Rambling

You know, I’ve been supporting teachers on this blog, but I have to admit that I had some lousy ones. I also had some great ones. What I want to do is support public schools and the unions. The attacks lately are designed to push tax dollars to private companies and fund corporate tax breaks with cuts to the middle class.

That is my problem with all of this.

I do, however, think that public schools need to be fixed. I have a feeling that there are a lot of teachers who should be replaced. I also think that the reason for that is that many schools have not been attracting the most qualified teachers because the budgets keep being cut so they don’t pay enough. It doesn’t help when teachers are targets, either.

The same is true with the quality of the schools themselves, their state of repair. Budget cuts lead to lower school quality in level of education and buildings falling apart.

Unions get blamed a lot, but you can have a union and still be able to fire unqualified teachers. They are not mutually exclusive. And I don’t think collective bargaining ever kept a roof from being repaired.

Fix the problem, don’t just trash the entire school system. However bad things are, it is not the ‘public’ part that is the problem. A phrase about babies and bath water comes to mind.

Priorities are messed up and need to be reordered. I know what I think should be done, but for now I’ll just say that there needs to be more equality.

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen only one contestant make to Final Jeopardy before. Now I have a Weird Al song going through my head.

Maine

OK, just one more that I had lying around.

Maine’s Governor wants to cut state workers’ salaries by shifting 3% of their compensation from pay checks to pension payments. He calls it an increase in the employees contribution to the pension, but really it’s just so the state can save money by cutting workers’ pay. He wants to give that money to corporations as a $203 million tax break.

So again, we have a governor who wants to cut corporate taxes and have middle class state employees pay for it.

There is one state employee, however, who is exempt – the Governor.

Adding some detail

There's a point that I didn't make clearly earlier.

Since public employees negotiate their compensation, and that compensation includes salary and benefits, all of the money in the pensions is the employees’ money. Not only because it is contractually owed to them, but because if it hadn’t gone into the pension fund it would have gone to the employees in their paychecks.

It isn’t state money or state support any more than the money in their weekly paycheck is. It's compensation. It is the employees’ money.

Except of course in New Jersey where the State just keeps the money for itself.

There is a game being played

Governors, among others, who like to demonize public employee unions are playing a game. For years, public employees in many municipalities have taken pay cuts in order to preserve their benefits. Now, they are being attacked for having benefits that are too generous.

First you roll back wages then you attack the benefits so you can cut them too.

Even so, many unions have agreed to cuts to their benefits. Some are the only ones funding their pension because the state has stopped paying into it.

The states are in financial trouble because the economy tanked because Wall Street screwed up. Many states also have problems because of tax cuts for the wealthy. New Jersey’s Governor vetoed the extension of a tax on those making over $400,000 a year – then he cut half a billion dollars from public schools claiming the state couldn’t afford it and he blamed the teachers’ union.

It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that foretells economic catastrophe and is very good at bringing about the predicted results.

In case you didn't know

New Jersey public employees have taken cuts for years in order to maintain their benefits. The State promised them a pension so they would take lower pay. And they are not paid more than comparable private sector employees – when compared on education and experience they get less, in fact. They provide needed services, they pay taxes and they contribute to their pension (unlike the State).

Regardless of what anyone may say to the contrary, those are the facts.

The governor gave an almost $500 million tax cut to the richest fraction of 1% of state residents, cut $500 million dollars from education, deliberately cost the state $430 million in school funding and cancelled the job-creating commuter tunnel to New York City which also will cost the state around $270 million it has to pay back. Now he proposes more corporate tax cuts. The only cuts the people of New Jersey get are to services and health care.

There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for this, other than that it is somehow because the state needs money and jobs so we should take in less revenue and cut jobs – or something. None of this is good for the economy or the people of New Jersey.

Who's to blame?

If New Jersey hasn’t contributed to the state pension fund in decades, and the state is not allowed to run a deficit (they just short-change the unions instead), how can the pensions be responsible for the financial problems?

And since the state is responsible for investing the money that the union members did put into the pension fund because they kept paying into it (and the State loses the money in the process), how can the employees be responsible for the financial problems?

For years the union employees have taken pay cuts or no raises in exchange for state promises of pensions and other benefits, thereby saving the state money, so how can the employees be responsible for the financial problems?

In other words, since the state of New Jersey is directly responsible for the current problems, why do people keep blaming the unions?