Please dial back the rhetoric here. This is overly insulting and personal.
I said:
You said I said:
I think I don’t need to say anything else.
Except it’s different for public sector unions. A private union can’t pool its resources and use them to get the CEO fired and bankroll a more union-friendly successor.
WEAC (the Wisconsin teacher’s union) "spent $2.5 million on lobbying in 2009 and 2010, more than any other group in the state, according to the Government Accountability Board
The real reason the teacher’s union in Wisconsin wanted Walker recalled was because he killed their cash cow. The union included contract language that forced local school districts to buy teachers’ health insurance from the teacher’s union. They charged rates far higher that comparable health plans and used the profits to lobby for even better wages and benefits.
Do you consider yourself a poor parent? Not an equivocation gotcha, I mean that in terms of currency. Do you think that unionised teachers are worse teachers than non-unionised teachers? Do you think that public education should be abolished?
You had to get deregulation in there somewhere, didn’t you?
Okay, I’m familiar with Hazlitt’s argument in Economics in One Lesson. Do you accept his contention that workers should receive unemployment benefits and training to perform another job after the natural collapse of an industry? Do you think the makers of the buggy whip are entitled to a roof over their head and food? Would you support a law that removed the food and housing of buggy whip makers, as their profession was obsolete? Do you accept the notion that in a post-scarcity economy, people should not be put to work unnecessarily and that the burden of working should not be distributed based on historical privilege?
Then why wasn’t this specific contract clause (which presumably the employer thought was a good idea to agree to originally) overturned by the legislature? There was no need to abolish collective bargaining entirely to remove the specific clauses that the employers had buyer’s remorse over and didn’t want to wait for the next round of negotiations to deal back out.
Is there some legal restriction that prevents the state from doing this? (I know that provincial/federal governments in Canada regularly change union contracts by legislation.)
Poor parent: no. Unionized teachers worse than non-unionized teachers: Yes. Abolish public education? No.
A little explanation about the middle answer: I think that for the most part, union and non-union teachers will present similar skill sets. But because there is difficulty ridding the workforce of poor teachers in a union environment, I think the distribution curve at the lower end is heftier with unions.
Should workers get unemployment bennies and training following the collapse of an industry? Yes. Are makers of the buggy whip entitled to a roof and food? No. Would I support a law removing food and roofs from the heads of buggy whip makers? No.
I don’t agree we’re in a post-scarcity economy.
I don’t think we’re in a post-scarcity economy, I just wanted to know what your position would be if we were.
Do you have any evidence of that?
Union-busting ain’t, and neither is deregulation.
I really haven’t thought about it.
I presented my argument by inference. I can’t see any aspects of unionization of teachers that tends to increase teacher quality. And I can see an aspect of unionization that tends to decrease teacher quality. So I reason that under that system, unionized teachers as a group would likely be similar to non-unionized teachers, except at the “bottom end” where the unions would contain more poor teachers.
I disagree as to public sector unions. Unions in general are a more complicated issue, and I don’t say across the board that their influence is negative.
Just bumping the thread to see if anyone has any update on the imminent indictment of Governor Walker.
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
I saw nothing related to a Walker indictment. They are suffering through an all time record heat wave in Wisconsin right now and probably don’t want to move fast. (hehe)
I did see this, however:
That is interesting.
And when does the Senate go into session, so that the Democrats can wield their advantage?
I imagine Walker’s veto will just lead to gridlock.
I imagine that the Wisconsin legislature does not have a session between now and the next election, so the Democratic “majority” will never so much as meet.
And, interestingly, my imagination conforms to the actual schedule of the Wisconsin legislature, an added bonus when using one’s imagination to predict future events.
Ah, I assumed you were asking an intelligent question based on the thread. I didn’t know you were just posting a derisive gloat that didn’t mean anything.
Interesting that there isn’t a session between now and election time. Is that typical for state legislatures?
Well, yeah, because she’s right. Those unions are made up of the employees, and one set of those employees is teachers. That’s what pisses me off so much about your opinion on this matter. You vilify the unions like they are some outsiders, some demonic group that exists outside the people who make them up. You completely disregard they are real people who wind up hurting from these sorts of things. Note how teachers have the lowest salaries in Texas, another state that has already done this?
I cannot understand a worldview that both holds Christian truths to be correct but also is okay with weakening the power of poor people in favor of the rich. At least most Republican Christians I know believe this shit out of ignorance, but you apparently embrace it wholeheartedly.
They aren’t just my beliefs. They’re your beliefs, except when it comes to unions. In any other context, deliberately saying words that you know would hurt people when they have not attacked you is not something you do.
The entire point of my post is that you are going around gloating, even though you admit that it may hurt people in the short term. You are therefore gloating about other people’s suffering.
Your opinion here on poor people is also inconsistent, BTW. It sounds right when you say someone isn’t owed a particular income. But that belief boils down to saying that poor people deserve to be poor. It means you have no obligation to help them.
The Bible very much teaches that poor people are to have stuff to eat and a place to sleep. So the Bible itself is saying that people are owed enough income to pull it off. You claim to be a Christian, you can’t discount that part because it disagrees with your political beliefs.
Surely you don’t want me to support legislation for a secular country such as the United States, with a strong legal requirement to separate church and state, based on my religious beliefs, do you?
I follow the command the help the less fortunate on a personal level. But i would never seek to enshrine my religious beliefs into law. That would be wrong.
Correct?
It wasn’t a meaningless gloat. It was very meaningful: the supposed Democratic advantage is nothing, because the legislature won’t meet.
Well, that’s not true. The advantage denies the Governor the possibility of calling a special session.