Tag: public employees

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Domestic Policies Education News Politics Wisconsin Union Bashing

Pensions in the Age of GOP Math

Things are getting a bit complicated in New Jersey for Governor Christie, and that’s having a major effect on when (and it will be when) he announces his bid for the presidency. Yes, he is waiting for the economy to improve and the George Washington Bridge scandal to go away, but now he’s added what could be a signature accomplishment for him to run on: another public employee pension reform bill. This time, however, he won’t have as many Democrats to help him.

Christie has been traveling the state telling some marvelous half-truths and outright lies about the history of governmental pension neglect since the 1990s. He’s even saying that the legislature is blocking pension funding when it’s actually the good governor who took out the full funding from the 2015 budget with a line-item veto. When the legislature then passed a bill to have the state pay quarterly payments, he vetoed it and the Republicans who supported it the first time around would not vote to override. At a legislative dinner in March, State Senator Joe Pennacchio (District 26) was asked why that happened. His answer: “Christie is going to run for president. We didn’t want to embarrass him.”

So much for fiscal responsibility.

Now comes word that State Senate President Stephen Sweeney is saying the the legislature will include a full pension payment in the 2016 budget, which starts on July 1. That battle will define the struggle for the next two months, but Christie will veto anything that even smells of a tax increase or else he’s going to be burnt toast in Iowa and South Carolina. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousand of public employees will have to sweat it out and worry that the pensions they were promised will not be paid in full, although they have made their payments reliably their whole careers.

But even if Christie doesn’t win the nomination, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is now attracting gobs of Koch Brother money for his campaign, would be an even worse choice. He’s been able to do what Christie has not when it comes to public employees, and that is to strip them of their collective bargaining rights. Imagine the nightmare scenario of a President Walker with a Republican Congress slashing taxes for the wealthy and slashing public programs and benefits for the middle class. Never mind that the number of working people who qualify for public assistance has increased in the last 10 years. The GOP loves to blame those lazy burger-flipping door-greeters (because many have two jobs) for their own problems while catering to the upper crust.

Blaming public workers and the working poor for America’s fiscal problems has worked well for the GOP. It’s time to fight back.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Health insurance Politics

Detroit’s “Emergency Manager” To Take Away Health Insurance from Public Workers

About 24,000 retired Detroit public servants will soon receive letters notifying them that they are losing their health insurance on March 1, even as the city claims to be negotiating with retirees’ groups to strike a better deal on health care.

The bankrupt city’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr is sticking to the same proposal for drastic retiree health care cuts that he initially intended to implement this month, prompting a group that represents retired Detroit workers to threaten they will sue the city.

For the two-thirds of the retiree group who are old enough to be eligible for Medicare, the plan means shifting onto the government-run insurance program for seniors. But 8,000 younger retirees will have their insurance plans replaced with a monthly stipend check of just $125 to subsidize the cost of insurance plans they will have to find on their own.

When that plan was initially floated last fall, a pair of retired firefighters young enough to be stuck with stipend checks told ThinkProgress that the change would doom their recoveries from the serious injuries they sustained protecting the city. Retired librarian Gwendolyn Beasley, 67, said the shift to Medicare’s less-generous coverage would mean choosing between groceries and prescriptions

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Politics tweet twitter

Today’s Funniest Tweet – Compliments Wisconsin’s @GovWalker

Okay. We know the day is not over, but it will be difficult, even impossible for anyone to beat today’s funniest tweet. It is from Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and his tweet goes out to the public employees of his state, the same “hard-working” public employees that received the brunt of Walker’s attacks for over a year now.

Sidenote: These public union workers in Wisconsin will get another shot at Walker in less than a month. His recall election is scheduled for June 5th.

Walker’s Tweet:

Needless to say, the Twitter world caught on to Walker’s sense of humor (if you wanna call it that). Below are some of the responses;

 

 

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