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Special Americans? Union official to get $500,000 in pensions...
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Special Americans? Union official to get $500,000 in pensions... By Jason Grotto, Tribune reporter 12:09 p.m. CDT, October 12, 2011. At least eight Chicago labor leaders who are eligible for inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions covering the same work period, thanks to a charitable interpretation of state law by officials representing two city pension funds, a Tribune /WGN-TV investigation has found. By double and even triple dipping on pensions, these union officials stand to reap millions more in retirement while thousands of rank-and-file union members face hard times and city pension funds stagger toward insolvency. Regular Americans don't count much anymore - 'special' union member Americans are superior.  ** Why are so many non-union Americans so pro-union? ** Do they enjoy paying more for goods & services, and higher taxes, so union Americans can live better? An internet comment: Do you hear it ?? It's the sound of hard-working taxpayers across the land calling for a TAX REVOLT!! Were tired of paying crushing taxes so Public Unions can work a cushy job until 50 and then enjoy a bloated pension compliments of the same taxpayer than is getting set up to be screwed after paying their whole career into the social security system!! Can you imagine when millions of Americans in solidarity stop paying their property taxes?? Yes, it's coming...were tired of the lazy tenured teachers who work 8 months a year getting 90% of their final salary off the backs of the same taxpayers that are counting on a 401K for retirement. Oh, and let's not forget about the Pension Spiking that the public unions engage in over the last couple years of a members career. That's where they pad their salaries up to 24% in the last few years because their taxpayer funded pension is based on their final salary. The taxpayers are getting screwed by Public Unions!! If the public unions are not dissolved soon, then look for Civil War II erupting in the streets !! Lock n' load !! *** I agree 100%. Some of that union money needs to be divertedto returning U.S. military members who make it possible for us ALL to work. Deadbeat state: Ill. owes billions in unpaid bills. By CHRISTOPHER WILLS - Associated Press | AP Sat, Oct 15, 2011 SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Drowning in deficits, Illinois has turned to a deliberate policy of not paying billions of dollars in bills for months at a time, creating a cycle of hardship and sacrifice for residents and businesses helping the state carry out some of the most important government tasks. Once intended as a stop-gap, the months-long delay in paying bills has now become a regular part of the state's budget management, forcing businesses and charity groups to borrow money, cut jobs and services and take on personal debt. Getting paid can be such a confusing process that it requires begging the state for money and sometimes has more to do with knowing the right people than being next in line. As of early last month, the state owed on 166,000 unpaid bills worth a breathtaking $5 billion, with nearly half of that amount more than a month overdue and hundreds of bills dating back to 2010, according to an Associated Press analysis of state documents. The true backlog is even higher because some bills have not yet been approved for payment and officially added to the tally. This includes the Illinois health care agency, which says it is sitting on about $1.9 billion in bills from Medicaid providers because there's no money to pay it. While other states with budget problems have delayed paying their bills, the backlog in Illinois is unmatched, experts say. Year after year, Illinois builds its budget on the assumption that it will pay its bills months late essentially borrowing money from businesses and nonprofits that have little choice but to suffer the financial hardship. The unpaid bills range from a few pennies to nearly $25 million. In early September, for example, Illinois owed $55,000 to a small-town farm supply business for gasoline, $1,000 to a charity that provides used clothing to the poor, $810,000 to a -nutrition program. Even death involves delays in Illinois. Funeral homes were waiting for $2.8 million in overdue reimbursement for burying indigent people. Leigh Ann Stephens wrote a letter in August "asking, pleading" for $50,000 the state owed to the DuPage Center for Independent Living, where she is executive director. It was the third time in two years that she had sent a hardship letter warning the center, which helps people with disabilities live outside of costly nursing homes, would close if it wasn't paid. The letter got results, for now, but it hasn't reversed cuts. Stephens has laid off one of eight employees, stopped opening on Fridays, cut back hours for part-time workers and reduced salaries 7.5 percent for herself and the other full-time worker. Like their , most of the employees are disabled, coping with blindness, loss of hearing, cerebral palsy and more. "This is not just a job for me. It's a way of life," Stephens said. "I can be angry. I can be sad. I can be so mad that I cry. I have thrown things across the room." The delays have prompted relatively little public outcry, perhaps because so much attention has been focused on other budget battles or there is no one politician or agency to blame. It also reflects resignation from some vendors who no longer expect the corruption-plagued Illinois government to function properly. "We've become accustomed to it. Being angry is not going to change it," said Suzanne Young, who has had a hard time getting the state to pay her business, Rockford Map Publishers. Illinois leaders join in bemoaning the crisis but haven't been able to find a solution. "God, how much more can our people take?" said Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka, a veteran politician responsible for trying to pay a seemingly infinite stack of bills with the finite amount of money approved by legislators and the governor. "I really feel terrible every day that we can't pay these bills and people are going to be hanging out there for six months, seven months," Topinka said. Delaying payments during tough times is nothing new for Illinois, though past delays were shorter and more limited. Under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, big spending collided with a recession that sent state revenue spiraling downward. Illinois could no longer afford to pay its bills and the backlog exploded. The backlog continued to grow even after Blagojevich was impeached and later convicted on corruption charges that included trying to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat. He is awaiting sentencing. Blagojevich's replacement, Democrat Pat Quinn, raised income taxes and trimmed spending, but that money was gobbled up by other needs, primarily rising pension costs. Under budget agreements with legislative leaders, all Democrats, bills continued to go unpaid. As recently as June 2008, Illinois paid its bills seven days after state agencies finished the paperwork. A year later the delay had reached 99 days. It stood at 118 days in June of this year, the comptroller's office said. The General Assembly has accepted the unpaid bills as an unpleasant necessity while Illinois claws its way out of deficits that once topped $13 billion. Lawmakers of both parties rejected Quinn's proposal to borrow money so the state can pay its overdue bills, although he says he'll try again when lawmakers meet later this month. Instead, Illinois has turned businesses, charities and local governments into unwilling short-term lenders, using their money to operate government and disguise the depth of the state's financial problems. Who gets paid sometimes depends on who complains the loudest or can get a politician to step in. Illinois grants "expedited payment" to vendors who say they're on the verge of shutting down if they don't get their money, but the process lacks clear rules. The Illinois governor and comptroller each say the other makes the final decision on payments, and documents show a letter of support from a legislator Republican or Democrat can often shake loose money for vendors. Many states use the budget gimmick of delaying payments when money is tight, but Illinois is seen as the worst. "I think you win the championship," agreed Elizabeth Boris, an expert on nonprofit groups at the Urban Institute think tank. California, another state notorious for budget troubles, had to issue IOUs to vendors at one point. But that was a temporary problem, not the way of life it has become in Illinois. California groups and businesses could get by with short-term loans. But many Illinois groups have maxed out their lines of credit and still don't know when state money will start flowing smoothly again or how much to count on as they plan their financial year. Illinois ranked No. 1 in the country in the percentage of nonprofit groups facing payment delays, an Urban Institute survey found. Eighty-three percent said late payments from state and local government were a problem in Illinois, compared to a nationwide average of 53 percent. That survey was conducted in 2009, when Illinois' backlog was still in the middle of its dramatic rise. "We are basically bankrolling the state. It's a ridiculous situation," said Abha Pandya, CEO of Asian Human Services, a Chicago organization awaiting payment on $609,000 in bills, some of them stretching back to November of last year. "It's just absolutely awful and there seems to be no end in sight." Maybe those union arseholes won't get their money.  This is starting to get funny... now the Post Office union has hired lobbyists. The Post Office is broke! It cannot support itself! And they hire lobbyists? If there were a union rule that said members had to successfully pass the first grade, a lot of union members would be laid off, lol. The days of endlessly expanding state and local budgets are over, and Trumka and his union buddies may soon have to explain to their members why so many of their least senior colleagues may lose their jobs in order that more senior members can keep their gold-plated health and pension benefits. More senior members may go along with his strategy out of pure self-interest, but the illusion of unions working in solidarity for the good of all of their members will be exposed as a hollow promise. Union members are like Piranna fish that feed on each other when caught in a net, lol. The Obama administration's decision to delay a controversial oil pipeline was cast by critics as a political ploy to placate environmentalists ahead of the 2012 election. But if that's the strategy, it could backfire. While the decision pleased environmentalists who had earlier suggested they might withhold support for President Obama over the project, it did not please the labor unions who were banking on the estimated 20,000 jobs tied to the pipeline. And in a jobs election, the support of unions and business interests is arguably more critical than that of the green base. Obama is about to pull a fast one on the unions. And none of those union nitwits even see it coming, lol. Pipeline project decision is being postponed until after the election so that Obama can get the union votes and then fvck the unions over after he is re-elected. Those shit-for-brains union dumbfvcks won't even see it coming, lol. Obama Abandons (Private) Labor By Daniel Henninger Published November 17, 2011 | The Wall Street Journal The decision by the Obama administration to "delay" building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year? The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate. On a recent trip to Omaha, Neb., Mr. Obama signaled where his head was on the pipeline during a TV interview: "Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren't going to say to themselves, 'We're going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our are potentially drinking water that would damage their health." Imagine if he'd been leading a wagon train of workers and farmers across the Western frontier in 1850. Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy "superpower," exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on<b> campus. </font></b>Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada. Recall as well the president's gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. Writing in these pages this week, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski described how Mexico, the Russians, Canada and even Cuba are moving to exploit oil and gas deposits adjacent to ours, while the Obama administration slow-walks new drilling permits. Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger argues that President Obama is leaving private sector workers out to dry on Opinion Journal. No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion. This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted. You would think someone in the private labor movement would wake up and smell the tar sands. Last week's Big Labor "victory" in Ohio was about spending tens of millions to support state and local government workers. Many union families attached to the state's withering auto plants no doubt voted with their public-sector brothers in solidarity. But why? Where the rubber hits the road new jobs that will last a generation what does this public-sector vote do for them? ? Between the gov't health insurance regulations and union demands, it is economic suicide to have a manufacturing plant in the USA. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. Postal Service released its annual financial results on Tuesday, and they're nothing to write home about. The agency reported an annual loss of $5.1 billion, as declining mail volumes and mounting benefit costs take their toll. The Postal Service said its losses would have been roughly $10.6 billion if not for the passage of legislation postponing a $5.5 billion payment required to fund retiree health benefits. The extra 5.5 billion in the hole doesn't count because they don't "owe" that yet? Creative accounting? What a fucking lie, lol! WISCONSIN REBORN. Important read!!! This got real quiet as to how it came out. Well, here are the results. Remember, the violent and disgusting demonstrations over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing away with collective bargaining for Teachers unions? The results are in. Some school districts went from a $400,000 deficit to a $1,500,000 surplus as a result. They are even hiring new teachers, not firing like the Liberals said would happen. Why? It seems that the insurance company that provided all the "so-called" benefits to the teachers was an insurance company owned and operated by the teacher's union. Since the outfit was guaranteed to get the insurance business from the teachers, and the State had to pay for it (not the teachers) the insurance company was increasing annual costs every single year to become the most expensive insurance company in the state. Then the company was donating millions and millions of dollars to its favorite democrat politicians who, when they got elected, guaranteed to keep funding the union's outrageous costs. In other words, the insurance company was a "pass through" for Wisconsin taxpayer money directly to the democrat politicians. Nice racket, and this is the racket that is going on in every single State that allows collective bargaining. No wonder the States are taking it away. Now the State of Wisconsin is free to put the insurance contract out for bids and, lo and behold, they have saved so much money it has turned deficits into surplus amounts. As a result, none of the teachers had to be laid off, everyone got a raise, etc., etc., and the taxpayers of Wisconsin don't have to pay more taxes to fund the union's political ambitions. The Hartland-Lakeside School District, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in tiny Hartland, Wis., had a problem in its collective bargaining contract with the local teachers union. The contract required the school district to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust. The creation of Wisconsin's largest teachers union -- "WEA" stands for Wisconsin Education Association -- WEA Trust made money when union officials used collective bargaining agreements to steer profitable business its way. The problem for Hartland-Lakeside was that WEA Trust was charging significantly higher rates than the school district could find on the open market. School officials knew that because they got a better deal from United HealthCare for coverage of nonunion employees. On more than one occasion, Superintendent Glenn Schilling asked WEA Trust why the rates were so high. "I could never get a definitive answer on that," says Schilling. Changing to a different insurance company would save Hartland-Lakeside hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on key educational priorities -- especially important since the cash-strapped state government was cutting back on education funding. But teachers union officials wouldn't allow it; the WEA Trust requirement was in the contract, and union leaders refused to let Hartland-Lakeside off the hook. That's where Wisconsin's new budget law came in. The law, bitterly opposed by organized labor in the state and across the nation, limits the collective bargaining powers of some public employees. And it just happens that the Hartland-Lakeside teachers' collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30. So now, freed from the expensive WEA Trust deal, the school district has changed insurers. "It's going to save us about $690,000 in 2011-2012," says Schilling. Insurance costs that had been about $2.5 million a year will now be around $1.8 million. What union leaders said would be a catastrophe will in fact be a boon to teachers and students. But the effect of weakening collective bargaining goes beyond money. It also has the potential to reshape the adversarial culture that often afflicts public education. In Hartland-Lakeside, there's been no war between union-busting bureaucrats on one side and impassioned teachers on the other; Schilling speaks with great collegiality toward the teachers and says with pride that they've been able to work together on big issues. But there has been a deep division between the school district and top union executives. In the health insurance talks, for example, Schilling last year began telling teachers about different insurance plans, some of which, like United HealthCare's, required a higher deductible. "We involved them, and they overwhelmingly endorsed the change to United HealthCare," he says. But even with the teachers on board, when school officials presented a change-in-coverage proposal to union officials, it was immediately rejected. The costly WEA Trust deal stayed in place. Now, with the collective bargaining agreement gone, Schilling looks forward to working more closely with teachers. "I would say the biggest change is we have a lot more involvement with a wider scope of teachers," he says. When collective bargaining was in effect, "We dealt with a select team of teachers, a small group of three or four who were on the bargaining team, and then the union director. Any information that went to the teachers went through them. Now, we feel that we will have a direct dialogue." It's not hard to see why union officials hate the new law so much. It not only breaks up cherished and lucrative union monopolies like high-cost health insurance; it also threatens to break through the union-built wall between teachers and administrators and allow the two sides to work together more closely. The old union go-betweens, who controlled what their members could and could not hear, will be left aside. Hartland-Lakeside isn't the only school district that is pulling free from collective bargaining agreements that mandated WEA Trust coverage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the Pewaukee School District, not far from Hartland-Lakeside, will save $378,000 by next year by leaving WEA Trust. The Menomonee Falls School District, farther north, will reportedly save $1.3 million. Facing state cutbacks, the districts can't afford to overpay for union-affiliated coverage. Look for the unions to fight back with everything they have. If the Wisconsin situation has shown anything, it is that organized labor views the collective bargaining fight as a life-or-death struggle. If the unions lose in Wisconsin, the clamor for change could spread to other states. What happened in Hartland-Lakeside could become a model for other schools looking for new and better ways to do business. Gov. Chris Christie is demanding the resignation of the executive director of New Jerseys largest teachers union, after the official said of poor people, Lifes not always fair, and I'm sorry about that. Vincent Giordano, of the New Jersey Education Association, said in a TV appearance over the weekend, Lifes not always fair, and I'm sorry about that, when he was asked why a less well-to-do family shouldn't have the option to take their out of a failing school and send them to a better one. In a press conference in Westfield, N.J., Christie said Wednesday that he was disgusted by Giordanos comments and called for his immediate resignation. You know, as Vince drives out of the palace on State Street every day in his big luxury car with his $500,000 salary, Im sure lifes really fair for him, Christie said, according to a video posted by the New Jersey Star-Ledger. And if Vinces were in a failing school district, he'd be able to afford to send them to any school in New Jersey that can help them to succeed. But his answer for the single mother in Camden is, Life isn't fair. Arguing that teachers deserve better than the head of a teachers union that will sit on Sunday talk shows and pontificate to the poor, the governor vowed to stand up for the less wealthy people of the Garden State. Arguing that teachers deserve better than the head of a teachers union that will sit on Sunday talk shows and pontificate to the poor, the governor vowed to stand up for the less wealthy people of the Garden State. That level of arrogance, that level of puffed-up, rich man baloney, is unacceptable in this state. He should resign. He should resign today, Christie said. Following the governors remarks, Giordano immediately fired back, accusing Christie of having stooped to a new low even by his own standards. In his personal attack on me he has demonstrated that there is no limit to his willingness to twist, distort and misrepresent the facts in a situation to satisfy his voracious appetite for political vengeance, Giordano said in a statement to the press. I have no intention of resigning. If he thinks hes going to bully me like he bullies everyone else, he doesn't understand who I am, or how deeply I care about the work I do. The kicker: For his abysmal record on education and his hypocrisy in claiming to care about in urban districts while pursuing policies that have hurt them deeply, I call on Gov. Christie to resign from office immediately. It is hilarious how union retards pay some numbnuts 'boss' $500,000 a year through their union dues. |
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