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.