The quote of a quote within the headline is from NY Times, here, on the nationwide orchestrated let's-look-at-their-pay-levels attack on public worker remuneration. Restiveness and labor trauma is good theater. Other news is slow today beyond Wheeler's murder, where things likely will go unresolved -- body found at Delaware dump being the main story with it traced to a New Jersey garbage truck route - a classic get rid of the body in a dumpster situation (e.g., this Google News page - do you suppose he was the Wikileaker and this is clandestine payback?).
Aside from that, back to the Times reporting, this excerpt:
Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE - Published: January 3, 2011
State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets. On Wednesday, for example, New York’s new Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is expected to call for a one-year salary freeze for state workers, a move that would save $200 million to $400 million and challenge labor’s traditional clout in Albany.
But in some cases — mostly in states with Republican governors and Republican statehouse majorities — officials are seeking more far-reaching, structural changes that would weaken the bargaining power and political influence of unions, including private sector ones.
For example, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.
Some new governors, most notably Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are even threatening to take away government workers’ right to form unions and bargain contracts.
“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”
Many of the proposals may never become law. But those that do are likely to reduce union influence in election campaigns, with reverberations for both parties.
In the 2010 elections, Republicans emerged with seven more governor’s mansions and won control of the legislature in 26 states, up from 14. That swing has put unions more on the defensive than they have been in decades.
Many of the state officials pushing for union-related changes say they want to restore some balance, arguing that unions have become too powerful, skewing political campaigns with their large war chests and throwing state budgets off kilter with their expensive pension plans.
But labor leaders view these efforts as political retaliation by Republicans upset that unions recently spent more than $200 million to defeat Republican candidates.
“I see this as payback for the role we played in the 2010 elections,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the main union of state employees.
“Now there’s a bull’s-eye on our back, and they’re out to inflict pain,” he said.
In an internal memorandum, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. warned that in 16 states, Republican lawmakers would seek to starve public sector unions of money by requiring each government worker to “opt in” before that person’s dues money could be used for political activities.
“In the long run, if these measures deprive unions of resources, it will cut them off at their knees. They’ll melt away,” said Charles E. Wilson, a law professor at Ohio State University.
Of all the new governors, John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, appears to be planning the most comprehensive assault against unions. He is proposing to take away the right of 14,000 state-financed child care and home care workers to unionize. He also wants to ban strikes by teachers, much the way some states bar strikes by the police and firefighters.
“If they want to strike, they should be fired,” Mr. Kasich said in a speech.
[italics added] Stoke the flames of unrest, distrust, class animosity, fear and loathing. It's the GOP after all, doing what it knows best. Krugman addressed the situation as a thinly-fabricated hoax of the right, in a NY Times op-ed, "Schoolteachers Driving Cadillacs," and there was what looks to be a foreseeable coordinated right-wing backlash; e.g., here, here and here, with both sides stoking the fire, here, republishing Krugman's essay, for example. (It's absurd, schoolteachers if that wealthy would more likely want BMW's or Porsche Cayennes, but to the Tea Party base "Cadillac" has gut-level instinctive meaning while resonating undamped in the well-developed reptilian levels of Tea Party hind-brain and brainstems.)
Krugman's op-ed ends well, this screenshot:
In Minnesota, in local government, is the pie sliced the same or is payroll a bigger part of things? I suppose you ask Diana Lund, Ramsey's CFO, and she would have actual numbers.
While anecdotal evidence is always questionable as to universal applicability, there is this still online reporting by ABC Newspapers about the chief city administrator's compensation in East Bethel (smaller for now than Ramsey in population), and to me those numbers simply are quite out of line with the job, and with private sector pay, leaving aside questions of feather-bed benefits.
My understanding (readers please correct me if I am wrong) is that statewide guidelines exist for local governments; if not a binding labor relations agreement in place negotiated at state level; and I know that when James Norman was City Administrator of Ramsey he was paid over a hundred grand to wreak pure mischief and havoc, so the "right" side of the argument is not without its convincing evidence.
My guess is that at local government levels where town councils are virtually volunteer operations (the stipends are minimal, the work hard, and benefits go lacking); those tasked with day-to-day implementation of policy set by the boards and councils arguably are overpaid.
So, bring on the Pinkertons, to crack those evolution-teaching Cadillac'ers across the forehead with billy-clubs, over their outlandish prosperity. Knock some sense in them in the process.
Or don't.
But be aware that these rumblings have been building like some kind of earthquake or volcanic pre-shock pattern, and it's not the news reporters producing manipulating propaganda that they then report as news - it is puppet string-pulling at levels away from that.
Krugman again, this link.
Partisan links here, here, here, here and here.
___________UPDATE___________
Pawlenty op-ed, here (watch-out big-time, Rupert Murdoch owns WSJ now, as well as FOX). Krugman's rejoinder naming Pawlenty as a "humbug," here (and here). Pawlenty "pants on fire," here. Rand Paul, "False," not "pants on fire," here. Weekly Standard, here. Also see: Here. Here.
The detail that makes some sense to me, seemingly objective in its presentation - of all things data instead of opinion - is a link given in the main post. (However, it's Breitbart so take it with a grain of salt - here; this screenshot [with site-reader comments omitted]):
The problem: What unknown bias or error lies behind the numbers in that listing, when the man uses another person's chart and attributed numbers while his link (here) presents only the chart without the tabulated data.
The chart itself clearly is showing federal employment trending up in 2008 [last Bushco year], with the same slope continuing into early Obama time, (i.e., no disruptive change shown). But, then the slope clearly is decreasing, the rate of growth lessening, and the "census spike corrected" graph shows a leveling off under Obama, at around the 2010 ending data timeframe, etc. So, the jury is still out on reining in federal government growth - military and clandestine communities included and the airport scanner operators, foreign embassy workers, etc. Or not? We don't know what cleansing or adjusting parameters were used - military included/excluded, foreign nationals employed by foreign service in or outside of the numbers, etc.
It is all left out and needed to understand the validity of data.
Concerning validity checking: The Ramsey council, for example, says it has kept taxes in check, but it was done by spending reserves down with hand-waving about when the Clown Center is built out the money's going to be recouped. ("If" is the actual operative word, not "when"). So, when you see the council Tarzan calling throughout their jungle about their tax control, know the full picture and then judge the performance.
Now if essential data are likewise hidden in the entire government sector employment debate with different commentators hiding different parts of the entire story, then nobody's version can be fully believable and it becomes a matter of faith and swaying argument, not fact.
What I do know, there are two Ramsey fire houses, and I have heard stories of suitable response while having seen effort against a wetland cattails fire between Ramsey Blvd and Variolite. So, that part of paid-for local government works well. We live on a side street, low in rank sometimes in the plowing hierarchy, and the crown on the tarred roads and unevenness prevents 100% removal, especially what traffic has compacted before the plow arrives. And the guy always plows a strip of lawn about two feet beyond the road side, into lawn area. The driveway end gets plowed in with heavy snow needing removal. But that's limitations of the process itself, not how it is done. The streets get plowed. The firemen and public works people get paid for their work. There is a police chief, office staff and patrol, and they get paid. All that's the norm, private sector too.
Bottom line, taxes buy services when you look at the part of the balance sheet and income statements apart from office staff levels, spending on speculative real estate venturings, and all other debatable or questionable things not a part of normal and expected and justifiable government expenss (in particular real estate speculation via consultants and/or staff, consultants being the worse of things).
Put the Town Center fiasco aside and all the cash wasted there, along with questions about depleting reserves further to buy a third water tower, and apart from that Ramsey's done okay on scheduled public works such as road maintenance [sealing and the road-tar schedule].
A debate statewide over whether a city administrator and an assistant city administrator are needed when there are also department heads reporting to the city administrator, can be made with merit. It looks to be feather-bedding of an unneeded kind. I think much of Heidi Nelson's time - indeed too much - is spent on holding Darren's hand while he wastes resources chasing dreams; yet she's also held other management duties. The feather-bedding argument has to be made, pro and con, and examined, since the ABC newspaper reporting about the East Bethel situation mentions the assistantship position existing there. Is it some kind of statewide organizational thing? Can any reader help on that? Part of a collective bargaining agreement reached above the local government level, or at the local level?
All such questions need firm, correct, and prominent public answers before the debate over public sector employment size and growth can be rationally addressed. For now, it's emotional finger-pointing and mud-slinging, and Pawlenty's put his WSJ thing into that hopper, for his purposes, saying what it says, etc. Expect that you've not yet heard the end of this direction of discourse. Discourse, smack-down, whatever it becomes, it is on its leading edge, not the trailing edge after peaking. Stay tuned.
____________FURTHER UPDATE______________
The Darrens at all levels of government (i.e., Landform as contract consultants, as was Tinklenberg Group earlier) has been noted as a part of the "size of government" debate apart from the remuneration of public sector employees; e.g., here (with links omitted):
Obama has been roundly criticized for adopting the flimsy notion of jobs “saved” (rather than created) in defense of his stimulus bill. But if “saved” jobs has any meaning at all, it now seems clear that the stimulus bill’s transfer of $220 billion to state and local governments “saved” jobs only in the bloated and tax-dependent state and local government sector.
But all of this is far from the whole story of Obama era heedlessness. Anyone vaguely familiar with public sector budgeting knows that for years the federal government has been operating with a “shadow” workforce of millions of private contractors. According to New York University economist Paul C. Light, the number of federal contractors grew from an estimated 4.4 million in 1999 to more than 7.5 million by the end of the 2005 fiscal year. According to Light, “given the continued rise in federal procurement spending, the number of contractors is almost certainly higher today.”
A key part of the debate - Republicans when in control letting the payroll go down by attrition while diverting pubic money into the ready hands of crony private contractors (too often with actual or represented "connections" to get things done), is something happening but presently still under the radar.
And it's been a "bipartisan" abuse, not solely a GOP invention.
If those on payroll are replaced by crony consultants the situation is wrong. And, that "connection" thing also rankles. Tinklenberg said "Oberstar" a lot, and Jungbauer is a part of the Landform key people touted by the private-sector firm to Ramsey, in the process of insinuating itself into a cash flow position.
Tinklenberg's claimed for himself a DFL insider status. Jungbauer has GOP roots.
In both instances I believe public taxpayer money doled out to crony consultants represents a severe defect in how things are handled.
It's wrong, in my view. It should stop yesterday, in my view. Both sides do it. Each should stop.
FURTHER UPDATE: One more link, I do not think I am repeating one given earlier, here. Minnesota (however it's based - state employment only or state and local) is one of the states with a lower percentage of public sector employment - reported by the item's author as 12.8%.
There is a link over to this detailed downloadable item. If you download it, (I did not), do not read it inattentively. Read it skeptically, looking for wherever it might show glide-and-slide dimensions, or else don't bother reading it at all.