Pensions

I heard an interview with a woman on the news today. This lady, a Wisconsin citizen was stating that she had to pay for her own healthcare and did not have a fancy pension and so why should union teachers get that.

This is the brilliance of the Republicans. They and their moneyed interests sit back and pull the strings and plant divisiveness between groups that should be on the same side of an issue.

Lets talk about pensions. Again giving the Republicans credit their plan is well thought out and many steps are planned. In a plan presented by Scott Walker today he has greatly expanded a voucher program for education allowing parents to use these to supplement the expense of taking their children out of the public schools. Thus, more teachers would be out of the unions as private school teaches are not unionized. This would drain the pensions of more money, it would also incidentally drain the union of contributions.

The largest contributor to Democratic campaigns are always unions. Republicans state this as being a bad thing while they pocket sums from insurance companies, petrol companies, and defense contractors. You tell me whose hands are cleaner.

However when we are told about the greedy unions who want their pensions to be kept remember this. Throughout their careers teachers have their salary reduced by an amount that covers their benefits. This is a negotiated consideration. An employee in the public sector who does not have these benefits should have them but when you do not bargain collectively you have less control.

It is something very American in this time that instead of wanting to raise ourselves up we want to bring others down to our level. The issue of working people begrudging other working people pensions encapsulates this issue.

State government advises that the pension funds cannot cover the amounts needed to be paid. Imagine if you went to work everyday and every other Thursday your employer paid you X but told you that Y was being kept in an account for your pension. ( something they agreed to with you). So the sum of your total compensation is X plus Y.

However now we find out that Y has been spent on other programs and services and we are short. If we found out that much of Y was being spent to give higher compensation to executives of the company ( in this case the tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Wisconsin citizens that Walker gave out right before attacking the unions, this created the shortfall in question in large part) and that therefore Y was not available for your pension how would you feel.

This is what Wisconsin state employees face. These are people who teach our children, these are the faceless government workers that Republican vilify every day. When planes crash into Social Security buildings we are told that while that should not happen Steve King of Iowa can understand the frustration people feel. Really? That comment alone tells you all you need to know.

The Republican dream would be too gut social security and kill union rights. Even the Republicans which seem acceptable on the surface are beholden to that idea on some level. Democrats have their problems and none of our politicians have the stones to attack the corporate welfare, military industrial complex that is just as responsible for our problems as anything else.

Pensions and social security promises should be sacrosanct. Those who most often proclaim they should not be are those who need them not at all. How convenient.