Posted on 04/25/2011 1:42:32 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
...Voter support for rolling back benefits available to few outside the public sector comes as Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans in the Legislature haggle over changes to the pension system as part of state budget negotiations. Such benefits have been a flashpoint of national debate this year, and the poll shows that Californians are among those who perceive public retirement plans to be too costly.
Voters appear ready to embrace changes not just for future hires but also for current employees who have been promised the benefits under contract.
Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.
..."It's pretty clear that there's broad support for making changes in the area of pensions," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who co-directed the bipartisan poll..
Many public safety officers can retire at 50 with a pension equal to 3% of their final salary for each year worked — for example, 60% of salary after 20 years on the job. Many other state employees can retire at 55, with 2.5% of salary for each year worked. And tens of thousands of public workers may also purchase "air time" — credit for years they do not actually work — to boost their retirement income....
... Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said the public is trapped in a "moment of envy" over benefits that he maintains are far from lavish.
His union's position is that every worker should be entitled to a pension, not an unsecured retirement reliant on Wall Street earnings.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I still keep wondering what part of “the state is broke” don’t these people get?
I think they do get it, as the ax is falling.
Comments of “envy” by the union sec-treas are typical of the Left (they are in the business of envy to “get out the vote”) — however, NOW they finger those who fund their retirement as envious.
Looks like the vote may be shifting for such a “foolish” comment to be said publicly.
The ironic part is that in the 60’s, a lot of what is now the public sector Left, saw the state as the establishment enemy.
What goes around, comes around or “ we have met the enemy and he is us”
Europeans shift long-held view that social benefits are untouchable
Edward Cody, April 24, 2011 - Washington Post
“In the new reality, workers have been forced to accept salary freezes, decreased hours, postponed retirements and health-care reductions. Employees at Fiat’s historic Mirafiori plant in Turin, rolling back a tradition of union privileges, even pledged to cut back on the number of workers who call in sick when the local soccer team has a match.
Unlike in the United States, where conservatives are so resolved to cut spending that they threatened a government shutdown, Western Europe’s generous welfare programs had generally been embraced by the right as well as the left. Against that background, the new wave of cutbacks seems to signal a dramatic shift in attitude toward benefits that many Europeans had come to see as a birthright and that politicians of any stripe could challenge only at the risk of their careers.
Many Europeans, particularly in left-wing political parties and labor unions, have interpreted the new winds as a triumph for ruthless free-market extremists who want to protect private wealth from higher taxes and as an aberration that can be undone by electing governments that are more worker-friendly. But many others, resigned to the new reality of globalization, have come to view the shift as the end of a golden era, perhaps never to be revived.......”
Interesting times.
Roh roh, dissension in the ranks. When one lives off the politics of division, they had better watch out for the proverbial bite in the back-side.
I hope my family and I survive them...
We all are connected to this. The 2012 vote (at all government levels) could well be our last chance to pull out of this. The states are showing conservatives in WI we mean business and they in turn are showing the rest on the Hill what a backbone is and what must be done.
This is all the proof anyone needs that Obama is in over his head and too f*cking stupid for the job he holds.
It is HE who has implored the citizens to hate those who have been feeding at the trough, although he calls them rich, Wall Street types. But Goldman Sachs, JPM, or any of the rest have stuck their hand in my purse and stolen money intended for my own use, or to use on behalf of my family (unless via gov’t bailouts). No one has ever forced me to buy a big screen TV, an IPad; I don’t have to use Warren Buffett’s Geico insurance either. I can also avoid Microsoft and enriching Bill Gates, if I wish.
But what I CAN’T avoid are taxes. And no group of people are more greedy than those drawing salaries funded by confiscatory taxes.
Why is it okay for the POTUS to “stoke” to fires of envy but not okay for the voters to respond to his call?
Just another episode of the chronicles of unintended consequences. The voters will lash out not at the titans of industry, but those who are truly “in their face” and picking their pockets via taxes.
Poetic justice, it says here.
More and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that this can’t be caulked up to stupidity.
If California would drop the Greenies an start drilling off their coast they could get out of trouble with no problems.
I might add the United States could use the same solution.
Stop tossing money down the entitlement hole and start drilling for cheap energy.
Worry about the environment after we save the economy.
Rationally I just can’t see how we are not already past the point of no return. We’ve grown generations of takers who think they are entitled to other peoples work. I see no indication they will change their ways no matter the cost to the country. If they are going to lose their entitlements, they’re determined everyone else lose what they have too.
I don’t know the above is certain so I hope there’s some way out not yet seen. But I’m pretty hard pressed to believe there is.
What we’ve been doing for decades is clearly unsustainable. It’s irrational, but we refuse to stop. As if magically all that accumulated debt that we continue to pile on daily will just go quietly into the night. That the endless regulation extracting only a little blood on each strike won’t really affect our jobs or our standard of living. That taking from those who “can afford it” and giving it to those more deserving will improve our standard of living. That we can create wealth by paying more for less using “green” technology to solve a problem with little if any evidence it exists.
We’re to appoint that it will take a miracle, literally, to recover from.
The institutional left lives in its own world entirely. The only connection between it and our world is taxpayer money being sucked into their world.
The Greenies are socialists bent on destroying free market capitalism. They must be overwhelmed at the polls.
The only environment we have to worry about is the environment that has been crafted to destroy conservatism and give power to elites (who we're told know best).
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” — Sherlock Holmes.
Since our president and his party want to take us deeper into debt, it’s fight back or let their socialist agenda roll over us.
The entire world is basically in the same boat and since we’ve joined the passenger list on this ill-fated journey, we can either help or go down with the ship.
There has to be an radical adjustment because the Democrats want us equally suffering with the rest of the world.
I say Americans need to stay a step ahead of that “level-playing field” being designed for us.
If we can’t correct this.....
If I get this right, a California (or any state) bureaucrat, with a vested interest in the outcome of the negotiations, especially for a higher pension, is negotiating with the labor unions who demand, and get, higher pensions.
In any other business, this would called “insider trading” and is illegal.
Unions! The money and muscle need to win elections for Democrats (and if that fails, kick propositions to an activist judge to overturn).
SWEET. I’d love to watch the public sector unions have to get into a street fight in California of all places to save their seat on the gravy train.
That should embolden Republican legislatures and governors in the Midwest to go on offense and really hammer these goons. Right to work laws across the Midwest would do a great deal to reignite stagnant economies.
If California has to pare down unions goodies as an absolute last resort, the unions are indeed in trouble.
"Sweet" indeed!
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