These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.Here we see local officials standing up against state and federal ones and rural residents fighting a mostly urban environmental movement. Perhaps we're seeing a renewed sagebrush rebellion.
A three-year investigation into the police's habit of fixing traffic and parking tickets in the Bronx ended in the unsealing of indictments on Friday and a stunning display of vitriol by hundreds of off-duty officers, who converged on the courthouse to applaud their accused colleagues and denounce their prosecution.I covered a jail-beating death in which internal affairs officers coached their fellow officers on what to say to avoid getting in trouble. In another case, the district attorney found that deputies changed their stories and engaged in a code of silence to protect a fellow officer accused of repeatedly tasering a handcuffed man. After Chicago cop Anthony Abbate was accused of savagely beating a petite barmaid who refused to serve the drunken cop additional booze, fellow officers shielded him at his arraignment and ticketed the cars owned by reporters who were trying to cover the trial. When police behave like gang members protecting their misbehaving members rather than like professionals who are serving the public, then this undermines their credibility. Unfortunately, the police unions protect their worst members and encourage this mob behavior.
Last week I posted an item about the Bureau of Labor Statistics' recent report on injuries and illnesses among workers, which showed that public sector workers missed work at far higher rates than those in the private sector, even when they work in similar jobs. One explanation, I noted, was that in many places public sector workers enjoy more generous
sick time and richer disability benefits than private workers. "Incentives matter, including those that
pay you not to work."In 12 days, Ohio voters can solidify the meaningful public sector employment reforms put into law earlier this year under the leadership of Governor John Kasich. Just like their neighbors to the west in Wisconsin, taxpayers in the Buckeye State can reap the benefits of a more efficient public sector workforce while keeping taxes down and maintaining vital services such as education and healthcare. However, if Ohio voters reject the reforms by repealing Senate Bill 5, the Buckeye State will be faced with rising taxes, public sector layoffs and fewer services for an overtaxed population. This short video lays out the great success taking hold in Wisconsin and offers a clear picture of what Ohio taxpayers can experience if they simply stand-up to Public Sector Inc.
MacIver News Service
[Madison, Wisc...] The Walker Administration has unveiled a new Compensation Plan for state employees that replaces the old state contracts. The new plan cracks down on overtime abuses and curbs many work rules and add-on provisions that had previously been negotiated with the former employee unions.
Having already saved an estimated $600 million over the next two years through employee contributions to health and retirement plans, department heads will now be given the freedom to assign overtime in an efficient manner without regard to seniority, a move that will save more than $5 million in one state agency alone.
"Overtime is one of the major areas that will be affected as agencies will now have discretion in determining how overtime is assigned," Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch wrote in a letter sent to all state employees Tuesday.
Read the entire article here.
Michael Shear, in what is supposed to a neutral report on Mitt Romney's tepid support for the measure, describes it as "tough anti-union legislation." That this is the shorthand suggests that supporters of Governor Kasich's signature legislation have effectively lost the battle to frame the issue. 
Quinnipiac released a poll today that shows New Yorkers like the way Gov. Andrew Cuomo is "handling" unions. From Quinnipiac's release:
Cuomo is "about right" in his handling of public employee union, 46 percent of voters say, while 21 percent say he is "too tough" and 20 percent say he is "not tough enough."
when about half of state workers make more in retirement than they did working (and this does not include Social Security payments). While PSI has long been documenting the state's fiscal problems, they've recently received some national news coverage that is worth reading. Walter Russell Mead has an insightful take on how RI got into its' current bind.
message war in his battle with public sector unions. Opposition to the governor's reform of his state's public sector labor relations has almost doubled in the last
month, from a 13-point margin in favor of repealing the law in late September to a 25-point margin today.Over the weekend, Senator McConnell said preventing firefighter and police layoffs wasn't the federal government's job. Watch the CNN "State of the Union" segment:
For the last twenty years, local government has been robustly expanding far faster than the population. Public sector layoffs we're seeing now shouldn't be bringing us back to a level of poor service, says Steve Malanga. Read Steve's PSI post on this and then watch Steve and FOX Business's Dagan McDowell talk about the costs of public employment.
We can't afford the local government that we have right now. Welcome to the new fiscal reality where states and cities have to adjust their budgets for the long term.
As a small cadre of University of California faculty prepares to deliver the first online classes in a systemwide experiment, the effort is stirring both excitement and controversy among instructors and administrators...
It was politically feasible for Republican President Richard Nixon to engage China because he had impeccable anti-communist credentials. Similarly, Chicago's Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel can take on his city's unions without creating a firestorm because of his party's alliance with organized labor. Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released 2010 rates of injury and illness in the American workforce, and once again state and local government workers on average missed far more days from illness and injury per worker than workers in the private sector. Below are the topline rates of illness and injury. More detailed stats available from the BLS show that even in comparable jobs, public workers miss substantially more time than private workers.
A MacIver News investigation that revealed recent state employee retirees cashed in an average of 43 weeks of unused sick leave is prompting legislative calls for reform:
Despite Governor Quinn's massive tax increase earlier this year, lawmakers in Springfield, IL have been mulling the prospects for a federal bailout of the state's unsustainable public pension system. Yesterday, in rather clear language, Illinois' Republican Congressional delegation told Springfield that it would not support a federal bailout for the state. You can read all about the Illinois bail out debate here, where our friends at the Illinois Policy Institute have been closely following the story. The letter from Illinois' Congressional Republicans underscores the findings from a recent Manhattan Institute poll, which found that 66 percent of likely voters in Illinois don't want a federal bailout of the state.
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/13vBB)
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/13vBB)
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/13vBB)
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.tt/13vBB)
While San Francisco's District Attorney George Gascón publicly supports pension reform, he is quietly receiving a sizable pension from the Los Angeles Police Department, The Bay Citizen has learned.
Gascón, who is running for a full term as District Attorney, earns a salary of $216,776. He also receives a $125,000 annual pension from Los Angeles Police Department pension.
Source: The Bay Citizen (http://s.t
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Steve Malanga sits down with FOX Business Network's Shibani Joshi to discuss Harrisburg, PA filing for bankruptcy. Watch the video then read the prescient article, "The Man that Bankrupted Harrisburg," that Steve wrote last year.
When the dust settled on Gov. Jerry Brown's first legislative session in nearly three decades, no group had won more than organized labor, which heralded its largest string of victories in nearly a decade.
In an important budgetary win for Cuomo, members of the larger Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) voted two months ago to ratify a similar five-year deal, including a three-year base pay freeze and an increase in health insurance contributions. The negative PEF vote (by a 19,629-16,906 margin, in an impressive 65 percent turnout) seems to have taken aback the governor and the union leadership, although it could not have been a complete surprise. PEF represents the state's better-paid lawyers, research scientists, engineers and the like, who faced bigger increases in their health insurance premiums than the lower paid, less educated CSEA members. And in contrast to CSEA, there was an organized opposition movement in PEF.This is amazing hypocrisy. Check out CalPERS' weak response to another article I wrote about the topic. But the key point is the one raised by the Wall Street Journal -- how these funds are trying to exert more influence in the boardrooms. Be sure to check out this Manhattan Institute report on this topic.The nation's two largest pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, have been plagued by myriad fiscal problems and even a corruption scandal in the case of CalPERS, and yet these systems continue to lecture the private sector on ethical corporate governance. The latest nonsense, released recently, is a project funded by the two systems to promote "diversity" in board rooms.
The two funds launched something called the Diverse Director DataSource (3D), which is designed to help companies find "untapped talent to serve on corporate boards," according to a statement from the pension funds. It's meant to be voluntary, but make no mistake about the political and investment muscle these two funds wield. As the Wall Street Journal reported, many Wall Street sources believe this really is a mechanism by which the investment funds can select board members and exert more political control over corporations.
Under the council's agreement with Bryan Montgomery, manager of the community of 35,000 people, the city forgave a home loan it had issued him and received in exchange a far-less-valuable partial ownership of his property.
It was the third time Montgomery received mortgage assistance from the city. When he took the job in 2005, the city issued the loan at an exceptionally favorable interest rate. Then, for the past 21/2 years, the City Council had allowed Montgomery to defer monthly payments without accruing additional interest.
The City Council agreed to the latest deal without consulting an outside adviser and after negotiating directly with Montgomery in closed session. That private gathering violated the state open-meeting law because a council majority cannot legally negotiate compensation in private with an employee.
"Lawmakers struggling to keep cellphones away from California's most dangerous inmates say a main obstacle is the politically powerful prison guards union, whose members would have to be paid millions of dollars extra to be searched on their way into work. Prison employees, roughly half of whom are unionized guards, are the main source of smuggled phones that inmates use to run drugs and other crimes, according to legislative analysts who examined the problem last year. Unlike visitors, staff can enter the facilities without passing through metal detectors."So the governor wants to tackle the problem by issuing a toothless executive order that barely touches on the real source of the problem, the guards' union. Granted, the legislation he signed increases penalties, but it too avoids dealing forthrightly with the fundamental problem. I want to note, in fairness, that the bill's sponsor Alex Padilla has been willing to take on CCPOA and the governor's signature is a good thing. But it's so hard to take on these powerful unions. This is what passes for reform in California.
Legislators must avoid the temptation to enact reforms that do not immediately set about closing the unfunded liability. Josh Barro of the Manhattan Institute notes, for example, that many states rely on cuts to future workers' benefits to alleviate pension troubles, delaying savings for "years or decades." A better approach, commonly taken in the private sector, is to apply changes to the future benefits of all workers.
demonstrators. And now they are receiving some support from organized labor. My own union, the Professional Staff Congress, which represents 20,000 CUNY employees is going to join the protesters tomorrow. Some are even calling the protests the harbinger of a Tea Party on the Left. What the passion of these protestors is directed at remains hazy. Left-wing protests are often long on problems but short on solutions. Nonetheless, a few things seem clear...
