No, of course they didn’t. Just wanted to illustrate how ridiculous and cowardly it is for Wisconsin democrat lawmakers to have fled the state ahead of their vote three weeks ago.
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unions
Thank God for Governor Scott Walker’s heroic stance in Wisconsin. Thanks to him, Gov. Christie, Gov. Kasich and others, American citizens are finally taking their states back from union thugs.
Earlier this week, Walker’s office issued a press release highlighting some of the most egregious actions by Wisconsin unions. One of the most illustrative is the story of the ‘Outstanding First Year Teacher,’ who was laid off due to the union seniority system (more info).
Milwaukee Public Schools teacher Megan Sampson was laid off less than one week after being named Outstanding First Year Teacher by the Wisconsin Council of English Teachers. She lost her job because the collective bargaining agreement requires layoffs to be made based on seniority rather than merit.
Informed that her union had rejected a lower-cost health care plan, that still would have required zero contribution from teachers, Sampson said, “Given the opportunity, of course I would switch to a different plan to save my job, or the jobs of 10 other teachers.
To those readers who would like to knock me in the head for my stance, who charge that Walker is coward for pushing through the collective bargaining portion of the legislation while the state democrat lawmakers were in hiding, think about this: when Obamacare was forced into law, with the bribing of U.S. senators with all sorts of goodies and exemptions, Republican senators did not go into hiding in Canada. They stayed, made their case, voted, and Obamacare became law. And Obamacare was not even constitutional. Cowardice lives on the left.
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This Forbes article, Gilt-Edged Pensions, is a must read this morning, even if you already know that public sector employees are robbing us blind. Amazing.
Don’t let anyone tell you the American dream has faded. The truth is the U.S. is still minting lots of millionaires. Glenn Goss is one of them.
Goss retired four years ago, at 42, from a $90,000 job as a police commander in Delray Beach, Fla. He immediately began drawing a $65,000 annual pension that is guaranteed for life, is indexed to keep up with inflation and comes with full health benefits.
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Are you feeling just a bit of sympathy for the teachers who have stormed the capitol of Wisconsin to try and keep their union gravy train going, because you know they are at least really trying to help the children? Well, maybe those children would be better off without those teachers — after all, they can’t even teach most of them to read. CNS News tells the tale.
Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.
In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”
The test also showed that the reading abilities of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders had not improved at all between 1998 and 2009 despite a significant inflation-adjusted increase in the amount of money Wisconsin public schools spent per pupil each year.
Not only are we spending too much money on these unionized teachers, we’re not getting enough for our money. Send in the nuns.
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Union workers and assorted other crazed liberals stormed the capital building in Madison, Wisconsin during a 17-hour public hearing on the a bill that would reform the way unions operate in Wisconsin, and reduce some of the insane compensation and benefits these selfish people believe they continue to deserve, while the private sector, who pays them, suffers.
The most ridiculous thing is that these selfish people compare themselves to the protesters in Egypt. And the compliant lefty media amplifies that message. Speaking of fire, fire every damn one of the 25,000 protesters in Madison who are teachers that called in sick. Every one.
Meanwhile, a cowardly a group of Democratic senators have fled the state in order to block the vote on the bill.
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New Jersey governor Chris Christie has some competition for the nation’s toughest fiscally conservative governor — Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, who is starting off his first term with a bang, taking on the state unions in a battle that has mobilized the nation.
You know he’s on to something if you look at the unions and assorted liberals crying foul. The opposition’s videos are everywhere, but here’s a liberal-biased, Democracy Now! interview with John Nichols of The Nation magazine and Brad Lutes, a Wisconsin public school teacher. By the end of the interview they resort to comparing Walker to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack and the union workers to those he oppressed.
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Union members protested a Mortgage Bankers Association Conferece, at which their target homebuilder Pulte was attending. I found this video in a story over at a site called FDL. I’d never heard of it, but it covers unions and labor issues and is written by Michael Whitney, who is a “progressive online organizer with experience in labor institutions, including the SEUI and the labor rights nonprofit American Rights at Work.” That’s enough for me to know I despise the site already.
Watch the video. In Whitney’s eyes, the unions are the heroes, and the protest is described as “awesome activism from members of the Sheetmetal Workers union (SMWIA), 200 of whom burst into a private meeting of mortgage bankers to protest layoffs by a homebuilding company that got a $900 million in federal funds intended for job creation.”
What’s the $900 million about? A link in the FDL article brought me to a Daily Kooks article (please shower afterwards if you visit this wacko site):
Tucked within the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009 (WHBA) was a tax carry-back provision. It allows homebuilders to count the losses of 2008 and 2009 against taxes paid up to 5 years ago—during their peak profit years. In short, the act allowed for a big tax refund pay-off for big builders, particularly the biggest of them all, PulteGroup.
During PulteGroup’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings call, the company announced that it expected a tax refund of approximately $955 million, $917 million of which would come from the tax loss carry back . Several months later, PulteGroup received $880 million in tax refunds for 2009 thanks to the net operating loss (NOL) tax carry back provision of the Act.
The unions are seething mad that the $900 million was not used for job creation. Well, unions have never been accused of understanding economics. I can only assume the unions want Pulte to hurry up and build some houses with that money pronto, and of course, hire the most expensive subcontractors they can — union shops. Perhaps they have never heard of the Great Recession and the Housing Bust. Perhaps they didn’t know that 2012 will be the worst year in this housing depression so far, which has already equaled the drop in home prices during the Great Depression.
If I were Pulte, I’d be using that money to first off keep from going bankrupt. Secondly, I’d be looking to buy raw land for pennies on the dollar, on which, when the market comes back, I could build homes that people would actually buy. Memo to the unions: you cannot make money building new homes now, not with the competition from used homes and foreclosures in this high unemployment market. But they don’t give a crap about that.
I don’t feel sorry for unions one bit. Their selfishness that makes them believe they should live better than the rest of us is the reason cities are on the verge of bankruptcy, and a contributing factor to why a company like Pulte isn’t building homes that can’t put construction members to work. The illogic of thinking that that they can force Pulte to build homes now shows how far afield from reality, and how truly interested in just themselves, they are.
Unions and people like Michael Whitney don’t care if the homes would sell or not. They just want to get paid, even if others subsequently lose their jobs due to bad economic decisions. And not just that they want to be paid, they want to be paid better than non-union workers, and with the ability to retire younger and with more money than others, for life.
By the way, Mr. Union Man, your support of progressives and the democrat party is another reason your unions members are not finding work. There’s a little thing called the Mexican border, across which millions of illegals come to America and find work with building contractors. You can’t have your tortilla and eat it too.
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