Even in as populist a movement as Obama’s candidacy, the percentage of doantions from small donors was only slightly higher than half.
The people who can afford to contribute the maximum amounts to political campaigns represent a small slice of the population (you can add corporations to that list now) but they basically finance our political process.
Because they have been told to do so. They have been told that of all the people in our capitalist system who make more than they should TEACHERS are the fucking wost of the lot and need to be taken down a peg and we can totally screw with them because they have nowhere else to go, its nto like they can be teachers on the island of Nevis). The bankers and hedge fund managers can apparently flourish from anywhere so we can’t pick on them.
Judge Moeser issued a court order (temporary restraining order) this morning that the building must be opened to the people. The court was attempting to serve the order to the DOA, and the DOA was claiming compliance even though almost all are being locked out of the Capitol, and some legislators were hampered from entering. The state is taking up the issue at 2:15pm with the court, but it looks like this move is meant to keep a decision from being reached before Walker’s 4:00pm speech so the public cannot enter the building while it is given. Some think the state may maintain that the building is technically open to some.
There is a tunnel system that gives the Govenor access to the Capitol, though I can’t speak to whether or not he is using it to usher in tea partiers. It was confirmed by an Assemblywoman this morning that lobbyists were allowed to enter both yesterday and today with little issue while fireman who came to protest were (almost mosly) not.
I saw it put this way this weekend: there are a dozen cookies on the table, and a CEO, a tea partier and a union rep are sitting there. The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says “that union thug is trying to steal part of your cookie!”
Haha, I saw (and reposted) a similar thing, except mine said, “Watch out for that union guy–I think he wants a part of your cookie.”
You do realize that about 87% of the people who ‘work for a living’ do not belong to a union, right? And that unions make life more difficult for these people?
Property taxes have been going up relentlessly in the various states as public union wages climb and private sector wages decline. Every dollar that goes to a public union worker is a dollar that’s not going to other social programs or staying in the pockets of working people.
Unions drive up the price of products. This increases the cost to consumers. Apparently they don’t count either.
‘Working people’ want their kids to get good educations so they can rise up in class, but the teacher’s unions have blocked education reform and pushed up the cost of education.
The Davis Bacon act freezes out non-union workers from government contracts by preventing them from competing on labor price. This is a law that was originally put in place by racist politicians to keep poor black people from competing against ‘white’ jobs, and is now used to maintain union power in the various states. Of course, this drives up the cost of government contracting, and therefore hurts all taxpayers.
This isn’t a battle between ‘The working class’ and the capitalist robber barons. This is a battle between the small percentage of privileged, protected workers and everyone else.
And once again, you can wail all you want about the rich not paying their ‘fair share’, but even if you took twice as much from them you couldn’t pay the cost of current government. If you unionized everyone, you’d simply drive up costs and inflation, and in the end standards of living would go down because of the inefficiencies created by the union model.
And notwithstanding the typical elucidator snark, union members have far more political power than does the average working person, and they are rent-seekers extraordinaire. And they’re not even anti-big business. More and more, big businesses and their union allies are using government to feather their own beds at the expense of the public at large.
And I know you guys see it as a feature that the public unions donate heavily to the Democratic party, but this is a fundamentally corrupt process. It puts the politicians who are supposed to be regulating and controlling the cost of the public sector in a position where they depend on donations from that sector to keep them in office. They use taxpayer money to give extra benefits to public employees, and in return they get some of that money kicked back to them as campaign contributions. Public Unions should not be allowed to withhold dues money for use as political contributions.
When Schwarzenegger tried to curb the public payroll in California, a massive spending spree and mobilization by the public unions unleashed a political tide on him that destroyed every reform he was seeking. That’s real political power.
Every dollar? So either you think that public union workers provide no services to the government, or you think they should work for no pay; which is it?
Sam, I don’t think you’re correct.
Way back in the 1980s when I was working my way through college, I had a summer job at a small, non-union factory in Ohio. We laborers had fair pay and good working conditions, but a big reason for that was management was terrified that the union would come in. The mere threat of the union meant that we workers had a good enough deal that we didn’t actually have to join one. Absent any unions, wages and working conditions would most likely decrease, me thinks.
Let’s try to do the math right, shall we?
It’s more like this: There are 1,000 cookies for 1,000 people. Those people are made up of these groups:
2 CEOS
120 public union workers
878 other people.
The CEOS each take 20 cookies.
The public union workers each take 2 cookies.
Total cookies gone: 280.
The other 878 complain that that there are only 720 cookies left - not even one each!
The people on this board complain that the greedy CEO bastards took 20 each, and therefore the problem can be solved if we just take those cookies away from them. Unfortunately, even though the CEOS got ten times as many cookies as the union guys, there were only two of them, so it only amounts to 40 cookies in total, which only gives everyone else 5% extra cookie, while the union people still have 2 cookies each. On this board, that apparently counts as ‘looking out for the workers’.
The point: It doesn’t matter how unfair you think it is that the ultra-rich have what they have: you can’t fix problems of the middle class by taxing the ultra rich, because there just aren’t enough of them to make a big difference. In the end, you have to go where the bulk of the money is, not where the wealth wealth differential is the greatest.
By all means go after the rich guys if it warms your progressive little hearts - just don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’ll get enough that way to make even a dent in the fiscal problems facing the states and the federal government. At some point, the middle class and the public unions have to either lose benefits or pay more taxes. You can either start now and do it in a slow, orderly way giving people time to adjust to the new reality, or you can kick and stamp your feet and play class warfare games until reality comes along and makes the decision for you, at which point the adjustment will be much harsher.
Just ask the people of Greece.
Why is it only called class warfare when we fight back?
Before we accept your math, you are going to have to support your proportions. 2 CEO’s? 120 union workers? 878 other people? Such precise numbers have the odoriferous aroma of excrement about them, probably due to where you extracted them.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. The phrase is another way of saying that government is a zero-sum game. The government gets X tax dollars, and has to divvy it up. Every dollar that goes to a public union worker is a dollar that doesn’t go to some other priority. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay a fair wage to public employees - it means that if you pay them too generously, that pay is going to come at the expense of other things government could do to help the rest of the people.
Progressives need to get past their knee-jerk support for all things union. Public union employees are not the poor and downtrodden in society. They are typically above the median in pay and benefits, and in some cases WAY above the median, and yet they are helping to destroy the efficiency of government and with it the public’s confidence in government efficacy. You have let some very big, very powerful interests capture your ideology and use it to feather their own nests.
Imagine how much more support you could gain for progressive programs if the government were demonstrably leaner than the private sector, or at least just as lean. Imagine how much you could get done if governments weren’t so deep in hock because of excessive entitlement spending and public retirement benefit shortfalls. Imagine how much more support you’d have for big government in the population if big government was cheaper and provided more bang for the buck.
The public union bosses are laughing their asses off at the progressives fighting tooth and nail to help them maintain power while they fleece the government for all they can.
So as to not make this too partisan, let me point out that the average Republican has exactly the same problem in reverse - their knee jerk opposition to all things government has pushed them into bed with private sector rent seekers and to give a pass to Republican politicians who support ag subsidies, tariffs, and other means of funneling wealth from the average citizen to powerful, wealthy special interests.
Both sides are used as pawns by very powerful, corrupt institutions. We’re all ‘useful idiots’ to these people.
That was the most demented post in history. Unions make life more difficult for other worker?. Is that including union battles for vacations, health care, minimum wage, safe working conditions elimination of child labor and battles for rights of workers against the powerful owners.
Corruption of the corporate and owner class in the financing of Right wing and Republican candidates is somehow benign? Who has the money? Who has the papers, Tv and Press? It sure as hell isn’t the unions.
I wish I could be a public unionized worker like Sam describes. Instead, I’m a public unionized worker who makes less now than I did 6 years ago, next possibility of even a 1% bump in wages in 2013 (which will be offset by another increase in medical insurance, IF we get any bump), more work to due thanks to layoffs (got to balance the budget, yanno), and requests to take time off without pay (again, to balance the budget - think about it. I went from 250 cases average to 360 cases average, they want us to take time off - so when am I supposed to work my cases?)
There you go again trying to sneak private sector unions into a discussion about public employees…
So then stop saying “Every dollar that goes to a public union worker,” when what yiou really mean is “Some of the dollars that go to public union workers.”
Well, except for all those public union employees who don’t. You know, like starting teachers who make about $25,000 per year, though that varies from district to district, so some of them only make about $20,000. Or support staff in public schools who make less than even that, and many of whom have been cut from full-time to part-time during the recession, so that they no longer have health benefits and probably didn’t have pensions to start with.
But, yeah, let’s fuck those people over, because of some manufactured idea that publicly-funded employees are vastly overpaid. Ooh, $9.50/hour and less than 40 hours per week. That’s big money!
I see. So the conservative/Republican side is eager to promote social programs, but the expense of public unions renders this impossible? A rather extraordinary proposition, which is going to require some extraordinary citation Or, at least some.
The irony, it burns!
Sam Stone sings Lennon’s Imagine. With several modifications, of course.
Oooh, those evil, evil labor bosses! How did you find out? Who told you? My grandfather was a low-level labor boss, president of his Teamster’s local, I can’t recall him ever cackling evilly, except when he drew one card to an inside straight.
So, then, if its all darkness and a struggle of tooth and nail amongst selfish savages…shouldn’t the amoral savages with the numbers win? Are there more rich people than poor?
Hell, Sam, you’re probably right, I probably am a fool. But if I must be a fool, let it be a fool for justice, fool for peace. We are all already fools for love, so that’s a given. If we were not befuddled by love, no child would live to be five.
Yeah, I think I’m going to start taking up a collection to donate to the National Republican Projection Syndrome Foundation…
This may be true of the federal government but there is no requirement that state government learn any lessons from the federalist papers.