My Favorite protest was State Rep. Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh) turned to a female colleague, Rep. Michelle Litjens and said: "You are F***king dead!"

Because of the civility

http://www.620wtmj.com/shows/charliesykes/…

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Look - Big Unions fund Big Government. Unions take on average 2% of workers’ pay and give it to the left leaners which use the taken cash to further grow government which further grows unions which grows the number of 2% contributions even further which in turn grows the Left leaning Party which grows government more… Repeat until bankruptcy or taxpayer funded bailout.

The private sector of America does not operate like this.

John Maynard Keynes the influential economist of the 20th century of left leaning social or democratic state fiscal policies and saint of stimulus offered a dismissal of any obligation to future debt by saying “In the long run we are all dead.” That is comforting and motivating.

The Greek and Wisconsin bullies are Keynesians to us all. That mob is demanding the right to carry on suspending reality until they’re all dead. After that, who cares?

If this new class war between public servants and the rest of us some countries no longer have enough of the rest of us even to put up a fight.

That's why we cannot wait to fight any longer. The longer we wait to stand up against the public service unions, the less our chance of winning.

Stand up now - please.

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"The private sector of America does not operate like this."

Haha, seriously?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Lobby

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bank…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Asso…

You have no idea what you're talking about, PP. You only know what you've been told to repeat.

"John Maynard Keynes the influential economist of the 20th century of left leaning social or democratic state fiscal policies and saint of stimulus offered a dismissal of any obligation to future debt by saying “In the long run we are all dead.” That is comforting and motivating."

I'd accuse you of an appeal to authority fallacy if you knew what that was.

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Eric - I enjoy a lot of what you post inspite of a strange Jared Loughner like fixation you have with grammer, punctuation and language - I am posting stuff and not writing an article and getting paid for it.

Also, we have lots in common. As I was and still am an Italian Chef, I managed Restaurants, I built restaurants, and I even waited tables often at several DePalma's Italian Cafe's in and around Atlanta and Athens, as well as the extinct Rio Bravo chains for nearly 10 years from High School, paying my own way, through college until I got my degree - with no external help of any sort from parents or student loans. I am twice your age.

I also believe that everyone should have to wait tables for at least a month to earn their dough to live on for a real dose of humility.

I dislike Liberal Wiki Leaks but I see your point about lobbyists which I detest as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_secto…

There are striking diffrences between the Private and Public sectors of which I am sure you know. We cannot afford State Public Sector Lavish benefits any longer. All Scott Walker wants is for his State Workers to more closely mirror the Federal State Workers in terms of pay and benefits.

The economic situation our nation is in is just one math problem and is not too difficult to understand.

Surely you would agree with this.

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"I enjoy a lot of what you post inspite of a strange Jared Loughner like fixation you have with grammer, punctuation and language"

Wow, you have to be a troll. I refuse to believe you actually said and believe this.

"Surely you would agree with this."

I'd like to agree with you but you don't even know what argument you're attempting to articulate.

If you hadn't been spoon-fed each little bitter morsel of ignorance you espouse, you would be aware that the Wisconsin debacle is currently all about collective bargaining. Public workers in WI have already agreed to all wage and rate adjustments, the sole sticking point is the ability for (some) unions to collectively bargain in the future. Walker's attempt at political union breaking is even more transparent when you learn that right-leaning unions, like Police and Fire, are exempted from the collective bargaining ban.

I'm more than willing to agree with you, but first you need to agree with the facts.

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In the collective bargaining between public unions and their government employers, where is the taxpayers' seat at the table?

It's not the same as it is in the private sector. The unions know the employer can't go bust if they pay out too much. They contribute to and vote for or against the politicians making the decisions. It's a rigged game in favor of the unions. When they fight "The Man," they are fighting taxpayers.

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"In the collective bargaining between public unions and their government employers, where is the taxpayers' seat at the table?"

Public union members aren't taxpayers?

"It's not the same as it is in the private sector. The unions know the employer can't go bust if they pay out too much. They contribute to and vote for or against the politicians making the decisions. It's a rigged game in favor of the unions. When they fight "The Man," they are fighting taxpayers."

Your point might have some substance if the WI unions hadn't already agreed to wage reductions, co-pay increases, benefit cost increases, etc. Since they have done so, your argument doesn't hold water. This is all about the right of the unions to collectively bargain, a right which the majority of Americans agrees should be protected.

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I don't buy this claim that because the government can't go out of business the balance brought by Union's is somehow to much.

Government does have the power of PR that private industries do not have because unlike private businesses the taxpayer does realize its coming out of their pockets, or at the expense of being able to hire more teachers or garbage collectors or at the expense of other projects.

True one would think Government would be more fair than someone like lets say the Koch brothers but I think Gov Walker has proven that to be wrong. Stuff like these furloughs in GA show that teachers do need protections. I haven't seen cuts in the salaries of elected officials.

If the elected officials are doing a poor job of getting their staff to negotiate wages then elect new officials, don't take away bargaining rights.

I would also imagine at some point legislators could start looking at changing legislation to allow them to privatize services - haven't seen it done with teachers yet but its done with garbage - so in someways there is the scenario of going out of business.

Bottom line I haven't seen evidence these people are grossly overpaid, but they've agreed to the cuts - and the collective bargaining somehow only seems necessary for certain unions but not all?

Btw what pay cuts has Gov Walker dictated for himself, his staff and the state legislators?

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You can't get around the fact that the adversary of the public union in negotiations is the taxpayer, who has no seat at the table. The unions have a seat at both sides of the table, their own seat and the government seat which they can affect, if not control through donations and votes. You and I, who pay for what happens there, have no place at the bargaining table.

That is why there should be no government employee unions. Teachers, cops and firefighters should have a professional organization, but it should be more like what accountants, doctors and pilots have, not like what truck driving Teamsters have.

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Inatl - comparatively, they're underpaid. I hate to be the arbiter of the CTRL-V, but I can't put it much better than this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20…

"Government workers, he claims, have higher pay and better benefits than others in a bloated state that must slim down if it is to keep running. This is hardly true. Accounting for age and education, US local government employees earn 4% less than their private sector counterparts. Yes, the shortfall in pensions is real. But if the political will existed, calamity could be avoided with a fairly modest increase in the budget allocation. Union members do generally enjoy better benefits. That's the whole point of being in a union: to improve your living standards through collective action. And that is precisely why Republicans like Walker want to crush them.

His agenda has nothing to do with redressing a fiscal imbalance and everything to do with exploiting the crisis to deliver a killer blow to organised labour. If fixing the budget deficit were really Walker's priority, he would not have waved through $140m in tax breaks for multinationals or refused to take federal funds for transport or broadband development. Like 10 other states, he might even have raised taxes progressively."

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So you're saying if he acted like a Democrat, all would be fine? He is going to do what he was elected to do. To quote the Community Organizer, "We won."

Any gains made by public employee union members are at the expense of your wallet and my wallet.

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Yes, Dave, it makes the most fiscal sense for the taxpayers if public workers earn as little as possible. As far below comparable private-sector employees as possible. Even better if we can eliminate them altogether.

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Public workers should get minimum wage and work part-time so as not to qualify for benefits. We could run our government just like Wal Mart.

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"Any gains made by public employee union members are at the expense of your wallet and my wallet."

This is a very simplistic and zero-sum way of looking at things. I suppose it wouldn't be too much of a waste to have the least-qualified individuals teaching your kids.

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"That is why there should be no government employee unions. Teachers, cops and firefighters should have a professional organization, but it should be more like what accountants, doctors and pilots have, not like what truck driving Teamsters have."

Did you know that Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly are members of AFL-CIO? They're hypocrites and they're laughing all the way to the bank.

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"You can't get around the fact that the adversary of the public union in negotiations is the taxpayer, who has no seat at the table. The unions have a seat at both sides of the table, their own seat and the government seat which they can affect, if not control through donations and votes. You and I, who pay for what happens there, have no place at the bargaining table."

God is dead, and we have killed him. -Nietzsche

Democracy is dead, and we have killed it. -OyDave

Oh, who am I kidding. My clever philosophical references are wasted on you.

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How do you get from "no public unions" to that? I can take the opposing viewpoint and run it to an extreme with the best of them but what's the point?

Unions have an unfair advantage in the public sector. That's one reason private sector union percentage has plummeted and public sector union percentage has zoomed.

smitty may be on to something, though. Walmart's doing pretty well. KIDDING...I'm kidding.

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That was for Nad and smitty

And for Eric...

I know my Nietzsche...and I think he's peachy.

Those radio guys are only members of AFTRA or whatever because they HAVE to be to do what they do. More unfair union practices.

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Oy I see clearly how he got to that. If you are going to say that people hammering out budgets for the state, county or city are so corrupted by contributions, and that there is so little coverage or public information of budgets to taxpayers, that the negotiation room is more a circle jerk than a wrestling match,,,, Well then that pretty much seems to indicate democracy has failed.

I mean if its that bad then how do we allow our government officials to negotiate land lease deals for oil drilling, contracts for paving roads, contracts for building jet fighters, contracts for private garbage collectors to pick up trash, trade treaties with other countries. Those guys are contributing a whole bunch more money.

Seems hard to argue that taxpayers don't have a seat at the table and that there is no effective negotiation when the wages being paid are at or below comparable private sector wages.

As to private sector union jobs shrinking and public ones not. Well that's a reflection on the historic shift of jobs from union friendly states to overseas and to non union friendly states. It also happens to coincide with one of the biggest squeezes placed on the middle class in recent times - not caused by the unions but caused by this thought process that working Joes and Janes are making too much money and crying socialist at those who criticize increasing Executive pay.

Personally I'm a bit disgusted by the Tea Party people in Wisconsin, they dive in to criticizing the livelihood of these working stiffs yet these TP folks are the same people who spout the tired talking points of "you're playing class warfare", "you're hating rich people", "taking from the rich doesn't create wealth." Well how the you know what does taking from the middle class create wealth? Why is that not class warfare? Why is that not hating working people?

Bottom line the wages are not to high and Walker is letting Police and Fire keep their collective bargaining rights. I'd say that's a pretty strong One Two punch knocking out your the taxpayers do not have a seat at the table concern.

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Nah...swing and a miss.

The pension and health benefits are way out of line and it's the taxpayers that pay for these sweetheart deals.

The Tea Party people aren't against the union workers because of class warfare, it's because they are draining public resources. It's limited government that lives within it's means that they are after.

It's the rigged game of public union collective bargaining that allows these benefits to become so excessive.

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Frankly, I'm a little troubled by the constant refrain, here and elsewhere, that "taxpayers have no seat at the table." First of all, that seems to suggest that the public's only interest in negotiations with government workers is to obtain services as cheaply as possible. I may be a taxpayer, but I'm a citizen first. I want the best government, not just the least expensive.

Second, who says the citizens "have no seat at the table?" We are represented by the elected officials we put in office. Their job is to look out for our interests. If you say that the interests of elected officials and the public aren't always in synch, that's true -- but neither are the interests of a public company's management and its shareholders, as we've seen.

If the argument is that the system is unfair because the unions have some influence as to who is elected, well I guess that's possible, though certainly it's not always the case that the union candidates win. And that's really no different from public sector unions, who are able to buy stock in the company and influence who is hired as management.

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Focus like a lazermike. Now YOU hit some good points.

I still think there's no adequate check on labor's power in the public sector when they have the same bargaining rights won by trades in the industrial labor saga. Except elections and laws which, as we see, labor won't accept.

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May not be a homerun but not a miss Oy. You apparently feel teachers, police, fire, sanitation and other people are a "drain" on public resources because you say they are overpaid due to what you say are excessive benefits.

I've been looking around at the different articles on who is overcompensated and frankly for you to say they are overcompensated (via "way out of line" pension and health benefits) and use that as a basis to dismiss everything I said and to defend the Tea Party people attacking working middle class Americans or to support your claim that taxpayers don't have a seat at the table makes me wonder about your use of facts.

The only thing that is clear is that its not clear whether public workers are overpaid or underpaid. The debate and underpaid vs. overpaid would at the very least seem to confirm that their compensation/benefit is not grossly above the private sector. So they aren't the big drain and taxpayers are not being abused at the table.

The only thing that is clear is that these cuts to middle class compensation/benefits is needed to fund tax cuts for the rich. Yes the TP wants limited government but is that how they want to get it? By squeezing the middle class more so that the rich can pay fewer taxes?

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http://www.slge.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC…{22748FDE-C3B8-4E10-83D0-959386E5C1A4}&DE={BD1EB9E6-79DA-42C7-A47E-5D4FA1280C0B}

"Even with benefits, government jobs pay less

Beth Almeida, NIRS executive director said, “For a long time, there has been a compensation trade-off in public sector jobs - better benefits come with lower pay as compared with private sector jobs. This study tells us that is still true today.” She added, “What’s striking is that on a total compensation basis – looking at pay and benefits – employees of state and local government still earn less than their private sector counterparts."

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"I may be a taxpayer, but I'm a citizen first. I want the best government, not just the least expensive."

Well said, lazermike.

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