Obama Has Nothing to Say About #Libya Because He Is Busy "Community Organzing" for Wisconsin for Public Unions

ALF-CIO's boss Richard Trumka says he's "at the White House a couple of times a week...two or three times a week", and that he has "conversations everyday with someone in the White House or in the administration. Everyday." The remarks were supposedly taped on February 18, 2011.

Sure, he doesn't say he's talking with Obama himself. So? He's probably talking with his handler, Valerie "Slum lord" Jarrett.

O'Bummer is too busy organizing public union workers to demonstrate against taxpayers. Roughly the equivalent of Libya's Gaddafis organizing thugs against citizens who oppose their policies...

(Is it Constitutional for a sitting president to do the "community organizing" in a particular state, favoring one side against the other? Nah.. who cares about Constitution?)

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Will There Be A Battle Between Takers and Makers? (Nah, Not in the US...)

Will Grigg said it last year, and he said it last night in a radio program. There are two kinds of people: "Takers" and "Makers".

More and more, it is becoming clearer. It is almost surreal in the 21st century, but the world seems indeed becoming a two-class society: "Takers" who take away money, wealth from others through taxes so that they get paid for their work; and "Makers" who pay those taxes to local, state, federal, governments so that "Takers" get paid for their work and get well taken care of once they retire.

In the case of the US, "Takers" extend all the way from the occupants of the White House, Congress, courts, to federal, state, local government workers, police, firefighters, public school administrators and teachers, public librarians, and private contractors, big and small, who get a chunk of business from the "government" - federal, state, local.

(So, of course Nancy Pelosi strongly support Wisconsin public union workers. She and they are in the same boat, "Takers". After all, Ms. Pelosi has never worked a day in the private sector.)

Never mind if "Takers" may have their jobs guaranteed (in case of Wisconsin public union teachers) in this unprecedentedly severe job market , and on average "Takers" earn much more than "Makers" who have to support them.

Faces of "Takers": Wisconsin public union workers protesting against the WI governor's plan to limit their union's collective bargaining power, to have them pay more for their health care premiums, and have them contribute to their own pensions. These public union workers are protesting, claiming the governor's move will hurt kids. (How can she open her mouth that big without dislocating her jaw?)



Faces of "Takers": The Egyptian counterpart of Wisconsin public union teachers - well-fed, well-clad police demonstrating to demand better pay, while claiming it was not their fault if they beat up and killed anti-Mubarak protesters because they weren't given the proper training. They also claim they are the friends of the anti-Mubarak protesters. The photo is from February 14 Al Jazeera Live Blog. I believe they were later routed out by the protesters.



Faces of "Makers": Egyptians who drove Mubarak out of office, and who return to the streets to push the Army, another class of "Takers", for real reforms. The photo is from Al Jazeera Live Egypt Blog.



Faces of "Makers": Americans who still have jobs in the private sector, who pay taxes to local, state, and federal governments so that the public employees get their jobs, salaries, benefits, and pensions and health care for life, and who have finally decided enough is enough and risen up against "Takers"....

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Average Annual Compensation for Milwawkee Public School Teacher: $100,005

Milwaukee is the largest city in the state of Wisconsin, where the public union teachers are staging the protests against the governor's budget rescue bill.

$100K per average teacher. I hate to think how much those school superintendents and administrators get. And that $100K per teacher hasn't done much to improve the Milwaukee Public School system.

The link to MacIver News Service at McIver Institute in Wisconsin was clearly overwhelmed with clicks (the link appeared on Drudge Report) but I've finally got there - here's the snippet:

MacIver News Service – For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public School system will exceed $100,000.

That staggering figure was revealed last night at a meeting of the MPS School Board.

The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011.

The accompanying video says:

• $56,500 average salary is more than double the city's average salary;

• It is more than the median family income of $42,950; and
  

• MPS graduation rate is 68%, compared to 90% statewide.

A poster on Yahoo's stock board who lives in Wisconsin says that the state employees in Wisconsin do not contribute to the pension fund, and pay only 0.5% of health care premiums. (BTW, trolls defending the public union teachers in Wisconsin suddenly appeared on the board for a double-short financial ETF... Fun to watch.)

And a clown like Jessie Jackson likens the protest to anti-government fights in Egypt and Tunisia, and these public union teachers go ecstatic.

Surreal.

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Obama Sides with Public Unions (Nothing New), Mobilizes His Political Machine to Crush Wisconsin Bill

Hasn't this guy been saying education is the top priority of his admin, or something close to it? Over and over again?

So what does he do? He goes full in on Wisconsin's anti-union (or so dubbed by MSMs) law, unleashing his community organizing apparatus, Organizing for America, so that teachers will call in sick and/or take a union-provided bus to participate in demonstrations instead of educating kids in schools.

Public school teachers are skipping schools and waving signs like "Silencing Teachers Hurts Kids". What the hell does that mean? If the teachers union cannot negotiate the pay increase above the inflation rate and they have to pay more for their pension and health care premiums, more in line with the private sector workers (who are lucky enough to have such benefits), and if in exchange they have no furloughs and layoffs, that hurts kids? How?

Kids are hurting alright, I can tell when I read the comment like this from a University of Wisconsin sophomore activist Max Love:

“The quality of our institutions would suffer if this bill passes,” Love said. “This is a student cause, and we’re seeing a lot of people who really care about this issue.”

The quality of the institutions suffer from students like him, who blindly recites the party line (anything to do with education, other than increasing teachers and teachers' pay, is bad), to whom protecting the collective bargaining power of the teachers union morphs into "a student cause".

In coordination with the National Democratic Party and public unions, Obama's organization, Organizing for America, has been working the phones and sending out messages via Internet social sites to bring public school teachers of the state to demonstrate against the governor's budget plan. It clearly coordinates with left-leaning alternative media sites on the Internet to identify the demonstrations with those in north Africa and Middle East, two of which has toppled the existing despotic regimes.

For the snippets of MSMs and alternatives glorifying the public union protests, go to this post at Washington's Blog.

(Even Max Keiser says, rather incoherently, that it's all about people rising up against the banksters. Huh?)

Who's paying for these teachers?

Who's paying for Obama?

They are so oblivious it is almost pitiful.

The ruler of the regime (Obama) organizes and unleash the demonstrators, and we are supposed to cheer them on as if they were the anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Algeria.

It looks to me like the equivalent of those pro-Mubarak demonstrations orchestrated by the Mubarak regime that quickly fizzled in Egypt. With the solid support from the White House and the Democratic Party, I wonder how long these demonstrations in Wisconsin will last.

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Wisconsin Dem Senators Have Left the State to Delay the Vote on Union Bargaining, and They Are In Rockford Clock Tower Resort in Illinois

It looks like Wisconsin is indeed resembling Egypt, except in a bad way - members of the ruling class running away to a resort....

Part of the ruling class of the state - Democratic State Senators - have fled the state in order to avoid the capture so that they cannot vote on the bill that would restrict the collective bargaining power of the public unions. Apparently, they got on a bus and crossed the state line, and they are in Rockford, Illinois at the Best Western Clock Tower Resort.

Rockfort Clock Tower Resort boasts many amenities, I've learned, including Tilted Kilt Pub and Eatery, pictured below:



What a joke. And the cynical MSM in the US paints it like it is a popular uprising against a despot.

From an even more cynical (well, who isn't, these days?) Zero Hedge, quoting AP:

The farce over the Wisconsin anti-union vote has just passed into the surreal. According to the AP, democrat lawmakers, who are firmly opposed to voting on the bill which is said to already have majority support, and who have been boycotting the vote by being absent from the state capitol, have now escalated and patriotically left the state. The reason is that while the vote can not take place without at least one Democrat being present, the police had been sent out earlier, with orders to sequester the democrats. The democrat response: run away. As the AP reports: "Senate Republicans can't vote on the bill unless at least one Democrat is present. Police could be dispatched to retrieve them, but it was unclear if they would have the authority to cross state lines." So to all who were expecting the latest iteration of members of the executive class to run away (with or without gold) to come from Africa or the Middle East, will be disappointed: it was in America's very own back yard.

From the AP:

A Wisconsin state senator says the 14 Democratic lawmakers who are boycotting a vote on a controversial anti-union bill have left the state.

Sen. Jon Erpenbach says the group wants to force negotiations over the Republican-backed bill, which would strip most public employees of their collective-bargaining rights.

Erpenbach told The Associated Press that he and his colleagues had left Wisconsin, but he would not say where.

He said the plan is to slow down the bill because it's "tearing the state apart."

We don't get what the big deal is here: just call Von Bernankestein's hot line and get him to deliver $10 billion, or trillion, it's all the same these days. These are the Chairman's favorite kinds of inbound calls. After all, the dollar needs all the help it can get to get to zero way ahead of everyone else. It is everyone's patriotic duty to go bankrupt and to demand bail outs from our money printing syndicate. Lastly, not doing so is racist.

So what are these Dem Senators, public union workers in Wisconsin, and the Prez of the USSA upset about this bill? According to another AP article, under the bill:

state employees' share of pension and health care costs would go up by an average of 8 percent.

Unions still could represent workers, but could not seek pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not force employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized.

In exchange for bearing more costs and losing bargaining leverage, public employees were promised no furloughs or layoffs.

See that last sentence? No furloughs or layoffs!

In this day and age of semi-permanent unemployment and underemployment in the private sector, there would be no furloughs or layoffs for these public union workers in Wisconsin.

So, what are they complaining about, again?

I think public unions feel their very existence is being threatened, and therefore they are mobilizing the members to protest. Read the middle paragraph of the above quote; the bill would restrict their ability to force members to pay union dues and force them to hold annual votes to stay organized.

(Union officials must be envious of those Dem Senators spending time in Tilted Kilt Pub...)

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State vs Federal: Why Is It Obama's Business Anyway?

Organizing for America, funded by President Obama, is spearheading the effort to defeat the Wisconsin bill on public unions.

State right, Mr. President. That means it's none of your business. Your business, by the way, is outlined in this old document, and it doesn't include meddling with state issues, not to mention setting up and funding an organization to attack states.

Well, you haven't worked a single day in your adult life working for a for-profit business where performance matters. For you, public union members are your friends, neighbors, colleagues, your world.

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Obama: Wisconsin's Collective Bargaining Law "Assault on Unions"

He doesn't speak up for the protesters in Middle East, he doesn't speak up for the (once-)middle-class in the US, he doesn't speak up for the homeowners losing their homes to TBTF Wall Street banksters.

But he sure does speak up in defense of the public unions:

"Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions...."

"... public employees are your neighbors, your friends..."

That's right, neighbors and friends. And thanks to the mismanagement by the state and the local governments we, non-public-union members, are on hook to pay for their benefits FOR LIFE. (And don't get me going how much more these public union employees are getting compared to the private sector.)

Some compare the protests by Wisconsin's public union employees - teachers, firefighters, police - with the anti-government protesters in Egypt.

(What an insult to Egyptians.)

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Winter Wonderland in NYC Courtesy of Sanitation Workers and Mayor Bloomberg

As New York City is snowed under, it turns out the City's sanitation workers may have been contributing to this natural wonder. New York Post reports:

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts -- a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

... The snitches "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

New York's Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process -- and pad overtime checks -- which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.

and to collect fat overtime checks. They are ostensibly doing this to stick it to Mayor Bloomberg.

Emergency vehicles are stuck on the streets of New York thanks to them. Instead of sticking it to the billionaire mayor, they are likely killing people. One new-born baby in Brooklyn was dead probably because of them.

And what does Mayor Bloomberg do? Blame the public.

That's the public union and the elected official for you. And remember, taxpayers in New York City, you are paying for their destructive non-service and for their fat benefits and pensions while some among you are paying for it with their lives.

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Let Them Eat Cake - Federal Labor Union Version

The NTEU (National Treasury Employees Union) who represents over 150,000 employees in 30 august federal government agencies and departments says its members deserve higher salaries and benefits because they are more skilled and more educated than the private sector, according to USA Today's article. The private sector, by the way, deserves lower pay because the government is contracting lower pay jobs to the private sector.

They are so deserving, the federal government employees, that President Obama has proposed 1.4% pay raise across the board for 2011 for his 2-million federal workforce as the country languishes in high unemployment and contracting tax base that cannot support these deserving public union employees.

But no matter. The masses in the private sector don't count unless they cough up taxes to the feds so that the first lady can romp off to Spain to comfort her friend.

Below is an article by USA Today.

Federal workers earning double their private counterparts
(Dennis Cauchon, 8/10/2010 USA Today)

At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.

Public employee unions say the compensation gap reflects the increasingly high level of skill and education required for most federal jobs and the government contracting out lower-paid jobs to the private sector in recent years.

"The data are not useful for a direct public-private pay comparison," says Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Chris Edwards, a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, thinks otherwise. "Can't we now all agree that federal workers are overpaid and do something about it?" he asks.

Last week, President Obama ordered a freeze on bonuses for 2,900 political appointees. For the rest of the 2-million-person federal workforce, Obama asked for a 1.4% across-the-board pay hike in 2011, the smallest in more than a decade. Federal workers also would qualify for seniority pay hikes.

Congressional Republicans want to cancel the across-the-board increase in 2011, which would save $2.2 billion.

"Americans are fed up with public employee pay scales far exceeding that in the private sector," says Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the second-ranking Republican in the House.

Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., says a pay freeze would unfairly scapegoat federal workers without addressing real budget problems.

What the data show:

•Benefits. Federal workers received average benefits worth $41,791 in 2009. Most of this was the government's contribution to pensions. Employees contributed an additional $10,569.

•Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.

•Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.

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Obama Wants $50 Billion More for Teachers, Police, Fighterfighters

Government workers earning almost twice as much as private sector workers is not enough for him.

Wait, is this $50 billion on top of the provisions in the latest jobs bill ($23 billion) and FY2010 Supplemental Appropriations Bill ($25 billion) that would be used to 'save' those same jobs? If it is, Obama wants to give away another $100 billion total for these public union workers.

Obama pleads for $50 billion in state, local aid
(Lori Montgomery, 6/13/2010 Washington Post)

"President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

"In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year's huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy's free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. "We must take these emergency measures," he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

""I think there is spending fatigue," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently. "It's tough in both houses to get votes."

"Democrats, particularly in the House, have voted for politically costly initiatives at Obama's insistence, most notably health-care and climate change legislation. But faced with an electorate widely viewed as angry and hostile to incumbents, many are increasingly reluctant to take politically unpopular positions.

"Obama asks lawmakers to be patient on the deficit, noting that a special commission is at work on a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan.

""It is essential that we continue to explore additional measures to spur job creation and build momentum toward recovery, even as we establish a path to long-term fiscal discipline," Obama wrote. "At this critical moment, we cannot afford to slide backwards just as our recovery is taking hold."" [The article continues.]

I'm sure his commission will come up with a winner. (How about disbanding itself to save money?)

So to summarize: to help save the jobs of teachers at public schools which are not educating kids, and police and firefighters who will retire with fat pensions courtesy of tax payers will spur job creation and boost the economic recovery.

Make sense, doesn't it?

Maybe the 'newly discovered' $1 trillion mineral deposits in Afghanistan will pay for all this and more. (Remember, oil from Iraq was supposed to pay for the recovery of Iraq.)

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