Cuomo Administration: Middle Class Is $300,000 A Year, Upper Middle Is $500,000

The Cuomo administration explaining its "middle class tax cuts":

In defense of new regressive tax cuts in the most economically unequal state in America, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide tonight told the Journal News that those making $500,000 a year are merely “upper middle class” and those making $300,000 a year are “middle class.” In fact, the median household income in New York is $53,046 and in wealthy Westchester County it is $79,585. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, those making $500,000 a year salary are among the top 1 percent of New York’s earners. - Sirota

Yeah, middle class is $300,000 a year, upper middle class is $500,000 a year.

They must be talking about Eva Moskowitz, who makes over $475,000 a year.

Not too many people in that "middle class" tax bracket.

Andrew Cuomo, class warrior, cutting taxes for his wealthy campaign donors, then claiming he's helping out the "middle class."

The Class War Is Over - The Plutocrats Won

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon:

American conservatives love to attack anyone who raises the issue of worsening economic inequality for waging “class war.” Their compulsion to keep repeating that phrase is revealing in itself; it’s like the serial killer in a movie who can’t help returning to the scene of the crime. Because the only class war being waged in 21st-century America is the relentless, all-fronts struggle conducted by the rich against the poor.

Within the last week, we have learned that poverty remains at near-record levels in our supposedly affluent nation. Even amid a so-called economic recovery, nearly 22 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty, and the overall number of poor people reached an all-time high, at 46.5 million. Income inequality, meanwhile, is roughly twice as bad as it was in the 1970s, reaching a level never seen before in this country or any other industrialized nation. The top 1 percent of Americans now bring home almost 20 percent of the country’s annual income, and have seen their tax bills decline by almost half. Britain, which has pursued similar tax-cutting policies over the last 30-odd years, finds itself a distant second in inequality, with its top 1 percent of earners commanding about 10 percent of total income. So while we may be behind the Brits in public health, life expectancy and almost every other quality-of-life indicator, we still totally kick their asses when it comes to disgusting rich people.

Read the rest of the O'Hehir piece and think about the role our union leadership has played in the class war, especially in the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers.

Of course, if you have union leaders who see themselves as part of the elite here to negotiate the terms of exploitation of their members rather than protectors of the rank and file, perhaps the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers on so many different issues has been purposeful and conscious.

I tend to think the union elites and the corporate elites all play fight in public for us, then go back to the dressing room and yuck it up over cocktails and cocktail weenies.

In other words, they're bought off and the whole game is rigged.

But 13 years watching Randi Weingarten spin her horse@#$% has made me cynical.

Bloomberg Wasted Millions On 911 System

He tried to hide the waste, mocked an audit that was to look at his vaunted 911 system upgrades - and now we see why:

Less than a year after Mayor Bloomberg derided an audit of the 911 system as “stupid,” his own review revealed poor bookkeeping that resulted in up to $24 million in unnecessary payouts.

The KPMG review, commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Emergency Communications, concludes that contractor Hewlett-Packard was overpaid for upgrades of the emergency call system between 2005 and 2012. The mismanagement resulted in as much as $11.5 million in unnecessary payments for 217 invoices and 5,850 time sheets.

The entire cost overrun over seven years was set at $24 million.

The 25-page report was completed last November but not released publicly. It was obtained by the Daily News through a Freedom of Information Law request.

City Controller John Liu, who conducted the audit that the mayor mocked, saw vindication. “This audit very clearly lays out fraudulent billings,” he said.

The errors read like an accountant’s nightmare:

• Hours claimed on Hewlett-Packard invoices were greater than the hours approved in time sheets, costing as much as $4 million.

• Underqualified contractors were paid more than they deserved, projecting to $3.4 million in unnecessary costs.

• Documentation was often unavailable, leaving KPMG unable to determine whether the price tag on services provided was appropriate.

The emergency communications office said it agreed with the KPMG findings, and would “strengthen the invoice review process.”

Liu has for more than a year tangled with Bloomberg over the upgrade of the 911 system, which is overdue and overbudget. During the summer, 911 was prone to crashes.

The full upgrade of the 911 system, initially projected to cost $1.2 billion, has ballooned to more than $2 billion.

Liu, who is running for mayor, claims Hewlett-Packard owes taxpayers $163 million for overbilling uncovered in the audit conducted by his office last year.

Bloomberg last year called Liu’s charges against Hewlett-Packard “intellectually dishonest” and “stupid."Liu’s auditors found Hewlett-Packard charged the city $192 an hour for menial tasks like opening a door for visitors.

$192 an hour to open doors.

Nice work if you can get it.

Gee, how will the city get by without the fiscal genius of Mike Bloomberg?

I have said before, I will say again - if there was ever a truly independent accounting of Bloomberg's time in office here (as opposed to one he pays for or one done by an entity with some ties to either Bloomberg the Man, Bloomberg the Company Or Bloomberg the Philanthropy), they would find the billions wasted in this man's 12 years in office.

They would find all the data has been phonied up - from the crime stats to the emergency response times to the graduation rates and test scores.

Michael Bloomberg the Genius is a fraud - and yet, because he has more money than God, he is feted as a fiscal genius and a municipal visionary and the like.

That's all about the power of his wealth and the fundamental flaw we have in this country whereby we worship money and believe people with it have it because they are smart and innovative.

The truth is, people with Bloomberg's kind of money are cunning and ruthless - that's all.

That's how he's been able to fool people over the last 12 years into believing he has made this city better.

He has not.

He has increased income inequality, he has made the city into a playground for the rich and famous, he has moved poor people to the edges of the city or out of the city (those he terms the "less fortunate") so that he could bring in the "fortunate" (i.e., rich white people.)

He has waged class warfare for the 1% and largely won that war.

Because he is a media mogul and because he is a billionaire, the press do not give him the scrutiny they will almost certainly give to his successor.

But make no mistake, he has been a disaster for this city and the people in it.

Just look at all the privatized public spaces, corporate stores that replaced the mom and pop places, the luxury housing that has replaced whole swaths of the old city and ask yourself if this city is better for the 99% who can either barely afford to live here anymore or cannot afford to live here at all.

Democrats Keep Conceding - Obama Wants To Cut Social Security

 Same old same old.

Democrats keep conceding on all their so-called deal-breaker issues and keep giving the GOP everything they want in this fake "fiscal cliff crisis."

President Obama said he wouldn't accept any fiscal cliff deal that didn't raise taxes on families making more than $250,000.

Republicans balked at that level, so Dems raised that threshold to $400,000

But that wasn't good enough for Republicans either, so now Dems have agreed to raise taxes only on people making more than $450,000.

But that still isn't good enough for Republicans.

The Washington Post reports they are holding out for a $550,000 threshold, and since Dems have conceded on almost every other point, Republicans think they can get it.

In addition, Dems were demanding estate taxes go up from their low levels, but Republicans have fought that and the Post reports the following:

Democrats also relented on the politically sensitive issue of the estate tax, according to a detailed account of the Democratic offer obtained by The Washington Post. They promised instead to hold a vote in the Senate that would guarantee that taxes on inherited estates remain at their current low levels, a key GOP demand.

One point Dems have so far held their ground is on Social Security - but only because they plan to use Social Security cuts as a future bargaining chip.

Republicans want to change the way inflation increases are calculated so that Social Security recipients will get less money each year - this way, there will be more money for tax cuts for rich people.

President Obama is a big fan of this change as well, having made the offer as part of the Grand Bargain he tried to make with John Boehner a few years ago as well as part of the Grander Bargain he tried to make with Boehner a few weeks ago.

But Senate Dems fought changing that calculation in this part of the fiscal cliff negotiation and Republicans dropped the demand, realizing that fighting to cut Social Security while simultaneously fighting tax increases on rich people wasn't a winning political strategy.

Don't worry GOPers - according to the Washington Post, the president and his merry men and women plan to give you those cuts to Social Security in short order:

 Obama had offered to include chained CPI in the big deficit-reduction package he had been negotiating with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) earlier this month. Obama endorsed the idea again Sunday, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” calling it a tough decision he was willing to make “in pursuit of strengthening Social Security for the long term.”

But many Democrats say they would go along with the idea only as part of a far-reaching deal that also included at least $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over the next decade. The deal under discussion Sunday would raise far less than that, somewhere between $600 billion and $800 billion.

“Chained CPI should be part of the larger discussion about the future of Social Security,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), “not just a casual bargaining chip here at the last minute.”

So Obama and the Dems plan a sell-out on Social Security and they, like Republicans, want to make sure older people live on generic dog food and food pantry offerings - they just want to get more from Republicans in the bargain.

Where are all those liberals and progressives, the ones who said they would hold Obama to his alleged progressive principles after his re-election, the ones who said Romney would be an "unthinkable" alternative to Obama?

They are effectively silent as Obama and the Dems concede on every major point and get ready to sell out working and middle class Americans so that the wealthy and the corporations - the 1% - can continue to rape and pillage the rest of us.

So far, Obama has cut food stamps in order to fund his Race to the Top education reforms, is going to force Americans without health care to buy shitty private insurance, is looking to cut Social Security and Medicare, and has promoted public school privatization.

In the foreign affairs sphere, Obama murders innocents every month in drone bombs strikes - including children just like the ones killed in that awful Sandy Hook shooting earlier in the month.

He has a "kill list" and has declared he can murder any American at any time for any reason if the government suspects - just suspects - that person is guilty of terrorism.

He has extended warrantless wiretapping and expanded the state surveillance apparatus in the name of "keeping us safe," and has condoned the torture of Bradley Manning after declaring publicly that Manning is guilty of a crime the government hadn't yet tried him for.

And let's not forget how Obama's DOJ and DHS helped coordinate the Occupy Wall Street crackdowns all across the country.

I get the part about Romney being a horrific president.

But considering his record in both domestic and foreign affairs, Barack Obama is pretty horrific too.

Oh well - thank God we got him re-elected instead of that "unthinkable" alternative.

We'll make sure we hold him accountable to his campaign promises and alleged progressive principles, won't we?

Career Opportunities

I won't open letter bombs for you!

Which Side Are You On?

Inflation Is Rising, Pay Isn't

From the Kaplan Test Prep Post:

Inflation is back, with higher prices for food and fuel hammering American consumers, and this time it really hurts.

It’s not just that prices are rising, it’s that wages aren’t.

Previous bouts of inflation have usually meant a wage-price spiral, as pay and prices chase each other ever upward. But now paychecks are falling farther and farther behind. In the past three months, consumer prices have been rising at a 5.7 percent annual rate while average weekly wages have barely budged, increasing at only a 1.3 percent annual rate.

And the particular prices that are rising are for products that people encounter most frequently in their daily lives and have the least flexibility to avoid. For the most part, it’s not computers and cars that are getting more expensive, it’s gasoline, which is up 19 percent in the past year, ground beef, up 10 percent, and butter, up 23 percent.

Inflation is typically the symptom of an economy overheating. Workers can’t keep up with the demand for the vast array of things they make. Abundant dollars pursue scarce goods and services, forcing prices and wages up. The solution is simple enough: Central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, hike interest rates, applying brakes to the economy.

But the current price spike is in some ways more pernicious than the last great U.S. inflation — the steep increases of the 1970s — and harder for policymakers to address. Today, raising interest rates might make a weak economy even weaker, stifling what meager growth there’s been in wages. Moreover, higher interest would make the nation’s massive budget deficits even more expensive to finance, taking an additional toll on the economy.

Few would argue that the U.S. economy, with its 8.9 percent unemployment rate, is overheating at the moment. Rather, the global economy — in particular developing nations such as China and India — is growing so rapidly that it’s straining the available supplies of all types of raw materials.

Yeah, maybe China and India are gobbling up all the available supplies of raw materials and thus causing the rise in prices.

Or maybe all the banksters Helicopter Ben has been showering with Federal Reserve largesse are creating a commodities bubble with all that cheap money.

I suspect it's number two on the menu, but either way, the vast majority of people are going to be screwed by rising prices and stagnant wages.

In the past, the oligarchs have been able to turn that anger against poor people, ethnic people and lately public employees and union members.

But that's get harder to do as it becomes clearer and clearer that the top 5%, who now own almost 64% of the country's wealth, are doing pretty swell while it's the rest of us who are suffering and falling behind.

Sarah Palin Tells Unions To "Tone It Down"

Yeah, I'm not kidding - the woman who put killshot diagrams over congress members she wanted "taken out" says union members better tone down the rhetoric or somebody's gonna get hurt:

Sarah Palin on Thursday flipped around a line that was used against her not long ago, calling on union supporters to tone down the rhetoric in Wisconsin “so nobody gets hurt.”

After saying that union bosses were “acting like thugs,” Palin told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that it is the responsibility of the unions “to turn down the rhetoric and get truth out there so nobody gets hurt.”

Mama Grizzly Bear wants some truth - okay, here's some:

The neoconservative and neoliberal forces are waging class warfare on middle and working class Americans to chain us to the New Feudal Order.

Now middle and working class Americans are fighting back

There's some truth for you.

Michael Moore: Once Wall Street Saw They Could Get Away With The 2008 Collapse...

I have said for a long time now that when the Obama administration DELIBERATELY shied away from holding ANYBODY in finance or on Wall Street accountable for the financial collapse they created in 2007-2008, they were laying the groundwork for continued looting of the country by the banking and corporate criminal class.

So far, few on the left seem willing to tie Obama to what has happened in Wisconsin, Ohio, Idaho and elsewhere as the corporate oligarchs put the finishing nails into the coffins of working and middle class.

But Michael Moore has:

Once the Republicans and the corporate power structure saw that they could get away with the looting of the federal Treasury and taking millions of homes from people, they got away with that, and there was no revolt, there was no uprising, there was nothing. And Obama comes in there, and he appoints one of them as our Treasury secretary. Nothing, silence. Well, if you were a big shot on Wall Street, Amy, and you saw that—"Oh, my god! We just like got billions of bailout money. We now are getting the Fed to print what will eventually be trillions for us. We’ve thrown a million families out on the curb, foreclosing on them. And they just don’t do anything. They don’t do anything"—as with any criminal, what does that tell the criminal, if the criminal is not stopped, caught, punished for the crime that they’ve committed? They will keep committing the crime.

Indeed, they will.

And that's exactly what they have been doing these past two years.

Now Obama is NEVER going to take these people on,

He's too busy raising money for re-election from corporate types and listening to his new chief of staff, former JP Morgan Chase exec William Daley, to do that.

So working and middle class people are going to have to do it themselves.

And they're going to have to find ways to BACK the politicians who have backed them up while punishing the ones who haven't.

Today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the problem in Wisconsin is that everybody needs to sacrifice but GOPers only want working and middle class people to sacrifice.

No, Jay, that ISN'T the problem.

The problem is the income disparity in this nation that has the richest 400 people in the country owning more wealth than the bottom 150 million.

That's the problem.

Until that problem is rectified, these people are going to grab more and more power and more and wealth.

As School Matters pointed out today, Gates is grabbing more and more power in education by using his wealth to promote his privatization agenda.

You know, we could solve two problems with one stone by hitting Bill Gates with a righteous, Reagan-Era tax bill instead of letting him outsource his company to tax havens like the Caymans and Ireland, make him pay billions more in tax revenue AND force him to spend less on education reform.

It's a win-win for the country AND the kids.

And of course Obama will NEVER do it.

He's too busy touring charter schools with Melinda Gates and talking about market-based reforms to do what's right.

Please, folks, remember that come 2012.

Politicians only do what you want WHEN YOU MAKE THEM.

So let's make Obama stand up for the working and middle class people he said he would stand up for back in 2008.

Remember When?

Bloomberg Bristles At Liu's Study Of Private/Public Employee Benefits

John Liu released a study of the pay and benefits of public employees compared to private employees today.

Here is what he found:

Employees of New York City’s public agencies are older and better educated but are paid less than their counterparts in the private sector, according to a study released on Wednesday by the office of the city comptroller, John C. Liu.

The study, conducted by the comptroller’s chief economist, Frank Braconi, found that the pay gap between the public and private sectors was reversed for less-educated workers, though. City employees who did not attend college earn about 13 percent more than workers with similar educations in the private sector, Mr. Braconi estimated. But city workers with graduate or professional degrees are paid about 16 percent less than their peers in the private sector, he estimated

Nearly half of city employees — 49 percent — have four-year college degrees, compared with just 41 percent of workers in the private sector, according to the study. But the city workers earn slightly less than $55,000 a year, on average, while the private-sector employees make an average of more than $66,000 a year.

A recent analysis of census data for The New York Times found that, since 1990, the median wage of state workers without college degrees had surpassed the median wage private-sector workers, but the wages of college-educated state employees had fallen further behind the pay of their private-sector peers. In New York state, the analysis found, state employees without college degrees earned almost one-third more than their peers in the private sector, while state employees with college degrees earned 4.5 percent less than their private-sector peers.

The value of health insurance plans, pensions and other benefits is often assumed to make up for the pay gap, but Mr. Braconi found that that was not generally true for the city’s 306,000 employees. Over all, he said, the cost to the city of contributing to its employees’ retirement is “roughly equivalent” to a corporation’s cost for contributing to a standard defined-contribution retirement plan.

The study is the first research published as part of Retirement Security NYC, Mr. Liu’s initiative to delve into the thorny political issue of public employee pensions. “These findings about municipal salaries are an important foundation for any discussion about public employee pensions,” Mr. Liu said. “The issue of retirement needs to be looked at in the context of the overall compensation package earned by public employees.”

So Liu's study finds that public employees with college degrees are actually UNDERPAID compared to their private sector counterparts, even when you take into account their benefit packages.

How did the Mayor of Money react to the study that Liu released today?

Defensively and with snark, of course:

Asked about Mr. Liu’s study, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “I have absolutely no idea where he gets those numbers; the last I’ve checked, his job was to audit the city’s books.”

Then the mayor added: “We’re not trying to pit one group against another. We’re trying to make sure that everyone in New York City has a good job and that they get to enjoy the American dream.”

Oh, sure , no divisiveness from the Mayor of Money, the guy who has pitted the rich vs. everybody else with his tax and development policies, veteran teacher vs. younger teachers with his layoff threats, and Manhattan vs. the Outer Boroughs with his snow removal.

Nor no class warfare from Bloomberg and his media cronies like Mort Zuckerman - the guy who said that 21st century America is divided between the "Haves" (public employees) and the "Have Nots" (everybody else.)

You notice how these guys always go to the "Let's not start a class war!" when they get called onto the carpet with facts and data for their policies that clearly favor the rich and elite over the middle and working classes?

Meanwhile they've been waging class warfare for the last 35 years, squeezing wages, eroding work protections and benefits, busting unions, and setting up a system that favors the very few over everybody else.

Hey, Moneybags, you love stats.

You always say the stats don't lie.

How come you don't like these stats?

NY Times Poll Shows Support For Public Workers Unions

The corporate media - owned by corporate elites like Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch, and Michael Bloomberg or huge conglomerates like Comcast, Viacom and Disney - like to portray the country as a place divided between the "haves" (members of public employees unions with cushy jobs, great benefits, good pay and job protections) and the "have nots" (the rest of us without that stuff.)

They say that the rest of America is sick and tired of these unionized public employees with their "gold-plated benefits and pay" and want to bust them (see here for an example from Mort Zuckerman in US News.)

Just watch the cable news networks, even the supposedly "liberal" MSNBC, and you'll hear a bunch of corporate shills dish dirt on unions as "special interests" that most of America no longer supports.

Of all the public sector unions, teachers unions get special attention from corporate media types on both the right and left.

But the NY Times did a little poll about this issue and found the following:

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Labor unions are not exactly popular, though: A third of those surveyed viewed them favorably, a quarter viewed them unfavorably, and the rest said they were either undecided or had not heard enough about them. But the nationwide poll found that embattled public employee unions have the support of most Americans — and most independents — as they fight the efforts of newly elected Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to weaken their bargaining powers, and the attempts of governors from both parties to cut their pay or benefits.

Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them.

Those surveyed said they opposed, 56 percent to 37 percent, cutting the pay or benefits of public employees to reduce deficits, breaking down along similar party lines. A majority of respondents who have no union members living in their households opposed both cuts in pay or benefits and taking away the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Governors in both parties have been making the case that public workers are either overpaid or have overly generous health and pension benefits. But 61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Feb. 24-27 with 984 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all adults. Of those surveyed, 20 percent said there was a union member in their household, and 25 percent said there was a public employee in their household.

OK, so this poll has a MOE of 3%, which is a helluva lot less than the 12%-35% margins of error the new teacher ratings systems have, so I think we can safely say that we now have hard data to show that Mort Zuckerman, Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the corporate class warriors may NOT be speaking for the country at large like they say they are.

In fact, they speak for themselves, and as corporate moguls with union-busting histories themselves and business interests that are served by powerless employees, they WANT people to think they speak for America at large.

But it looks very much like Americans are starting to wake up to the fact that a teacher in Rhode Island with 15 years seniority making $60,000 a year isn't receiving "gold-plated benefits."

This is good to see.

The fight in Wisconsin is exposing quite a few of the biases of the corporate media, especially the shills who work for Murdoch, Zuckerman and Bloomberg, but it is also providing us with evidence that many Americans think unionized public sector workers are receiving fair wages and benefits and do NOT support the busting of these unions or the downgrading of the wages or benefits that these workers receive.

Another thing we have seen as a result of the fight in Wisconsin is how union workers AND non-union workers are coming together to support the rights of ALL workers.

Watching 100,000 people protest Scott Walker's union-busting policies in Wisconsin has galvanized many in the middle and working classes to begin to FIGHT BACK in the class war being waged by the corporatists.

This is so interesting because I think the Walkers and Bloombergs and Zuckermans and Murdochs think they have this war won and they're just putting the final nails in the feudal chains right now.

And that certainly WAS the case before these past few weeks when protests in SUPPORT of unions and workers have erupted ALL over the country.

Wisconsin was SUPPOSED to be the beginning of the end for public employees unions.

Instead, it is the BEGINNING of the GREAT AWAKENING of the middle and working classes to the class war that has been waged against them for the last 30 years.

As a member of a teachers union in NYC, as the son of unionized policeman and the grandson of a unionized trackman, I couldn't be happier to see this.

As Victor Laszlo told Rick Blaine in Casablanca "Welcome back to the fight."

Unions Try And Snatch Defeat Before Battle Is Over

Read Ohio Gringo at Firedoglake.

I agree with him.

The fight in Wisconsin is not about Republican vs. Democrat.

It's about class warfare - the Ruling Class vs. the Rest of Us.

Period.

The Oligrachs think they're at the endgame.

They're putting the final clamps on the feudal chains.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC can talk R vs. D shit all she wants.

It has NOTHING to do with that.

Hell, lots of Dems - Obama and Cuomo come to mind - are engaged in fights against the unions that are the same as Walker's in conception, if not in degree.

This is simply about class warfare.

Unfortunately the unions in Wisconsin HAVE ALREADY agreed to ALL of Waalker's concession calls on pay, health care, and pensions.

Talk about giving up the fight before the war is halfway over.

This is an egregious mistake, but not a surprise from this member of the UFT/AFT who watches his own union snatch defeat from the jaws of victory time after time in the battle against management.

The correct way to fight this was to say:

IF THE GOVERNMENT CAN BAIL OUT THE BANKS, THE CAR COMPANIES, THE MORTGAGE COMPANIES AND HOLD NOT ONE OF THE WALL STREET OR HEDGE FUND CRIMINAL CLASS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE 2008 FINANCIAL COLLAPSE, THEN THEY CAN NEGOTIATE IN FAIRNESS WITH MIDDLE AND WORKING CLASS PUBLIC WORKERS ON PAY, BENEFITS AND PENSIONS.

That's it - that's all you have to do to frame this fight.

People KNOW Wall Street got away with murder in 2008.

People KNOW, if the unions would bother reminding them, that the financial crises in the states were NOT caused by public employees but by the financial speculators and corporate criminals who nearly brought about financial collapse in 2007-2008.

Instead, the unions are saying, oh we'll give you everything you want EXCEPT for the right to collectively bargain.

Well, in effect you give away that right anyway by giving away all of these concessions BEFORE negotiations even start.

Yes, I understand, the union leadership thinks this will help win the P.R. war.

But the problem is that it concedes that the PROBLEM in Wisconsin is with the public employee pay and compensation when that is JUST NOT TRUE.

Wisconsin has a well-funded pension system, the state finances are in better shape then many states and the economy is okay given the horrors of 2008.

No, the problem in Wisconsin is that the 2008 financial collapse did to the state finances what it did to people and institutions all across the country - it decimated it.

And that is NOT the fault of public employees.

That is the fault of these criminals that Matt Taibbi writes about in his aptly titled "Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail" piece in the latest Rolling Stone.

That ought to be the message here going forward - not just for Wisconsin, but in Florida and Ohio and Tennessee and New York City.

Not only is that message the best one to send, it happens TO BE TRUE.

What Wisconsin Means For The Rest Of Us

The corporate scum at CNBC explain why the corporatists are cheering on Scott Walker and worried that the unions and union supporters will prevail in Wisconsin:

The mass protests from state workers in Wisconsin and the revolt by Democrats in the state Senate should set off alarm bells for investors in municipal bonds.

One of the strongest arguments against fears of a wave of muni bond defaults is that state governments will be able to reign in their need to accumulate debt before a crisis develops. That would require states to reign in spending—especially health care spending—and pension fund obligations.

...

Wisconsin is not in imminent danger of defaulting on its bonds. Although tax revenues dropped in the wake of the financial crisis, Wisconsin’s economy is healthier than many other states.

But a victory by the unions in Wisconsin could embolden state workers in states with far worse finances. Politicians worried about similar revolts might consider it better politics to force muni bond holders to accept haircuts. After all, hedge fund and mutual fund managers are not likely to fill the streets of the state capital or win the sympathy of members of the state legislatures.

Much of the bullish case for munis depends on the belief that states and localities will behave rationally and predictably when it comes to their debt payments. In Wisconsin, however, we’re seeing these assumptions fall apart. Political risk is alive and well.

As usual, this political fight pits Wall Street and hedge fund criminals on one side, working and middle class people on the other.

And the hedge fund managers and Wall Street criminal class are WORRIED that the union fight in Wisconsin will spread to other states and other municipalities.

Well, they ought to be worried.

Here in NYC, Mayor Moneybags has decided that even if the state gives more money to the city, he is STILL GOING TO LAY TEACHERS OFF.

Do you understand that logic?

$2.1 billion in extra tax revenue for 2011, NYC economy looking up, the city has over a $3 billion dollar surplus and the state may very well come around with more money for the city, but Bloomberg STILL INSISTS HE HAS TO LAY TEACHERS OFF NO MATTER WHAT.

Just as in Wisconsin, which actually doesn't have that bad a deficit problem (and a previous Democratic governor was able to handle a worse deficit problem without the harsh measures Walker is imposing), Bloomberg here in NYC is USING THE SUPPOSED FISCAL CRISIS TO WRANGLE POLITICAL CHANGES THAT ARE DESIGNED TO DESTROY THE MIDDLE AND WORKING CLASSES AND UNIONS.

That's it - that's what all this is about, whether you're talking Wisconsin, New York City, Tennessee, Florida - wherever.

It's about destroying the unions and subjugating the middle and working classes to an oppressive future where they will have to work longer and harder to make a lot less money, have worse health care and diminished expectations for retirement.

It's CLASS WARFARE.

So this fight in Wisconsin is REALLY, REALLY important.

It scares corporate scum because so far, they have gotten everything they wanted from people - concessions, economic exploitation - without a fight.

But now they're seeing some FIGHT coming from the other side and it worries them.

I have said before, I will say again, until the oligarchs and ruling classes FEAR for their wealth, their possessions, their livelihood, their institutions, their families and their lives, they WILL NOT STOP STEALING 85% OF THE WEALTH OF THIS COUNTRY OR EXPLOITING THE REST OF US.

Make no mistake - the obscenely wealthy oligarchs do not share pieces of the economic pie willingly.

They, like an unwatched dog, will gorge themselves on it and eat it all.

UNLESS WE MAKE THEM STOP.

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: When property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: When a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: Repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. -- John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

Let's stop them, Bloomberg, Walker all of the oligarchs -now.

Class War - Bloomberg-Style

Norm at Ed Notes says Cathie Black's first non-prophylactic related public words at the PEP last night were about changing Last In, First Out rules, changing pensions, and firing the ATR's.

He says she was booed.

There was a rumor that people were going to bring condoms to the PEP and shower Cruella de Black with them.

Given the jive-ass bullshit she is slinging, toilet paper would have been the more appropriate matter to shower upon her.

Then again, she was just repeating what her boss, the Mayor of Money, said earlier in the day in his State of the City speech.

The outrages continue - especially against the unionized middle class.

Ironic given that the Fiscal Policy Institute revealed today saying the divide between the really, really rich and everybody else in New York City is the widest ever:

Some armchair economists like to argue that a rising tide lifts all boats, but these days the tide's just lifting the yachts, and the rest of us are actually working for minimum wage to manually raise the tide with buckets. According to a new study [pdf] from the Fiscal Policy Institute, the gap between the rich and poor was widened dramatically in NYC ever since the middle class's post-war golden era ended with the Reagan era. Since 1990, the income share of the top 1 percent of New Yorkers has doubled from 21.5 percent to 44 percent—this is almost double the historically high national level of 23.5 percent.

This is also the first time that an economic "recovery" has not restored family incomes and median wages to the peak of the previous business cycle. But the top one percent has recovered quite nicely from their slight dip, and that money hasn't exactly "trickled down"—but that's only to be expected, because furnishing deluxe underground bunker cities can be costly.

Of course Bloomberg and Black want to steal even more money for themselves and their super-rich cronies by attacking the middle class and unionized employees.

Why wouldn't they?

That's all they ever do.

We get class warfare, Bloomberg-style. Pit unionized middle class against nonunionized middle and working classes, steal more money for the super-rich.

Just another day at the office of Bloomberg and Black.

And just wait until Cuomo gets started.

MLK, Economic Justice and Public Education

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while he was focusing on economic justice issues.

The charter school movement would have us believe that were King alive today, he would be promoting the corporate-funded charter school movement as the means to racial equality (despite the fact that charter schools are overwhelmingly segregated by race.)

But given where King was headed on economic justice before he was killed, I don't think that is the case.

Common Dreams reran an editorial from the Capital Times that focuses on King's work on economic justice issues and how that part of his legacy has been conveniently forgotten:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated at a rally organized by a right-wing talk radio host, or at the inauguration of a conservative Republican governor.

King, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaigner for economic and social justice whose legacy we celebrate with a holiday that falls on Jan. 17 this year, died while supporting the right of public employees to organize labor unions and to fight for the preservation of public services.

That inconvenient truth is sometimes obscured by pop historians, who would have us believe that King was merely a "civil rights leader." King's was a comprehensive activism that extended far beyond the boundaries of the movement to end segregation. His most famous address, the "I Have a Dream" speech, was delivered at the 1963 "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" — a historic event that explicitly linked the social and economic demands of campaigners for civil rights and economic justice.

And King always saw that linkage as being well-expressed — arguably best expressed — in the struggles of public employees and their unions for dignity, fair pay, fair benefits and a recognition of the contributions made by those who collect our garbage, clean our streets, police our communities, protect our environment, care for our aged and infirm family members, teach our children and deliver our mail.

It was to that end that King made his last journey, at the age of 39, to march with and campaign on behalf of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union in Memphis, Tenn., in April of 1968.

The sanitation workers of Memphis had experienced not just racial discrimination but the disregard and disrespect that is so often directed at those who perform essential public services.

No one should miss the fact that AFSCME, the union that they joined and the union with which King worked so closely, is now under attack by right-wingers who would have us believe that public workers are to blame for the problems that occur when policymakers blow the budget on tax cuts for the rich, bailouts for big banks and military adventures abroad.

King did not fall for the fantasy. He stood at the side of public employees, telling a Memphis congregation on the night before he died: "Let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on … the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them."

King was proud to rally with public workers, and proud to make the connection between their struggle and the broader struggle for a fair and equitable economy that served all workers — public and private.

The defense of public employees — so essential to a functional society, and yet so frequently abused by the powerful players who would diminish the role of government in order to enhance their own wealth and authority — is as vital a struggle today as it was in 1968.

As Gov. Scott Walker and his legislative allies target public employees for abuse, it is as necessary for the right-minded and right-hearted people of Wisconsin to defend those workers as it was for the right-minded and right-hearted people of Memphis.

King's call echoes now. "Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness," he declared on the night before he was slain. "Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation."

Brian Jones at Huffingtonpost brings the economic justice issue to the current education climate:

The current fad in education "reform" is to put as much daylight as possible between racial justice and social justice. The result is fine words about closing the achievement gap, but little to show for it. Worse, the proposals on offer today -- charter schools, privatization, testing, teacher data-reports -- threaten to actually widen the gap, while those that have demonstrably had some effect -- Head Start, desegregation, smaller class sizes -- are ignored.

This is an historic reversal. It was the Civil Rights Movement that placed the onus on society to deal with the effects of racism. "We are likely to find," Dr. King wrote, "that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished."

Today, the onus is increasingly placed on the individual teacher, or the individual student, or the parents. Any discussion of poverty or racism is tantamount to "making excuses."

"The task is considerable," King wrote, "it is not merely to bring Negroes up to higher educational levels, but to close the gap between their educational levels and those of whites."

But against the current "reform" consensus, King understood that providing a quality education is very much a question of resources. "Much more money has to be spent on education of the children of the poor;" King argued, "the rate of increase in expenditures for the poor has to be greater than for the well-off if the children of the poor are to catch up." He went on to argue for reductions in class sizes, for greater community involvement, a greater commitment from educators, and a strategy for promoting desegregation.

If we truly want to close the achievement gap, we should remember Dr. King's words. At the end of his life, his perspectives were diametrically opposed to those of today's political elites. Yet, come Monday, they will all line up to praise his dreams of equality. They will quote his famous speech from 1963, but not his perspectives from 1967:

"If the society changes its concept by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the individual, and guarantees secure employment or a minimum income, dignity will come within reach of all."

Somehow the American economic system - exposed as corrupt, predatory, and diseased by the financial crisis of 2007-2008 in which bankers, Wall Street traders, hedge fund managers and real estate executives gamed the system for their own interests, stole billions, then in many cases received government-funded bailouts while paying themselves billions more in bonuses - escapes responsibility when fingers are being pointed at teachers and schools.

But the system - along with the political and business elites who benefit from it - ARE at fault for so many of the problems in today's society, including the ones in public education.

As Brian Jones points out, until "society changes its concept by placing the responsibility on its system, not on the individual, and guarantees secure employment or a minimum income," not much will change.