It Came From Mills' Facebook Page!!! Part Deux

1. I didn't discuss George Meaney because I've never heard of him. Am i safe in assuming he was against public employee unions because, like FDR, he felt workers shouldn't have the right to shut down the government with strikes? No problem. There is no public employee union in the country that has the right to strike. That's why all these teachers are using sick days. Right to strike is the first thing they give up in these contracts. As far as the danger of public employees electing their nominal bosses and gaining too much power that way... That's simply insane. Have you noticed how public workers go from a tiny percentage of the people when you're talking about their benefits to some kind of electoral majority when you're talking about their influence on elections? But it wouldn't matter if FDR and George Meaney were God and Moses when they said those things. Union members are people too, and they are citizens of the US. The constitution guarantees them the right to assembly and the right to free speech, they don't have to give up their citizenship rights to get a government job. If they want to join a union they can.

I keep saying "a deal's a deal" because in every other aspect of American life, the deal is sacred. It is only working people who can get screwed out of what they deserve by the other side simply tearing up their deal. And I compared teacher salaries (or prison guard salaries, or truck driver salaries, or lawyers salaries, all of whom work for the state) to CEO salaries, because you keep comparing them to the bottom rung, to people who flip burgers or work at Wal-Mart. Both comparisons are kind of unreasonable.

CEO's of small companies do a little bit of everything. They negotiate with vendors, they keep the books, they try to squeeze a little more from clients/customers, at a small company the CEO makes every decision that's above the level of simple day to day operations.

At a big company, like say, AIG, all of these things are delegated. They have whole departments devoted to keeping the books, teams of lawyers to negotiate contracts, the CEO is just the guy that approves their decisions. And plays a lot of golf. That was the Enron CEO's entire defense. That he didn't know what was going on was illegal, he depended on the assurances of the CFO and the outside auditing company, Arthur Anderson. He just signed his name to their work because they told him it was all right. Yeah, the CEO is the guy holding the bag. But it's a bag filled with money and get out of jail free cards. I'm not saying they should make $19,000 a year and be grateful. But, really, they have an easy job compared to teachers. And notice how nobody's saying we need to cut CEO salaries, or executive salaries, or corporate profits to balance the budgets. As you yourself say about public employees why shouldn't the recession affect them?

But, honestly, nobody IS saying they should be immune to the recession, they're WILLING TO NEGOTIATE. They're even willing to make the fiscal concessions the governor wants. But they're not going to negotiate themselves out of existence.

Union influence in elections simply can't be compared to corporate influence. You yourself stated that unions are less than 15% of the workforce. And they're not the best paid 15% either. If the Democrats really depended on unions to win elections the Democratic Party would have gone extinct sometime in the '80s.

Unions do serve a purpose. They keep people from being exploited. The 40 hour work week, child labor laws, workplace safety laws, basically everything that separates us from serfs on a salary, was won for us by unions. The wealthy interests in this country want to roll back the clock, and they've been working against unions behind the scenes for decades. Looks like they're about ready to come into the open. Once the unions are gone, they can start rolling back every other labor protection. And as far as the market goes... unions are as much a part of the market as any corporation. What? People shouldn't be able to help determine how much their work is worth? We just have to trust the bosses to be fair? Sounds like a sucker deal to me. There has to be at least two sides for there to be a market. That's what the market is, people negotiating on an open playing field. Somebody standing in a booth screaming "Lemonade, $500 dollars a glass! Take it or leave it!" is not a market.

The difference between a union and a corporation, Mills, is that a corporation could fire every one of its employees, and as long as its shareholders were willing to maintain their investments, just hire a whole new workforce and continue on. That's actually been done. If the union "fires" all its members, what it's just done is disband. What matters for a corporation is how much money it has, what matters for a union is how many people it has. Yes, there's some overlap, but even a union that's completely broke can still negotiate as long as it's membership stays united. A corporation that goes broke is out of business.

2. I did address this point, but Facebook only allows entries of 8,000 characters max. I wouldn't cut a goddamn thing. Social spending in this country has been under the ax for 30 years already. It's not Democrats who are doing the spending, it's Republicans. But since they're spending$100 billion a year on wars instead of health care, I guess that's ok. I would raise taxes on rich people. The richest people in this country have been paying less and less in taxes ever since the Reagan Administration. They went from paying 90% under Roosevelt and Truman, to maybe 35% now under Obama.

Meanwhile the budget keeps getting bigger. Not social spending though. That was slashed under Reagan. Clinton cut welfare spending. Bush II looked for even more cuts. And added two very expensive wars to the tab. The military budget however has not been cut. Clinton made some modest cuts, but that funding was largely restored even before 9/11. And we've packed on more and more state security agencies since then. The big spender however, is Medicare and Medicaid. Again, this is somewhere where Bush II added a bunch more spending to the tab with the prescription drug benefit. Republicans think the answer is to eliminate all government programs that don't turn a profit and cut rich people's taxes to 10%.

The real problem however is that we're spending money like our top tax rate is 70 or 80% but it's less than half that and we've been borrowing the difference for the last 3 decades. We've been cutting and cutting and cutting for 30 years. We can't cut anymore. If we cut more, then we might as well not have a government because it won't be doing anything anyway and a whole lot of our most vulnerable people will have to just fend for themselves.

It Came From Mills' Facebook Page!!!

Hello, all

Apparently Facebook comments can't be longer than 8,000 characters. So, here's what I just tried to post to Mills Facebook page, in its entirety.



James Jordan Halsey Mills, if those figures are right, that means the per capita income in Milwaukee is only $18,883.33. And you think it's the teachers whose salaries are out of whack? You think everyone should be making closer to $19,000 then $60,000? Why? I've never understood this. Why is it that teachers, and police, and firefighters and garbagemen, and people who do budget projections, or manage parks, or whatever; people who draw a government check, why is it foregone that they should survive on whatever scraps society is willing to hand out at the moment? Meanwhile, business executives pull in millions of dollars every year, mostly for playing golf and approving other people's work, while throwing around the appropriate buzz words.

You think the CEO of AIG, who mostly sits at a desk talking to other CEO's in between golf outings, when he isn't busy completely tanking the economy, really deserves to make more money than Dave or Rob Corday?

Anyway, we can call all that neither here nor there, if you want. And I'll move on. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a union is. A union is its members. Its not like a corporation, which is essentially a fictional person given flesh and bone and sinew by its top officers and the shareholders. A union dies if nobody pays dues, if nobody shows up to meetings, if nobody comes out in the streets to show their support. A corporation can be basically one person, for instance the way Michaell Eisner was at Disney for 20 years, a union needs multitudes. It's not the unions negotiating on behalf of the workers. The workers ARE the unions. No workers, no members, no unions.

Do you see how it's multiple unions out there protesting? Even unions that aren't affected by the present bill? Because the principle behind unions is that individually we are all weak, but together we are strong. And the more of us, the stronger. Yes, unions have small professional staffs to manage dues, membership benefits, and even political strategy. Although when one political party is basically at least tolerant of unions and the other is constantly... well doing stuff like this, trying to bring about the end of unions; the strategy maybe isn't so hard to come up with.

The reason I said I don't take newspaper articles at face value is that they don't do the work. Take what you said up there about the unions refusing to negotiate. "The unions have expressly said they aren't negotiating". Well, that's simply not true. What the article probably said was something like "A spokesman for Governor Walker stated that the unions have expressly said they aren't negotiating, and until they're willing to talk we have nothing to talk about". And then they didn't bother to check. Either that or this is an old article.

The truth is that the unions made concessions to the previous governor to balance the last budget, and they've said they're willing to discuss concessions to help balance this budget with the new governor. They've even willing to give up the pension and health care concessions he's demanding, which amounts to an 8% pay cut for state workers. What they won't do, is negotiate over their very right to exist. They're not going to sit down and negotiate while what's on the table prohibits collecting dues and requires them to recertify every year. Recertification means an election, which is expensive. And if they can't collect dues... Basically, Scott Walker thinks he's found a way to outlaw public employee unions without saying "I'm outlawing public employee unions".

The solution to these budget problems, not just in Wisconsin, but for the whole United States, is simple. You. Fucking. Raise. Taxes. On. Millionaires.

It's that easy. Once upon a time in this country, during World War II and immediately after, people remembered the Depression, how we got in and how got out. And the top tax bracket in this country was 90%. The largest millionaires in the country got 90% scooped off the top by Uncle Sam. And they were STILL millionaires. And the economy didn't collapse, in fact it purred along. And the government could pay for all its returning soldiers to go to college and buy houses and cars on the GI Bill. Under Eisenhower the top bracket went down to 70-80%. Kennedy cut it to around 60-65%

The Reagan came in and it got silly. He cut the top income tax rates in half, while raising payroll taxes! Ugh, what a scumbag. The top rates have gone up and down a few times since then, but I think right now they're around 35%. The story of corporate tax rates is even sillier. I'm not sure what the rates used to be or what they are now, but it doesn't even matter because there are so many loopholes and tax breaks and giveaways and shelters that most corporations don't even pay corporate taxes. It's, like, optional.

Obviously, the answer to every fiscal crisis is not going to be raise taxes. But in this case? With taxes lower than they've been at any time since the Great Depression? With the government talking about cutting $100 billion in real essential domestic spending to fix a $1 trillion dollar yearly deficit? I mean, here's the real story. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are paid for out of money jacked straight from everyone's check every week or every other week. Yes, those programs are sliding from surplus to deficit, but those surpluses were all invested in government bonds. The Federal Government has been using those programs (at least Social Security) as a piggy bank for decades, definitely since Reagan, probably before. That same Federal Government owes those programs, billions or trillions of dollars as those bonds mature. Are they just going to default on those bonds? That would probably cause the economy to collapse faster than any other single thing they could do.

Income tax money is only used to pay for the other 40% of the budget. Defense spending is most of this number, with everything else, all discretionary domestic spending being only about 15% of the total budget. So, unless you want to cut defense spending, or Social Security, or Medicare/Medicaid, you're talking about making up our entire $1.65 trillion dollar deficit out of only about $600 billion in spending. Which is what the House Republicans are trying to do. The fact that the deficit is almost three times more than the entire piece of the budget pie they're trying to cut doesn't seem to phase them.

Anyway, this is too long, and has drifted off topic, what I've been trying to get you and others that might read this to do, is to stop seeing these union workers as "the other". As greedy parasites that want to soak your taxes up to pay for their own retirement after a career of loafing. In reality, these people are people you know. People just like you. I thought about apologizing for the Hitler stuff, but you know what? I'm not going to. Because while the stakes maybe aren't "people in ovens" high yet, they're still plenty high enough. You think it's perfectly fine for people in Wisconsin to see their wages and benefits go down since they make more than the average and since taxes pay their salaries. You think that they don't deserve to have collective bargaining, or a union to put them on a more equal footing with their bosses. And you think that none of this can ever effect you, except maybe you won't have to pay as much tax.

But you're wrong. As everyone slides down to the average per capita income, as the top 2% of earners take more and more and even the per capita income starts to slide downward, maybe all that will happen is more and more people will decide they don't have extra money to buy instruments or take instrument lessons. Or maybe the next time a state has to balance its budget on the backs of its less advantaged citizens, it will be Virginia, and it will be the schools that take the hit, and music departments, school bands, etc. will be eliminated. I don't know. All I know is that we are all connected, all of us. The people in the same state, same country, obviously more tightly, more clearly than others, but we're all connected just the same. The people in Wisconsin fighting for their rights and their economic survival are just like you. They are you. They're just further down the path we're all probably on. You think this doesn't affect you, but it does. Or it will.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I don't intend to wait until they come for me with the new 12 hour a day 7 days a week, work week. I'm not waiting until kids Kayle's age have to get jobs to help their families make ends meet and the laws change to allow this. I'm speaking out now, and I hope everyone that reads this will join me.

Demonstrations!

I'm not talking about the foreign variety of Islamo-Fascist pro-democracy demonstrations sweeping the Middle East like the latest Justin Bieber single. I'm talking about the labor movement's last stand, taking place right now, as I write this, in Wisconsin. 30,000 people showed up in Madison today to protest the Republican Governor's decisions to not just refuse to negotiate with the state employees unions, but to send a bill to the legislature that would end collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin. Effectively outlawing public employee unions within the state of Wisconsin. And he wants that bill voted on by next week.

Today was actually the sixth day of these demonstrations, apparently. The first day, 2,000 people came. By day three, 15,000. Today, day six, as I mentioned earlier, at least 30,000 people came to the capitol to make their voices heard. Everyone needs to follow their example and make themselves heard. Because this is it. This is the big business, anti-labor end game. The American labor movement has been in retreat since Reagan's first term. The public sector is the last bastion of unionization in this country. If the Republicans can break the public unions in Wisconsin, they will break them in Ohio, they will break them in New Jersey. Eventually, the public employees union will go the way of the pink-headed duck and will be a thing of the past.

And we'll all lose. Wages in this country have been effectively stagnant for over 30 years, just barely keeping pace with inflation. Unions and collective bargaining are one of the few upward pressures that exist on wages. Non-union employers have to keep their wages and benefits at least competitive with union employers or else continually lose their most desirable workers to the unionized companies. If that pressure disappears, if the principle of collective bargaining goes away...

Eventually, that pushes a huge group of Americans out of the middle class. Right now, if you're a teacher, or a fire-fighter, or a police officer, or you work at the DMV, or you work for the state in some other capacity, then you are comfortably middle-class; assuming that you're single, or that your spouse is also employed. If public workers are no longer allowed to have unions or bargain collectively it won't be long until these jobs become minimum-wage jobs, simply by virtue of inflationary pressure and the state budget process. It's a lot easier to balance your budget on the backs of your employees when you can make each individual employee a take it or leave it offer, rather than bargaining with your entire labor force collectively.

Of course, once the unions are broken, the corporate interests can turn their attention to eliminating the minimum wage. And the 40 hour work week. And maybe even child labor laws. The point being that the day is coming when your salary will depend, not on your performance, not on established industry standards, not even on some kind of government mandated wage-floor; but instead on the whims of the people at the top. Company have a bad quarter? Five percent salary cuts for everyone below vice-president. Executive bonuses need a little fattening? Shit, fire everyone whose last name starts with "F". This will be the future unless we fight now.

Of course, Governor Scott Walker, and the Republicans in the legislature would argue that the state is in a financial crisis and that this bill offers the only solution. This, it turns out, is not true. Wisconsin's budget crisis was averted prior to Walker's election, in no small part due to sacrifices made by the public employee unions. Furlough days, hiring freezes, etc. Walker's plan, while requiring public employees to essentially give up the right to bargain with their employer; also includes tax breaks for big out of state corporations like McDonalds and Wal-Mart. Corporations that provide mostly minimum or low wage jobs and will take their profits out of state. Meanwhile, state employees foot the bill, a bill made worse by Walker's tax giveaways.

Honestly, it wouldn't matter if Walker was right and the only way for the state to balance its budget was the end of collective bargaining and the Wisconsin labor movement. Some things are simply evil and must be resisted on that basis. I imagine Wisconsin could make its books look fantastic if they simply enslaved half the state to do all the state's work for free. And yet this simple solution is being entirely ignored in the halls of the state capitol. Maybe it's a little too on the nose? Or just too early.

But this is classic Republicanism. Republicanism 101. When the economy's good, it's time for tax cuts to let people keep more of the money they earned. When the economy's bad, it's time for... more tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, to stimulate the economy. The middle class and the working poor can pay for it. And they usually get to use both lines, since Republicans have an amazing facility for turning good times into bad times.

I'm not saying the unions shouldn't make concessions, even on top of the ones they've already made, I'm saying that the governor should negotiate in good faith. I'm saying the unions shouldn't have to be the only ones making concessions and sacrifices. I'm saying the governor and legislature don't, or shouldn't, have the power to wipe away basic human rights and turn the population of Wisconsin into actual, literal wage slaves. This is a democracy and they're elected officials, servants of the people, not their masters. That is all that I am saying.