Joke Line is not a conservative but he likes to position himself as close to the middle as possible. This means that his primary role in life is what many refer to as “punching hippies.” If you think the invasion of Iraq is ill-advised and unjustified, Joke Line is happy to call you names. And if you think the governor of Wisconsin is selectively picking on the public employees who didn’t endorse his candidacy, then he’s here to tell you about how much New York City janitors used to make in the early 1980’s for mopping the cafeteria once a week. He calls Governor Walker’s proposal “modest” and scolds Democrats for opposing Democracy and the natural consequence of elections. But let me focus on just one point of Klein’s:
Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed…of the public?
That kind of sounds right, but it misses the point. Obviously the public wants to pay the least amount possible for the best quality services. If your position is that you are going to cut taxes always, no matter how much they have already been cut (i.e., you are a Republican), and your kind makes up more than 40% of elected officials at pretty much all times, then it’s clear that the people on your payroll are going to be under constant pressure to take less money and benefits. This is exactly how the situation stood prior to rise of public unions (and that was before the GOP morphed into a Read-My-Lips-No-New-Taxes party). Politicians, on the state level at least, have to balance their budgets, and they don’t like to increase people’s tax burden. That’s why they want to build a billion casinos and make cigarettes cost $12 a pack. They’ll do anything to avoid raising people’s income taxes and that means they must either slash services, come up with ingenious ways to pick on unpopular people and behaviors, or slash the pay of government workers.
It’s a different kind of downward pressure on wages and benefits than is imposed by the global marketplace, but it’s no less effective. Now, sometimes, it is necessary to renegotiate a contract that turned out to be too generous, or which is inappropriate at a time of budgetary hardship, but that involves negotiation. Gov. Walker wants to destroy the public unions’ ability to negotiate. He leaves the police and firefighters alone both because they are more popular than teachers and social workers, and because they endorsed his candidacy.
Joke Line lives up to his reputation though. You gotta give him that.
I wrote Joe a nice little email. I pointed out that he was the guy that wrote the best known biography of Woody Guthrie and sent him the link to this:
Well done, Calvin. In addition to the (very good) Guthrie biography, Klein was news editor for “The Real Paper”, a Cambridge MA alternative weekly, was a contributing editor to “Rolling Stone” for several years, and worked briefly for public television’s WGBH.
According to Wikipedia, Klein graduate from the University of Pennsylvania after attending the Hackley School, a formerly Unitarian prep school that’s part of something called the “Ivy Preparatory School League”.
I’ve given up (for the most part) trying to figure out Klein and folks like him. Clearly there are plenty of reasons for him to be a consistently progressive pundit, but there’s just something about him (within him?) that leads him not only to end up “punching hippies” but also, as in this case, “punching” school secretaries and street cleaners who are holding on for their $25,000 a year pensions.
I didn’t know that, meaning his prior job history. I knew his education background. I actually sent him the link to that video. I see a reply from him in my inbox. I am going to wait till tonight to read it. That way the reply I write will be even-keeled. If I wrote him back now, I’m liable to call him some naughty names if he continues his ignorance on Wisconsin.
On an unrelated note, I’m wondering where the left is today? I mean Elizabeth Warren just hired a whole bunch of Wall Street Bankers to run part of her agency. I have no problem with it at all, but I wonder what would have happened if Obama had done this. I wonder if this ends DKOS effort to draft her for a senate bid.
She is appointing two former Wall Street bankers and a former Freddie Mac official to top positions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and yet it hasn’t elicited a single peep.
The appointees are Raj Date, formerly a managing director at Deutsche Bank, Elizabeth Vale, a managing director at Morgan-Stanley, and Zixta Martinez, from Freddie Mac.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the hiring’s received hearty approval from Wall Street’s premier lobbying organization.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/consumer-watchdog-hires-former-bankers/
As the new federal consumer watchdog agency takes shape, Wall Street might see a few familiar faces on its roster.
Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor who is setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced her latest string of hires on Thursday, including former managing directors at Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.
Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers from abuses in the lending industry. Now the bureau is turning to former members of the industry to help it police banks, credit card companies and mortgage lenders.
It’s not the career path as much as it is the integrity and willingness to actually serve the public interest. Insiders often know more of the schemes and tricks than even experienced regulators do. One former insider that I find very helpful on health care issues is Wendell Potter.
Rahm got to her, obviously.
Wow you sure made that overly complicated.
Labor has its interests. Management has their interests. Management’s interests are projected via their control of the company’s money. Labor’s interests are projected via their control over the company’s productivity.
Done.
Many Madison Police and firefighters are not buying the Cheesehead Pharaoh’s ploy to divide the workers. Many are standing with the protesters.
As are many of the Packers, which is interesting given their labor situation.