This past Monday the AZ Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SB1474, the “guns on campus” bill, which would allow concealed weapons to be carried on Arizona college campuses. My dear friend Jennifer Longdon testified against it. She had expected to get 5 minutes to speak but it was shortened to 3 minutes due to the time constraints of so many people showing up to speak on it (mostly against). I watched her abbreviated testimony online and she did great. But she wanted people to know all of what she wanted to say so she posted her complete prepared remarks on her blog. Jen draws upon her considerable personal experience to refute the arguments put forth by the gun lobby and, well, you just have to read it for yourself.

Lots of people did show up to oppose the bill. Jen told me that about 70 people, including law enforcement officers and university and student representatives, signed up in opposition to the bill and 12 in support. I asked her if any business groups or Chambers of Commerce spoke for or against the bill. She said the only input from business was from Raytheon, which asked for a carve-out.

In contrast, business group reps showed up in full force at a Senate Economic Development and Jobs Creation Committee on Wednesday in support of SB1336, a “tort reform” measure that would limit product liability damages. On one level I can understand it: corporate lobbyists have priorities. But on another level I have to ask, once again, why we’re supposed to trust the wise, pragmatic counsel of business leaders to shape policy and select suitable candidates for elective office when said leaders can’t even be bothered to put up the slightest opposition to scary and stupid legislation like allowing guns on college campuses.

NYT editorialist Joe Nocera, tried to explain, yet again, how Fannie and Freddie were not, in fact, the “epicenter of the financial meltdown”, as Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann claimed at the most recent GOP debate.

Yet these real sins have been largely overlooked in favor of imagined ones. Over at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, two resident scholars, Peter Wallison and Edward Pinto, have concocted what has since become a Republican meme: namely, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ground zero for the entire crisis, leading the private sector off the cliff with their affordable housing mandates and massive subprime holdings.

Nocera’s piece linked to another one of his from January 2011:

But I wonder. Had there been a Dutch Tulip Inquiry Commission nearly four centuries ago, it would no doubt have found tulip salesmen who fraudulently persuaded people to borrow money they could never pay back to buy tulips. It would have criticized the regulators who looked the other way at the sleazy practices of tulip growers. It would have found speculators trying to corner the tulip market. But centuries later, we all understand that the roots of tulipmania were less the actions of particular Dutchmen than the fact that the entire society was suffering under the delusion that tulip prices could only go up. That’s what bubbles are: they’re examples of mass delusions…

…There is a telling moment in the commission’s report, when some A.I.G. executives are questioning whether they should stop insuring triple-A tranches of C.D.O.’s, which have become increasingly risky. In search of answers, they visit a housing analyst at Bear Stearns. One A.I.G. consultant later recalled that “the analyst was so optimistic about the housing market that they thought he was ‘out of his mind’ and ‘must be on drugs or something.’ ” But of course he wasn’t on drugs. His hallucinogen was the housing bubble.

In pushing the idea that the crisis was avoidable, Mr. Angelides is also trying to make an additional point: if we just do it better next time, we will avoid the next crisis. I’m all for holding the bad actors accountable, and to the extent the F.C.I.C. has done that, I tip my hat. But mass delusions, alas, are part of the human condition, and no report, no matter how scathing, is going to change that.

No report may do it but maybe we should tell the cool rich kids of the world to stuff it when they blame convenient scapegoats for their delusional and destructive actions. I lived in Ahwatukee (a suburban Phoenix village), which is known colloquially as “All-White-Tukee”, from 1999 to 2009. I was there at the height of the 2000s housing bubble. Every apartment there was “upgraded” to a condo, to take advantage of the mad upswing in housing values. Every third person I met, it seemed, was a real estate agent or a house flipper. As I recall, you were insane to opt for a boring traditional mortgage or home equity loan when there were so many great exotic and more lucrative options at your disposal!

I don’t recall any of this being geared toward inviting low income minorities into the 85044/85048 locale. I don’t recall one eager agent or mortgage broker confiding in me how the meanybutt Feds were forcing them to extend loans to low income minorities to satisfy Community Reinvestment Act or Fannie and Freddie requirements. Nope, I recall them being really stoked to make fat commissions, irrespective of who was buying homes or refinancing. I also don’t recall All-White-Tukee getting a speck browner during that heady time. And a Congressional inquiry concluded in January 2011 that loans to minorities under the CRA were “not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis.”

But hey, you’re having a real hard time convincing them that it’s “them”, and not you, who are the problem, right, rich kids? Must be that damn liberal media.

So we all know that GOP primary frontrunner Newt Gingrich has been spouting off about how child labor laws should be abolished and how “really poor” (read: black) elementary kids would make nifty janitors.

Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day; they have no habit of “I do this and you give me cash,” unless it is illegal.

Newt’s, um, wisdom may or may not have inspired Forbes tech contributor Gene Marks, an affluent middle aged white dude, to imagine what a determined, prescient, and self-reliant poor black kid he would be. But Marks did share his eloquent thoughts on the matter on a recent blog post – “If I Were A Poor Black Child:

The President’s speech got me thinking. My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011.

I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

It takes brains. It takes hard work. It takes a little luck. And a little help from others. It takes the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available. Like technology. As a person who sells and has worked with technology all my life I also know this.

That part I quoted is actually pretty innocuous compared to the rest. Trust me, it goes on and gets increasingly, and nauseatingly, condescending. Complete with links shilling various tech sites. I honestly don’t think Marks was being malicious in his post. He was being a salesman touting websites and reassuring his audience of rich white people. But it was shockingly callous of him to downplay the inequality poor black kids face while admitting his own kids (mediocre by his own assessment) have a boatload of undeserved advantages.

President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Many have teachers who are overburdened and too stressed to find the time to help every kid that needs it. Many of these kids don’t have the brains to figure this out themselves – like my kids. Except that my kids are just lucky enough to have parents and a well-funded school system around to push them in the right direction.

So poor minority kids need to be exceptional and especially motivated but rich kids can be average or less and still be confident of securing educational credentials and employment. Kids raised in poverty must divine by osmosis the specific technical and social knowledge that wealthier kids (like Gene Marks kids) have imparted to them via well funded schools and adults around them steering them in the right direction. Right, that’s fair. Needless to say the response from the blogosphere to Marks’ piece was scathing.

Sadly No: Privilege of Privileges

The Root: Why Forbes Column Crossed the Line

Pandagon: If I Were a Rich White Motivational Speaker

NewsOne Roundup of responses

The comments are as good as the blogs. One commenter (I forget on which post) posted a 1997 Onion article, “An Open Letter To A Starving Child”, to illustrate how unintentionally close to a parody Marks’ commentary was.

Dear Starving Child,
I saw your picture in one of these “Feed The Children” magazine ads. It said your mother dumped you in a Sri Lankan back-alley trash heap, and that you’ve been a street urchin, begging for scraps from Bedouin traders, since you were five. And it said for two cents a day I could feed you. Well, I must say, I don’t know how you can live like that. I mean, what are you thinking?

If I were you, I’d high-tail it home and make myself a juicy ham sandwich with some cheese on it, then I’d put it in the microwave so the cheese melts and the sandwich is nice and warm. In fact, I’d toast the bread so it has a little crunch to it.

And that brings me to why I’m writing you. I think I can offer you some basic tips on how to get along better in life. Instead of giving you a mere two cents a day, I’m going to give you a lifetime’s accumulated wisdom. You see, as a successful carpet salesman, I do all right. And I think I can share a lesson or two about getting the most out of this crazy game called life…

Give a poor kid a fish and they’ll eat for a day. Tell a poor kid how to sell carpet or watch TED podcasts on their high-speed internet and…the sky’s the limit! The absurdity that micromanaging poor people’s cultural choices can propel them out of poverty is a resilient belief. And a stupid and self-serving one. (Emphasis mine, going forward from here.)

The effect of tastes, child-rearing practices, speech patterns, reading habits, and other cultural factors is relatively small in comparison to the effect of wealth and influence. What I am trying to suggest is that the inclusion in the analytic process of the elements of social stratification that are usually omitted—particularly economic class and power—would produce more significant insights into the circumstances of the poor and the pressures and deprivations with which they live. The simplest—and at the same time, the most significant—proposition in understanding poverty is that it is caused by lack of money. The overwhelming majority of the poor are poor because they have, first: insufficient income; and second: no access to methods of increasing that income—that is, no power. They are too youn& too old, too sick; they are bound to the task of caring for small children, or they are simply discriminated against. The facts are clear, and the solution seems rather obvious—raise their income and let their “culture,” whatever it might be, take care of itself.

The need to avoid facing this obvious solution—which is very uncomfortable since it requires some substantial changes and redistribution of income—provides the motivation for developing the stabilizing ideology of the culture of poverty which acts to sustain the status quo and delay change. The function of the ideology of lower class culture, then, is plainly to maintain inequality in American life.

The millionaire, freshly risen from the lower class, whose crude tongue and appalling table manners betray the newness of his affluence, is a staple of American literature and folklore. He comes on stage over and over, and we have been taught exactly what to expect with each entrance. He will walk into the parlor in his undershirt, gulp tea from a saucer, spit into the Limoges flower pot, and, when finally invited to the society garden party, disgrace his wife by saying “bullshit” to the president of the bank. When I was growing up, we had daily lessons in this legend from Jiggs and Maggie in the comic strip.

This discrepancy between class and status, between possession of economic resources and life style, has been a source of ready humour and guaranteed fascination for generations. The centrality of this mythical strain in American thought is reflected again in the strange and perverse ideas emerging from the mouths of many professional Pauper Watchers and Victim Blamers.

In real life, of course, Jiggs’ character and behavior would never remain so constant and unchanging over the decades. The strain between wealth and style is one that usually tends to be quickly resolved. Within a fairly short time, Jiggs would be coming into the parlor first with a shirt, then with a tie on, and, finally, in one of his many custom-made suits. He would soon be drinking tea from a Limoges cup, and for a time he would spit in an antique cuspidor, until he learned not to spit at all. At the garden party, he would confine his mention of animal feces to a discussion of the best fertilizer for the rhododendron. In real life, style tends to follow close on money, and money tends to be magnetized and attracted to power. Those who try to persuade us that the process can be reversed, that a change in style of life can lead backward to increased wealth and greater power, are preaching nonsense. To promise that improved table manners can produce a salary increase; that more elegant taste in clothes will lead to the acquisition of stock in IBM; that an expanded vocabulary will automatically generate an enlargement of community influence—these are pernicious as well as foolish. There is no record in history of any group having accomplished this wondrous task. (There may be a few clever individuals who have followed such artful routes to money and power, but they are relatively rare.) The whole idea is an illusion of fatuous social scientists and welfare bureaucrats blinded by the ideology I have painstakingly tried to dissect in the previous chapters.

If you don’t get the “Jiggs and Maggie” reference, that’s understandable. The passage I quoted was written in 1971. Read the whole thing. It’s stood the test of time.

Brewer’s statement said she believed the investigation was a politically motivated attack on her family. She said she believes it began with an anonymous complaint to Social Security before last year’s election.

Cry me a river, will ya? Had Jan Brewer not lucked into a successful political career by spouting simplistic social conservative platitudes and were simply Jan Brewer, x-ray tech of Glendale, whatever public assistance she and her family were getting (including everything going to her institutionalized son) would be characterized as “welfare”. She’d be exactly the kind of person whom Republican politicians call a “loser” and whom they derisively suggest should turn to churches and private charity. Because, you know, $619 a day for a state facility and $450 a month or so for disability is forcibly redistributing wealth from hardworking achieving Job Creators^TM, isn’t it? And maybe she should be drug tested, like conservative lawmakers want other recipients of government aid to be.

I had Kathleen’s back at the beginning:

Arizonans have become masters at throwing the covers over their heads. Over and over, they close their eyes to the tough issues. As if all those cold realities, from an out-of-whack state budget to lagging student scores, might magically go away.

No more hitting the snooze button. The new Arizona Directions 2012 report, laying out data and critical issues, should be the final wake-up call.

The report, a joint project of Arizona State University and the Arizona Community Foundation, was presented at the Morrison Institute’s annual State of Our State gathering Wednesday in Phoenix.

Back in the summer of 2009, when the Legislature failed to meet the budget deadline, I met a nice woman down at the Capitol. She was a pink-slipped teacher who told me she voted R down the whole ticket every election and “had no idea how crazy they are!” I can forgive the pink-slipped teacher for her lack of attention to her representatives but I cannot forgive Kathleen Ingley (much as I usually like her work) for this:

Wake-up call: The state Legislature is more and more divorced from the views of the average Arizonan.

Just 27 percent of Arizonans in the Merrill/Morrison poll are satisfied with state government. No wonder. Most legislative districts are so dominated by one party that the general election is meaningless. The real decision is made in highly partisan primary contests, which favor more extreme candidates.

It’s time to adopt open-primary elections in which candidates compete, regardless of affiliation, for two slots in the general election. The idea has support from 58 percent of Arizonans, according to the poll.

The bulk of her column reads as a straight indictment of conservative kookiness and craptacular GOP policies but in this section Kathleen simply had to play the Both Sides Are Equally Bad^TM game and shill for top-two primaries. Really, Kathleen? That’s your takeaway from all this? That is unbelievable.

Create perfect Thanksgiving pies. Drive to Costco, select an apple, pecan, and pumpkin pie and pay for them. Then head to Fry’s or Safeway or Bashas for whipped cream and vanilla ice cream.

Argue effectively with your wingnut relatives. Many of y’all aren’t lucky like me. I’ll be feasting with a bunch of commie liberals tomorrow so the conversation will revolve around things like where to get good organic produce in Phoenix and what an appalling collection of dangerous morons the GOP Presidential Primary roster is. Those of you facing the unfortunate predicament of having to chow with your Fox News watching inlaws have a bigger challenge. I feel for you. Luckily, the interwebz provide a wealth of useful sources to help you help your brother in law to a giant cup of STFU.

MoveOn has the Top Five Fox Myths To Debunk This Thankgiving. Short, pithy, and substantiated statements to help you demolish myths about the Occupy Movement and the deficit.

Speaking of the deficit: Economist Dean Baker took NY Times privileged wanker extraordinaire David Brooks to task for falsely conflating Greece’s economic troubles with America’s. This has become a common bleat from the Right and Baker neatly lays out the case for why it’s idiotic and disingenuous to compare the two countries: 1. Greece has chronic structural debt problems that are totally unlike ours. 2. The US is a highly diverse economy (still) and our dollar is protected from inflationary pressures. 3. We have a sovereign currency, unlike Greece, which is a member of the EU. Greece is more analogous to Ohio than it is to the entire U.S.

“47% of Americans pay no taxes!” My suggestion is not to bother with the usual response about how everyone actually does pay a whole host of taxes (sales, payroll, etc). Make your brother in law defend his tax breaks! As I’ve explained here before, the increasing number of households paying no taxes is driven by stagnating wages but also in large part by exemptions and credits to parents. I cited conservative economist Keith Hennessey and here’s the link again: Why do so many Americans pay no income tax?

Fannie and Freddie totally caused the collapse!!1! This lie has been laid to waste by every sentient being who researched the matter for two minutes but it remains an article of faith with conservatives. Mother Jones debunked it, yet again, in response to Michele Bachmann last month:

The origination of subprime loans came primarily from non-bank lenders not covered by the [Community Reinvestment Act, a law pushing the two GSEs to purchase more loans in the secondary markets and thus expand access to housing loans to low-income neighborhoods];

The majority of the underwriting, at least for the first few years of the boom, were by these same non-bank lenders;

When the big banks began chasing subprime, it was due to the profit motive, not any mandate from the President (a Republican) or the Congress (Republican controlled) or the GSEs they oversaw;

Prior to 2005, nearly all of these sub-prime loans were bought by Wall Street—NOT Fannie & Freddie;

In fact, prior to 2005, the GSEs were not permitted to purchase non-conforming mortgages;

The change in FNM/FRE conforming mortgage purchases in 2005 was not due to any legislation or marching orders from the President (a Republican) or the the Congress (Republican controlled). It was the profit motive that led them to this action.

Hope this helps!

I keep playing it and it makes our Corgis bark excitedly, which is awesome.

Anyways, quoth Presidential candidate Newton Leroy Gingrich the other day:

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.” [...]

“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

This makes perfect sense because when you think of all the really successful economies in the world doesn’t “large labor force of children” emerge as the key feature they all share? Right. But this is far from the first time in recent memory that a Republican has expressed a desire to repeal those annoying and bootstrap-destroying child labor laws. State legislators across the country have been floating the idea all this past year. I smell ALEC and so did PSC CUNY blogger Peter Hogness back in May.

“There was a time when children’s value was marked by the amount of money they brought home to their families,” commented Gary Schoichet of Communications Workers of America (CWA) 1180. “Employers liked children because they were cheaper, more manageable, and less likely to strike. They were everywhere.”

Among Republican state legislators across the US, Cunningham is not an isolated figure. She has chaired the Education Committee of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an influential conservative group that drafts state-level legislative proposals and circulates them across the US. Other bills to scale back child labor laws have now been introduced in Maine, Minnesota, Ohio and Utah.

If these bills passed, children would still be protected by federal law. But a number of right-wing politicians believe that federal labor laws, including those on child labor, are unconstitutional.

I’m rather surprised Arizona Republicans haven’t jumped on this yet but if my instincts are correct that ALEC members are chatting up the idea of working the kiddies (the poor ones, not theirs) at the secret legislation drafting meetings it won’t be long before it shows up here.

It also puts the GOP’s anti-choice stance in an even more stark context. This goes beyond their depraved indifference to the needs of post-born children into the realm of outright sadism. Today’s fertilized egg is tomorrow’s nine year old janitor!

Anyhoo, I’ve been asked to PSA y’all about Occupy Phoenix activities and I’m happy to oblige. Here’s what’s on the agenda for the next few days:

Event: Occupy the Phoenix City Council Public Meeting

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 16th at 3:00pm

Location: Phoenix City Council

Details: Pursuant to A.R.S. Section 38-431.02, notice is hereby given to the members of the PHOENIX CITY COUNCIL and to the general public, that the PHOENIX CITY COUNCIL will hold a meeting open to the public on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, at 3:00 p.m. located in the City Council Chambers, 200 West Jefferson, Phoenix, Arizona.

Please join us and make your voice heard! This is a call to participate in the policy process as a collective and voice our concerns as active citizens of Phoenix, Arizona. Although there will be a focus on responding to the continued selective enforcement of the urban camping ordinance within, and beyond, the Occupation, we urge you to voice whatever is in your heart. Dress to impress, and arrive 30 minutes prior to the 3pm start time. This will insure that you have time to properly fill out a Speaker Comment Card and reserve your time to speak. All speakers will have a two minute time limit. Also, be prepared to wait through the formal meeting process. This could potentially last up to 2 hours.

If you are unable to make it in person but would be interested in providing others with assistance in adding their voices to the effort, please email your particular concern in the form of a short essay or statement to legal@occupyphoenix.net Please keep it to 200 words or fewer. We will then print those statements and allow any in attendance the opportunity to read them for you!

Together we will amplify each other’s voices!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact:
Ezra Kaplan (928) 351-7999
Diane D’Angelo (602) 405-5134
media@occupyphx.org
www.occupyphx.org
Occupy Phoenix Rattles Light Rail, Stands Up for Economic Justice with #N17, #N18 Events
Resist! Reclaim! Recreate!
Phoenix, AZ 11/15/11 – Occupy Phoenix protestors will stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and turn up the heat on the 1% with two solid days of action this Thursday and Friday. The 99% is no longer willing to have our First Amendment right to assemble violated by the enforcement of arcane laws that result in the arrest of Occupiers for falling asleep in a public park. Condescending notions of urban “camping” and snide remarks about homelessness meant to slander those brave enough to take a stand against corporate greed are no longer acceptable.
On Thursday #N17, morning commuters will be asked to share their own stories of foreclosure, crushing student loan debt and lack of health care as occupation of the Light Rail begins. Occupation Crews will meet at three stops (Sycamore/Main, Washington/Central or Montebello/19th Ave) at 7am sharp to wake up residents who’ve been lulled/coerced into indifference. A flash mob for the 99% is slated for midday in the business and entertainment districts.
Teach-ins at César Chávez Plaza will begin at 6pm. Topics include non-violent civil disobedience, economic and social justice and the First Amendment freedoms of speech and assembly.
Free Speech Friday #N18 includes a “Put Your March Where Your Money Is,” a nonviolent action in Downtown Phoenix at 4pm. Marchers will return to César Chávez Plaza to rally for an economy that works for everyone. An additional action sure to shake up the 1% will also occur.
To learn more about Occupy Phoenix, visit www.occupyphx.org; Twitter: #occupyphoenix
We are the 99%!

Someone from inside the Chicago Board of Trade is handing out leaflets to Occupy Chicago explaining how it all ends.

“Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.”

Riiiight. 35% tips. Maybe after twenty vodka martinis. And please, by all means, landscape your own yard and wash your own car. It’ll leave you with less time to drive up commodity prices.

Here’s some more from our whinebag wannabe Master of the Universe:

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

Sure you will, tough guy. I’d like to see you take on a class of 40 10th graders in an underfunded high school in a poor neighborhood. I’ll take an over-under of you lasting 3 hours. Or in an affluent school, for that matter. Kids are brutal on pompous arrogant windbags like you. And as far as you being such a hard worker goes, you know what? Meh. You put in a lot of hours, and working in the financial industry is indeed stressful. You are under a lot of pressure to make dough-re-mi for your clients. But let’s get real here. Your job consists of yapping excitedly on the phone and monitoring the market on computer screens. You do this sitting on your ass behind a desk on a comfortable chair. A chair that is on wheels and swivels so you don’t lose a precious second keeping on top of manipulating oil prices so that more of Grandma’s meager retirement income will flow to your billionaire client. BTW, he’s in the 1%. You are probably not. BTW, a lot of low wage workers don’t get to leave their stations to pee either (read a book called Void Where Prohibited).

You do your difficult and important work in a climate controlled office building. Followed up by wining and dining and then the strip club. You think your avaricious “eat what I kill” mentality is going to impress a landscaping foreman? You must also think the strippers really like you, Chicago Board of Trade guy.

See, first the puffed-up plutocrats and their wannabe lackeys came for the “welfare queens”. You know, the mythical people who supposedly refuse to work at all. More recently, it was the people who got laid off and couldn’t find a new job in the recession. The unemployed needed to stop being so picky and just take any job available (even though there were none). Now, we’re at the point, as our petulant commodity trader so amply demonstrates, where people with jobs are undeserving losers too.

I wasn’t going to blog about the Chicago guy, until I saw this photo that’s been somewhat viral:

Chicago Board of Trade guy, you’re not fit to shine this man’s shoes.

Exposed: Union Control at City Hall
Goldwater Institute releases months-long investigative report

Greg Satnton(sic) – Supported by unions
Wes Gullett – Rebublican who will cut red tape

Phoenix public union leaders are paid at least $3.7 million of taxpayers’ money to do union work instead of their regular jobs – while the city is cutting services to libraries, seniors, children and parks because of budget restraints.

A story by Mark Flatten, an investigative journalist now working for the Goldwater Institute, shows that the city pays for union leaders to take more than 73,000 hours off their city jobs to do union work.

This is with public dollars, your money, not from union dues. This dramatically demonstrates how much public unions own city hall.

Taxpayers’ money is going to pay them to not do city work. You’re paying union bosses to fight for bigger and bigger pieces of the public purse.

According to the Goldwater Institute report Money for Nothing: Phoenix taxpayers foot the bill for union work

All seven public unions have multiple workers who are paid their regular salary and benefits when they get “release time” to do union work instead of their assigned job.

The top two to six union officials in the seven units take the entire year doing union work – not one hour of city work – and get not only their full city salaries and benefits but also hundreds of hours of automatically paid overtime.

Two unions get lobbyists paid with taxpayer dollars.

Some union bosses also get salaries and stipends from their unions.
None of this is audited to see if they’re actually showing up and doing any work.

The practice may violate Arizona’s “gift clause,” according to constitutional lawyer Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute.

While this is shocking, it’s not really surprising. Phoenix staff compensation grew 23 percent over the past five years, during the worst recession in most people’s lifetime, while services were curtailed and taxes and fees shot up.

I’ve highlighted the struggles you and your family have been going through, how businesses have to fight through the expense and red tape of city bureaucracy to create a job.

This report is one more glaring example of how Phoenix city government is dominated by insulated insiders who just don’t get it. This shows how much union control exists at city hall.

You’ve heard me say that your voice must be heard in order to make a difference. Real reform will not occur until you get your family and neighbors to demand real change. You must vote.

To fix this problem, I recommend that:

All labor contracts will be available for public inspection at least 30 days before Council can vote on them so you have an opportunity to tell us what you think.
All key items should be defined in layman’s language, in a glossary, to prevent confusion. For example, if “pay” means only salary or if it means salaries and anything else, that should be clearly spelled out.

All previous benefits enjoyed by each labor group should be listed in advance of negotiations, including pay, time off, overtime and seniority benefits.

All negotiation sessions should be taped and transcribed. This will give you the opportunity to see if your city officials are negotiating in your best interest.

The proposed budget will show labor costs, benefits cost, bonuses and raises, and these will be presented on all public hearings on the budget.

All contracts must be audited.

Sincerely,
Councilman Sal DiCiccio

Here’s the Goldwater Institute “months-long investigative report” Sal anxiously wants us to read: Yawn. Seriously, this took months? Predictably, Mark Flatten larded his report with lots of anti-union think tank crapola but he did interview some union representatives about release time. They gave sensible explanations of why the time is necessary for training and personnel issues and how it often saves the city money in the long run, which was of course ignored by GI’s Nick Dranias, who used the report to push for (guess what?) union-busting legislation. Not just for an end to regular wages for release time, which he recommended, but an all out ban on public sector unions.

Moreover, no less than elected officials, public employees are trustees of the power delegated by citizens to the government. Public-sector unions violate a basic public trust when they use collective bargaining to secure one-sided and obviously unsustainable benefits. For these reasons and others, the Goldwater Institute recommends that Arizona join North Carolina and other states that completely prohibit state and local government officials from contracting with public employee unions, requiring all employment relationships to be individually negotiated.

Because a group has power and leverage that a lone individual doesn’t and, silly rabbits, collective power is only proper when it is in the hands of elite corporate cabals. Speaking of the American Legislative Exchange Council, here’s them in 2007 on release time for unions:

Resolution on Release Time for Union Business

Summary

The Resolution on Release Time for Union Business opposes the practice of public sector
union members receiving release time from their primary responsibilities to participate in
union business.

Model Resolution

WHEREAS, many public agencies, including school districts, regularly provide release
time for union leaders and negotiating team members to conduct union business; and

WHEREAS, such time should be recorded in order to determine how much time an
employee spends on union activity as opposed to performing his/her job duties; and

WHEREAS, such union leaders are often senior level employees at the top of the salary
schedule; and

WHEREAS, drawing out the negotiating process often causes substantial costs to
accrue, especially when an impasse results in prolonged negotiations lasting as long as 6-
12 months; and

WHEREAS, the individual agencies or school districts are still responsible for paying the
salaries of their employees, even when they are not performing their job functions, but
are involved in union business; and

WHEREAS, most agencies and school districts would benefit from requiring unions to
pay for the time their representatives work on union business;

NOW THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED, that the State/Commonwealth of (insert
state) urges legislatures to revise any policy that allows release time for public employees
to conduct union business, and to acknowledge and preserve the role of the states and
federal agencies in the interpretation and enforcement of such laws.

Adopted by the CIED Task Force at the Spring Task Force Summit, May 2, 2007.
Approved by the ALEC Board of Directors June 2007.

Notice the similarity to Dranias’ policy prescription? Sheesh, Goldwater Institute, you’re not only NOT non-partisan you are not even original.