Free Republic

Conservative provocateur James O'Keefe has his digital alms bowl out. He says his non-profit group "needs $30,000 RIGHT AWAY" to finish his latest sting operation that he claims "dwarfs anything Project Veritas has exposed to date." His attacks on ACORN, Planned Parenthood, CNN, and NPR had varying degrees of success in taking down their targets or coming up with evidence to back his rhetoric. So who's next on his list? Government employees. "I can't reveal all the details yet, but I can tell you that we have evidence of government employees gladly offering public assistance to individuals representing themselves as...

The New Jersey Assembly passed landmark legislation Thursday that requires public employees to pay sharply more for pension and health benefits, driving a wedge through the Democratic caucus that controls the chamber but was deeply divided on the bill. The 46-32 vote followed hours of often bitter closed-door debate among Democrats, then hours of emotional public speeches on the Assembly floor. Uniformed state troopers escorted several people from the gallery for disrupting the debate with cheers and jeers. The measure was fast-tracked through the Legislature after Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, struck a deal with Democrats and Republicans who lead...

After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. This calculation was based on a salary spiked by summer teaching, and since I no longer pay into the retirement fund, I now receive significantly more than when I "worked." But that's not all: There's a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase and a few other perquisites. Having overinvested in my retirement annuity, I received a fat refund and — when it rains, it pours —...

Imagine you’re irresponsible. Now imagine you’re the people in charge of California’s government budget. But I repeat myself. Imagine you have run up your credit card and borrowed beyond what’s reasonable. Imagine now that you have too little money because you have a spending problem. Then imagine you get a windfall bundle of cash. What would you do? Pay some outstanding bills? Pay down your credit card? Nah. You’d spend it. . .

I wrote the below letter to the editor to a liberal editor at a liberal newspaper (Akron Beacon Journal) in a liberal city (Akron), and so it had to be not so critical of teachers, public employee unions in general, or Democrats at large. That is how you get an editorial written in local newspapers which have the same mindset as the NY Times. Dear Editor "I can understand why public school teachers would object to being judged by how they perform in schools where undisciplined and uninterested children stifle the teaches so much that they would never be able...

Winter Park is paying a consultant $2,500 a day to help the city's staff dissuade about 150 city workers from joining a union. Employees in the public works, parks, fleet maintenance and water departments are likely to vote in June or July on whether to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, known as AFSCME. In the past few years, the city has done away with longevity bonuses and pay increases because of the economy. In late April, city commissioners voted 4-0, with Commissioner Carolyn Cooper not in attendance, to approve a contract with Kulture LLC, a...

Please click in order to see handy graphsPublic Sector vs. Private Sector * Bringing public-employee benefits in line with private-sector averages would save $5.7 billion in Michigan. * Public-sector bargaining privileges are not inalienable rights. * Public-sector wages and benefits have increased while the private-sector's have fallen. * Insurance benefits per public-sector employee are $7,149 more per year than in the private sector. * Retirement benefits per public-sector employee are $11,725 more per year than in the private sector. * Since the beginning of the recession, the number of government jobs fell by 0.8 percent. Private-sector jobs fell 10.8 percent....

Public employee unions, the last bastion of an American labor movement in decline, are facing the fight of their lives this year as strapped state and local governments seek to permanently downsize their pensions, pay, benefits and bargaining rights. Powerful unions such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) have been bruised in battles with Republican governors and legislators in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana and other states that are grappling with record budget shortfalls and fighting to stave off insolvency. Even where state governments are controlled by Democrats, public employees such...

We couldn’t resist the corny headline, but imagine living in a small town where police scoured the landscape for cars to confiscate on the slimmest excuse to help pay for the fat, make that grotesquely fat, salaries pulled down by the, ahem, civic leaders. If we lived in Bell, we’d ring a bell today too. “Incoming City Council members in Bell pledged to renew efforts to sweep out City Hall. . .

Most people know that our $13 trillion national debt is endangering America’s credit rating and pushing the United States closer to bankruptcy. But hidden beneath the surface is another ticking time bomb that threatens economic collapse : unfunded public employee pensions. ...Historically, increasing public employee pensions has been a practical way to resolve a budget crisis. .... voting to approve richer pensions is easy because they know they’ll be long gone before the bill comes due. ...According to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States, state and local governments now owe at least $1 trillion to public employee...

See This At Tea Party? Walker As Hitler Ohio has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs as well as population in the past ten years as Ohioans trek onward to greener pastures -like Texas - to find employment. Thousands of college grads now work in restaurants and bars, and may never need show their college diplomas again to a prospective employer. And why shouldn't Ohio lose manufacturing jobs to other states? President Obama was backed by the very powerful unions, both public and private, over Hilary Clinton who did not appear to be as pro union and did not...

James Taranto could be the best columnist around. Every day at his Best of the Web at the Wall Street Journal online, Taranto turns out an original, often unconventional, conservative take on the news, managing to leaven it with humor. Rush today rightly extolled Taranto's column of yesterday, in which he made the point that there is a vast, inherent difference between private and public sector unions. In the former case, unions are negotiating against corporate interests. In the latter, unions are, by definition, organizing against the interests of the public itself. Surely even Cenk Uygur understands this. So when...

A raucous, Wisconsin-style labor showdown is unlikely to unfold in California given its Democratic-controlled Legislature and union-friendly Gov. Jerry Brown. But a different type of showdown is simmering in California as business and taxpayer groups and Republicans are ratcheting up the pressure on Brown to ask for more concessions from public employee unions to help fill the state's $25.4 billion budget deficit. While union supporters gathered in Sacramento and Oakland on Tuesday night for vigils to show solidarity with their brethren in Wisconsin, the buzz among the 200 business leaders at the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce earlier in the...

There is no legitimate role for government unions. Public servants — meaning government employees — don’t work for greedy miscreants exploiting them for personal profit. They work for democratically elected officials representing the will of the people. This is just one reason why there is no legitimate role for government unions, and there should be no collective bargaining rights for public servants. Since public servants work for the people, their wages, benefits, and working conditions are set in accordance with the will of the people, as determined by the democratic process. This is why it is not legitimate to ask...

Ezra Klein and a variety of other thoughtful liberal bloggers have been pointing to an Economic Policy Institute analysis that they claim demonstrates that Wisconsin’s public employees, even after adjusting for benefits and hours worked, face a “compensation penalty of 5% for choosing to work in the public sector.” Unfortunately, when you get under the hood, the study shows no such thing. Klein links to an executive summary to support his claim, but reading the actual paper by Jeffrey H. Keefe is instructive. Keefe took a representative sample of Wisconsin workers, built a regression model that relates “fundamental personal characteristics...

Public servants who think themselves wronged by their government have been demonstrating for days in Madison, Wisconsin. Their march for fair treatment in the budget battles and contract negotiations to follow is intended to evoke sympathy, but is it merited? Such a thing has happened before. In the summer of 1786, Captain Daniel Shays led a revolt of his fellow Revolutionary War veterans in Pennsylvania. His compatriots were losing their homes to foreclosure, after having served their country, after enduring the frost at Valley Forge, the shelling at New York, the disease and malnutrition of an ill-equipped army's eight-year campaign...

NBC's Rick Santelli on Sunday compared the budget crises affecting state and federal balance sheets to a Sept. 11-type attack on the nation.

Godwin's Law: When you compare your opponentto Hitler, you lost already. Isn't calling Scott "Hitler", even a tiny bit hateful? We don't hate people.We just don't like Unions sucking us dry.And "rape"? Because WI wants you to pony up a small percentageof the benefits we private citizens pay so dearly for?Please. Doing EXACTLY what they accused us of doing.Except worse.That's no surveyers mark over Scotts face.Those are true crosshairs. Riiiighhhht.You see, Scott Walker isn't a duly elected governor.He's a 30-year dictator.Liberalism truly is a mental disorder. More of the same insanity from the Union Communist Movement.

The following is an open letter to the people of Wisconsin, written by a group of concerned Academic Staff members at UW-Milwaukee: An Open Letter to the People of the State of Wisconsin from Concerned Employees of the State of Wisconsin/University of Wisconsin-System: The last six months, candidates for public office and elected officials have made statements defining State employees as overpaid and overcompensated in their benefits (including retirement plans), thus making State employees the scapegoat for the economic crisis the State of Wisconsin currently faces. A small group of State employees who have dedicated their careers to providing quality...

The Legislature should consider cutting state workers' pay, according to a new, grim review of what Gov. Jerry Brown's budget plan means for California's civil servants. The Legislative Analyst's Office notes that Brown says departments won't make about one-third of the cuts required in the 2010-11 general fund budget. Furthermore, the LAO says, Brown's budget plan for 2011-12 contains several suspect assumptions about employee cost savings.