Wisconsin's governor: Protest end of labor contracts, I'm dragging out the Guard

Sadly for your point, the pensions are even more out of line than the health insurance. And, as I've said already, the unions have been telling him to f**k off since he was inaugurated last month.

 

I'm 100 percent with you on the cost of public employee benefits. I also believe pay itself is quite inflated.

However, the issue at hand is the use of the National Guard. It is Walker who raised that specter, therefore it is Walker who has been fomenting this fear by suggesting the state workers represented a risk of violence.

 

I'd be more sympathetic to Walker if he wasn't planning to end Wisconsin's corporate income tax. Time for everyone to make sacrifices... except for business?

 

Well, there's the rub. After Illinois raised its income tax, New Jersey started running ads to attract the state's businesses, with Chris Christie pledging that as long he's governor, he won't raise taxes and balance the state's budget on the "backs of businesses." Well, it's going to be on somebody's back. The fight right now is on who's back, and everybody says, not mine -- you can cut that program, but not the one I like.

 

Christie's campaign may be slowed by the fact Jersey's corporate income tax remains significantly higher than Illinois'. Just a grandstanding loudmouth. Popular with the losers who get a thrill out of vicarious bullying, though.

 

I giggle about Christie's election being a sign of Republican ascendence, as if there'll be a 30-year reign of GOP governors in New Jersey. Anyhoo, the point isn't whose demands are the realistic ones, it's that the state is considering using the military against citizens who are exercising a right.

 

I am from California. One of my cousins, who has no college education, works as a secretary in the office of a state official. She makes $52K, gets five weeks of vacation a year, 12 sick days a year and works from 9 to 4 with a 90-minute lunch every day. She will retire in her early 50s with a pension that would make those who spend 20 years in the military jealous.

Her job is essentially answering a phone that rarely rings and directly the handful of people who come into her office to go to a different office. You could get rid of her job and nobody would notice.

Yes, I believe this is close to the norm. The government is going bankrupt and we're paying these people pensions that should be reserved for the military, police and firemen.

There have been fewer layoffs of state employees than in any other field in this country. Oh, they got a furlough? Cry me a fucking river, they kept their jobs.

 

Uh yeah. Cut the throats of everybody on pensions, haul off and abrogate (at the gunpoint of the National Guard) contracts bargained under existing antitrust laws, to give the corporations more tax cuts. You got it.

Elections have consequences.

 

This will be constant in states like Wisconsin and Iowa. Both just turned over their governorships from Dems to Republicans.

Both Wisconsin and Iowa had their state governments/contracts in the absolute pockets of unions. Unions spent millions to keep Democrats in office.

They lost.

Both Republicans (Walker for Wisconsin and Branstad in Iowa) ran on fiscal conservative platforms. Both won with ease in states that now typically vote Democrat in national elections.

My wife had been a state employee in Minnesota 10 years ago. Our health insurance cost US $17 a month, $33 a month by the time we had both kids.

And there were people b!tch!ng and protesting about that jump from $17 to $33 a month. Seriously.

 

Jerry Brown, icon of liberalism, is also taking on the pensions despite his ties to unions. This is happening more and more as the full reality of pension obligations sets in.

 

Words can't even describe how much I hate this clown, the sooner he gets booted out of office the better.

 

Doyle's already gone. It's been in all the papers and on all the TV stations. Don't know where you've been.