Even when O’Donnell laudably attempted to concentrate the audience’s consideration onand hopefully last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen beneath for excellent, I used to be overtaken, not by the pulling about the thread, and also the voracious audience he serves. It didn’t make me unhappy, it created me angry.
Concerning celebrities, we could be considered a heartless country, basking in their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Beach. The impulse is understandable, to some degree. It could possibly be grating to listen to complaints from consumers who relish privileges that most of us cannot even imagine. When you can not muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who can make a great deal more capital for a day’s do the job than the majority of us will make in a decade’s time, I guess I can not blame you.
With the quick speed of events online in addition to the knowledge revolution sparked through the On-line, it is pretty quick for your technological know-how business to assume it is different: frequently breaking new ground and accomplishing important things that no person has ever before done before.
But you will find other types of business that have already undergone a number of the similar radical shifts, and have just as terrific a stake during the potential.
Consider healthcare, for instance.
We commonly consider of it as being a big, lumbering beast, but in reality, medication has undergone a sequence of revolutions from the previous 200 many years which can be a minimum of equal to these we see in technological know-how and material.
Much less understandable, but nevertheless inside the norms of human nature, would be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and check out the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but in the blithe interviewer Sheen’s lifestyle as we pass it while in the suitable lane of our everyday lives. To be honest, it can be tough for people to discern the distinction in between a run-of-the-mill focus whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its very own merits, a quote like “I Am On the Drug. It’s Labeled as Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we can’t all be expected to consider the total measure of someone’s everyday living each and every time we hear some thing funny.
Quickly ahead to 2011 and I'm attempting to investigate means that of staying a bit more business-like about my hobbies (typically music). From the conclude of January I had manned up and commenced to promote my blogs. I had put together plenty of various weblogs, which had been contributed to by mates and colleagues. I promoted these activities through Facebook and Twitter.
Second: the little abomination the Gang of 5 about the Supream Court gave us a yr or so in the past (Citizens Inebriated) literally is made up of a bit bouncing betty of its individual that can highly nicely go off in the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Given that this ruling extended the notion of “personhood” to both equally businesses and unions, to strive to deny them any appropriate to run inside the legal framework that they have been organized beneath deprives these “persons” on the freedoms of speech, association and motion. Which suggests (after again, quoting law college trained family members) that either the courts should uphold these rights for the unions (as person “persons” as assured by the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they have to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights need to apply to key corporations, also.
As Americans, we’re often taught that trusts and monopolies are the product of big business and are bad. However, if trusts and monopolies are bad when Big Business engages in monopolistic ways, why isn’t it bad when Big Labor engages in the same sort of behaviors that are condemned when committed by Big Business?
For over a week now, the nation has watched tens of thousands march in protest to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget plan. Democrat lawmakers (aka Fleebaggers) have fled the state in order to avoid doing their duty, while Obama’s OFA has bussed in the astroturf from out of state. While the union meme has been that Walker’s plan is “union-busting,” perhaps a more apt description would be “trust-busting.”
One of the most vocal opponents of Scott Walker’s budget plan has been the Wisconsin Education Association Council [WEAC]. As a union affiliated with the NEA, WEAC (according to its website) represents 98,000 “educators” in the State of Wisconsin.
Like any union, WEAC has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo when it comes to forced dues from Wisconsin school teachers, as well as automatic dues deduction from teachers’ paychecks—both of which would be eliminated under Walker’s proposal.
Employers will be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units will not be required to pay dues.
In essence, Walker’s proposal threatens the life blood of the WEAC which, according to its most recent financial report on file (FY 2009), raked in over $25 million from teachers in a one year period.
Another threat to WEAC, which no one in the mainstream media is talking about is the threat to the union’s insurance trust, called WEA Trust. The WEA Trust is, in essence, a union-run “multi-employer” health insurance trust (the employers, in this case, are school districts).
The way it works is that WEAC has, through collective bargaining (negotiations), convinced school districts to pay into the WEA Trust and, in turn, the WEA Trust is responsible for administering teachers’ benefits. According to PublicSchoolSpending.com, Walker’s proposal would give school boards the ability to shop freely for more competitive insurance rates and save the state millions.
Last year, the Education Action Group issued a report which stated, among other things, that:
WEA Trust, an insurance company established and closely associated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), siphons millions of crucial dollars from K-12 schools and their students every year.
WEA Trust has grown very fat on public school dollars, with a net worth of $316 million and a team of 12 administrators all receiving compensation packages worth six figures per year.
Sadly, this insurance swindle is endorsed by state law.
The group’s Communications Director, Steve Gunn, explains:
The pressure derives from state law, which makes the identity of a school’s health insurance carrier a topic of collective bargaining between local unions and school boards. That allows union representatives to come to the table demanding expensive WEA Trust coverage, and frequently school boards give in.
[snip]
Once school districts sign up for WEA Trust coverage, and write the carrier into collective bargaining agreements, the shackles are on. And they aren’t easily removed.
Local unions often refuse to have the provision stricken from school labor contracts in subsequent negotiations. If a school board presses the issue in an effort to save money, WEAC will frequently take the case to arbitration.
The Trust’s business practices also complicate the problem.
Districts need employee claim histories to provide to potential bidders, but WEA Trust sometimes refuses to surrender the information, making it more difficult, if not impossible, for competitors to draft an accurate insurance estimate.
WEA Trust also reportedly threatens districts with higher premiums – by removing them from regional insurance pools with lower rates – if they consider a cheaper carrier.
Some districts have managed to break WEA Trust’s shackles and the savings tell the story. Officials from 15 districts recently told EAG that they saved six figures the first year under new coverage, while still providing quality health benefits for employees. They also say the cost of their new coverage has remained steady in subsequent years.
But there is a catch. Officials at all of the breakaway districts said they had to surrender, or at least share, the insurance savings with their local unions, generally in the form of salary increases. That left them with little or no extra revenue to cover other costs.
In other words, WEAC, the union that has been most vocal during the last week’s protests has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. If the union can defeat Scott Walker’s reform plans, not only does it keep the union dues of teachers, it also gets to keep its health insurance monopoly intact.
Of course, you’re not hearing this in the press as it doesn’t fit the convenient narrative of class warfare. So, the next time you have someone tell you how “mean” Scott Walker is for attacking the teachers’ union, you can simply reply: Follow the money.
_________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
[Photo credit: Vaxomatic]
X-posted.
It’s nearing two weeks since unions and their cohorts on the Left have thrown a nationwide fit over Scott Walker’s solution to what is ailing Wisconsin. Unions and Democrats have made Wisconsin their cause célèbre by deploying OFA astroturf, the big talking heads, as well as recruiting just about every known Grateful Dead concert attendee on their mailing lists into Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Democratic state senators (now humorously known as fleebaggers) comically continue to hold the state hostage over an issue of union power, politics and money—nothing more and nothing less.
Despite unions’ long hatred of Scott Walker, the new governor is moving to address both the symptoms of the disease and the disease itself—the public-sector union scheme that has molested Wisconsin’s taxpayers and their children by gaming the system. Unions like Wisconsin’s teachers’ union [WEAC] (which was Wisconsin’s biggest-spending lobby in 2009) have been extraordinarily adept at fixing the system through spending millions to elect politicians who, in turn, reward the unions at the expense of the taxpayers.
Now, in response to Walker’s proposals, the Left has gone overboard in their attempt to protect their stranglehold on Wisconsin taxpayers. Even though unions have made clear that their fight is not about their wages or benefits (they’ve offered concessions), they’ve made the fight all about their “right to be unionized” and the fictitious right to “collective bargaining”—which makes their cause even more despotic.
In making Madison into something reminiscent of the spectacle of the 1960s, unions, Democrats and their liberal cohorts are attempting to make the Wisconsin union battle into a civil rights battle, when it is not. In fact, the Wisconsin fight, when compared to private-sector negotiations is about: 1) the Scope of Bargaining, 2) Union “Income” Security [Right-to-Work vs. Forced Dues], 3) whether Wisconsin should be the unions’ dues collection agency [payroll deduction of dues], and 4) whether public-sector unions should be ‘recertified’ by holding elections every year.
Contrary to the Left’s hyperbole, Scott Walker’s proposals do nothing to eliminate public-sector workers’ right to association, assemblage, or to petition their government. Even pretending that it is a “rights” issue is a mistake. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that requires a government to engage in a back and forth negotiation with a collective of workers. In a poignant piece entitled There is No Right to Collective Bargaining, Public Service Research Foundation President David Denholm summarizes the problem with the unions’ argument, stating:
A law granting public-sector unions monopoly bargaining privileges gives a union, a special interest group, two bites at the apple. First, it uses its political clout to elect public officials. Then it negotiates with the very same officials.
When you consider that between 70 and 80 percent of all local government expenditures are personnel costs, you begin to get an idea of the magnitude of the power such laws give unions.
Not only is there no right to collective bargaining in public employment, it is wrong. Collective bargaining distorts and corrupts democratic government.
Collective bargaining is a process for employer-employee relations that was designed for the private sector. This process served as the model for the development of public-sector collective bargaining without taking into account the fundamental differences between the two sectors.
As Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour explains:
“When they have collective bargaining in Wisconsin, on one side of the table there’s state employee unions or the local employee unions. On the other side of the table are politicians that they paid for the election of those politicians,” Barbour said. “Now, who represents the taxpayers in that negotiation? Well, actually, nobody.”
Even Newsweek’s Evan Thomas noted on Sunday [via Newsbusters]:
The Democrats really depend on these public employee unions in a lot of states for their support and for their political muscle, and public employee unions got a problem here. I want to distinguish between unions and public employee unions. Unions obviously are critical, but in the public sector, public employee unions have a pretty easy time getting a lot of benefits because nobody’s really pushing back all that hard.
Admittedly, Walker’s proposals are a threat to unions in several ways. As Walker’s proposals determine:
- The extent of what unions will be allowed to bargain about. Walker’s proposal limits bargaining to wages only, effectively eliminating the WEA Trust monopoly which gets its money from local school boards and runs it through a union-run insurance company.
- Whether unions can have workers fired for not paying union dues. According to its most recent financial record on file, WEAC (the teachers’ union) raked in over $25 million in 2009. Walker’s proposal makes paying union dues voluntary, as opposed to mandatory. This goes to the lifeblood of any union. If, for example, 20% of those teachers who are currently required to pay union dues as a condition of employment opt out, WEAC could lose up to $5 million a year in revenue. [It is noteworthy that, in the private-sector, the SEIU will be conducting its second strike at a Pennsylvania medical center over the issue of mandatory dues.]
- Whether the state will continue being the unions’ dues collector. Walker’s proposal eliminates’ the employers’ payroll deduction of union dues. Again, while it is commonplace for unions to negotiate payroll deduction, there is nothing anywhere (in private or public sector law) that states that it is an employers’ duty to be a union’s collection agency.
- Whether the unions will have to ‘re-certify’ every year to maintain representational status. Of all of Walker’s proposals, this seems to be one that could be considered a ‘throw away’ item in negotiations. If Walker’s other proposals get enacted, and union-represented employees feel that the union is worthless, they can initiate an election themselves every calendar under existing law [see Section 111.83(5)[h]] .
Given the ability of the unions and their co-conspirators on the Left to hijack the issue in Wisconsin over these last two weeks, there appears no way for a “win-win” compromise to be worked out. One side or the other will win. Either the unions and the Left, or taxpayers will prevail.
If the Left wins, all chances of reforming public-sector unions will be tossed aside by weak-kneed Republicans who will then be held hostage by temper-tantrum throwing Democrats (see Indiana for example). In addition, the Left has already painted the entire Republicans party with bulls eyes and has for years. Therefore, there is no reason for GOP governors like Scott Walker, Chris Christie and John Kasich to back down, which puts the Left in an untenable situation as well.
In the meantime, the disciples of Saul Alinsky will continue their prattle, attempting to convince America that the Battle of Wisconsin is something more than a fight over union power, politics and money…even though it’s not.
_________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
X-posted.
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