Quote:The Showdown Over Public Union Power

At last, politicians and voters are fighting back against the most potent lobby for government spending and ever-higher taxes. .


By STEVEN MALANGA
Government workers have taken to the streets in Madison, Wis., to battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott Walker that include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions. Everywhere that this "opt out" idea has been proposed, unions have battled it vigorously because the money they collect from dues is at the heart of their power.

Unions use that money not only to run their daily operations but to wage political campaigns in state capitals and city halls. Indeed, public-sector unions especially have become the nation's most aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending. They sponsor tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising and lobbying campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them. And they mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by governors and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes.

Early last year, for example, Oregon's unions spearheaded a successful battle to pass ballot measures 66 and 67, which collectively raised business and income taxes in the state by an estimated $727 million annually. Led by $2 million from the Oregon Education Association and $1.8 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), unions contributed an estimated 75% of the nearly $7 million raised to promote the tax increases, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Also in 2010, teachers unions and public-safety unions in Arizona were influential players in the successful ballot campaign to increase the state's sales tax to 6.6% from 5.6% to raise an additional $1 billion. Some state business groups also supported the tax increase in the vain hope that the legislature would roll back business and investment taxes. The public unions, by contrast, wanted the tax hike precisely to avoid government spending cuts.

Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Public employee protests spread across the Midwest.
.In Washington state there was a ballot measure last November that would have raised $2 billion by imposing an income tax on those earning more than $200,000. The media portrayed the political fight as a battle among the rich. That's because William H. Gates Sr, father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, supported the tax, while Microsoft's current chief executive, Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos opposed it.

But unions were the real power behind the scenes. According to Ballotpedia.com, state and national SEIU locals gave $2.5 million, while the National Education Association and Washington teachers union locals contributed $900,000 to the $6 million campaign for the new income tax. In the end, Washingtonians voted down the tax, in part because they feared it would eventually be expanded to everyone....

read more here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...73034.html

and now these demon bastions of democracy bring indians governance to a halt:

Quote:Indiana Democrats trigger Statehouse showdown over anti-union legislation

Written by
Mary Beth Schneider Filed Under

Zoom Todd Kegley, President of Local 9231 of New Carlisle, screams a chant as he and other union members from throughout the State of Indiana protest several anti-labor bills outside the Senate chambers at the Indiana Statehouse on Tuesday. / MATT DETRICH / The StarRelated
Seats on one side of the Indiana House were nearly empty today as House Democrats departed the the state rather than vote on anti-union legislation.

A source tells the Indianapolis Star that Democrats are headed to Illinois, though it was possible some also might go to Kentucky. They need to go to a state with a Democratic governor to avoid being taken into police custody and returned to Indiana.
The House was came into session twice this morning, with only three of the 40 Democrats present. Those were needed to make a motion, and a seconding motion, for any procedural steps Democrats would want to take to ensure Republicans don’t do anything official without quorum.


With only 58 legislators present, there was no quorum present to do business. The House needs 67 of its members to be present.


House Speaker Brian Bosma said he did not know yet whether he would ask the Indiana State Police to compel the lawmakers to attend, if they can be found.


Today’s fight was triggered by Republicans pushing a bill that would bar unions and companies from negotiating a contract that requires non-union members to kick-in fees for representation. It’s become the latest in what is becoming a national fight over Republican attempts to eliminate or limit collective bargaining....

read more here:

http://www.indystar.com/article/20110222...dyStar.com

It will be very interesting to see what happens from all of this.

Good or bad, I expect a revolution of sorts.

and one more. the words "fleeing" and "democrats" just seem to belong together, in so many contexts:

Quote:Reports: M.I.A. Dems fleeing Indiana


By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 2/22/11 1:39 PM EST
Democrats in Indiana’s legislature are said to be fleeing the state Tuesday to block a vote on an anti-union bill, repeating the move used by Wisconsin Democrats to avoid voting on legislation there.

Members of the Indiana House are headed to Illinois or Kentucky to avoid having to vote on a “right-to-work” law, which would allow non-union members to work in unionized companies, the Indianapolis Star reported.

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When the House was called into session Tuesday morning, just two of its 40 Democratic members were on hand. In all, 58 legislators were present in the chamber, nine fewer than the 67 needed for a quorum.

Terri Austin, a Democratic member of the state House, told reporters Tuesday that “it doesn’t matter where” her fellow Democrats were and would only say “they’re working hard” when asked whether they were in Indiana. “What matters is that they’re trying to figure out a way to save the state from this radical agenda,” she said.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, said he was “flummoxed” by Democrats’ absence and said the Democratic minority leader “has taken a page out of the Wisconsin Senate playbook” by apparently leaving the state. “They are shirking the job that they were hired to do.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, has voiced his support for the bill and for the legislation moving in Wisconsin. “The most powerful special interests in America today are the government unions,” the potential 2012 presidential hopeful said Monday in an interview with NPR. “They’re the leading financial contributors. They have the biggest PACs, they have muscle, a lot of times their contracts provide for time off to go politick and lobby, and over the last few decades, if there were ever injustices or shortfalls in how we took care of government employees, it’s been fixed and over-fixed.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/021...z1Eik20Q8C

I think them leaving the state is gutless. The people voted in the representatives... at the end of the day you can't just leave because you don't agree with what is going to win.

to the question of where this will all go, next stop is O-HI-O. i'll repeat this again and again:public employees should never have acquired collective bargaining "rights" as FDR and others prominent on the left recognized for years until old Wisconsin changed the playing field.

Quote:Unions protest Ohio collective bargaining bill

2:21 PM, Feb. 22, 2011
Written by
Julie Carr Smyth

COLUMBUS — Security is being tightened as thousands of union protesters deluge the Ohio Statehouse to oppose a bill that would strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.

A Statehouse spokesman says the Rotunda and Atrium are filled to capacity Tuesday and additional visitors will be directed to an off-site theater, where a 4 p.m. committee hearing on the bill will be simulcast.

The bill is sponsored by first-term Sen. Shannon Jones of the Cincinnati area and backed by Gov. John Kasich, both Republicans. It would end collective bargaining rights for state workers and restrict bargaining abilities of teachers, firefighters, police and others.

A coalition of police and fire unions is urging the Ohio Senate to slow down the controversial bill, which has been drawing crowds to the Statehouse for several weeks

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110...|text|News

I wish there was a legal way to "de-certify" the missing legislators as from being legal representatives of the people. With less legislators, less members in attendence are needed for a quorum. Any of you Legal Eagles know if that is possible?

They need to put up wanted posters around the capital with their faces on them.

(02-22-2011 04:31 PM)QSECOFR Wrote:  I wish there was a legal way to "de-certify" the missing legislators as from being legal representatives of the people. With less legislators, less members in attendence are needed for a quorum. Any of you Legal Eagles know if that is possible?

I would imagine that at some point the position becomes "vacated" if the representative doesn't show up. Probably depends on the state... as far as I'm concerned, walking out because you are on the losing side is a joke. If you don't agree, keep fighting to get others with your viewpoint elected and change it next term.

(02-23-2011 10:39 AM)mlb Wrote:  I would imagine that at some point the position becomes "vacated" if the representative doesn't show up. Probably depends on the state... as far as I'm concerned, walking out because you are on the losing side is a joke. If you don't agree, keep fighting to get others with your viewpoint elected and change it next term.

Couldn't agree more. As long as they're using tools available to them while they're within the state and doing their job, I don't care what they do to slow a bill. Hiding out in neighboring states to avoid electrons from having an impact while speaking of democracy is about the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Wonder which state it will occur in next?

This is being coordinated at the DNC level. Won't be the last we see of it.

Quote:February 24, 2011
Who Benefits From Government Unions?

By Michael Barone

Everyone has priorities. During the past week, Barack Obama found time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state's public employee unions. Walker was staging "an assault on unions," he said, and added that "public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens."

Enormous contributions, yes -- to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the biggest public employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

Follow the money, Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party.

So, just as the president complained in his 2010 State of the Union address about a Supreme Court decision that he feared would increase the flow of money to Republicans, he also found time to complain about a proposed state law that could reduce the flow of money to Democrats.

And, according to The Washington Post, to get the Democratic National Committee to organize protests against the proposed Wisconsin law. Protests that showed contempt for the law, with teachers abandoning classrooms, doctors writing phony medical excuses, Democratic legislators fleeing the state and holing up in a motel. The lawmakers played hooky without losing any salary, which is protected by the state constitution.

It's true that Walker's proposals would strike hard at the power of the public employee unions. They would no longer have the right to bargain for fringe benefits, which are threatening to bankrupt the state government, and they would no longer be able to count on government withholding dues money and passing it along to them.

But what are the contributions that public employee unions make to our states and our citizens? Their incentives are to increase the cost of government and reduce down toward zero the accountability of public employees -- both contrary to the interests of taxpaying citizens.

An argument can be made that higher pay, generous benefits and lavish pensions will attract better people to public employment. But where are the studies that show that citizens of states with strong public employee unions get better services than citizens in states without?

What citizens of states with strong public employee unions do get are higher taxes and enormous pension burdens that threaten to squeeze out funds for ongoing services, as even Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Jerry Brown of California have figured out.

That's why one of the great 20th century presidents was against unions for public employees who have civil service protections. No, not Ronald Reagan. It was Franklin Roosevelt who said, "Action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."

read more here:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article...09013.html

(02-23-2011 10:26 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  They need to put up wanted posters around the capital with their faces on them.

Make them milk carton styled "Missing" posters instead. Keep it more pc, esp. in WI.