Democrat COWARDS

[Cleo's Mom 257]

You're entitled to think that the cause of all the economic problems comes from the lazy, unproductive middle class, the working poor and senior citizens who just want entitlements. Or some guy who took out a second mortgage to buy a big screen tv or the single mom on welfare who has cable or the person who gets food stamps who isn't willing to rummage through a dumpster. But you have nothing to back up these opinions in the way of facts. It's just that right wing mentality that doesn't let facts stand in the way of opinions.

I have presented compelling facts and statistics to show the causes of the economic problems, who got us in this mess, who has profited and who has been hurt. Who has the power and who is losing ground.

You can continue to think the way you do. I have made my case and won the argument, IMO, so I am done with this line of arguing.

FYI, I hear you can download a Walmart application online.

[ariscus99 1]

Where did I ever say that I thought the "you" was directed at me personally? Nowhere. I knew what you meant and when you saw my reply you backpedaled because you saw how ridiculous and insane your post was.

You said it - you backpedaled - now don't blame me for the consequences of what you said. I, and everyone else who read your post, knew what you meant.

As I said, ask you union about whether you can opt out at the next meeting. If not, then find another non-union line of work since you find it so distasteful. In the private sector, of course. I hear Walmart's hiring. Hell, they even have those commericals on tv about how you can rise up the ladder there to all kinds off cushy positions in managment.

No, you skewed it the way that made your argument sound best, like most liberals do. I am not backpedaling, and have no need to, my family did what it had to do to survive with out being a leech on society. I would love people to have the devotion my parents did to their children to make ends meet on their own to instill a strong work ethic in there children. Show me in the post where I say every struggling American needs to dig through a dumpster? Show me that, in black and white, or get off you high horse, I can contort your words too, however I like to be honest and not do that. Try it sometime.

You take every last letter to a disgusting extreme to try and get a point across, your intellectually dishonest, it's quite disturbing. I don't do the job I do for the money or the benefits, I volunteered throughout high school and college as a firefighter, no pay, no benefits, and showed up day in and day out to help others, not for money, because there was none, not for health insurance, because there was none, not for retirement, because there was none. I'm not allowed to volunteer anymore, because of my union, or I would still be doing it. If walmart's hiring why are there so many unemployed cm? They must not want to work right. You heard it here first, cm says the unemployed masses refuse to work for Walmart where they can climb the ladder to management!!!!

Wow, that sounds dishonest, well, cm would say it so I can too.

[ariscus99 1]

Where did I ever say that I thought the "you" was directed at me personally? Nowhere. I knew what you meant and when you saw my reply you backpedaled because you saw how ridiculous and insane your post was.

Here;

I don't receive any government handouts. Never did. But your're the one sucking on the teet of the union perks while bashing them. So screw you.

You can't even keep up with the crap your spewing anymore, you copy and paste and copy and paste and don't really know what your putting down, you forget stuff, it's a little sad. Thanks for playing.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

No, you skewed it the way that made your argument sound best, like most liberals do. I am not backpedaling, and have no need to, my family did what it had to do to survive with out being a leech on society. I would love people to have the devotion my parents did to their children to make ends meet on their own to instill a strong work ethic in there children. Show me in the post where I say every struggling American needs to dig through a dumpster? Show me that, in black and white, or get off you high horse, I can contort your words too, however I like to be honest and not do that. Try it sometime.

You take every last letter to a disgusting extreme to try and get a point across, your intellectually dishonest, it's quite disturbing. I don't do the job I do for the money or the benefits, I volunteered throughout high school and college as a firefighter, no pay, no benefits, and showed up day in and day out to help others, not for money, because there was none, not for health insurance, because there was none, not for retirement, because there was none. I'm not allowed to volunteer anymore, because of my union, or I would still be doing it. If walmart's hiring why are there so many unemployed cm? They must not want to work right. You heard it here first, cm says the unemployed masses refuse to work for Walmart where they can climb the ladder to management!!!!

Wow, that sounds dishonest, well, cm would say it so I can too.

Do you have any proof that the unemployed haven't applied at or refuse to work at Walmart? Because the unemployment did drop from 9.7% to 9.4%

I obviously touched an nerve. Good. What a sad, pathetic, desperate post. And anyone who reads it will think so. But what can you expect from someone so young who hasn't really experienced life but thinks he knows all the answers? Write back when you've grown up.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I guess the big bad chamber of commerce is scared of little old unions. Considering that they along with the NRA are the two biggest lobbying firms - I don't know what they are scared about:

Why Should Firms That Spied on Unions Keep Government Contracts?

Thursday

Feb 24, 2011

4:25 pm

By Mike Elk

Earlier this month, Lee Fang of Think Progress wrote an investigative piece on how the Chamber of Commerce had hired a private security firm to spy on union leaders and their families.

Lee discovered through emails obtained by ThinkProgress that the Chamber had hired the law firm Hunton & Williams in October 2010. Hunton & Williams then solicited bids from several companies to illegally spy on unions and other opponents of the Chamber of Commerce. As part of the bidding process, the law firm paid the firms to conduct initial spying on union leaders, their families and even their children.

Several of the firms involved in the spying had in the past received government contracts. As investigative reporter Justin Eliot of Salon dug up, one of the firms, HBGary, had won $3.3 million dollars worth of federal contracts for various federal agencies since 2004. Likewise, investigative reporter Marcy Wheeler of FireDogLake found that another of the firms involved, Palantir, had received $6.6 million in federal contracts since 2009.

AND MY ANSWER TO THE QUESTION IS: HELL NO THEY SHOULDN'T.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

An honest, rationale analysis of the wisconsin debate:

February 22, 2011

Don't Strip Public Worker Rights in Wisconsin

By Eugene Robinson

Let's be clear: The high-stakes standoff in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget.

It is about money, though -- but only in the sense that money translates into political power. At this point, it's clear for all to see that Gov. Scott Walker's true aim is to bust the public employee unions, thus permanently reshaping the political landscape in the Republican Party's favor.

Democratic state senators who fled the state to forestall Walker's coup have no choice but to remain on the lam. Protesters who support union rights have no choice but to keep their vigil at the capitol in Madison. This is a big deal.

At issue is the attempt by Walker and the Republican majority in the Legislature to strip public workers of their rights to collective bargaining. Under the legislation -- which fugitive Democrats have managed to stymie by denying the state Senate a quorum -- public employee unions would have no ability to bargain over benefits and pensions. The unions would be able to bargain over salaries but could not secure raises greater than the increase in the cost of living.

Walker is right about one thing: When it comes to pensions and benefits, public workers in Wisconsin have a sweet deal. Most of them put less than 1 percent of their pay into their pensions; Walker's bill would require contributions of at least 5.8 percent. And most pay only about 6 percent of the cost of their health insurance premiums, a figure that Walker wants to raise to at least 12.6 percent.

It's easy to see why the average private-sector worker in Wisconsin -- probably paying upward of 25 percent toward health insurance costs and struggling to tuck away something, anything, for retirement -- might agree with Walker.

It should be noted, however, that those generous deals were not ordained by Divine Providence. They were negotiated, which means that state and local officials agreed to the contract provisions now deemed so excessive. It has long been common for unions to accept better health and pension benefits in lieu of higher salaries -- in effect, taking the money later rather than sooner. Now that these IOUs are coming due, Wisconsin wants to renege.

I thought Republicans were supposed to believe that a contract is a contract, sacred and inviolate. Guess not.

But never mind all that. The reality is that workers in many industries are having to choose between give-backs and massive layoffs. Public employees should not be uniquely sheltered from the ill winds buffeting the U.S. economy.

The Wisconsin unions have recognized this fact. Union leaders have announced that they are prepared to accept Walker's proposal on health and pension contributions. In other words, money is no longer an issue.

Walker won, right? He got what he wanted, didn't he?

Actually, no. Bringing health and pension benefits in line with reality was never the point.

Walker and the Republicans are insisting on the provisions in the bill that would deny collective bargaining rights to public workers. The GOP's focus is not on the practical impact of this measure -- the unions have acquiesced to Walker's financial terms -- but on the political impact.

Unions have been a reliable source of political support for the Democratic Party, including campaign contributions. Over the past few decades, union membership has declined sharply; according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers who belong to a union declined from 20.1 percent of the work force in 1983 to just 11.9 percent in 2010.

In the private sector, just 6.9 percent of workers belong to a union. But among public sector workers, 36.2 percent are union members -- and if you look only at state and local government workers, 42.3 percent are unionized. So if Republicans wanted to weaken the Democratic Party by destroying its most important source of big-money support, they would try to crush public sector unions at the state and local level.

That's what the Wisconsin fight is really about. That's why Walker won't settle for budget-balancing concessions. He wants to eliminate the greatest benefit that unions can give their members -- collective bargaining -- and also, by the way, make it much harder to collect union dues. He wants to starve the unions to death.

This is pure, unadulterated union-busting -- not with goons and brickbats, but with the stroke of a scheming governor's pen.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

A very good analysis of the hypocritical and wrong political mind set of those on the right:

Margaret Carlson / Beating up on janitorsAusterity-chic is cover for a GOP war on the middle class

Friday, February 25, 2011

A good litmus test of how far right a politician is leaning is the question of President Barack Obama's place of birth.

Yes, this is still an issue. A recent survey of 400 Republican primary voters nationwide by Public Policy Polling found that 51 percent believed that the president wasn't born in the United States.

Here's what one prominent Republican figure said on the so-called birther issue: "It's distracting. It gets annoying, and let's just stick with what really matters."

A second important Republican, asked to stand up to birther ignorance, responded, "It's not my job to tell the American people what to think." And, on the canard that Mr. Obama is secretly a Muslim: "The president says he's a Christian. I accept him at his word." (Taking the president "at his word" is code to tea partiers. It means, "He's a liar but there's nothing I can do about it.")

Here's what's interesting. The first quote -- the more reasonable, if we're grading on a curve -- happens to be from Sarah Palin, the person we normally think of as holding the pole position in the Republicans' daily race to the outer edge of our political galaxy. The latter quotes are from House Speaker John Boehner on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Lapping Ms. Palin is one way Mr. Boehner can prove himself to his House freshmen. The insider of insiders, boon companion of lobbyists, Mr. Boehner smoked, drank and wept his way to his gavel. Now the man who once handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry on the House floor finds that his old unsubtle ways don't win quite so many friends.

Mr. Boehner is being pulled in different directions by his freshmen, by the larger Republican Party and by his own nature. Republicans can't win the presidency in 2012 by ceaselessly pandering to the tea party, a lesson even Ms. Palin has absorbed -- as shown by her slight retreat on Mr. Obama's citizenship. To win, Republicans must appeal to moderates and independents, many of whom are partial to clean Water and Pell Grants.

Already the cutters have shown Mr. Boehner who's boss. His $35 billion in pledged budget cuts quickly morphed into their $100 billion. Where he would trim, they would slash, even if it means being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Cut home heating oil assistance and you risk sending more people to emergency rooms and seeing homes flooded by burst pipes. Demolish neighborhood block grants and you get more homeless people evicted because there's no one to negotiate rent payments with landlords. Cut food inspections and you get more E. coli. Yeah, these are the things that have caused our deficit.

More than Ross Perot, the tea party has focused the country on the crazy aunt in the attic, the deficit, so that fighting it trumps concerns over unemployment, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure and health care.

As long as the supposedly adult conversation we're having remains childishly vague, it's easy to turn those complaining about cuts into welfare queens who should toughen up. Even worse is how some supposed budget hawks, on the eve of battle, made deficits even worse with tax cuts for the haves, then used mounting deficit projections to justify cuts to discretionary programs that mostly hurt the have-nots. So much for spreading the pain. That's right - give more money to the wealthy that increases the deficit and then cut the deficit on the backs of those who didn't cause it. Typical hypocritical republican mind set.

The new austerity-chic is playing out in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker gave tax cuts to businesses while demanding give-backs from public employees. He also wants to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights to make sure they don't ever get their sweet packages again.

Analysts say public pay in Wisconsin is in line with private pay for similar work. State workers have agreed to contribute more for their benefits. Mr. Walker, refusing to take yes for an answer, prefers to use the issue as a pretext to cripple organized labor.

What an odd chapter in American history we're living through. Suggesting that the financial elite might be responsible for the economic mess we're in brings cries of "class warfare." Meanwhile, congressmen and governors, under cover of cutting deficits created by congressmen and governors, wage real class warfare on janitors and on parents trying to pay their mortgage or send their kids to college.

Blaming nurse's aides and prison guards for the death grip this economy has on the middle class is to indulge a fantasy on par with the fairy tale of an American president born in Kenya and secretly Muslim.

Margaret Carlson is a columnist for Bloomberg News (mcarlson3@bloomberg.net).<BR clear=all>

[Cleo's Mom 257]

In addition to the cuts mentioned above, the republicans in their infinite hypocrisy, are cutting funds for Title X family planning which enables 5 million women nationwide access to health care including breast exams, mammograms, cancer screening, birth control and screening for STD's. In my area, about 80,000 women access this care. Medical clinics that receive these funds prevent nearly a million unintended pregnancies a year thereby preventing thousands of abortions.

So, by cutting this funding there will be an increase in abortion. Now, I know that the republican's so called pro-life stance is phoney - they don't really care about babies or life. But they will still have the blood of these murdered babies (which is how they refer to abortion) on their hands by cutting family planning funds. But somehow they will get away with this hypocrisy because it won't be headlined in the media like the tea partiers message that Obama wasn't born here or the elderly receiving home heating assistance are abusing the system -what with their mentality of entitlements and all.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

A second important Republican, asked to stand up to birther ignorance, responded, "It's not my job to tell the American people what to think." And, on the canard that Mr. Obama is secretly a Muslim: "The president says he's a Christian. I accept him at his word." (Taking the president "at his word" is code to tea partiers. It means, "He's a liar but there's nothing I can do about it.")

It's not Boehner's job to tell the American people what to think? Isn't that what he does every day when he bashes Obama? Maybe what he meant was that it isn't his job to tell Americans the truth. That's more like it. I wonder if the media asked him if McConnell was a secret member of the KKK or that Marco Rubio was born in Cuba if he would tell the American people what to think.

Even former maverick McCain corrected a woman during the 2008 presidential campaign when she said Obama was a Muslim. He told her no he wasn't. However, that McCain is long gone - he has done a complete 180 and now has the most conservative record in the senate.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

You read it here first - the unemployed do apply at Walmart, which I NEVER DOUBTED OR SAID OTHERWISE.

OAKLAND, Calif. - The city's first Wal-Mart, set to open next week, fielded more than 11,000 applications for 400 openings, company officials said. By late Tuesday, 350 positions had been filled.

"There's still a lot of people who were put out of work in the last four years who still don't have a job," Levy said. "If the rest of the labor market was strong, you wouldn't have 11, 000 people applying for 400 jobs" at Wal-Mart.

The company, which employs 66,000 people at 150 Wal-Marts in California, offers an average hourly wage in the Bay Area of $10.82. "People are looking for jobs with a career," said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin.

But for people like Melvin Brown, just about any job is worth it if it comes with a paycheck. He's been out of work for six months. "It's best to accept what you can get," said Brown, 52, who applied for an overnight maintenance position. "You start low and aim high."

[ariscus99 1]

In addition to the cuts mentioned above, the republicans in their infinite hypocrisy, are cutting funds for Title X family planning which enables 5 million women nationwide access to health care including breast exams, mammograms, cancer screening, birth control and screening for STD's. In my area, about 80,000 women access this care. Medical clinics that receive these funds prevent nearly a million unintended pregnancies a year thereby preventing thousands of abortions.

So, by cutting this funding there will be an increase in abortion. Now, I know that the republican's so called pro-life stance is phoney - they don't really care about babies or life. But they will still have the blood of these murdered babies (which is how they refer to abortion) on their hands by cutting family planning funds. But somehow they will get away with this hypocrisy because it won't be headlined in the media like the tea partiers message that Obama wasn't born here or the elderly receiving home heating assistance are abusing the system -what with their mentality of entitlements and all.

I like how you say the blood of the babies will be on the republican's hands, once again passing responsibility onto someone else. Are the republicans forcing these women to have sex? Are they not allowing them to walk into the neighborhood drug store and buy condoms, or spermicidal foam, or any of the other dozens of contraceptives? Are they hindering them from taking some of their own money, walking into a doctors office and paying the $60 fee to be scene and the $50 dollar prescription? Life and it's choices have consequences. If a women chooses to have unprotected sex, that is her choice. If a man chooses to have unprotected sex it's his choice. People need to take RESPONSIBILITY for their actions. I doubt there are few people out there who don't know that the consequences of unprotected sex are often pregnancy and STD's. I'll believe the republicans have blood on there hands when you show me how they are forcing people to have unprotected sex. Hell I walk into the bathroom of my local grocery store and buy and FDA approved condom for 25 cents. If I CHOOSE not to use it, I suffer the consequences. There is not statute stating I must have sex, or preventing me from budgeting for birth control myself. It's another part of the nanny state that democrats are working towards.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I like how you say the blood of the babies will be on the republican's hands, once again passing responsibility onto someone else. Are the republicans forcing these women to have sex? Are they not allowing them to walk into the neighborhood drug store and buy condoms, or spermicidal foam, or any of the other dozens of contraceptives? Are they hindering them from taking some of their own money, walking into a doctors office and paying the $60 fee to be scene and the $50 dollar prescription? Life and it's choices have consequences. If a women chooses to have unprotected sex, that is her choice. If a man chooses to have unprotected sex it's his choice. People need to take RESPONSIBILITY for their actions. I doubt there are few people out there who don't know that the consequences of unprotected sex are often pregnancy and STD's. I'll believe the republicans have blood on there hands when you show me how they are forcing people to have unprotected sex. Hell I walk into the bathroom of my local grocery store and buy and FDA approved condom for 25 cents. If I CHOOSE not to use it, I suffer the consequences. There is not statute stating I must have sex, or preventing me from budgeting for birth control myself. It's another part of the nanny state that democrats are working towards.

As I used to tell pattygreen - if saving unborn babies and reducing abortion is the REAL agenda and the most important thing - then reducing unwanted pregnancies is the most important way to do that.

In order to reduce unwanted pregnancies you must be willing to provide access to contraceptives to poor people - men and women. They don't have $50 or $60 to buy it at a drugstore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all about personal responsiblities and if you dont' have money don't have sex - but we live in the real world where poor people have sex. Imagine that!! I guess if you're poor you shouldn't have sex. That's the immature mantra from the right but hardly realistic. Like telling teens not to have sex before marriage. That doesn't work either. A mature debate deals with the world as it is. I want poor people to be responsible and go to these clinics and get birth control and family planning.

So, if reducing unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions is the real agenda then those who call themselves pro-life will support funding for family planning clinics that provide it.

And birth control can fail, so even if someone buys their own, that is no guarantee it will work. There was something in the news recently that an implant didn't work and women were getting pregnant - which is a reason abortion needs to be kept safe and legal.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

I guess this is why they're call CONservatives:

Thu Feb 24, 2011 at 05:53 PM EST

The Con Is On

The key to a good con is misdirection. Convincing a mark to close out his bank account, liquidate all his property, and borrow, steal, or embezzle in hopes of realizing a big score requires getting him to believe in something for nothing. Getting him to look over there—while you fleece him, over here.

This is not just simply cheating someone. This is getting a person to reach into his own pocket and beg you to take his money. A good confidence artist believes the mark has it coming for being stupid.

You’ve read a lot about how what's going on in Wisconsin is not local. It’s about finishing the long national looting begun in 2008. It's true. The Big Con is on.

It's on when Wisconsin’s governor denies there’s anything nefarious about a clause in his union-busting bill allowing public power plants to be put up for sale, without bid, notification, review, or disclosure of fair market value.

Yet at the same time a local energy group—apparently Alliant Energy, a corporation that made direct contributions to Governor Walker’s campaign--is soliciting resumes, seeking “experienced Plant Managers for multiple power plants located in Wisconsin.”

Look over there! Unions! Pensions! Deficits!

It's on when D.C. floats a proposal to allow banks to “reduce the loan balances of troubled borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.”

Look at that! Bad loans! Troubled borrowers!

The con is on.

Because the proposal also says this:

“The cost of those writedowns won’t be borne by investors who purchased mortgage-backed securities.”

No, those poor unfortunates will be held blameless. Who are they? The very Wall Street banks that, as Matt Taibbi points out ,

when they flooded the market with these phony securities…were smart enough to realize that they were eventually going to blow, so they started betting against them. They went to companies like AIG, and they took out trillions of dollars of credit default swaps and pseudo-insurance policies on these mortgages. The bailout wasn’t really to pay off real losses in these mortgages. It was really to pay off the bets on these mortgages. So, not only did they flood the market with a trillion dollars of defective merchandise, they got the United States taxpayer to pony up $5, $6, $7 trillion worth of bailout money to pay off their bets on all this stuff.

Look! Crisis! Bailouts!

With Wall Street off the hook, who will bear the burden for these massive losses?

The investors who weren’t banks. The ones the banks convinced to buy the MBS’s.

Like pension funds.

Like California’s pension fund, which lost $1 billion from investments that crashed, and is suing Moody’s, S&P, etc., who blessed those investments with AAA gold-standard ratings on the strength of claims by the very banks whose securities they were!

A number of internal e-mail messages from the companies, suggest[ed] that employees were aware they were giving their blessing to bonds that were all but doomed. In one of those messages, an S.& P. analyst said that a deal “could be structured by cows and we’d rate it.”

Or like Ohio’s pension fund, which lost $457 million, and is also suing.

But the con is on.

It's on when Ohio Governor John Kasich says it's just a coincidence, that in 2002, while he was a Lehman Brothers rep, he lobbied Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers—specifically, mortgage-backed securities. It's on when in a further coincidence, Lehman is pushing toxic investments to the Ohio pension system as late as August 25th, 2008 - only 21 days before Lehman collapsed.

It's on when the former Lehman executives, the former AIG execs, the regulators who looked the other way in order to grease their later entry though the revolving door, are all doing quite well with the money they obtained by fraud.

It's on when they're doing well at the expense of these folks:

[The] over a quarter of mortgage holders [who] are underwater on their homes. A big chunk of these people were sold houses at artificially inflated prices, courtesy of the bank and captured appraisers.

These little cheated folks are cast as profligate, immoral wastrels, forced to take pay cuts, take benefit cuts, surrender their bargaining rights. Because pensions caused the problem.

Look! Pensions! Benefits that we pay for!

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers….Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash.

But not before the bankers get another slice of pie:

The average Wisconsin pension is $24,500 a year, which is hardly lavish. But what is stunning is that 15% of the money contributed to the fund each year is going to Wall Street in fees

The con succeeds when the public believes these are just coincidences. When they find it beyond belief that rich and famous men, pillars of the community, could be involved in something so…criminal. Or that the fix is in for them. Or in against us. When they go on voting Republican, and beating their chest about the uniquely just place that is America.

Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast

except the mark

knows his part perfectly. –David Maurer,

The Big Con

[ariscus99 1]

How can fringe benefits cost nearly as much as a workers salary? Answer: Collective bargaining.

The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents.Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would bring public-employee benefits closer in line with those of workers in the private sector. And to prevent benefits from reaching sky-high levels in the future, he wants to restrict collective-bargaining rights.

The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools. When I showed these figures to a friend, she asked me a simple question: "How can fringe benefits be nearly as much as salary?" The answers can be found by unpacking the numbers in the district's budget for this fiscal year:•State Pension. Teachers belong to the Wisconsin state pension plan. That plan requires a 6.8% employer contribution and 6.2% from the employee. However, according to the collective-bargaining agreement in place since 1996, the district pays the employees' share as well, for a total of 13%.

•Teachers' Supplemental Pension. In addition to the state pension, Milwaukee public-school teachers receive an additional pension under a 1982 collective-bargaining agreement. The district contributes an additional 4.2% of teacher salaries to cover this second pension. Teachers contribute nothing.

•Classified Pension. Most other school employees belong to the city's pension system instead of the state plan. The city plan is less expensive but here, too, according to the collective-bargaining agreement, the district pays the employees' 5.5% share.

Overall, for teachers and other employees, the district's contributions for pensions and Social Security total 22.6 cents for each dollar of salary. The corresponding figure for private industry is 13.4 cents. The divergence is greater yet for health insurance:

•Health care for current employees. Under the current collective- bargaining agreements, the school district pays the entire premium for medical and vision benefits, and over half the cost of dental coverage. These plans are extremely expensive.

This is partly because of Wisconsin's unique arrangement under which the teachers union is the sponsor of the group health-insurance plans. Not surprisingly, benefits are generous. The district's contributions for health insurance of active employees total 38.8% of wages. For private-sector workers nationwide, the average is 10.7%.

As the costs of pensions and insurance escalate, the governor's proposal to restrict collective bargaining to salaries—not benefits—seems entirely reasonable.

[ariscus99 1]

Great story about more passing of the buck. So people who are upside down in their homes and are behind in payments will have the banks forgive(at the cost of several billion to the banks) the price down to the current market value? Well what about the people who are upside down but not behind in payments? Screw you responsible American, you don't need help. The white house isn't talking about this yet, because they know if it comes out that this will in fact be the case, that they are only going to help people behind in their payments or in foreclosure, millions will stop paying their mortgage to try to get a slice of the government pie. And why shouldn't they? If they don't they're going to penalized for doing what they are contractually obligated to do. Don't worry big brother is here to help you out again. Though I suppose your jumping for joy about this cm because the banks will be paying for it, redistributing some wealth around yay.