequences or cutting essential services.
On the spending side first, the defense budget, which honestly accounted (which it never is) amounts to about 1.2 trillion USD per year and is roughly as large as the combined defense budgets of the rest of the world combined can conservatively be slashed by at least half with no danger to US territorial interests. The US has no hostile neighbors, is as self sufficient in terms of rewsources (or potentially so) as any country on Earth and would probably be fine with a skeleton military as traditionally used to be the practice between wars. Another huge money saver would be to end the quagmire occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan- both enormous wastes of public resources. All this would enormously stimulate the productive economy as military spending has the lowest economic multiplier of all public spending, only being incrementally better than buying gold bullion and shooting it in rockets towards the Sun. There 600 billion a year and we haven't even had to do any painful cutting.
Next, entitlements must be reformed. People are living and working longer and there are enormous reductions possible in outlays for entitlements possible by simply moving the eligibility thresholds a few years to reflect those trends. And of course the caps on contributions as a proportion of income and paying out benefits to people who are well off kill the maths. Means testing for eligibility is an expedient measure that will save trillions over the next generation. Spending on public employee benefits is couch cushion change compared to these.
Then we can work on the revenue side, which is hugely inequitable and irresponsibly configured presently. If one seriously wants to balance budgets one cannot be giving or extending tax cuts for the small proportion of people who possess and control most of the country's wealth. In the economic boom years of the 1950s the highest marginal rates on income exceeded 90% and there were far fewer loopholes and shelters in the tax code. Increases in the contributions asked of the tiny percentage of citizens who control roughly half the nation's wealth by raising marginal rates at the top and simplifying the tax code to strip away the cumulative accretion of tax loopholes would bring in literally hundreds of billions per year in revenues without affecting rates for 90% of taxpayers.
Then there are corporate taxes, which have plummeted in the last 50 years due to the corrupting influence of large business on the legislative process, a trend which became turbocharged after the Citizens United supreme court ruling which essentially corrupted the American political process by putting it up for sale to the highest bidder with predictable results. Then there are the tens of billions wasted annually on subsidies for corporate farming and energy companies and on and on and on...
We also spend ridiculous money on health care on a per capita basis compared to countries with saner delivery systems. Treatment costs and drugs are often multiples of what other countries pay. This is of course no accident, it is by design as the profits are staggering and those making them aren't shy about lobbying to keep them flowing in. Huge, huge savings amounting to tens of billions per year in government monies spent on health care are there to be saved with no loss of quality of care just by following the proven methodologies used in other modern Western countries. Savings here will also benefit all responsible employers who provide their workforces with health benefits and will increase both productivity and competitiveness in global markets.
In the case of Wisconsin the putative budget crisis isn't even real. Gov. Walker handed out tax breaks to the same corporations who made campaign contributions in almost the exact same amount as the projected budget shortfall. The entire "crisis" was manufactured ad hoc as an excuse to go union busting.
But instead of actually coming to grips with the problem, the politicians go after items that amount to nothing but play well to their political base- public sector unions, PBS, Planned Parenthood, public education to score cheap political points while doing nothing substantive to actually solve the problems.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 11, 2011 19:29:01 GMT
I cannot add anything to Fumobici's thoughtful, full, and accurate post.
Louis, I don't want to insult you, but please look further afield than Glenn Beck for real information on how the United States functions and what state it's in. That ilk of talk-show host only promote hatred, suspicion, and selfishness, and throw reality out the window in order to do so.
Also, look around you. There are people who were committed, productive workers their whole lives, who must now struggle to get along. It's grotesquely unfair to type them as deadbeats or feckless non-planners.
And as far as the suggestion that it should fall to churches and charities to take care care of the unfortunate -- !!!
In so many cases, churches and charities give relief where the government has failed to do so. It is obscene that in a country as wealthy as the US this is necessary. And it is the fault of poorly informed voters terrified of the word "socialism" that the United States is such a backward first-world country.
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Post by hwinpp on Mar 12, 2011 4:21:57 GMT
I think Glen Beck is on the way out.
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