The American Ruling Class

[rickoff]

A lighter, encouraging note. Let us follow the footprint of this and insist freedom! Go Maine!!

Maine town becomes first in the nation to pass "Food Sovereignty" law., page 1

It's nice when something like this happens so close to home. Sedgwick may be a small town, but with big ideas and a hefty dose of attitude. Most all of us here in Maine hate the way that regulations and regulators have crept in and tried to micromanage nearly every aspect of life, and the phoney federal "food safety" bill had no legitimate place here. Thus the bottom line wording of the local ordinance aimed at protecting the rights of producers and consumers: "It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance."

[rickoff]

Another first for Maine

Earlier this week, Maine became the first state to be granted a waiver on ObamaCare, and now other states are hoping to do the same.

Of course it probably doesn't matter, because ObamaCare has already been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in Florida because it required Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty. The Obama regime is appealing that decision, and the case will likely go to the Supreme Court after a hearing at the appeals court in Atlanta.

[dutchdivco]

Appealing Obama Regime

"The Obama regime is appealing"? Sorry, Rick; But there is NOTHING 'appealing' about the Obama Regime! Sorry, I couldn't resist!!!LOL

[rickoff]

That's quite okay, Jim. Good joke. Besides, you're not the first to quote me out of context, and probably won't be the last.

Rick

[dutchdivco]

Yeah,

Probably not the first time i've done it, but at least this time, it was done with toungue firmly in cheek, and no intention to actually misrepresent what you were saying. Just going for the joke, Jim

[rickoff]

Cheers for Wisconsin, a state that got it right



Yesterday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed into law legislation that will accomplish two sorely needed objectives:
1. The new law will allow Wisconsin to avoid defaulting on debt payments, and to avoid the otherwise necessary layoffs or terminations of many state employees. Voters had elected Walker in November on his promise to reign in runaway deficit spending which was threatening to bankrupt the state, and rightfully expect results. In order to accomplish this objective, there obviously must be cuts in state spending, and any special interest group that is currently receiving bloated, unwarranted, unjust, or unnecessary state payments are a legitimate target for spending cuts. A review of the facts showed that the largest deficit item by far was the massive and ever growing cost of providing excessive wages, healthcare, and retirement benefits to state employees, a situation which is repeated in nearly every other state across the USA. Naturally, any group that is affected by a spending cut proposal is going to whine and complain, but this group is overdoing it. After all, even when their relatively small loss in compensation is accounted for, they will still be earning considerably more than their private sector counterparts.

Wisconsin state employees claim that they are already paying 100% of their pension costs, and that taxpayers are not paying any part of this, but is this true? Well, yes and no. If taxpayers directly paid for 100% of state worker pensions, it would be considered as illegal gifting, so union bosses figured a way around this. Intead of the public directly paying 100% of the cost, the union contracts negotiated for enough additional wages, beyond fair and just compensation, to cover the full cost of pensions. Then the money paid into the pension fund was said to be "deferred wages," or wages the employees earned but elected to receive at a later date in the form of pension payments when they retire. In other words, it is an entitlement program. A small portion of benefits costs actually is deducted from state employee paychecks, but in reality it is just a small part of a bloated total compensation package. And who pays for the cost of that compensation package? The taxpayers, of course. Irate taxpayers who realized that compensation for their own work in same or similar private sector jobs was considerably less.

So how did this situation come about? Why, over the years, have state governments agreed to the exhorbitant compensation demands of state employee unions? Why not just set compensation at rates the state could reasonably afford to pay, and let state employeess decide whether to work for that amount or work elsewhere? It's quite simple, actually. In the past, getting elected (or reelected) to a state political office was practically assured if a candidate promised, or delivered on earlier promises, to work towards higher compensation packages to state employees. In return for that assurance, the union bosses funneled huge campaign contributions to these candidates to assure their election. As soon as a candidate becomes elected to state office (and this is also true of federal government), they immediately begin seeking donations to assure their reelection in the next election cycle. And why would they waste time seeking out many small individual private contributions when it is so much easier to meet with a small handful of union lobbyists who have the big money in hand? All of this money, of course, comes from dues paid by unionized employees regardless of whether or not any of those employees would choose to vote for the candidate receiving the payout. And in states which have laws allowing forced unionism (and union dues payments) as a condition for holding a job, workers have no recourse to such extortion. And this brings us to point #2.

2. The new Wisconsin law contains a right-to-work clause that allows state workers (with the odd exception of construction workers) to individually determine whether or not they wish to be in, or pay dues to, a union. The law does not restrict employee freedom to join a union of their choice if they so wish, and does not prevent employees from engaging in collective bargaining for wages, as mass media and Wisconsin Democrats would have us believe. The law only removes healthcare and pension benefits packages from the bargaining process, allowing Wisconsin to adopt benefit packages that are affordable and within budget. Union bosses and politicians (especially Democrats) are extremely worried by this development in Wisconsin, which is likely to spread to other states as they wrestle with bringing budgets into control, and are vowing to fight to overturn the new law. Union thugs and liberal progressive socialists are fanning the flames and doing their best to intimidate Wisconsin Republicans while attempting to convince the public that the Walker administration is their enemy. It looks as though things could really get ugly now.

For some reason, police and firefighters are exempted from the provisions of the new law. Realistically, these are the very last group of employees that should be allowed to be in a position to hold the state hostage, but it appears that Wisconsin lawmakers feared that including them in the new law would probably cause them to "call in sick," like the teachers did, and that panic would ensue in the case of emergencies not being responded to. In my opinion, any employee who falsely called in sick to take false advantage of sick pay, while actually attending protest demonstrations, should have been fired from their jobs. And the action of Democrat lawmakers to leave the state, rather than perform their jobs and vote on the legislation, was deplorable. They too should rightfully be fired or recalled for refusal to perform the job they were elected to.

[Nadda]

Yeah, Ohio is headed in that direction now. John Kasich was elected governor here in ohio. He spoke at a tea party rally and he has every intention on reducing the deficit here.

[rickoff]

Yeah, Ohio is headed in that direction now. John Kasich was elected governor here in ohio. He spoke at a tea party rally and he has every intention on reducing the deficit here.

Hi Nadda,

Yes that's right, and the time has come to either follow through on promises and do whatever is necessary, or suffer the consequences of failure to act. The states cannot continue to go on borrowing and spending so recklessly, and are already at the brink of catastrophe. They must either cut spending or raise taxes in order to stay afloat, but raising taxes is not a viable solution and must not be tolerated. Our tax burdens (for those of us who pay them) are already way too high. That's what gave birth to the TEA Party movement and kicked out many of the career politicians who were happy to maintain the status quo and do nothing. It was good to see them go, and I expect we will be seeing a lot more of that in 2012.

Rick

[dutchdivco]

yes

Good overview, rick, as usual.There are additional details.Unions not only can contribute funds to a candidate, or his opponent; they also have very well organised voter registration and get out the vote organising abilities.

In the private sector, there are certain restraints on a union, when they are negotiating; if they demand too much, they know they risk putting the Business out of Business; but a government can't (theoretically) go out of business.And, the heads of the business, that they are negotiating with, work for the stockholders, not them.

With a government official, who was elected with campaign contributions and election support FROM the unions, you can't say that.Its kind of like if the union had something to blackmail the person they are supposed to be negotiating with; they are 'threatening' with a strike, which is always what a union has as its 'trump' card, but they are also threatening the person on the other side of the table with their job.Not really a fair negotiation.

So, its been a skewed system for a long time. Now, people are trying to 'level the playing field', and as you say, people are complaining.People got a 'good thing' feeding at the trough, they don't want it to end.So what.
Even Democratic govenors, faced with the same kind of #'s, are looking at similar solutions.Its overdue. Jim

[aljhoa]

In the private sector, there are certain restraints on a union, when they are negotiating; if they demand too much, they know they risk putting the Business out of Business; but a government can't (theoretically) go out of business.And, the heads of the business, that they are negotiating with, work for the stockholders, not them.

Stockholders are granted special privileges depending on the class of stock. These rights may include:

The right to sell their shares, provided there is a buyer.
*
The right to nominate directors (although this is very difficult in practice because of minority protections) and propose shareholder resolutions.
*
The right to dividends if they are declared.

Therefore, contrary to popular opinion, shareholders of American public corporations are NOT the (1) owners of the corporation, (2) the claimants of the profit, or (3) investors, as in the contributors of capital.

Shareholder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Al

[dutchdivco]

Clarification

Hey, I didn't mean my post to be misinterpreted as a defence or advocacy of corporations, just a contrast of the situations of unions with private companies, as a contrast of public sector unions.Corporations are NOT democracies, I agree.When it comes to unions, and big corporations, I say "Shoot them all, and let God sort it out!" LOL Jim

[aljhoa]

Corporations are NOT democracies, I agree.

Paradox - US Corporation Is Not A Democracy?
YouTube - Democracy:2 Wolves And A Sheep Voting On What's For Dinner! WATCH!

YouTube - U S is not a democracy Milton Friedman
Al

[danychif]

The Illusion Of Democracy

What we are experiencing now is only the illusion of democracy, we think we hold the cards but we couldn't be more wrong. There is a handful of people that control everything from finances to politics and we might never actually know what goes on around us.

Democracy is the best thing that humanity came up with until now, but it is very far from being perfect because it enables a select few to obtain too much power.

[Joit]

In the meantime i dont think anymore that it is only a small Group of Peoples, when i think about all the Clubs, like Lion Club Club of Rome and whatelse, and that they are tied to everwhere, Politic Economy and Healthcare to Peoples, when they reach a certain Level at the payroll.

[dutchdivco]

"Democracy is the WORST form of government,...

except for all the others."Seeing whats going on in Japan, etc. I am reminded of the cartoon; shows a bearded, bedraggled guy holding a sign; it says "Repent, the end times are near", and he's crossed out "near" and written "Here". Hope you all were stocked up with iodine, and are taking it.Some Suppliers are back ordered now.Its pretty obvious the Japanese gov't is downplaying this, as their reactors keep popping off like firecrackers.Jim