I always get a chuckle out of how civil servants, sanitation workers, construction crews and ESPECIALLY teachers get the crap thrown at them for 'not working hard' when 90% of the wasted public funds are going into the pockets of crooked politicians who are also being bribed....yes, bribed...regularly by corporate fat cats who are milking the system for every dime they can get and avoiding paying taxes whenever they can. And those politicians? Republicans, Democrats, Multiplexar Saturnian Exposition Party members-----it does not matter WHAT party they are in, corruption is rampant and the way they get the heat off is pointing the finger elsewhere.

 

Oh yeah what were those public employees doing for the past six weeks or so?

Who got the roads open? Who ran the ambulances and police cars? Who set up shelters and responded to the emergency.

I don't know where you guys live. But damn out where I live the people we EMPLOY in government do a damn good job. And I hate to see them suddenly demonized when they worked longer hours for less money than I did.

Same with teachers. The vast majority of the many, many teachers I've known aren't just hard working folks. They are talented and dedicated professionals that really do believe what they do matters.

But I'll tell you without a union the best and brightest among them would likely be fired every time parents with a grudge came out on the winning side of an election.

I've seen schools destroyed and kids literally killed over such elections and damn sure support professional teachers being protected from that kind of politics.

That's what is really at stake here. Bust the Unions.

 

Stumbler, you'll never convince a bunch of selfish, ignorant bastards that education is important.

 

Average US elementary school teacher salary $51K. Same as Wisconsin.

 

Average fire fighter salary in US $41K. In Madison, WI $40K.

 

Average Wall Street BONUS (BONUS, NOT SALARY): $110,000.

Clearly, stockbrokers deserve bonuses that are more than double what teachers are paid.....so clearly children's educations are rewarding money hogs for making more money for more money hogs.


Average elementary school teacher salary in North Carolina : $39,500. No raises in 3 years.

 

I still feel the unions are most of the problem. Lets take GM and their union. When they shut down a line (for what ever reason) they received 90% of their salary. I would love to have my salary if there was no work. They did not want any give backs. The obama screwed the bond holders and share holders. That was not right. The unions refuse to give back anything. They do not pay for their health care and that (from what I heard) is about 24,000.00 And they refuse to agree to pay even a small bit of it.

There was a union in WI that did agree to give some back that is the way it should work. But we now have radical unions and they could care less. Those are the problem.

 

Interesting. I just noticed that five words disappeared from my post.

 

Are unions to blame for 1% of the population holding close to 75% of the total wealth in this country?

 

Since 1990, 'givebacks' in the U.S. auto industry have totaled over $500 million in wage cuts alone. Also, over the same time period, workers real wages have risen an average of 1.3 percent, while the salaries of top executives ( division and regional managers, vice presidents, etc.) have risen an average of 109 percent.

I guess the unions are the real villains here.

 

You are right about states rights. That is just like when Washington decides on a program and they pay for it for a few years then it becomes the states problem.

As for the schools, let the money follow the kid, there are plenty of bad teachers (not all) and they end up (what they call in NY) in the rubber room. There is one in there for over 10 years (they cannot fire then due to the unions) He has been paid over 1 million and he runs his company from that room. That is just wrong. If the money follows the kid then schools compete for the kid and if they do a crap job the parents can change the school they attend.

The question I have is this, Where does all this money go that goes to the schools?? I was Board President of a Co-Op and we had to be audited every year by an independent auditor, How about we do that to the schools?? And the Money that comes from the lottery why is that not put in a separate account??

The same with Social Security??

 

So then the problem is the executives that make more then a union guy??

People in the unions are all equal, if one decides to work a little harder he gets no more then the next guy. Is that what people want?? The executive makes what he makes because he works hard and that shows that the harder you work the more you get. There is nothing wrong with that.


I know that if I work hard I will make more then my neighbor and if he does not want to work hard then he does not have to, but he will not make more money.

So Yes the unions are the problem.

 

Just too much lead in the water in the Rocky Mountains

 

Public safety is like the military, a very necessary part of the governments role. Wisconsin's state police are very different that CHiPs, they have a prepaid plan. Each employee contributes 5% of his pay into a required vested retirement fund, the state matches that contribution into a non-vested section of the same fund. So when the time comes to retire, the plan is fully funded.

California is $80 million short on their fund, Wisconsin less than $150k. So we need to stop comparing apples to orange, Walker and the Wisconsin legislature are acting responsibly, California is burying it's head in the sand.

 

The people at the bottom will get it first. The American system manages to harm those who cannot effectively fight back. If there is a revolution in the United States it will be a right wing revolution that restores laissez faire capitalism and Jim Crow legislation.

 

I'd take that over Socialism and Communism any day of the week.

 

I'm sure you would. I would definitely prefer the economic system of Scandinavia to that of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the beginning of the Reform Era that can be said to have started with the administration of Teddy Roosevelt in 1902.

From 1876 to 1902 the government restricted its intervention in the economy to tariffs, business subsidies, and the violent suppression of trade union activity. Blacks in the South were restricted to second class citizenship and subdued with the terrorism of the Klu Klux Klan. Millions of Americans worked twelve hour days, and six day weeks in factories for wages that kept them in poverty.

 

And yet when not trying to break teacher's unions those same conservative/Republican/Tea Party hypocrites will be screaming that our public schools are failing.

And let's keep track of what is actually happening here. Why are the states suddenly facing such huge deficits? Because of the Great Recession. And why did our economy collapse into the Great Recession? Because of the greed, and corruption of those same bankers, insurers, and stock brokers.

They are the ones who made our country go broke and are the ones who are trying to make teachers and public employees pay their next bonuses.

Let's talk about government give backs and bailouts. The real villains are those who looted our economy. Between us taxpayers and the FED we pumped $13 Trillion into bailing out Wall Street and the Banks and all we got out of that is a 9% unemployment rate.

No, its time this nation woke up and rise up against the lie of conservatism as it is preached and practiced in this nation. And God bless those protesters in Wisconsin for being the alarm clock.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x2N4bDmzdc&feature=player_embedded

$100k per teacher is just stupid. And it's not an end to their collective bargaining "rights"