There’s very little demonstrable linkage between Public Employee Unions and the end of the patronage system.
Patronage was slowly eroded by the creation of the classified civil service throughout the fifty states and in the Federal government. Considering the entire country had moved to this system long before the 1960s when Public Employee unions were first allowed by statute it’s just absolutely incorrect to say that destroying Public Employee unions = a return to the patronage system.
For right or wrong there is an immense amount of rage being directed at public sector employees because 10% of this country had been unemployed for a very long time. When private citizens are on 90+ weeks of unemployment, they start to get angry and lash out at different groups. Public sector employees have always been a popular target.
My view generally is that I’d reduce spending by eliminating unnecessary or disproportionately expensive programs. However I do think the services that government provides should be provided well. That means your compensation system needs to at least be competitive with other state governments and it means you need to allow for things like merit raises. If you create a culture in state government in which people are constantly jumping around from position to position because they know they’ll never get any benefit by staying in grade, that causes serious problems for the operating efficiency of the entire government.
When I worked in state government we had a guy leave a position and work at another agency for six months. Because of the complicated nature of his job at my agency, no one really was able to fill those shoes. Because of the complicated nature of his job at his new agency, he was nowhere near operating at “peak efficiency” during his time there. He then applied for a slightly different job at his original agency. This was all basically an elaborate ruse. He was severely underpaid (even by the standards of government workers) for what he was doing. However because of a freeze on approvals of things like merit raises, they had no real way to do anything to help the guy out. Even though he had taken on significantly more responsibility and et cetera. What could be done though, is if his position became vacant they could reclassify it as something else, a position in a higher pay band. Then it would be reopened to open application, and since he was legitimately the best candidate he moved into the new position.
These are the kinds of contortions people go through when you have retarded compensation systems. Everyone, including the tax payer, would have been better off if they had just allowed the guy to get a merit raise. All the cost in interviews, his unproductive time working at another agency and et cetera were totally unnecessary.
The notion of filibuster is enshrined in the Senate rules, unpleasant but at least within the bounds of legality. Hiding in plain view is repugnant regardless of the rationale.
As pointed out, blocking a quorum by being absent also has a long tradition. Honestly I find the fact that quorum blocking is used very rarely, as an extreme measure for an issue that the minority side feels exceptionally strongly about, to be less repugnant than the abuse of the filibuster to create a circumstance that a majority cannot pass anything unless they have a filibuster proof majority.
That ‘welfare queen" thing has had terrific staying power. Reagan brought it up to make it acceptable for the rich to hate the poor for bilking the system.
After Reagan’s speech, the NYT spent months tracking down this "welfare queen’. She did not exist.
Want to bilk the system, do it by being rich. They really know how to steal.
MSNBC has a series, American Greed. They never run out of powerful and smart people ripping millions and billions out of us. Mad0off is just one of many.
At this point, the unions have said they’re willing to make concessions on health care and pensions, but not on their collective bargaining rights. So if Walker truly is only concerned about the budget deficit in Wisconsin, and not actually concerned with destroying the unions, he’ll be leaping at this compromise, right? Right?
Regardless of how you feel about it at filibuster has the vestige of legality. Hiding does not. I see this as the last gasp of a weakening union movement in Wisconsin and this will end up being an own goal for the Democrats.
A bit like ACORN, isn’t it? Using the power of legislation to weaken and/or destroy one’s political enemies. We know now that the whole ACORN “scandal” was a crock of shit, but it doesn’t matter, ACORN is destroyed. Who is out there doing their work now, registering and empowering the lower class voter? They killed ACORN because ACORN was working, ACORN was effective, ACORN was empowering people who would vote against them, so they killed it. America, fucked yeah!
And on the other side, campaign finance reform has turned to shit before our wondering eyes, either of the Kock Brothers has about a million times more political power than you or I, because they have money to fund the cash-roots movements like the Tea Party. Corporations have a protected voice, unions will be crushed.
How many of you are working harder now to make up for laid off fellow workers? Is your employer paying you extra for your work? Is he promising to make it up to you when things get better? Or is he simply demanding that you sacrifice for the greater good? His greater good.
How many more people might be hired if you didn’t have to put up with that shit? But you need that job, don’t you? You need that health insurance. You got a mortgage, and there’s a good chance you’re “underwater”, one less paycheck in your family and your family is on the street.
What do we need unions for, anyway, when our corporate masters are so generous and patriotic, willing for you to make sacrifices? Its business as usual, they’re giving you the business, as usual.
This bears repeating. It’s an outright lie that Acorn committed voter fraud. Yet it is a lie that uninformed people on this very board believe.
Modern Republicans have no reticence to use misinformation to reach their ends. At least before it was cynical people swaying crowds by lying. Now the people who’ve grown up with the lies and truly believe them are being elected. It’s scary.
"First they came for ACORN, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a community organizer - (because all they do is register illegals and criminals anyway)
Then they came for the unions, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a unionist - (because all good Christians know them unions are just a bunch of godless communists)
Then they came for the public radio and television, and I did not speak out –
Because I did not watch public radio or television - (and everyone knows that they are a bunch of liberal pantywaists.)
Then they came for the Democrats, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Democrat - (at it was about time - running out of state, and trying to force socialized medicine and death panels on us REAL Americans.)
Then they came for me –
But working 60 hours a week at Wal-mart for minimum wage is great - I get to see my children all the time since we share the same shifts. And only two more years until retirement when I can take it easy and just be a greeter."
Time to do it … cite please? What law has been broken by refusing to be present at a meeting and leaving the state, or by hiding within it? Certainly the GQ thread on this subject had no one citing any laws that were being broken. To the best of my knowledge this is a legal maneuver, albeit an extreme and rarely used one. You may not like it but being unable to pass a law without a quorum is as much enshrined as is the filibuster … just not as routinely abused.
So your position is that Walker really just cares about breaking the unions? I agree that that is his position. But Walker refuses to pitch it that way.
I haven’t read every post of this thread, so sorry if this has been asked before. While I think it’s a fine stunt for these guys to flee the state for a day or two, if the time is prolonged is there a problem with them “not doing their job”?
While these people were elected and not hired, do they still have an obligation to show up for work? Or to be present so they can do the job they were elected to do—and get paid to do?
Theoretically, what would happen if a Mayor got elected, then just took off for a 4-month vacation globetrotting? Or if an Attorney General got elected then decided to spend 6 months writing a book in his lake cabin (in another state)?
Anyone know the degree to which an elected official is subject to fulfilling his terms of the “contract”?
Is not showing up for work for a few days really any worse than showing up for work every day, and never actually doing your job, for years at a stretch? We’ve got nearly an entire party of legislators who refuse to vote on legislation. Do they draw as much ire from you, too?
I think you mean: is there an objective, legal problem with it, because otherwise the only people who can answer that question are the people who voted the senators into office and others who live in their district. I’m going to guess the answer is “no”. I mean, it’s not like there’s a big legal problem if Frank the Waiter doesn’t do his job; he just gets fired. The senator’s employers are free to attempt impeachment or fail to re-elect these people if they don’t like the way they do the job.
Again, I’m going to guess the answer is “not much more, if at all, than anyone else is ‘obligated’ to do the job they were hired to do”. And I think you’ll have a hard time backing up the argument that they are paid to do the job; ISTM that they are paid because they have the job. What they deem appropriate to spend a senator’s time on, after all, is part of the job of being a senator. No senator is obligated to work on your issue if he/she determines it isn’t worth spending time on. Should those senators be in some kind of legal trouble too, because they deem Action A a better use of their time than Action B? No. That’s part of what they were elected to do: decide what needs to be done and what doesn’t, AFAICT.
If Frank the waiter does his job perfectly, He can be fired. His boss can replace Frank the Waiter any time he wants. The boss can change Frank’s job on a whim. He can cheat him out of tips . frank has no power in the face of ownership. If they unionize they have the power to get decent treatment and legal protections.
Just being a serious employee and a hard worker guarantees you nothing. His owner can do what ever he wants. That seem fair?
Why would Frank want to work for a business that the only way he can have these things is via unionizing? There are too many good employers out there that value their employees to fool with this.
Bull. If Frank can be replaced by someone who works 10 cents cheaper, the owner will. They love good employees, at the right price. If they can find someone cheaper, you are gone.
That is the principal of offshoring. You can get workers to do the work cheaper. The work is not as good. Shipping engineering abroad does not give you the same deep well of experience and expertise. It just saves money and the companies figure they can find a way to make it work until the cheaper workers get up to speed. Companies do not care about workers. They care about profits. That is how the system has morphed.
It is an adversarial relationship controlled by the corporation. Workers do not benefit from it. They have to work under insecure conditions that they have no input into. In case you do not realize it, workers can help a company if they listen to them.