Community > Politics, Current News & Events

Topic: A Sad Day in Wisconsin?
AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Sat 03/12/11 06:00 PM
YEPPERS! Sad day indeed. Want to see me playing my tiny violin? You will need a magnifying glass! Your Democrats brought this on trying to run and hide in Illinois! So does the fruit of the Democrats actions taste bitter? Like I said in a previous post, if this is how the Democrats are going to "help us" face our collective economic crisis screw them. They do not deserve our votes! I cant help but wonder how many well paid union people would no longer be able to afford and aquarium tech? Here is a hint, I don't work in the public sector. I work for businesses! I work with union labor all the time. I know who the clowns are and who are not. Oh the stories I could tell about some of the union labor I came across in my day... Besides, Aquarium Tech is only one of the many hats I wear! Lets see how union labor can afford it when their computer dies and they need me to fix it! Yes I do fix computers too! I even build them. So you tell me? Chances are they could not afford me in the first place anyways! This country may supposedly be free but I sure am not! You remind me of this guy I know who works the plant nurseries that are fairly prolific in my county. He does soil samples and recomends fertalisers and also tests for plant type disease and what insecatcides and fungacides to use. He would also down grade union wages and work rules etc etc. When the economy turned sour the first things people stopped buying we decorative plants and flowers. About half the nursries are now out of business and as a result his pay has been cut in half. I suppose I am trying to say be carefull what you wish for because things often have unforseen consequences. I am not sure what country or king this was who wanted to raise revenue by taxing mens beards as a beard was considerd fashionable in its day. the unforseen consequence was the men shaved their beards rather than pay the tax, Tax revenue did increase though because they began shaveing more often and barbers had a dramatic increase in taxable income as well as blade manufacturers. Ok I am bored and we have a foot of snow in Northeast Ohio. When gas prices hit $4.00 a gallon in 2009 I seen the writing on the wall. I lost half of my customers within a month thanks to that! I warned all of my friends in construction what was coming and they didn't believe me. When they were begging me to help them find work I told them I was fighting to keep myself employed. Now with fuel prices reaching those same highs I am not as worried these days since I have gotten into a niche no one else can fill. There are VERY FEW "Aquarium Techs" who can do jellyfish. I am successfully rearing some right now for a very large client! I sort of have better job security than most since I got a job! Likewise I may not be getting premium wages BUT I can pay my bills. You either adapt or die! Plain and simple! If you re unwilling to be exploited a little in economic times like these you will starve! So go hungry holding out for principles or suck up some pride and eat? I prefer to eat! Funny you should mention the writeing on the wall. I have worked non union as a younger man and thought hard work and dedication would be enough to get me raises at least to keep up with inflation. After five years on a job I was actualy told on my last review that despite my outstnding work I was paid to much and only could be afforded a dime more an hour, after all I was the highest paid hourly worker etc etc. I saw the writeing on the wall and changed jobs within four weeks and have worked in a union shop for the last 18 years and have never had to endure a preformance review or be told I made to much. I have cost of liveing raises depending on the economy and the security of senority on the job. I would have to say the american dream is still in my life but I know if current trends continue everyones lifestyle will be in jeapordy unlesss of course for the most affluent among us who can hop on their private jet and flee any disaster scene to one of their vacation homes and never have to struggle to rebuild or face hard life choices. Today its public workers yesterday it was auto workers, everyone except the most affluent are makeing sacrafices and here in Uber amerika we have aquraium techs arguing the case for the wealthy and why they shouldnt sacrafice like everyone else. One fact remains we will all be to old to work one day, we will all get sick and need medical care are we going to be acountry that turns its back on those in need or are we going to be a descent society with checks and ballances that ensures everyone gets a fair shake? But what of situations where a "check" becomes a "catch 22?" Then there is no balance. At least SOME unions do make god damn sure that people working are trained, experienced, and qualified to do the job and perform as required. The Teamsters however ARE NOT THAT! Neither are ANY of the teacher's unions! And collective bargaining has destroyed the Free Enterprise Principle in America. They need regulation Just as much as anyone else does so weasels don't take over. Likewise Collective Bargaining SHOULD NOT APPLY IN GOVERNMENT JOBS! Likewise it is an individual responsibility of each of us to cover our own retirements! BUT the government also has an obligation to make sure "Free Commerce" is not taken advantage of like Auto and Health insurance have done to us. Who will profit from "Mandatory heath insurance?" American's at large? How is paying with money you cannot afford to give up profiting? So low income Americans get to be fined for not complying? Doesn't that sound just a touch communist to you? Does this not remind you of life in Soviet Russia people complained about so much? Things like Health and dental insurance were perks, but unions make it sound like they HAVE to give that. Profit Sharing is an incentive to work better and faster and to meet or beat deadlines. They are not required of anyone including corporations. That is illegal. And people want to empower Unions more? That is just like handing the keys of a hen house to a Weasel. Unlike Foxes, Weasels go on killing orgies uncontrollably. They will clear a hen house full of birds by itself. Foxes are smart enough to save some for later. So what do we do, keep on making the catch 22 worst or start by peeling some undeserved power away from unions? Who said they deserve the right to tell the government what to do? They are telling US what to do and how to do it and they will say "shut up and take it if you don't like it." That will cause a lot of blood to boil and pit brother on brother. Then it will get messy in a very bad way and the problem will just get worst until it gets better. I think government has lost sight of its purpose and objectives. It has gained too much authority in some areas and lost too much in others! And THAT IS THE CORE PROBLEM!

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Sat 03/12/11 06:43 PM
it is an individual responsibility of each of us to cover our own retirements! I think you think that you are making a point here. We do exactly this. We do so by contributing to the Social Securoty System commensurately with time of service.

AdventureBegins Joined Tue 04/10/07 Posts: 7666	Sat 03/12/11 07:23 PM
Yep... and Government proves (through the constant 'pilfering' of the SS system) EXACTALY what they will do with more taxes. Time to shrink that particular spider (government) before it bleeds us all dry. The current situation in Wisconsin is NOT about Social Security... It is about overeach on the part Unions using overgreed on the part of politicians (One wants money... The other wants power).

AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Sat 03/12/11 10:18 PM
it is an individual responsibility of each of us to cover our own retirements! I think you think that you are making a point here. We do exactly this. We do so by contributing to the Social Securoty System commensurately with time of service. You are aware Congress robbed the coffers of SS more than once? THAT IS FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT! They are robbing Peter to pay Paul! Well, they are robbing us to pay for other things that have nothign to do with us and somewhere they seem to make money elsewhere somehow vicariously through their businesses and partnerships behind the scenes. Why do you thing Congressman Weintraub(?) of NY, a Dem got so irate when HIS proposed measure got shot down? He threw a temper tantrum on the floor when asked to step down. He called people names. He was proven to be directly involved financially and stood to make a million and a half of of a 7 million dollar proposal. I mean come on! Your beloved Democratic Party is not so innocent! They are more of a problem than a solution!

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Sat 03/12/11 10:25 PM
You are aware Congress robbed the coffers of SS more than once? THAT IS FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT When somebody borrows money and pays interest for the privilege of doing so, it is not called robbery. This is a concept that even a third grader can understand.

AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Sat 03/12/11 10:56 PM
You are aware Congress robbed the coffers of SS more than once? THAT IS FINANCIAL MISMANAGEMENT When somebody borrows money and pays interest for the privilege of doing so, it is not called robbery. This is a concept that even a third grader can understand. How stupid can you be? You borrow money from yourself and pay yourself back more? HOW? That is not responsible finance. And likewise they have not payed SS back! They were assuming a steady growth model to maintain a growing fund by growing our population. They assumed that with a steady growth they could keep the money rolling in but Americans in general stopped having 2.5 children. The dip in population growth screwed with their financial juggling. Likewise in "Borrowing" and "Gaining" return like that is called Cooking the Books and that is CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR in our world! Government should not mismanage finances like that, That is part of the reason government has become so uncontrollably expensive to operate. But then again I suppose you don't see that either?

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Sat 03/12/11 11:24 PM
You don't have a clue about how Social Security works. You don't appear to understand the difference between Social Security and the Social Security Trust Fund. You don't seem to have a notion about the nature of a Treasury bond. You don't seem to recognize that the Government is paying back it's debt to the Social Security Trust fund every time it pays out a benefit. Your twaddle about this growth model is a figment of your imagination. The purpose of the Social Security Trust fund (which now holds a surplus of just under $12 trillion) was established in 1984 under Ronald Reagan by the Greenspan commission to provide benefits for us baby-boomers until around 2042, when we will all be dead. Then the system returns to the regular pay-as-you-go, money in-money out model of the original system. The longevity of the Trust Fund is currently challenged by this extended period of high unemployment which was caused by your people. It is now estimated to last until about 2037.

AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Sun 03/13/11 08:29 PM
OH BOY! I DON'T Know how it works? I know how it was supposed to work, I likewise know its failures. What YOU don't know is there is the real world and the imaginary world. For a business to shuffle money among sub divisions and charge interest to itself is ILLEGAL in regular land and yet the government is here doing everything we "Normal" people are not supposed to do. SS has been tweaked and the issuance of treasury bonds is done under the auspices of Government asking people to invest in it, not help it catch up with money it lost from the SS fund from reapportioning the finances. You are attempting to exonerate the government from wrong doing fallaciously. On top of that the greatest insult to injury is that the American government prints money and the Fed Treasury "Loans" it back to America With Interest. Pull your head out of your posterior! And another reason for me to spike the ball here is that you clearly cannot see that the greatest failure of SS was that the Baby boom created a surge in population growth that was capable of keeping up with the next generation BUT the next generation did not pump out babies like before and with a fall in population growth so came a depletion of funds that the SS system could not adapt to and had no way of generating the money it needed to remain solvent between government mismanagement and a lack of raw income from a smaller population base after the Baby Boomers. To build a financial system dependent on constant growth and likewise dependent on a future generation to support the current one is ludicrous! THAT IS WHERE SOCIAL SECURITY FELL APART! So what next do you have to offer since you are SOOOOO Educated and I don't understand? On top of that Greenspan is one of the worst monsters in American History and contributed directly to America's financial mess. So have you realized you are still kicking a dead horse yet???

Dragoness Joined Wed 10/17/07 Posts: 23320	Sun 03/13/11 08:43 PM
The benefits of unions outweighs the bad. But unions are hard to control for a type of government that needs ultimate control. GOP

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Sun 03/13/11 08:58 PM
For a business to shuffle money among sub divisions and charge interest to itself is ILLEGAL You're in a dream. Businesses shift money with interest and profits between subsidiaries all the time. Offshore tax sheltering. Over the past decade, corporations and their accounting firms have become increasingly aggressive in seeking ways to shift their profits, on paper, into offshore tax havens, in order to avoid their tax obligations. Some companies have gone so far as to renounce their U.S. "citizenship" and reincorporate in Bermuda or other tax-haven countries to facilitate tax sheltering activity. Not surprisingly, corporations do not explicitly disclose their abusive tax sheltering in their annual reports. For example, Wachovia's extensive schemes to shelter its U.S. profits from tax are cryptically described in the notes to its annual reports merely as "leasing." It took extensive digging by PBS's Frontline researchers to discover that Wachovia's tax shelter involved pretending to own and lease back municipal assets in Germany, such as sewers and rail tracks, a practice heavily promoted by some accounting firms. Other tax shelter devices, such as abuses of "transfer pricing," also go unspecified in corporate annual reports. Nevertheless, corporate offshore tax sheltering is estimated to cost the U.S. Treasury anywhere from $30 billion to $70 billion a year, and presumably the effects of these shelters are reflected in the bottom-line results of what companies pay in tax. http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_welfare/real_tax_rates_plummet.php the issuance of treasury bonds is done under the auspices of Government asking people to invest in it, not help it catch up with money it lost from the SS fund from reapportioning the finances. I don't know what this means. What losses are you talking about? On top of that the greatest insult to injury is that the American government prints money and the Fed Treasury "Loans" it back to America With Interest. Quantitative easing is a separate issue altogether. You and I probably agree on this. you clearly cannot see that the greatest failure of SS was that the Baby boom created a surge in population growth that was capable of keeping up with the next generation Another indication that you don't understand the Trust Fund. The trust fund was created to fund retirement for the present generation, not the next generation. In other words, when my FICA taxes almost doubled in 1984, I was now not only paying for my parents' retirement, but for my own, as well. By around 2040, there will have been a huge drop in the number of people retiring, requiring only the basic money in-money out of regular Social Security. The "constant growth" model is a figment of your imagination. I wish you had a better understanding of these issues.

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Mon 03/14/11 06:16 AM
The outrage in Madison doesn't seem to be going away. Wonder why the Tea Partiers aren't steping up in defense of their principals. http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/18891-1

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Mon 03/14/11 06:57 AM
Randy Hopper is one of those Republican State Senators who is in jeopardy of recall. Protestors went to his house and were met by his wife, who was only too happy to tell them that her husband is living with his 25 year old mistress, Hopper's maid was quite eager to sign the recall petition. http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/03/11/wi-gop-sen-randy-hoppers-wife-tells-protesters-hopper-living-with-25-year-old-mistress-in-madison/

AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Mon 03/14/11 12:32 PM
Two things about trust funds: ONE) if there is no trust there is no fund, why? Reason TWO. TWO) A trust fund is not liquid when you tap it for all the wrong reasons like Congressional misappropriation of funds. And one last time, just becasue business moves money around within its structure means noting until that business is "Charging Interest" within its own structure. which is illegal and when caught businesses are sanctioned. Hell, GM got bitten by that one recently! Now if your FICA taxes doubled guess what, someone screwed up and are making you pay for their mistakes and mismanagement. And here you are going back to attacking the Tea Party when they ARE the only ones trying to do something and here you are pissing on their shoes. Shame on you. Shame on you so much I am sicking the nun on you! And here you are wanting to grant Unions more power... Unions have far exceeded their power. Their detrimental forces outweigh their good. Once upon a time they served a good purpose but now they are power hungry, greedy, and do nothing to stimulate the economy. I will change my mind when the unions can get manufacturing jobs back here. Until then they are teats on a boar!

Bestinshow Joined Mon 06/01/09 Posts: 5540	Tue 03/15/11 05:38 AM
Two things about trust funds: ONE) if there is no trust there is no fund, why? Reason TWO. TWO) A trust fund is not liquid when you tap it for all the wrong reasons like Congressional misappropriation of funds. And one last time, just becasue business moves money around within its structure means noting until that business is "Charging Interest" within its own structure. which is illegal and when caught businesses are sanctioned. Hell, GM got bitten by that one recently! Now if your FICA taxes doubled guess what, someone screwed up and are making you pay for their mistakes and mismanagement. And here you are going back to attacking the Tea Party when they ARE the only ones trying to do something and here you are pissing on their shoes. Shame on you. Shame on you so much I am sicking the nun on you! And here you are wanting to grant Unions more power... Unions have far exceeded their power. Their detrimental forces outweigh their good. Once upon a time they served a good purpose but now they are power hungry, greedy, and do nothing to stimulate the economy. I will change my mind when the unions can get manufacturing jobs back here. Until then they are teats on a boar! I am sure if everyone in the US agrees to work for nothing gives up all their rights and OSHA is eliminated and the EPA manufacturing will return to the US.

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Tue 03/15/11 09:15 AM
Here's the latest from Wisconsin. Senate Majority Scott Fitzgerald has told Senate Republicans that any votes taken by Senate Democrats in standing committee public hearings and executive sessions will not be counted or recorded. http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_b561daf6-4ea0-11e0-9bab-001cc4c03286.html

mightymoe Joined Sun 11/19/06 Posts: 37362	Tue 03/15/11 09:28 AM
you guys are crazy... this is one of the best things to happen... i hope the whole COUNTRY follows this great happening... ALL unions should be disbanded.

TJN Joined Sun 12/02/07 Posts: 6745	Tue 03/15/11 11:26 AM
Ok so this whole thing is about losing collective bargaining "rights" Then I have a question. Should teachers not have a "right" as to wether or not they join the union?

artlo Joined Sat 01/29/11 Posts: 3085	Tue 03/15/11 12:28 PM
Should teachers not have a "right" as to wether or not they join the union? In a perfect world, they should have that right, but they should choose not to, then they should not be entitled to the benefits of union membership.

TJN Joined Sun 12/02/07 Posts: 6745	Tue 03/15/11 03:37 PM
Should teachers not have a "right" as to wether or not they join the union? In a perfect world, they should have that right, but they should choose not to, then they should not be entitled to the benefits of union membership. Then why do they not have the choice and union dues are automatically taken out of their checks reguadless if they agree to it or not.

AndyBgood Joined Thu 12/25/08 Posts: 12437	Tue 03/15/11 03:40 PM
Should teachers not have a "right" as to wether or not they join the union? In a perfect world, they should have that right, but they should choose not to, then they should not be entitled to the benefits of union membership. And this is fair and equitable how exactly? Be in a union or else? This is America or have you forgotten that? Likewise why should a union protect incompetent workers? Unions gained way too much power and some have pseudo communist beliefs in what they bargain for. Unions also promote mediocrity and cost us a lot of manufacturing. We need standards and a government with the authority to regulate but instead you want things the other way around where the government is powerless and the unions are in charge. Once again...