I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

1Athena1

I actually think that is a good idea. (Annettek's post)

Dinner tonight was too embarrassing to repeat in health-conscious circles, so I will "tee off" for the night. I am partly posting to see how my new signature looks from a "live" view (twirling around in front of the BCO mirror).

Glad we are all still here (hope Melissa works tomorrow).

kadeeb

You may think I'm against the unions and teachers and collective barganing. I'm not. I have no problem with people being paid a good wage for their labor. There was a time when the american worker needed the union to stand up for them because working conditions were on a level with human slavery. Their work may be just as important today. That's not my point. This is about money. I don't blame them for wanting more money. I don't see why anyone else should have a problem with it either. I don't understand why it's so hard to admit. Calling it something else doesn't change what it is.

lewing

Kadeeb, if I can have a go at this . . . it's really not about money.  Wisconsin public employee unions have already indicated their willingness to make economic concessions.  Collective bargaining also touches on a lot of noneconomic issues.  For teachers, that might include preparation time, class sizes, how teachers are evaluated, grievance procedures, school security/classroom safety, professional development, etc.  (I'm not a teacher, so this is an educated guess at what typical issues might be.  Hopefully a teacher will jump in and correct me or provide their own list.)  Collective bargaining gives teachers a say in these matters.  Take away collective bargaining rights, and school administrators can do whatever they damn well please, without having to listen to input from teachers.  If I were a teacher, I'd be outraged by that.  Heck, as a parent of a high school student, I'm outraged by that: I want my daughter's teachers to have a say in the school, because I firmly believe that makes for a better school environment.

An important point is that it takes both parties to arrive at a collective bargaining agreement.  Some discussions make it sound as though unions simply dictate terms, which of course is not true.

L 

Wabbit

kadeeb ... teachers are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act ... there is no protection for them there.

http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html

"Exempt professional job duties.

The job duties of the traditional "learned professions" are exempt. These include lawyers, doctors, dentists, teachers, architects, clergy. Also included are registered nurses (but not LPNs), accountants (but not bookkeepers), engineers (who have engineering degrees or the equivalent and perform work of the sort usually performed by licensed professional engineers), actuaries, scientists (but not technicians), pharmacists, and other employees who perform work requiring "advanced knowledge" similar to that historically associated with the traditional learned professions."

kadeeb

Lewing,

I appreciate your points which are well stated and I am sure from the heart. The bill is being labeled as a "union breaking" bill. At this point, the governor is proposing that unions cannot mandate dues, and that those being represented should vote on an annual basis for or against the continued utilization of the union. Don't tell me that's not about money. I'm afraid the issues you mentioned aren't being addressed in this bill either pro or con, nor are they the slogans being carried on posters. I haven't heard any commentators, CNN, Fox, ABC etc. bring anything up about teachers wanting more input in class planning, or text book selection. Grievence procedures will remain the  same under the Wis bill. Class size is now determined by administration, not by teachers or unions. The unions have never pretended to be the guardians of education. They protect the teachers and the only problem with that is that they protect the worthless and make it impossible to reward the priceless. 

I'm not a teacher either but I have them in the family. Good and Bad!! 

AnnNYC

kadeeb,

Just wanted to say that this is not just about teachers in Wisconsin, but nurses, home health care workers, bus drivers, prison guards, prison health care providers, civilian/clerical employees of police departments, food service workers, snowplow drivers, sewer plant workers -- just about anybody who does anything for a public entity in Wisconsin, including city and county entities, not just state...  If reporters from CNN, Fox, ABC give the impression that this all about teachers, and only about money -- that doesn't necessarily mean the reporters are correct!

kadeeb

At least I know you guys don't have me on "Ignore"

White,

You are right, I was wrong.

AnnNYC, I know where we're getting our information. I wonder where they're getting theirs. 

AnnNYC

Okay, I promise I'll stop!  Just wanted to say: "Madison, WI graduates 94 percent of its public high school students (compared to a national average of around 70 percent). Just three years ago Forbes named Madison the second best city in all of America in which to educate a child."

http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/burning-down-wisconsin-the-hidden-budget-bill-item-even-worse-than-union-busting  

kadeeb

I'm sorry if I've upset anyone with my posts. I just have a problem with anything that protects worthless employees, no matter where they work and says that everyone has to be treated the same regardless of their capabilities or work ethic. Yes it protects all but it means we are stuck with the useless because they knew someone and got a government job and will be there till they die because no one else would pay them a dime for what they know or do. I'm just idealistic enough to think the cream would rise to the top. Our private schools have found that to be true and they don't have anyone who feels the need to be marching in the state capitol. 

Edited to add: you guys are great and some of the smartest people I've had the privilige to call friend. 

BarbaraA

I still think that teachers standing alongside students and swearing is setting a bad example for the students. And doctors passing out signed excuses from work to protestors is another bad example. And the democrat legislators running off to avoid having to do their jobs and vote is a terrible example for the students.

JMO.

Enjoyful

I agree with you about the swearing, Barb.  As far as the work excuses and absent legislators, well, desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.  The teachers would be hard-pressed to make their feelings known swiftly and publicly through mail and the internet.  In my opinion, Walker created the situation by not working with the unions months ago.  The legislators are honoring a time-honored tradition (originated, I believe, with President Lincoln) of escaping a vote they could not win and giving the unions time to garner public support.  Was it a good example for Walker to create the budget deficit, then try to erase it on the backs of teachers not only now, but in the future?  Was it a good example for him to spring these changes on the unions with little or no time for discussion?  Is it a good example for Walker to go on national television and claim that the teachers are being fiscally irresponsible, when HE created the deficit? 

Who knows?  Monday morning (literally!) quarterbacking is much easier than dealing with things as they happen.

Bren-2007

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/20/wisconsin-democratic-senators-illinois_n_825748.html

Democratic senators vow to stay in IL until Walker agrees to talk.

On Friday, union leaders in Wisconsin agreed to the part of Walker's bill that would require public employees to double their health insurance contributions and contribute 5.8 percent of their salary to their pensions. Walker has argued that concessions by public workers are necessary in order to help the state's financial situation.

But in return, unions have asked Republicans to remove the provision that would essentially strip away the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has said, however, that the measure is non-negotiable.

kadeeb

One of the big issues now is that the governor tried to push this through without giving anyone time to look at the bill and then would not compromise on it's content. Sounds a little like health care reform. That got passed and even the ones voting for it hadn't read the bill. Sheesh!

Bren-2007

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/21/wisconsin.budget/index.html?hpt=T2

"There's a much bigger issue at stake here," Durbin said on the NBC program "Meet the Press," adding that Walker "is not setting out just to fix a budget; he's setting out to break a union."

1Athena1

There is no comparison with how the Wisconsin bill was handled and how the health care bill was handled.

Everybody had time to debate and speak out on health care for months on end and the bill was promoted as a what it was: a law to address health care accessibility and costs. In Wisconsin, the governor is trying to pass off a hastily crafted union-busting plan as a budget plan and is refusing to speak to anyone about it, as are republicans. In heath care, both Obama and democrats debated for days on end. Not everyone who voted for the bill -or against it- read it, but that happens with almost anything congress passes.

To be sure, health care was passed as a reconciliation bill -in a similar process as the Bush tax cuts, BTW- but rarely have a bill and issue been so debated, anticipated, savored and hashed out.

ananda8

...and watered down.

Alpal

Shirley said: Where do you suppose the money will come from for SS?  They could raise the payroll tax, but I don't think they want to do that. 

I think the biggest drain on SS is the huge number of people who collect it without ever contributing one dime. Why should a woman who has never worked outside the home be able to draw SS? Granted, spousal coverage was instituted during the time when there were few opportunities for women to work, but those days have long been over. Private retirement plans offer the recipient the choice of whether to cover their spouse - if they so choose, their benefit is reduced. Not SS - the working spouse draws the full amount and then the spouse is able to draw a reduced amount without ever having made a single contribution.

I chose a profession that I knew would never make me rich - my choice. I'll admit it, I was one of those dreaded do-nothing state employees. Social worker (child protection), no union here. Does that make it fair that someone who has never worked draws a larger share of a decreasing pot than I do?

 It would be nice to hear from those of you who are so concerned with freeloaders. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about my taxes paying your retirement.  

AnneW

Todays NYTimes op-ed piece by Krugman appeals to me. If you don't like Krugman, don't read it. But the man has some really good points, to me. This is all about power.

Wisconsin Power Play

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin's new union-busting governor, Scott Walker - demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday - Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: "It's like Cairo has moved to Madison."

It wasn't the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn't mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did - after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what's happening in Wisconsin isn't about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker's pretense that he's just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin - and eventually, America - less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that's why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators' side.

Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.

In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.

But Mr. Walker isn't interested in making a deal. Partly that's because he doesn't want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers' ability to bargain.

The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state's workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers - namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning - are exempted from the ban; it's as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state's budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there's not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it's not about the budget; it's about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we're a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we're more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it's important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don't have to love unions, you don't have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they're among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years - which it has - that's to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There's a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America's oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

So will the attack on unions succeed? I don't know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn't.

1Athena1

Alpal, nobody who does not pay taxes can get Social Security benefits. It is, strictly speaking, not an entitlement program but a social insurance program. Widows who collect retirement benefits do so because their spouses paid into the system. Remember that Social Security is not just a retirement benefit but also a disability and a survivors benefit. In fact, the full name is: OASDI - Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance.

Shirley, yes, since the Goldwater days, some republicans and many more libertarians have wanted to get rid of Social Security. Raising the retirement age is something agreed upon on many sides of the aisle (now that we have more than two). Raising the income limit subject to SS taxes is another. Such reforms have been agreed upon in the past, most notably by the Reagan administration, acting on recommendations from a commission led up by Alan Greenspan that is still hailed as a model of bipartisan cooperation.

The biggest challenge facing Social Security is that the amount of retirees is growing in comparison to those who contribute. The unavoidable demographic shift is being made worse by the retirement of the baby boomers (starting in 2008), and this is also affecting health care costs and future liabilities.

Many republicans and libertarians, notably Paul Ryan, want to partially or fully privatize Social Security and make it a private pension plan. I suppose they still believe in the stock market. What they don't realize is that the market can crash and die, that Social Security was meant as a safety net and not as a get-rich-quick-or-even-slow scheme and that it is one of the most popular government programs this country has ever had. This is why Social Security is known as the third rail of politics ("touch it and you die"). Bush thought his election in 2004 gave him a mandate to partially privatize, but he could not even get enough support from his own party in the senate. There is and probably always will be a strong libertarian/conservative current seeking to do away with Social Security for ideological reasons. It is one topic on which republicans themselves have no consensus. 

Alpal

Athena - I'm not talking about widows. I'm talking about wives whose husbands are very much alive and both the husband who worked and the wife who never worked are receiving separate social security checks. I also think it's splitting hairs to say that someone who has never been employed paid taxes based on earned income - only if they chose to file a joint return with their spouse. And, obviously, any taxes paid were not based on the unemployed spouse's earned income, because they had no earned income.

I'm curious to know why this isn't perceived as freeloading?

Enjoyful

Athena - the fact remains that people who haven't paid into the system (spouses) can collect a reduced benefit.  If a person with a non-working spouse pays no more into the system than a person without a spouse, nobody's really "paid" for the spouse's benefits.  Is that not correct?

leggo

Alpal or Athena, so you are allowed to draw Social Security without ever having paid into it via your employer?

leggo

Never mind, my question just got answered.

BarbaraA

Athena, I disagree that the House knew what was in the bill. Mrs. Pelosi herself said we would have to pass the bill in order to know what was in it. There was less than 4 days after the entire bill was released to the public until the House passed it. The thing is 974 pages and pieces of it were written by different congressional and white house staffers then they threw it all together and released it. I believe that the democrats who didn't read it passed it because it fits their ideology. To me, that simply does not cut it. This bill was an 'historic' piece of legislation and therefore deserved the best from our congressmen and women. They did not give it their best IMHO. We the people deserve better and I believe they got the message about that last November.

Alpal

Gracie - a spouse is permitted to draw a reduced benefit based on the working spouse's contributions. So the answer yes - you can be eligible even if you never worked a day.

Enjoyful

Barbara,

Pelosi actually said "we have to pass the bill so that YOU (American citizens) know what is in it, free from the political rhetoric clouding the bill" (or something along those lines).  To me, that carries an entirely different meaning.

The major provisions of the bill had been debated for a year prior to its passage.  The only things that were "new" to the bill were the excluded provisions and specific language.

1Athena1

Perhaps for the same reason why, legally, a non-working spouse is entitled to assets in a divorce. It is recognized that both sides are part of the economic picture.

It also isn't freeloading in the stricter accounting sense. Whatever is paid in by a family unit is taken into account for payouts. OASDI is intended for both people and families.

I think at some point we have to be less strict about the concept of freeloading. There are plenty of parasites in our society, to be sure, but family units have been recognized as a working entity for centuries and under common law, I'm sure. The biggest freeloaders I can think of are usually at private expense, IMO, like the extremely spoiled child sponging off of parents, or the CEO who earns a huge bonus despite sloppy work and despite the fact that the government owns half of his company due to his incompetence. Medicare-, Medicaid- and Food Stamp- fraud are also freeloading, as are government workers in the state and federal governments who use public monies for personal expenses. But Social Security? No.  

Wabbit

That was pure social engineering ... too many widows were ending up as charity cases so an additional benefit was added to Social Security.

It was later changed so that eligibility for spousal benefits only requires a 10 year marriage.  An individual with say a spouse and 2 former spouses could cause the system to have to pay 4 people off of one person's contribution.  When you add in free Medicare this is all a very substantial sum of money.   

If I were to be converted to a TPer worldview ...  I would have to say that such situations are what private life insurance policies and privately purchased annuities are for.  If a spouse does not provide that the children or other family should support the widow.  Everybody should get only what their individual contributions earn ... no more picking the higher of an earned benefit amount or a spouse's earned benefit amount.

Actually even the Civil Service Retirement system has never allowed that ... you get your own earned amount and if you want to give a spouse survivor benefits your payments are reduced to pay for it.  Our private annuity also pays less because we also purchased survivor's benefits.   

And health insurance ... why did I have to pay the same for a family plan for just myself and my daughter as the guy who was covering a wife and 5 kids.  And property taxes to fund schools ... maybe we need to change the school funding taxes so that it's on a sliding scale and the more kids you have using the system the more you pay.   

This is not a worldview that I think is good for society.  But if the Tea Party and such want to go there I don't think they should be allowed to just pick programs they don't like or benefit from themselves to defund. 

The goal of many in the Republican party is to privatize social security.  They want that money flowing to Wall Street.  We all saw what happened to retirement savings that were in the stock market and what it did to people's retirement plans.       

Enjoyful

Athena -

Regardless of what OASDI was meant to cover, the fact of the matter is that a spouse who has never paid into the system can receive a payout.  That's the specific item I'm seeking to clarify.

Whether that's morally right or wrong is up to each person's personal beliefs.  Since the conservative/tea party crowd usually champion personal responsibility and decry "freeloading," I would assume that they think this is wrong.

I DO NOT.

E

Edited to clarify.  Edited again to add a missing word and state my position.

leggo

Do adult children who are in school receive a benefit if their parent is disabled? In Canada, they do.