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Union Worker Protests In Wi


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/...d_b_824948.htmlOne section of the article-
New Taxes on Wall Street to Help Reduce the Deficit?But hold on, deep in the bowels of the president's budget you can actually find new Wall Street taxes. If you look real hard you'll see a category called "Total Reform Treatment of Financial Institutions and Products." Hmm, looks promising. Maybe they're proposing to finally tax the hell out of the derivative products that destroyed our economy a couple of years ago. So, let's see. It says the total tax increases in 2012 come to ... $159 million? Million, not billion? Is that a typo? Is the decimal point in the wrong place? Or is this the new definition of "equality of sacrifice"? Let's do the math: John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who earned $2.4 million an HOUR in 2010, could pay off the proposed tax increases for the entire financial industry personally -- by working less than two weeks. But not to worry, Mr. P. You and your fellow hedge fund elites have been saved yet again by the deficit fanatics' exclusive focus on squeezing middle- and low-income Americans instead of you. No one's talking about closing the shameless tax loophole that allows hedge fund managers to pay only a 15 percent "capital gains" tax on their enormous incomes instead of the top income tax rate of 35 percent. Closing that tax loophole on just the 25 top hedge fund managers -- just 25 individuals! -- would pull in twice the revenue compared to freezing the wages of 2 million federal employees. Apparently the new math of "equality of sacrifice" means that 25 people equals 2 million. To be fair, the president's budget does propose gradually raising financial taxes by a total of $33 billion over the next decade. Unfortunately that only amounts to 3.3 percent of the trillion dollars he's proposing to cut -- more Orwellian equality.The nauseating ironies abound. The hedge fund managers are likely to pay a lower income tax rate than the families who find out they can't send their kid to college because Congress cut their Pell tuition grant. It's one thing to have an in-depth debate over steeper taxes on financial billionaires and lose. It's quite another to see the entire debate buried by Democrats, Republicans, the media and just about every other force in society. Buried under great heaping mounds of deficit drivel.
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And why to you think Republicans are going after the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? Could it be they don't give a rats ass if polluting the **** out of us kills anyone, if credit card companies rip off and take advantage of consumers, etc. etc..

IF THE federal government is serious about deficit reduction, it should first target corporate welfare. According to a 2010 report by the group US PIRG, over 10 years, an estimated $1 trillion in revenues is lost as a result of offshore corporate tax havens — a shortfall the government has to make up. Once again Democrats and Republicans are asking the poor and middle class to sacrifice, when neither GE ($10.3 billion in 2009 pretax income) nor Exxon Mobil ($45.2 billion in 2008 profit) recorded paying a cent of income taxes to the IRS in 2009. Lest these corporate behemoths object to being picked on for funneling profits to offshore subsidiaries while one in eight Americans go hungry, we should recall that in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that two of every three US corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 to 2005. Ending corporate welfare would help save us from endless debt. Whichever party we vote for, do we wish to live in a corporate plutocracy? Or can we demand something better from our elected officials?
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And why to you think Republicans are going after the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? Could it be they don't give a rats ass if polluting the **** out of us kills anyone, if credit card companies rip off and take advantage of consumers, etc. etc..
...You should lay off the crack old man, you're starting to sound as stupid as some Ivy Leaguers that post in here.
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...You should lay off the crack old man, you're starting to sound as stupid as some Ivy Leaguers that post in here.
then why are they going after those things Iowa State? You speak as if from authority but most of what you say seems to be nonsense or 'gosh, I wish people understood economics as well as me! then, they would understand why it is perfectly awesome for 40% of the country to have 93% of the wealth.'
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Boo ya! 93% of the wealth!I can't seem to muster up any outrage that rich people have a lot of money.
I'd have no problem with them having lots of money if it wasn't such a ridiculous percentage of the total pie. And I'm in the good bar, for the record. The capital gains tax being so low is completely insane though super awesome for me personally.Don't worry lots of people clearly have no problem with this system or distribution. Later, Hblask will probably explain why it is ok and Brv will concur because he studied economics and knows to agree with Henry.
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Obviously.I shall call you Mr. Goodbar henceforth.
I know you and Brv know that from the sick thread but some people who only know me from this section of the forum probably don't. And I don't want my posts to seem like they are based in envy.I like that nickname. Though, I prefer Krackel.
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randy I think you really need to start drinking again or something. maybe pot?
He's just passionate. Pot makes sense, alcohol doesn't help with rage.
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He's just passionate. Pot makes sense, alcohol doesn't help with rage.
well see that's what I initially thought, but he never used to be like this when he was drinking, and I mean smoking pot automatically turns your brain liberal, so I really have to lean more towards the alcohol. randy you're turning into the democrat akoff! drink a beer!
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smoking pot automatically turns your brain liberalrandy you're turning into the democrat akoff!
both of these were really good.
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A tea partier, a fortune 500 CEO and a teacher are all sitting at a table about to enjoy dessert. The waiter brings out 12 delicious chocolate chip cookies. The CEO immediately grabs 11 cookies and eats them in a blur. Then, the CEO turns to the tea partier and warns him "watch out that teacher and his union want a piece of your cookie."
Fixed to reflect the more common scenario.A poor guy scrapes and saves for years, forgoing vacations and movies and drinking and all the things many people take for granted. After many years of this, he takes his savings and starts a business. He works sixty hour weeks for the first 10 years, making less than most of the employees of the business, but still believing in his dream. After a decade of this, the business finally gets a big contract and the owner can afford to take a vacation. He has produced approximately 10,000 cookies during this time, but 9,988 of them have gone to the employees in salaries.A tea partier, the owner and the head of the union are all sitting at a table about to enjoy dessert. The waiter brings out 12 delicious chocolate chip cookies that the CEO has left after decades of sacrifice. The CEO immediately grabs 11 cookies and eats them in a blur. Then, the CEO turns to the tea partier and warns him "watch out that teacher and his union want a piece of your cookie." The union member screams foul, and calls the NLRB, claiming that the 9,988 cookies they've received over the last decade were not enough, and they now deserve at least half of these remaining twelve cookies.The NLRB, being in the pocket of the unions, punishes the CEO for his selfishness. The CEO stops making cookies and fires 1000 employees. The Democrats wonder why unemployment is so high.
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I'd have no problem with them having lots of money if it wasn't such a ridiculous percentage of the total pie. And I'm in the good bar, for the record. The capital gains tax being so low is completely insane though super awesome for me personally.Don't worry lots of people clearly have no problem with this system or distribution. Later, Hblask will probably explain why it is ok and Brv will concur because he studied economics and knows to agree with Henry.
I don't know that the current level is correct, and neither do you or anyone else -- and that's the point. The people who are complaining about it have no particular reason for saying that one percentage is better than another. Should it be 30%? 50%? 70%? Why?One fact is clear, though: societies with the flattest distribution of wealth are miserable hellholes.The people who complain about the distribution of wealth do have one point, buried down there underneath all the class warfare and Keynesian rhetoric: the current system isn't real capitalism, it's crony capitalism. This goes a long way toward moving the wealth upward. That's why it's so fricking stupid that the very people who complain about this "problem" the most are the ones who want more and more government, as if, suddenly, this time, as our rights go up for sale, they will be sold to the poor.
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Based on discussions I've had on another forum, I've changed my position on this WI bill. Here's the logic...1. People should have the right to band together to negotiate salary.2. Employers should have the right to fire people if they don't want this setup.3. The unions, if they succeed, should have the right to sign a voluntary contract with the company saying they can only hire union employees.3a. The government should not take either side in this dispute, just keep it honest and non-violent.4. The employer for public sector employees is the government.5. Put (3) and (4) together, and you get the fact that government should not *prevent* the formation of public sector unions or any agreement they can make.Having said that, there's still a problem: the unions forcibly take from the workers and turn it over to the Democrats, who then sit across the table from them in faux negotiations. The conflict of interest is glaring.But since that is the problem, rather than removing workers rights, what Walker and the R's should be doing is putting a process in place to guarantee 3rd party negotiations from professionals unconnected to the politicians or the unions. Maybe hire some third party representatives with backgrounds in business, politics, unions, etc. Figuring out how to avoid just pushing this conflict of interest further underground could be a problem, but surely someone is smart enough to figure out a way.Walker should immediately explain this to the public and propose this as a way out of this deadlock.

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Based on discussions I've had on another forum, I've changed my position on this WI bill. Here's the logic...1. People should have the right to band together to negotiate salary.2. Employers should have the right to fire people if they don't want this setup.3. The unions, if they succeed, should have the right to sign a voluntary contract with the company saying they can only hire union employees.3a. The government should not take either side in this dispute, just keep it honest and non-violent.4. The employer for public sector employees is the government.5. Put (3) and (4) together, and you get the fact that government should not *prevent* the formation of public sector unions or any agreement they can make.Having said that, there's still a problem: the unions forcibly take from the workers and turn it over to the Democrats, who then sit across the table from them in faux negotiations. The conflict of interest is glaring.But since that is the problem, rather than removing workers rights, what Walker and the R's should be doing is putting a process in place to guarantee 3rd party negotiations from professionals unconnected to the politicians or the unions. Maybe hire some third party representatives with backgrounds in business, politics, unions, etc. Figuring out how to avoid just pushing this conflict of interest further underground could be a problem, but surely someone is smart enough to figure out a way.Walker should immediately explain this to the public and propose this as a way out of this deadlock.
binding arbitration perhaps? With the arbiter agreed upon by both parties?now, that's a fair, creative solution. I like it. They do it a lot in sports.I think you're story modifying the cookie joke is amusing but I think the idea that you constantly float that CEOs are people who came from humble beginnings and scrimped and saved while giving cookies to their employees is crap. Most of them started rich and inherited their station. Sure, your story applies to a few....but I seriously doubt it applies to the vast majority of the ultra wealthy or those hedge fund managers getting a 20% tax break on hundreds of millions of "capital gains".
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then why are they going after those things Iowa State? You speak as if from authority but most of what you say seems to be nonsense or 'gosh, I wish people understood economics as well as me! then, they would understand why it is perfectly awesome for 40% of the country to have 93% of the wealth.'
I'd have no problem with them having lots of money if it wasn't such a ridiculous percentage of the total pie. And I'm in the good bar, for the record. The capital gains tax being so low is completely insane though super awesome for me personally.Don't worry lots of people clearly have no problem with this system or distribution. Later, Hblask will probably explain why it is ok and Brv will concur because he studied economics and knows to agree with Henry.
You don't read my posts, and that's ok. Hblask rarely talks about economic principles, other than in generalities, and I rarely quote him or talk about his posts. You saying it loudly, doesn't make it true. Shake was an econ major, and I'm an econ minor, which means that together we've probably been in about 15-20 more college level economics classes than, for instance, other people that post here. I have no idea if you've taken any econ classes, hell, maybe you were an econ wiz at Penn, but your posts show the opposite of knowledge in the arena.Why should I get 60-80% of your money? You went to a boarding school/prep school in high school. You scored like a 1600 on your SAT. You went to an Ivy League school. You graduated from law school. You got hired at a firm in Miami. Most people didn't do any of that, not even close. You deserve every bit of your money. Just because you made better decisions than the dude living in the mobile home in Alabama, doesn't mean that you should pay a higher percentage than him. If you want to have a fair system, then everyone should pay exactly the same percentage. Any other system is the opposite of "fair". (BTW, even though our current system is "unfair", I don't think escalating tax systems are 100% negative)There is a major difference between you (dems) and me (non-dems), and that is that I don't believe the government should force people to do things. After taxes for basic needs of the country, like infrastructure and defense, the government should focus on creating policies that encourage people to help others. Why do we need that? Because people like Al Gore (who only gave $353 to charity in 1997 or Joe Biden who gave AN AVERAGE of $369/year over the last decade), won't give to charity unless forced to by the government, and since they won't, then they just assume that no one will. "Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household"Cliff notes: The government shouldn't force income equality.Every single economic graph of a country under socialism, which is what you and the other dems desire, is a big pyramid with all the wealth at the top. This is because people are self-serving and greedy, and the people in power will keep the money.The government should give incentives for the rich to give to charity. (especially to dems. Maybe something like, "For every $1,000 to you give, you can kill a baby!" month)The government should never allow monopolies.The government should never allow collusion between corporations.The government should never allow people to be forced to join a union.Democrats are cheap cheap bastards, who love to preach about helping people, as long as it's other people doing the helping.
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I think you're story modifying the cookie joke is amusing but I think the idea that you constantly float that CEOs are people who came from humble beginnings and scrimped and saved while giving cookies to their employees is crap. Most of them started rich and inherited their station.
False dem talking point.[FACT] Small businesses:Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.Employ just over half of all private sector employees.Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll. Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years. Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP). Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers). Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises. Made up 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007. Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.Also, how can you say (and presumably believe) that most CEO's were simply born into the position and didn't do anything to achieve it? I seriously don't understand how you could believe this. Did Jon Stewart say it last week? Obama?
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Also, how can you say (and presumably believe) that most CEO's were simply born into the position and didn't do anything to achieve it? I seriously don't understand how you could believe this. Did Jon Stewart say it last week? Obama?
I know a lot of rich people and a quite a few super-rich people and precious few of them came from humble beginnings.Most small businesses are not in the super wealthy class getting such a good deal.Part of the problem is we don't have enough tax brackets. Putting someone making 400k in the same bracket with someone making 400 million is insanity. I'm mostly talking about the ultra wealthy, not the merely very successful.
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There is major difference between you (dems) and me (non-dems), and that is that I don't believe the government should force people to do things.
This is actually a lie betrayed by your next sentence.
After taxes for basic needs of the country, like infrastructure and defense
You do actually believe in taxation, which at whatever level it occurs involves the government "forcing people to do things". The issue at stake of course is how much to tax, not if to tax.
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This is actually a lie betrayed by your next sentence. You do actually believe in taxation, which at whatever level it occurs involves the government "forcing people to do things". The issue at stake of course is how much to tax, not if to tax.
That's why I put that sentence in there, and explained it. The government should be allowed to run at a basic level. I talking specifically about the revenue taken after our basic needs are fulfilled. Also, I'm not talking about negotiable "basic needs". I'm not talking about homeless people or medicare. I'm talking about the absolute bare-bones necessities of the federal government as laid out for us in the constitution.
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well see that's what I initially thought, but he never used to be like this when he was drinking, and I mean smoking pot automatically turns your brain liberal, so I really have to lean more towards the alcohol. randy you're turning into the democrat akoff! drink a beer!
You're so silly. I thas nothing to do with beer or pot, duh. I grew my hair long.
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After discussing alot of the union vs politician arguments at some point someone has to come up with some reasonable solutions. This is collection of ideas I've gotten from reading tons of stuff on the subject here and elsewhere. Let's start with the unions and the theory that the workers have used their bargaining power to get higher wages and better benefits. First the wages. Here is a site, and there are many others, showing that they in fact collect similar and/or lower wages than a similar skilled worker in the private sector.http://www.slge.org/vertical/Sites/%7BA260...1166D116%7D.PDFPoliticians have always had an easier time negotiating salaries as public opinion is always on their side.Now the benefits. When the union bargains with the government over these benefits it's easy to sell the benefits to the union workers and they are more than happy to take less pay and better health and retirement benefits including early retirements. This has served to make everyone happy at the time of negotiations, because it is affordable to the government by pushing the cost of benefits off to the future for someone else to worry about. I don't blame the employees here, I blame the politicians and the union reps for delaying the future costs and not dealing with reality as they should. They do their jobs poorly. I will agree with the premise that this is partly due to the government being a monopoly and union negotiators not being realistic.The health plans mostly have no deductables or small co-pays (which lead to higher costs) since people have no deterrent to run to the doctor for everything. This leads to future costs that are too high for the future budgets to sustain. These workers would have been better off with a little higher pay and less benefits. The government also promises to cover pension costs that unrealistic as well.States like Wisconson and Ohio now want to cut not only there pay, which isn't the problem, but the benefits and their rights to even bargain over these issues. That is wrong. Like I said, they don't get high pay in the first place. The deferred benefits need to be fixed. Fix the wasteful health plans, ridiculous disability rules, low retirement ages (that let them double dip).We go round and round here about social programs. Conservatives claims range from the extreme (we shouldn't be helping anyone) to we simply can't afford the programs. Liberals claim we can't live in a society without them, and to their extreme, that we can't have babies and the elderly lying around the street dying. I think we can all agree that we can accomplish or at least do a vastly better job of running and keeping these programs if we eliminate wasteful, inneffective and duplicitious programs.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...2399165436.htmlWhy don't we take part of the trilllion dollar defense budget and use it to embolden better computer systems and agencies that attack things like medicaid fraud that costs us billions? Keep the programs but manage them better and more effectively. There is billlions of dollars to be saved in this area alone.This all might not help the current budgets but we need to start looking long term and the unions need to be realistic about this as well. They need to be open to employee evaluations. Government needs to work at being more efficient. (Obama has implemented a bunch of sensible plans but I won't get into that here).Politicians promise us tax cuts, no changes to social security or Medicare, safe towns, a strong military, and a string of endless promises. We all want high pay, low taxes and great benefits so we buy into their promises. We need all need to be realsitic about the society we want to pay for though.Hike taxes on the super-rich. Reform the tax code to create more brackets at the top with higher rates for millionaires and billionaires. Absurdly, the top bracket is now set at $375,000 with a tax rate of 35 percent; the second-highest bracket, at 33 percent, starts at $172,000 for individuals. But the big money is way higher.The source of income shouldn't matter -- salary, wages, capital gains, other unearned income -- all should be treated the same. There's no reason to reward speculators. (Don't penalize true entrepreneurs, though. If they're owners who have held their assets for at least twenty years, keep their capital gains low.)And while you're at it, raise the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes. And bring back the estate tax.

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Why don't we take part of the trilllion dollar defense budget and use it to embolden better computer systems and agencies that attack things like medicaid fraud that costs us billions? Keep the programs but manage them better and more effectively. There is billlions of dollars to be saved in this area alone.
We should also consider colonizing the Sun...
Hike taxes on the super-rich. Reform the tax code to create more brackets at the top with higher rates for millionaires and billionaires. Absurdly, the top bracket is now set at $375,000 with a tax rate of 35 percent; the second-highest bracket, at 33 percent, starts at $172,000 for individuals. But the big money is way higher.
You could make for brackets, but the highest bracket should be more than 40%. That's already too much.
There's no reason to reward speculators. (Don't penalize true entrepreneurs, though. If they're owners who have held their assets for at least twenty years, keep their capital gains low.)
Who gets to make the decision on who is a "true" entrepreneur? Please not Cane.
And while you're at it, raise the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes. And bring back the estate tax.
Gross. This is a terrible idea. The estate tax destroys small family farms all over Iowa. I hate it. People should NOT be double taxed on their money. It's so terrible, I'm actually angry that people think it's a good thing.One thing we should do for SURE is to not allow people who averaged more than $250k in the 5 years prior to retirement (or something else similar) from collecting Social Security and Medicare. Rich people don't need the $1100/month, so why bankrupt the country giving it to them.ps. We shouldn't even have social security or medicare.
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