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The return of Joe Hill
By adamg on Tue, 02/22/2011 - 11:08pm
Historygradguy photographed the rally for Wisconsin state workers at the State House this afternoon.
Copyright Historygradguy. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
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This
alone is about 3X the showing that the tea party gatherings had last summer in Faneuil Hall.
Anyone get some shots of the counter protest (and not @250mm)
This is the counter protest.
This is the counter protest. There were maybe two dozen people, if that, by the Shaw Memorial who had anti-union signs but they were surrounded by people with pro-union signs
Crowd estimate?
Anyone have any educated guess on how many people were there yesterday? Crowd estimating is such a tricky, freighted-with-controversy endeavor that the Parks Department has avoided it altogether and yet news reporters (and of course event organizers and counter-event organizers) have no problem pulling out numbers from their nethers. The Globe (Michael Levenson & Noah Bierman) estimates "about 1,000."
The street was pretty packed from the intersection of Bowdoin and Beacon west almost all the way to Joy Street. And then there is the wider sidewalk and stairs in front of the State House and all the iron workers hanging on the Shaw/54th Regiment Memorial. I'd guess that it was closer to 2,500, but that's a guess. Small rallies that have been confined just to the space on and in front of the stairs (with space for people to still get by on the sidewalk) I've head-counted to 250 people packed fairly tight but not "Rat-tight" (can't get by without spilling your drink on people).
As far as the 100 Tea Baggers the Globe estimates were there, I'm not sure. Some people had signs that were a bit ... uhm...confused, so it was hard to tell what they were for or against. Anyone yelling "Cantaloupe! Kumquats! Cantaloupe! Kumquats!" might have been mistaken for a Tea Bagger. Where I was standing I could identify about 30-40 people who were identifying themselves as "the opposition," but I also noticed the guy who discretely slid his "No Taxes, No Give-Aways, Blah BlahBlah" sign behind a trash barrel and slipped into the crowd. (Don't blame him as some of the union guys were really over the top and obnoxious. Screaming "You're an ugly old hag!!" directly in the face of some older woman just seems a bit unseemly.) So there could have been 100 "irate tax-payers" there.
3 to 4 dozen baggers
I could not get a fix on the good guys. However, I tried for the Tea folk. Using my old technique from my newspaper days, I focused on visually separating groups of 10 at a time. I too estimate under 40. It was a bit hard as most at the Shaw monument were identifiably pro-union by their signs. I visually edited them out in my count.
Union layabouts bleating
about "saving" libraries, schools, and youth jobs- more like saving THEIR jobs, funded @ ALL taxpayers' expense (and since when did "youth jobs" become the role of the state?) And unions for fighting for "all" workers? Wrong.
There's a reason why union membership has plummeted over the decades, long before the Republican/conservative ascendancy that began in the early 80's. Unions are an anachronism in a modern economy. Much as we no longer need landline phones, 3 TV networks, 70%-90% tax rates (which we did have- look it up) and so many more outdated things, so it is with the modern "labor" movement. Unions once served a purpose, and should be commended for their role in advancing reasoanble worker protections and rights. Now they are simply about feather-bedding and licking the plate clean, too often @ taxpayer expense, anti-competition and engaging in thug tactics when they don't get their way.
On Wisconsin- Go Governor Walker!!!
there's a reason
..why the middle class has declined with the decline of unions.
Where is the concern about corporate welfare and Wall Street gamblers walking off with the pensions after a bad night in Vegas?
Union leadership needs some cleaning out, but at the end of the day screwing over public sector employees and thinking that will fix the big bad deficit is asinine. Get some perspective. You're worrying about an irregularly shaped mole on your back, while smoking three packs of unfiltered Pall Malls a day and coughing up blood. By the time that mole is doing you damage the lung cancer will have taken your whole body.
Well said
At least we know what these "union layabouts" do for a living (teach, put out fires, serve the disabled, clean the streets, etc). Their jobs have a definite social value, even if some of them might seem overpaid. I'm not sure the same can be said for some of these financial industry-types who lost everyone's money and cashed out big-time. And speaking of layabouts, how about people like Sam Walton's kids, who were born unfathomably rich just because their dad was a talented businessman. But whatever distracts and divides the middle and lower classes is good for the overlords, and attitudes like RJ's are exactly what they count on to maintain control and to insulate themselves from responsibility for their crimes and inequities.
Where Am I Looking That Up?
Milton Friedman's Big Book of Made Up Facts and Horrible Theories?
Dem Rep to unions: Time to get ‘bloody.’
"A Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts is raising the stakes in the nation’s fight over the future of public employee unions, saying emails aren’t enough to show support and that it is time to “get a little bloody.”
“I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Ma.) told a crowd in Boston on Tuesday rallying in solidarity for Wisconsin union members.
Capuano’s comments come at a time when there is heightened sensitivity to violent rhetoric in the wake of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ (D-Az.) shooting in January."
What is it about these pro-union types, always with the violence? Whether it was SEIU thugs beating Ken Gladney, or Cappy here... And the so-called progressives want to lay blame on Tea Party sympathizers.
Capuano is the biggest turd in the MA delegation...
"Every once in a while you
"Every once in a while you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.” --Mike Capuano
Way to elevate the tone of political discourse, D-bag. I guess you didn't get the Cigar Shover's memo yesterday.
Here's the problem with public unions
At the City level in Boston (I've had to use some of my own estimates - I try to note these):
(excludes teacher pensions which are now accounted for separately - they used to be included in the operating budget - but note that teacher pensions in the last 11 years have increased well over 100%)
City budget in 2000 (excluding teacher pensions - budget is extrapolated estimate reducing 2003 budget by about 15% which is most recent online budget I don't have my docs in front of me and it's not online) = $1.55 billion
Percentage of budget spent on wages, benefits etc. = 70% (city used to use this number)
Wage related costs = $1.085 billion
Employees = 17,000 (again - approximate - docs not handy)
Total Compensation per city employee in 2000 = $64,000
Fast forward to 2011 - Bureau of Labor Stats reports 28% inflation over that time
2011 City budget = 2.335 billion
Assume other non-labor costs ($465k) from 2000 go up at rate of inflation or 28% = other costs in 2011 = $595 million
Current budget of $2.335 billion less other costs of $595 million leaves labor costs of $1.74 billion
divide by 16,449 current employees in 2011 budget = total comp of $106k per employee
The cost per employee in Boston has increased about 65% in 11 years or well over twice the rate of inflation and they keep screaming that they are still underpaid and the city is desperate for new taxes. My guess is this has been roughly repeated on Beacon Hill and across the country - and that's why so many people have had enough when their wages have probably not even kept up with inflation.
The vampires have sucked the stone dry and the stone is fighting back.
Don't know about Boston
Don't know about Boston specifically but public employees ARE underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts. And then they've got vultures like you screaming for their blood. If they're defensive of any kind of attack against them it's because they've learned that they're an easy target any time someone gets in a huff.
But the fact remains that public employee wages and benefits did NOT cause the budget crisis. There was no sudden explosion of wages or compensation in the last couple of years, indeed, just the opposite, public employees around the country have been agreeing to salary caps, furloughs, benefit roll backs and other financial penalties. What's caused the budget crisis across the country is the economic downturn which has eroded both personal incomes and property values, and taken a big bite out of commercial transactions. Instead of asking hard working public employees to take it on the chin why don't we ask the guys who have benefited enormously from American fiscal policy to belly up to the bar and make some sacrifices for the public good.
No explosion
but no pullback either - there was an article in the WSJ a couple of years ago talking about federal employees making an average of $100k per year with generous health care and pensions - and the federal jobs even for things like park rangers have become almost impossible to get - nobody quits because the deal is so good so they build up lots of seniority - the analysis showed that in the private sector when times were tough people took a step back in comp making it tough just to keep up with inflation - but in the federal govt Congress voted in 3-4% raises year after year until the wonder of compounding took over - now we have learned we can't afford this - similar to the 65% increase in Boston employee's average total comp increase.
If public sector employees are so underpaid - why don't they just go work in the private sector - haven't heard that there's any shortage of people trying to get public sector jobs with all their terrible comp packages.
The problem with your solution is that only about 1% of guys are in the bar to belly up - you could tax them 100% and you wouldn't get very far. The only workable solution is to actually get a larger percentage of Americans paying income taxes - but you wouldn't like that (I actually agree with you kind of - but it won't help public employees - I think we should raise the estate tax substantially but use it to pay down our enormous debts under the theory that the reason these guys are so rich in the first place is that we absorbed a lot of debt to help get them there).
How much of the disproportionate budgetary increase
comes from health insurance premiums going up? This is a little different from straight-up contract raises.
I seem to remember some kind of effort to get health care costs and insurance premiums under control at the national level- but I'm not sure how it all panned out. I know the GOP didn't like it much.
How Different
The answer to your question is that about $150 million of the $800 million increase in the budget is due to health care (for employees and retirees)- but employer subsidized health care IS a form of compensation - you can't separate the two. If you have $2k extra in the budget for an employee and health care goes up by $2k - you can't say - oh - here's a raise AND we'll just eat the health care increase. It is exactly like a raise - at least in the private sector (where companies have generally offered raises when possible, but asked the employees to chip in more and more for medical).
What's the private counterpart for a teacher?
A very large proportion of Boston's budget is spent on schools, fire protection and police protection. What is the counterpart in the private sector for these jobs? There is none.
How can you make the statement above for these and other public sector jobs?
There is no one reason for the budget crisis. However, one contributing factor is the rise in pension benefits in relation to the compensation, benefits, term of service for a given job.
The private counterpart of a teacher ...
... is a teacher, as there are plenty in charter, private, and parochial schools.