[gokenin]

There is no strike in Wisconsin.

I know where you can get a rewarding teaching job, mike!!!!!!
Great bennies and cheap housing.

Care to give it a try? You are a genius and they need your help.

well technically you are correct its not a strike its a "sick-out" when 40% of a school districts teachers call in sick and they close the schools its still the same thing its a strike. Thats how unions get around the no strike clause you can call it a "sick out" or the "blue flu" but its still a strike.

Back to the original topic which version of history do you want taught? Do you think history should simply be taught analytically as nothing but simple dates and events? Do you want history taught as it is seen either through conservative or liberal biases? there is no such thing as simple history.

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Last edited by gokenin; 02-22-2011 at 09:51 AM.

[shooz]

How else would you have them deal with a contract violation or stonewalling?

[Parallax]

How else would you have them deal with a contract violation or stonewalling?

Do the job they were hired and paid to do. If there is a contract violation, file suit.

[shooz]

The contract is being shredded.

Lawyers cost money too.

[Parallax]

The contract is being shredded.

Lawyers cost money too.

Yes, and that is, in part, what the union dues are for. At least any that remain after skimming by the union management.

[Tom S.]

Washington was the greatest president. Not for being first, or even for his accomplishments, but because (to my knowledge) he was the only one who didn't want the job in the first place. Everyone since him has run for the office due to some personal reason(s).

[L33tGreg]

I vote for Calvin Coolidge....And why is that tyrant Lincoln on the list?

[Ira]

No reasonable American here is going to argue our overall ignorance of history and geography, but the original premise of this thread is flawed:

Just because one believes X president was greater than Y doesn't make the latter ignorant.

I happen to believe Andrew Jackson was the greatest president ever, because he was brilliant in averting The Civil War. (Yeah, I know the Indians don't have good things to say about him, but since when has history ever been fair?)

Lincoln, on the other hand, was a p*ssy, and Sumter was attacked on that basis.

He said some great things and this makes for wonderful reading, but he saved the Union only because he allowed it to collapse in the first place.

JFK was pretty bad too, with his abandoning of the Bay of Pigs invasion and sub
sequent Cuban Missile Crisis being an almost exact parallel of Lincoln's situation.

[cardinal43]

And of course, as the P&R threads show, ignorance is widespread.

Get rid of the Republicans and this will stop.

[cardinal43]

Yes, and that is, in part, what the union dues are for. At least any that remain after skimming by the union management.

You and JohnInIndy should form a partnership since you both dislike unions so much.

[gokenin]

Get rid of the Republicans and this will stop.

Now Now there is no need to get nasty.

[jeffkrol]

From our offices four blocks from the Capitol, the Center for Media and Democracy has been live blogging this spontaneous uprising and following the distorted national media coverage. In addition to absurd suggestions that President Obama is behind the whole thing (he has been AWOL and unhelpful) and descriptions of the mom-and-pop crowds with kids in tow as "dangerous" and "anarchistic," one aspect missing in the debate surrounding this bill is the role of Wall Street.

In 2008, reckless Wall Street financial institutions collapsed the global economy putting eight million Americans out of work and robbing the middle class of some $14 trillion in wealth. Because workers pay taxes and unemployed workers do not -- states, cities and counties have taken a massive revenue hit. In 2009, Wisconsin wrestled with a $6 billion shortfall and successfully balanced the budget with a combination of revenue raisers and budget cuts. The nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau reports that Walker would have a $56 million surplus this year, but face a future shortfall of a more modest $3 billion. Many contend that the shortfall is in part due to some $100 million in tax breaks he doled out recently.

As United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard told the crowd in front of the Capitol Monday, "This is not about spending, this is about revenue. 53,000 factories have closed since the Bush years, since the collapse we have 27 million unemployed and underemployed. Let's be clear -- this mess was not caused by workers, but by corporate thugs on Wall Street."

Gerard went further to point out: "The top 20 hedge fund managers made on average $870 million each and they are taxed at a rate of 15%. That money would pay for 25 police, 25 firefighters, 50 teachers in all 3,000 counties in America!" The crowd responded with chants of "Shame on them! Shame on them!" President Trumka hit the same theme earlier in front of a crowd of 80,000 this weekend: "No Wisconsin teacher gambled on Wall Street, no snowplow driver shipped Wisconsin jobs overseas."

Mary Bottari: Who Knew That Cairo Was This Chilly?

By Saturday, the numbers had swelled to over 60,000, while the governor's Tea Party supporters could muster only a few thousand. This despite having billionaire financiers like the Koch Brothers creating astroturf websites, such as "Stand for Walker", imploring Wisconsinites to hit the streets in support of the governor.

For all this good energy and success, however, all is not well. Labour is seriously divided. The political right has invested heavily in turning private sector employees against their public sector counterparts. And, it has worked. After three decades of war on private sector unions, only 7% of non-public workers are protected. Predictably, this has translated into an almost complete erosion of their previously held health and pension plans they once enjoyed.

Today, US private sector workers have been reduced to Japanese-like long hours. Their health plans consist of HMOs providing substandard care, often having to navigate numbing bureaucracies, only to be told "coverage denied". They no longer have employer-paid pensions. Most are now on their own when it comes to retirement. Or if lucky, they may have a generous employer that gives half towards a 401k plan that merely feeds traders on Wall Street, while never delivering enough returns actually to fund their retirement.

In short, it has been a return of the mean season. Briefly, in 2008, this frustration was directed against the Republicans. Yet, the Democrats delivered no tangible gains for labour since taking power then, and now, the right has helped steer working-class anger away from Wall Street and back to Main Street's teachers and public employees. Deftly executed, private sector workers without benefits now blame workers who do have them as the cause of their deprivation. Instead of seeing the gains unions can deliver, private sector workers now take the lesson that these gains have somehow been taken at their expense – all the while ignoring the trough-feeding that continues unabated on Wall Street.

The new class war, as it is actually perceived, is not between workers and capital, but between private and public sector workers, with the fires generously stoked by the billionaire Koch brothers and right wing money generally. One can only imagine Mr Burns of the Simpsons hatching such a scheme in caricature of capital; but this is real, and few seem to recognise the irony as they play out their scripted parts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/22/wisconsin-tea-party-movement

[Ira]

Washington was the greatest president. Not for being first, or even for his accomplishments, but because (to my knowledge) he was the only one who didn't want the job in the first place. Everyone since him has run for the office due to some personal reason(s).

For someone who "didn't want the job," I'm still waiting to see evidence of this. He also supposedly insisted on leaving after a second term and not running for reelection, because he didn't want to be considered a monarch. (And remember that in those days, he wasn't really elected by popular vote.)

But the problem we have in "reviewing" history is separating the truth from the BS. It's widely accepted that he at first refused his incredible (at the time) annual salary of $25,000, because he didn't need it. He then gave in and took the money anyway:

Because according to legend, he thought that people of lesser means who wanted to run for the presidency should have that salary made available to them. (As if people of lesser means at the time ever made it to that point anyway.)

I just have a hard time believing historical accounts of the 18th century. The writings, as sincere as they may have been at the time, don't jive with human nature.

And the reason he didn't run for a third time is that after the revolution and two terms, he just didn't GIVE a crap and wanted to chill out. It had nothing to do with some grand vision for America, and if so, 2-term limits would have been written into the Constitution right at that time.