MaxRedline

Helluva Job, Brownie!

In his 16th and final State of the State address, California governor Jerry Brown made a case that his policies have charted a glorious future for the Golden State.

Sane people might disagree, but the public employee unions just love him - he managed to increase the state payroll by $1 billion. Presently, under his "leadership", the income-tax rate, at 13.3 percent, is the nation's highest - and also boasts the highest base sales tax, at 7.5 percent. And if they protest high taxes, residents are "freeloaders", in his words.

The state has billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, to which he has added. People and businesses are leaving in droves, even big companies like Honda and Toyota have relocated their national headquarters and much of their manufacturing to other states, taking thousands of jobs with them, under Moonbeam's tenure.

We're slowly making progress, though: one Brown down on the left coast; one more to go.

 

Fight For $15 Takes A Back Seat

SEIU was out "fighting for $15" for a while there, but now they're fighting something else: fighting for their own skins.

Another two union bigwigs from the nation’s second largest union, the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) have been accused of sexual misconduct and abusive behavior toward female staff members. The resignation of Kendall Fells — a top national leader for the union’s “Fight for $15” minimum wage campaign — and the firing of SEIU Detroit leader Mark Raleigh comes on the heels of the controversial resignation of chief strategist of “Fight for $15,”  SEIU Executive Vice President Scott Courtney resigning amid allegations against him of sexual misconduct.

So far, four top SEIU officials have been fired or forced to resign, and it's a safe bet that more are yet to come.

 

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Surprise! It's Not Like They Weren't Warned...

Every single article from local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist–including all of their subsidiary sites–has been taken down and replaced with a message from their owner, Joe Ricketts, informing the public that both companies are shutting down. This comes just days after the editorial team successfully joined the Writers Guild of America, East.

Ricketts warned that he'd shutter the news sites if employees unionized. The union bosses told the employees that the threat was just a standard union-busting tactic and nothing to worry about. Suddenly, they're all stunned:

It seems employees were caught off guard with this news–many have tweeted their sadness and dismay.

Darn. Let me break out my tiny violin.

Media have been dropping staff left and right during the past couple of months, and these folks should have thought about that. They didn't. Now they have no jobs.

Well, dang.

 

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Relief May Be On The Way

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider striking down mandatory fees that support collective bargaining by public-sector labor unions in Oregon and several other states. With confirmation of conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch earlier this year, a reversal of existing case law appears likely.

Public Employee union bosses are calling the case a political and well-funded plot to undercut "everyday working people". But there was a decision back in 1977 in which the court ruled that unions could collect "dues" for representational work only - not for political activities. Perhaps the unions should have taken that ruling to heart.

But no, that would have been too easy; what happens in many cases is that the schmucks get the full monthly dues deducted from their paychecks and later have to apply for a rebate to recover part of their money, and the union may well claim that the entire amount went strictly to representation. This pending case, known as the Janus casewould blow that horse-hockey out of the water:

The Janus complaint contends that all public sector collective bargaining activities are inherently political and hence, mandatory fees amount to government-compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.

If one wants to fund Democrats, join the union and pay the dues. If not, don't.

 

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Thugs Will Be Thugs

The UAW union, like all good Democratics, can't stand it when they lose an election, and immediately accuse their opponents of skullduggery.

Nissan workers in Canton voted 2,244 to 1,307 against unionization, dealing a blow to the UAW's bid to establish a footprint in right to work Mississippi. The union filed a slew of unfair labor practice complaints to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the two-day secret ballot election drew to a close on Friday. The complaints allege that the company's management violated federal labor law by threatening to close the plant or otherwise cut wages, benefits, or jobs if workers voted to join the union.

A company spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon that the accusations "couldn't be further from the truth," adding that the complaints were purposefully vague.

"Filing those complaints on Friday night was a desperate last-minute attempt to undermine the secret ballot election," the spokesman said. "It's not surprising to see that this done. It's more of a media strategy for them."

Immediately following the election the union issued a release titled, "Nissan threats, intimidation tilt outcome of union election in Mississippi." UAW President Dennis Williams said in a statement that the outcome should not be seen as a defeat and blamed the vote on the company's "vicious campaign."

Sure, sure. That's the usual approach of union thugs and Democratics. They lost in a Tennessee election at a Volkswagen plant less than three years ago and deployed similar tactics, which also haven't been effective. It seems that when given a choice, people would rather work with the companies than for the unions.

And the union bosses can't stand it.

If you want to pay to join a union, you should be free to do so. If you don't, you shouldn't be forced to join. It's a little thing called "freedom".

 

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They May Have A $1.8 Billion "Budget Gap", But Hey

Oregon's largest public employee union is close to signing a deal with the state worth millions of dollars in pay raises and health care benefits.

Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, said the extra money for salary increases was one reason he voted "no" on the end-of-session funding bill. Knopp said the gap between state revenue and costs is only projected to widen in the future, and new raises exacerbate the problem.

"If we have a budget crisis in the state of Oregon, it doesn't seem realistic we should be giving out raises in addition to the standard step raises that are occurring," Knopp said. "Businesses don't do that, nonprofits don't do that, and neither should public entities... When you're in a hole, stop digging."

Well, that's what you expect from a "greedy Republican", isn't it?

In Oregon, you can have any kind of sense you want, so long as it isn't common.

Yeah, "Stand Up For Fairness". Because they'll just "negotiate" compensation increases  to ameliorate any impacts that the rest of us have to endure due to the policies they push. Even FDR realized that public employee unions should never be permitted.

 

Hot In The Hall

Thing grew heated in the halls of Oregon's legislature as SEIU pushed for a corporate gross income tax (again), vowing to oppose any transportation plans unless they get one. Response:

Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, told Demarest his union trying to engage in "political blackmail." Boquist is a key architect of the transportation plan and also sits on the committee deliberating a corporate tax increase.

"If you want to generate 'no' votes across the board you can continue this crap, do you understand me?" Boquist said. He told Demarest to inform union leaders that they can negotiate on both bills "or they can get out."

Dem-arrest is a lobbyist for SEIU.

Leaders of SEIU 503, a powerful labor union representing most state employees, have pushed lawmakers to raise corporate taxes and insist that must be done in concert with other taxes and fees increases to fix roads, Melissa Unger, the union's political director, told The Oregonian/OregonLive earlier this week.

Unger said SEIU would consider launching or supporting a ballot measure campaign to overturn the multibillion-dollar transportation plan, should it become law without an accompanying corporate tax increase by the end of the annual legislative session, in July.

Melissa's the sister of Ben Unger, who spearheaded last year's Measure 97, which was written by SEIU and other public employee unions and touted as a way to force corporations to "pay their fair share". Sane people recognized that not only was it a stealth sales tax, it was a sales tax on steroids; not only would the tax be passed through to consumers, there were no exemptions - most states with sales taxes exempt groceries and medications, but not that one.

Understandably, it was nearly as successful as the Hindenburg. M97 went down in flames. So now the unions are pushing state legislators to pass the "son of M97" - or else. Public employee union leaders know that passage would have no impact on their members, as the unions would simply "negotiate" compensation hikes to cover the costs of higher prices. I believe that their official motto is: "From your wallet, to ours".

Unlike his wholly union-owned Democrat counterparts, Senator Boquist owes the unions no allegiance, and he made that clear to them. It's pretty rare for a state legislator to tell union representatives to cut the crap, but that's exactly what he did.

The tactics of the union thugs kind of backfired.

Even our governor from Minnesota criticized the unions on this one; it seems that nobody likes their "do this or else" approach.

Connecticut Doesn't Connect

Tina Kotek came to Oregon from her home state because her own state is so messed up that she wanted to find another nest to foul. Here's what's happening back home, Tina:

The Aetna insurance company has been based in Hartford, Conn., since 1853, but this week it said it is looking to move to another state. Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to match other states’ financial incentives, but taxpayer money can’t buy fiscal certainty and a less destructive business climate. That’s the real problem in Connecticut, which saw GE vamoose to Boston last year and which even Mr. Malloy now seems to recognize.

The situation there should sound familiar today in Oregon, because Tina and her fellow Democratics from other states are doing their level best to replicate the Connecticut experience here. Propelled by the usual suspects - public employee unions - they're pushing for a tax on corporate gross receipts. Evidently, being resoundingly told "No" last year isn't something they can accept.

Most sane people recognize that what the public employee unions and their Democrat puppets want to do is to increase the share of money that is transferred from your wallet to theirs - when public employees start feeling the pinch of increased prices like the rest of us, they'll just "negotiate" compensation increases to eliminate the pinch (for themselves).

Gov. Malloy has spent two terms treating business as a bottomless well of cash to redistribute to public unions. Now that his state is losing millionaires and businesses, he has seen the light. But the price of his dereliction will be steep.

While there are many reasons to dislike Florida - its flatness, sinkholes, and bugs ranking high among among them - the fact of the matter is that people are flocking to the no income-tax, business-friendly state for a reason: they're fed up with the cesspools that Democrat-dominated places invariably deteriorate into.

A well understood problem is a problem easily solved, Connecticut needs to understand that they have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, and the same applies here in Oregon, where despite record revenue (50% higher than last biennium) they still claim to have a $1.6 billion "shortfall", and so they need more revenue. No, they need to stop spending on non-core government idiocies like "fighting climate change" and spending millions on "the homeless" - most of whom, it should be noted, aren't from around here in the first place. Like Tina, our diminutive governor from Minnesota, and most of the other Democratics that have taken over Oregon for the past four decades, they've come here because they can get "free stuff".

As millions of American families understand but the government does not, when the paycheck runs out, it's time to stop spending. It's better to learn to maximize what one's paycheck is spent on with enough left over for emergencies, because it rarely works to go to one's boss and ask for a raise because one has spent too much.

In fact, the only time that seems to work is in the public sector.

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$440,000 For Nothing

Theresa Seeley, a longtime child psychologist with Portland Public Schools, enjoys an unusual distinction. Slender and 53 with dusty blonde hair, Seeley has drawn a paycheck from Oregon's largest school district since the late 1990s. But from October 2013 to January 2017, she performed no work.

That's because the district viewed her as a trouble-making whistle-blower, and if there's one thing PPS can't abide, it's transparency. So they placed her on paid administrative leave - a big trend in government circles - and prepared to fire her. Over the next three years, the district spent $440,000 toward that goal. They failed completely.

In the end, Seeley won. The district quietly returned her to work in January, placing her in a new school on the other side of town from her last one.

All in all, the district spent a whole lot of taxpayer money with nothing to show for it. And this being election night, they're really really hoping that the suckers will pass the biggest bond measure in state history because It's For The Children™.

We spend $12,000 per student, per year. Around 10% of that actually goes into the classrooms; most of it goes to retirement accounts and administrators. And of course, litigation. At present, they're suing a parent and a news organization to prevent access to what were, until last year, public records.

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Promises, Promises

According to a recent report from the nonprofit Truth In Accounting, a lot of public employees in states and cities controlled by Democratics may well be in for a rude awakening come retirement:

Of the 237 cities studied, 29 received an "F" grade, reflecting a funding ratio of less than 35 percent. Those plans cover many thousands of workers who cannot possibly be paid their full promised pensions, absent a huge tax increase (which would also come out of their pockets as workers).

Based on the size of its unfunded pension liabilities, Chicago is in the worst shape, with more than $62 billion worth of unfunded pension promises. Chicago has less than 33 cents set aside for every dollar promised.

The Chicago Municipal Employees plan is estimated to run out of assets in seven years, since it is only 20.3 percent funded. The police fund (funded at 25.4 percent) and the firefighter's fund (funded at 21.7 percent) will not be far behind. The Public School Teachers' Pension and Retirement Fund is in slightly better shape with 51.6 percent funding.

New York City is in second worst shape in terms of total dollars needed, with an unfunded pension liability of more than $61 billion, but at least it is 71 percent funded.

At another extreme, Portland, Ore., has set aside less than 1 percent of what it needs to pay its $2.9 billion of pension promises.

And at the state level in Oregon, the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is over $22 billion in the hole, and counting. That's what several decades of voting only Democratics into orifice gets you. At this rate, it may become necessary for Oregon public employees to contribute money into their own retirement accounts. That shouldn't be a problem; they'll just "negotiate" pay increases to offset the "burden".

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