Wisconsin Senate to vote on anti-union bill

[Guest Guest]

Get back in the closet, fetal position, and start your chant: It's the summer of recovery, we don't know what's in the bill until we pass it, I'm a penthouse pauper from Nevada, It's all Bush's fault, I don't pay attention to the constitution.....

 

 

And when you get out of the closet, don't forget to kiss your signed picture of Al Gore on the Fanny.

once agina the retort of an unprepared local rent a center woodchuck lol

[Guest Guest]

I’ve been watching what’s going on in Wisconsin, and it’s just one more example of how extreme Republicans have gotten. In Washington, rather than ask the wealthy to pay their fair share, the GOP is trying to balance our national budget on the backs of those who can least afford it. Now in Wisconsin, they’re launching an attack on teachers, prison guards and other public employees – the very workers who educate our children and keep all of us safe. They’re trying to strip away most of their collective bargaining rights and greatly increase the cost of their health care.

 

It’s unfair, and it must stop.

 

This is just the start of Republicans showing their true colors. Democrats are fighting back, but they need to know that we’ve got their back.

 

Click here to sign our petition. Let Democrats in Wisconsin know that we stand with them against the extreme antics of the GOP.

 

Republicans are far out of the mainstream, and when they target the very people who teach our children and keep our communities safe, we must speak out as Democrats, and as Americans. Thanks for adding your voice.

[Guest Guest]

Speaking of paying their "fair share", how about state workers pay 5.8 percent of their wages toward their pension (instead of little to nothing) and 12 percent toward their health care plan (instead of 4 or 5 percent). I know it's a huge sacrifice, but given that millions are out of work, perhaps they could live with that burden.. somehow.

[James Bonham]

Do you ever wonder why you are alone Tom?

 

From reading most postings on all topics it appears you and your other personalities posting as Guest are the one who is Alone!

 

The moderate opinions of Tom are far more worthy of thought than those of some schizophrenic Guest!

 

No it is not Tom who is alone, it is the Guest who is one time in favor of child molestation and next abhors it. The Guest who knows President Bush was the last American President yet condones the Islamists supporting Barry Soetoro confuses me, until accepting that Guest is nothing more than a Poster Child for Mental Health Needs!

 

Naw, it ain't Tom, it is Guest in need of Psychiatric help who causes the direction of rational thoughts on any given topic to go astray!

 

So tell me seriously Dear Guest, when you take your mom and other sexual partners out for a walk do you need to keep them on a leash or does a collar and voice command suffice?

 

If you ever get to the level of intelligence where you can rebut without making an (soory A) donkey of yourself get back to me. I'm charitable, I'll be kind to you.

[Guest Guest]

When will the Republicans in the House start focusing on jobs and the economy like they promised instead of wasting time on legislation that won't get passed by the Senate?

 

You didn't have a problem with Obama focusing on passing his health care reform for two years while the rest of the country was screaming jobs did you?

[Guest Guest]

To be honest, most of that is just stretching it.

 

I mean "Oh he gave someone a job that is prochoice! OH GOD!" that's just inane

 

Really? Kathleen Sebelious who is a staunch supporter of abortion, and a rotten Catholic because of it, is in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services which decides what services will be covered under Obamacare???????

 

You need to work on YOUR logic today and/or lay off the sauce.

[Guest Guest]

Really? Kathleen Sebelious who is a staunch supporter of abortion, and a rotten Catholic because of it, is in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services which decides what services will be covered under Obamacare???????

 

You need to work on YOUR logic today and/or lay off the sauce.

 

Example #1:

 

HHS replaces 'conscience' rule for health workers

 

......In its place is a new rule that retains just the federal conscience protections for abortions and sterilizations, along with a provision that spells out how health workers who feel they were discriminated against can ask the government to enforce that law.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021804967.html

=================

 

YOU GET MY DRIFT NOW?

[Guest Guest]

yawn...you guys just about killed the republican party with your abortion crap. go away.

[Guest Guest]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdqQTIQhn5A

[Guest Guest]

Paying Teachers to Do Nothing

New York City was once home to the infamous rubber room — a place where teachers awaiting disciplinary measures were sent to twiddle their thumbs while still receiving full pay as their grievances went through the system — but now it has an even bigger problem on its hands: The city spends more than $100 million every year paying teachers who have been excessed but have yet to find jobs.

 

The ironclad union contract requires that any teacher with tenure be paid their full salary and benefits if they are sent to the “Absent Teacher Reserve pool,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The average pay of a teacher in that pool? $82,000 a year. Some of the teachers have been in the pool since 2006. According to the Journal, the majority of teachers in the pool had “neither applied for another job in the system nor attended any recruitment fairs in recent months.”

 

This is what the union wants: To keep teachers on the payroll regardless of whether or not they are doing any work or needed by the school district. Why? As long as they are on the payroll, they keep paying union dues. The union doesn’t care about the children who will be hurt by this misallocation of funds — think of all the new textbooks $100 million would buy. All union leaders care about is protecting their members and, by extension, their coffers.

[Guest Guest]

Contracts Putting Kids at Risk

Teachers unions push for contracts that effectively cripple school districts’ ability to monitor teachers for dangerous behavior. In one case, school administrators in Seattle received at least 30 warnings that a fifth grade teacher was a danger to his students. However, thanks to a union contract that forces schools to destroy most personnel records after each school year, he managed to evade punishment for nearly 20 years, until he was finally sent to prison in 2005 for having molested as many as 13 girls. As an attorney for one of the victims put it, according to The Seattle Times, “You could basically have a pedophile in your midst and not know it. How are you going to get rid of somebody if you don't know what they did in the past?”

[Guest Guest]

Teachers union bigs tossed from Albany eatery as rep Paul Egan wonders: Where's the beef?

 

BY KENNETH LOVETT

DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALBANY - Cops booted an unruly group of city teachers union officials from a posh Albany eatery after they caused a ruckus over their dinner tab, the Daily News has learned.

 

Paul Egan, the union's political and legislative director, set off the fracas - claiming the quail he was served, and finished, wasn't large enough - sources said.

 

Egan and about two dozen other members of the United Federation of Teachers spread over three tables at the swank bistro Marché inside 74 State, a boutique hotel down the block from the state Capitol.

 

And with Egan apparently worked into a froth over the size of his quail in the $40 prix fixe meal, union members looked on without paying the group's bill.

 

Egan began shouting and demanded to see the manager. The restaurant's owner soon appeared, and pleaded with Egan to calm down, sources said.

 

When he didn't, restaurant staffers called the cops.

 

Two officers were dispatched to handle a man who was "yelling and refusing to leave," Albany Detective James Miller said.

 

"There was a dispute over the bill," Miller said. "They were refusing to pay."

 

Miller said members of the party-hearty crew identified themselves to cops as union reps, and he noted Egan "was pretty irate and agitated."

 

To hustle the scene-makers out of the dining room, restaurant managers reduced the bill for the group's prix fixe dinners, Miller said.

 

Officers told Egan the dispute was a civil matter and ordered him to pay the bill - to which he followed up by asking if he was required to leave a tip, sources said.

 

"It was explained he needed to pay the bill and leave because he and the group were causing a disturbance," Miller said.

 

With the tab finally tallied, cops told the union honchos to hit the road.

 

"They all had to stand up and walk out the door with the cops behind them," one source said. "It was mortifying. It was like they had to slink out the door."

 

Police made no arrests, nor did they file an official report about the incident.

 

Egan could not be reached yesterday and a union spokesman said they are looking into the matter. The restaurant also stayed mum about the fireworks.

 

Union officials and district leaders were in Albany to testify yesterday before a legislative budget committee - and to lobby lawmakers.

 

UFT boss Michael Mulgrew told The News he was not at the dinner and said he was unaware of the incident.

 

"I have to go look into it, because I have no idea what you're presenting me with here," he said.

 

A source with ties to the union said it's not the first time Egan has been kicked out of a restaurant after making a scene.

 

"He's done this more than once, though he never got escorted out by the police before that I know of," the source said.

 

The source recounted Egan loudly complaining during a Christmas-time lunch that he didn't get enough meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

 

In the end, Egan was bounced from the city eatery but not before the owner tore up his check, the source said.

[Guest Guest]

ANNALS OF EDUCATION

 

The Rubber Room

The battle over New York City’s worst teachers.

by Steven Brill

 

 

One school principal has said that Randi Weingarten, of the teachers’ union,“would protect a dead body in the classroom.”

 

 

 

In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: “Children are fragile. Handle with care.” It’s a June morning, and there are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.

These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.

The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.

[Guest Guest]

Am I late for the meeting of the people who have miserable lives who like to blame the success of others for their misery?

[Guest Guest]

Nancy Pelosi came out in support of the Wisconson tchrs. Jesse Jackson and Richard Trumka just gave speeches of support for them. Just another resson to bein favor of Wisconson's governor.

[Guest Guest]

Am I late for the meeting of the people who have miserable lives who like to blame the success of others for their misery?

 

Success of others? You mean the successful workers in the private sector who earn large amounts of money without fleecing the taxpayer? Nope, you're just in time.

[Guest Guest]

Nancy Pelosi came out in support of the Wisconson tchrs. Jesse Jackson and Richard Trumka just gave speeches of support for them. Just another resson to bein favor of Wisconson's governor.

If you stayed in school, learned how to spell and had gotten a decent job you might appreciate the educational system much more than you do now.

[Guest Guest]

Success of others? You mean the successful workers in the private sector who earn large amounts of money without fleecing the taxpayer? Nope, you're just in time.

Fleecing? lol You should have made better life decisions. Your jealousy is apparent.

[Guest Guest]

Walk into the bathroom: that's right move right in front of the reflective object, that would be a mirror. Now look closely at it. OK now go call mommy and tell her you have officially meet a liberal douchebag,right in your own bathroom!

 

 

How'd you get in there?!? What a DICKWAD.

[Thinkingguest]

Ok so to all of you who said we will not have riots like the Middle east in the USA, you were right. It will not be in one location it will be all over the country. Lets see cut wages and do away with unions. Gas going up. Food costing more. Cotton up 150%. Housing prices down. Unemployment now at 10% but really at 20%. Yes right now is a great time in America if you are at the top. 3 3 1 start

[Guest Guest]

O Yes right now is a great time in America if you are at the top. 3 3 1 start

 

 

3 3 1 start? God help us. You need to keep in mind what the Republicans are doing is what the people of Wisconsin elected them to do. Republicans are standing their ground and representing their constituents. The cowardly democrats left the state. How can it be anymore plain then that.

[Guest Guest]

Paying Teachers to Do Nothing

New York City was once home to the infamous rubber room — a place where teachers awaiting disciplinary measures were sent to twiddle their thumbs while still receiving full pay as their grievances went through the system — but now it has an even bigger problem on its hands: The city spends more than $100 million every year paying teachers who have been excessed but have yet to find jobs.

 

The ironclad union contract requires that any teacher with tenure be paid their full salary and benefits if they are sent to the “Absent Teacher Reserve pool,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The average pay of a teacher in that pool? $82,000 a year. Some of the teachers have been in the pool since 2006. According to the Journal, the majority of teachers in the pool had “neither applied for another job in the system nor attended any recruitment fairs in recent months.”

 

This is what the union wants: To keep teachers on the payroll regardless of whether or not they are doing any work or needed by the school district. Why? As long as they are on the payroll, they keep paying union dues. The union doesn’t care about the children who will be hurt by this misallocation of funds — think of all the new textbooks $100 million would buy. All union leaders care about is protecting their members and, by extension, their coffers.

 

If you were getting 82K to sit and watch Oprah and eat bonbons all day, why the hell would you go out and try to find a job?

 

The teacher's union cares about children? Sure, just like the United Auto Workers union cares about cars.

[Bee]

I'm shocked at the anti-union sentiment reflected here. Workers in Wisconsin are up in arms and demonstrating in increasing numbers their displeasure with the plan to do away with some collective bargaining rights. I dunno, it's almost as if everyone posting is the CEO of a large corporation....(So many more unions than ones that protect teachers).

[Guest Guest]

An the Wisconsin democrats are doing what US Senate republicans did, block legislation they don't like

[Guest Guest]

3 3 1 start? God help us. You need to keep in mind what the Republicans are doing is what the people of Wisconsin elected them to do. Republicans are standing their ground and representing their constituents. The cowardly democrats left the state. How can it be anymore plain then that.

lol It is obvious you don't know the whole story. They are giving tax breaks to businesses that is more expensive than the money they want to cut from the schools.