When in doubt, blame the unions. Personally, I’m holding out until we hear how ACORN and the New Black Panther Party are involved.
I do have to admit that I love this paragraph:
Assuming this is true it’s likely to provide much more ammunition to the arguments of those on the right who have started speaking out against the very idea of a public employees being allowed to unionize. Personally, I don’t think it would be appropriate to ban people from voluntarily associating just because they’re public employees. However, situations like this do raise the legitimate question of whether public employees in certain positions should be legally permitted to engage in some of the tactics that unions in the private sector engage during work disputes. When you’re a position where your job is one that is essential to the operation of the city — like a policeman, fireman, or sanitation worker — I think it’s highly questionable to concede that you should the right to go on strike. Essentially what happens in that situation is that the Union has a huge negotiating advantage over the city because leaders would not want to deal with the backlash that would result from the fact that garbage hasn’t been picked up in a week.
“I have no idea if this is true, but nonetheless it proves public employee unions are bad!” That’s fucking pro.
cathyx
So one of the comments on that site said the solution is to privatize the public services.
Once that happens, then profit comes into play. In order to have profits, you either cut down on the service, or raise the rates. Or both.
fourmorewars
This is off topic but I want to beg for help finding something that I think may be beyond my googling skills to find. ‘Cause I can’t remember the website, but it’s a world-o-crap/fafblog-ish site with the name mcguffey or mcguffin or something similar.
They did a piece where a father of a little girl apologizes, backhandedly, to another parent(s) for his little girl not sharing her toy at a playground with their little boy…they’re bringing her up libertarian, and they’re so proud when she yells at him something like ‘go away, looter!’
Any help would be appreciated.
JGabriel
John Cole:
This is ridiculous. Pretty much everyone agrees that the problems started with the city waiting too long to declare a snow emergency, call people in, and get trucks on the road.
All of those are management problems. How do you fucking blame that on the unions?
.
General Stuck
That’s alright, the whackadoodle from Iowa has ACORN covered, though they no longer exist. As well as those free loading darky farmers chincing Uncle Sam for slavery payback.
Peckerwood King also tells a whiteheart warming story on the House Floor, of those crafty Pigford freeloaders.
We are going to need a lot blog posts to cover the coming circus, and all it’s rings.
The Dangerman
If too many resources were tossed at the problem, we’d be a Nanny State trying to run all citizen’s lives.
Which reminds me: Can someone tell me the difference between Michelle Obama saying “don’t get fat” and Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign (other than the latter is an utter failure, I mean).
Gravenstone
Please to note the OTB post links to the fucking NY Post. Veracity, they no has it.
Davis X. Machina
@JGabriel: In politics, and in political journalism, you draw your curves, and only then plot your data — if you plot your data at all.
It made for better grades on lab reports in high school, why wouldn’t it work now?
Cat Lady
Doug Mataconis blamed Anita Hill for victimizing Clarence Thomas again by having a phone in her office that Ginni Thomas called. What a fucking whining wanker.
MattR
@JGabriel:
I agree about the last two. But IIRC the NY Times article said the last time that city officials could remember a snow emergency being declared was 2003 which means that the Bloomberg administration successfully dealt with previous storms without declaring a snow emergency. Granted Bloomberg was mayor in 2003, but I still think that partuicular decision is defensible and criticism of it is monday morning quarterbacking.
@Gravenstone: CNN is running with the story as well, though I think it is based on the same source as the NY Post story. And it is not as if CNN is the bastion of respectability,
Comrade Mary
@fourmorewars: That would be McSweeney’s: Our daughter isn’t a selfish brat: your son just hasn’t read Atlas Shrugs.
Jay C
I notice that the OTB post simply links to the same NY Post article: a poorly-sourced (anonymous “guilt-ridden” sanitmen complaining to a GOP Councilman) piece in a Murdoch-owned tabloid: now, of course, repeated throughout the blogosphere like it’s gospel – since, naturally, it reinforces some biased meme that the bloggers would like to believe in the first place. Therefore: truthiness triumphs again!
I mean, just because it’s in the NY Post doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s just pure BS: I’d still like to see some independent verification….
The Dangerman
Per the LA Times, how CA is dealing (and not very well) with our budget woes (can I have a “Fuck Arnold”; make it heartfelt, please). Drivers who cause accidents in at least 50 cities can be billed for the police and firefighters who show up.
freelancer
@fourmorewars:
The original was McSweeney’s satire piece. A dipshit who goes by “a conservative teacher” bought it as for reals, hook, line, and sinker.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
We are all air traffic controllers now. Thanks, Ronnie.
The Grand Panjandrum
A tax cut would solve this problem! Hey it worked and we haven’t had a terrorist attack since the tax cuts were renewed during the lame duck session. Tax cuts, baby. It works for whatever ails you.
JGabriel
Mataconis:
Shorter Mataconis: I’m not against public employees hanging out together, I just don’t want them planning anything together. They might figure out that we need them. And win! Which would make our taxes go up! Oh NOEZ!
.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
unions are the new black
freelancer
@freelancer:
…and then he showed up here to defend himself. It didn’t end well.
fourmorewars
Comrade Mary and freelancer, thanks loads to you both…I was working on variations of ‘mcgonigal’ when I checked back and saw your replies :). Thanks very much.
WereBear
One is an uppity woman pretending to be interested in social causes, and the other one actually planted a vegetable garden?
BGinCHI
The last sentence is the money shot: you mean it would demonstrate a “huge advantage” by showing how important garbage pickup is?
Then you concede that it’s worth paying a lot for.
I can do without credit default swaps, but not police/fire/sanitation.
Assholes.
Punchy
They hate civil unions, too. So at least they’re consistent.
beltane
@cathyx: And once privatization of these services comes into New York, the only beneficiary will be organized crime families. In the pastel colored, sugar spun, fantasies of the libertarians, privatization leads to a Little House on the Prairie idyll, when the reality is a failed society of filth and corruption where life is cheap and everyone has a price.
By the way, Bloomberg’s street along with the financial district was plowed immaculately.
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
A reading from the letter of St Ronnie to the Neoliberals, 1:1 “Everything private is better than anything public, and so long as one of us, anywhere, is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, can any of us truly be free?”
rikyrah
trying to cover their asses about not calling an emergency soon enough. can see it hundreds of miles away.
hamletta
As a FP-er at GOS said, if those workers are so guilt-ridden, why did they take time away from plowing to visit the councilman?
What a load of horseshit.
jl
The Post story is a mess. They lead with the union thugs issue, then later in the story mention that the NY gummint skimped on preparations in order to save on overtime, and then way down in the piece a denial from the Dept of Sanitation.
So, it is a typical Post effort: unreliable poorly sourced sensationalist trash.
But it will sell bigtime.
The ultimate cause of the mess is the low tax Bush ownership society economic policies, and an unregulated free market miracle boom that fell down and can’t get up. But that is forgotten. IMHO, because the Democrats do not have a prominent leader who will fight back sufficiently against corporate and GOP propaganda, but I do not want to start a tiff.
Punchy
@cathyx: Yes, because only plowing the side of the street–and only in the near vicinity of the payers’ driveways–of those who pay for plowing is so possible.
Privatize garbage pickup (see what I did there?) too. Watch every deadbeat just dump their trash in their neighbor’s bin.
beltane
@jl: If they don’t want to pay overtime, they have no right to expect that the job will get done. Why is the “Freedom isn’t free” crowd unable to understand such a simple concept?
Roger Moore
@The Dangerman:
FGASWAVRPF.
John - A Motley Moose
This is, of course, all the fault of the lazy poor people in NY. The crisis could have been averted simply by making the welfare queens and foodstamp using young bucks shovel the snow by hand. There are so many freeloaders in NY that the streets would have been cleared in hours. It’s about time those parasites paid something back to their true betters.
/snark
Thought I’d better add that snark tag. Although, that wouldn’t be snark to a winger. I can just hear Michelle Bachmann saying the same thing.
General Stuck
OT
Case closed? hopefully
Delia
And look at how well that’s turned out. Google “fatigued air traffic controllers” and you get link after link after link after link all explaining how air traffic controllers are overworked, underpaid, retiring en masse with not enough people to replace them. And, oh yeah, causing plane crashes cuz they’re forced to work when they’re over-tired.
I wonder if having a union could fix any of those problems.
Stillwater
@JGabriel: How do you fucking blame that on the unions?
He’s not really blaming it on the unions, since he thinks government employees ought to be allowed to organize. He’s blaming it on the coercive power unions have to bring a city to its knees by capriciously going on strike. But he’s not really blaming unions for having this power, either, since its just a fact that cops and firefighter and others can collectively decide to let mayhem and blazes and plagues ensue if they don’t get what they want because the government can’t fire them for political and practical reasons. No, according to Macatonis, this whole problem is really the fault of government, since they permit providers of necessary services, like cops and firefighters, to go on strike. And big M’s solution to this power imbalance is for government to pass a law prohibiting unions from striking.
And maybe he has a point. Surely no one other Macatonis, Conor and EDK have ever really thought about labor relations, you know?
Delia
Crap. Do you get sent to moderation for having too many links in a post? Like four?
Dork
Well, she succeeded in growing at least one vegetable.
KG
A lot of states have laws against public employees striking. Same goes for the Federal government. Everyone knows about Reagan firing the air traffic controls, but in 1978 Carter fired postal workers who went on strike. See also Taylor’s Law in NY and the Youngstown Steel case. Personally, I don’t have much problem with saying public employee unions can’t strike, particularly if you’re talking police, fire, or other public safety positions. That said, jumping to this argument based on the blizzard seems rather stupid since that wasn’t what happened.
PurpleGirl
@fourmorewars:
Try
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/no-looter-libertarian-family-values.html
Digby has a link to a story at a site called McSweeney which has the story Digby mentions.
My search terms were ‘go away, looter’ libertarian parents
stuckinred
@Delia: Sometimes one will do it. They don’t come back either.
Roger Moore
@Davis X. Machina:
You forgot the footnote, where there’s an exception for SAG members.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@jl: and like clockwork the far left appears to blame obama.
dude, obama has a 91% approval rating with self described liberal democrats. seek medical help; your knee jerk, far left, fringe view to blame everythin on obama has been categorically rejected by rank and file liberals.
AAA Bonds
WORK STOPPAGE STOPS WORK
POLISH, IRISH TO BE BEATEN
AAA Bonds
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Nope, sorry, that’s not the Tin Man you have there, but you’re close.
Sean
@Delia: That they named DC National Airport after Ronnie Raygun pissed me off to no end. I would continue to protest, but fuck flying into Dulles.
Also, and aside from Delia’s comment: Happy New year to all you folks here at Balloon Juice. This is a fucking excellent blog, an you are some excellent fucking people. Peace.
Maude
@WereBear:
There was the Just Say No “motto” printed on grocery bags back then. Problem solved.
JGabriel
beltane:
If it ever came down to Organized Crime vs. Randians, I think I might actually root for the Mafia.
.
Liberty60
Oh I get it-
When there is a huge negotiating advantage of one side over the other- say, like Wal-Mart versus its unskilled employees- then we need to rejigger the labor laws to even out the playing field.
Good to know!
WereBear
@Dork: I think you missed my point. But then, self-confessed dork, etc.
cathyx
@Punchy: No, by privatizing it they will still make you pay whatever they say. They will have to ask for rate hikes just like utility cos. have to, but if they don’t get what they want, they’ll cut services because they will be “losing” money otherwise. This is what will happen with the health care mandate requiring everyone to buy insurance from private cos.
AAA Bonds
Man, that Post piece is bedding for bird shit. It’s edited so poorly that “shameless” appears twice in five lines of copy, and it consists of a Republican councilman recounting a story where a bunch of union folks came to him and told him that the unions secretly ruined Christmas and then they vanished like apparitions into the night.
Also, people should spit on Doug Mataconis in the streets.
Dork
@WereBear: I got your point. I dont much care for Reagan.
beltane
@AAA Bonds: The question that needs to be asked is: Did the sanitation union cause the snowstorm? Unions are very powerful, so powerful that they can even affect weather patterns.
JGabriel
@MattR:
MattR, you recall correctly. However, I think the journalist’s source for the quote did not.
I can’t find a list of previous snow emergencies, but there are various stories and blog entries — like this one from Feb. 2010 and this story from March 2009 — which suggest that snow emergencies have been declared a lot more frequently and recently than reported in that story.
.
demkat620
@beltane: Yeah and remember what happened in that Arizona town when they privatized the trash pick up?
Tea Bagger Hell broke loose.
Janet Strange
@KG: Yep, I was an NTEU (National Treasury Employees Union) member back in the 70’s. They did some very useful stuff for us – got the seasonal employees health insurance for example, but we couldn’t strike. Against the law.
slag
@KG:
Exactly. Everyone knows that it was the Black Panthers scaring people away from the snow plows that caused this travesty of epic proportions.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@AAA Bonds: you’re right, the scarecrow didn’t have a brain and the far left is brainless. saying obama/democrats are at fault because they didn’t use their bully pulpit to repeal the root problem of bush’s tax cut (his view) is brainless and to the far left of 91% of liberals. it is brainless to drag national dems into this issue, as NYC has their own separate tax structure. what’s next, naderites blaming pelosi over clogged sewer drains in reno.
demkat620
@JGabriel: Well the Mob at least gets shit done.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
In the final analysis, this wouldn’t have happened if we had prayer in school.
Anne Laurie
Mataconis and his little buddies are hoping to find a new Calvin Coolidge. From Wikipedia, Boston Police Strike of 1919:
Because making ‘Silent Cal’ our national ideal worked out so fvcking well in 1929!
What was the line about the Bourbons — “They remember everything, and yet they learn nothing”?
(Was going to do a separate post on this, but… )
Anne Laurie
@The Dangerman: __
AMD doesn’t make huge profits from adding HFCS to marijuana or crack.
JGabriel
@Delia:
Yes. You’re allowed three links. After that, it’s Moderation City.
.
Maude
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Amen.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
So the depraved Republicans should therefore concede that it’s highly questionable not to fully fund these essential operations.
.
.
Anne Laurie
@Delia: Yup. For our variety of FYWP, it’s three links per comment — two, if you use the “Reply to” button.
Anne Laurie
@Mike Kay (True Grit): __
It’s nice for her that the Church Lady has found someone to cover her vacation shifts, but you may want to dial back on the kneejerk O-dolatry. You don’t want your masters suspecting you of snark.
Obama’s a big boy, and a Democrat. He’s not the C-Plus Augustus, dreaming of North-Korean-style fealty.
AAA Bonds
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
That sounds like a lot of stuff about some very scary people on the “far left”. I’ve never seen one but I understand they are invisible when exposed to light.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie: is it that hard to cut and paste? you forgot the part were glen says “dear leader”
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@AAA Bonds: the far left isn’t scary, they’re to marginal. they’re more like ants at a picnic – something you keep having to brush away.
General Stuck
I have no problem at all with multiple readings of this poll stat. No siree. Numbers don’t lie. People often do.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@General Stuck: that number is killing them. when you spend all your time in a self reinforcing echo chamber, which always says you’re right, and then when your brethen say you’re wrong (in vast numbers), it produces strong shock.
Bill Arnold
@fourmorewars:
As others have said, http://mcsweeneys.net/
Be sure to browse around the site (the Internet Tendencies icon); the stories will brighten up your day.
Also, for related-but-not-satire piece, see In Defense of Scrooge at mises.org
Nick
No No No No No
Dan Halloran said the workers who called him DID NOT blame the unions. They blamed the supervisors. The unions were not involved.
the media is running with a false story
I PERSONALLY spoke with Halloran, PERSONALLY
they were NOT blaming the unions.
I hate the motherfucking media.
Nick
@JGabriel:
The media is spinning with false information. Dan Halloran is no friend to unions, but he did not say the people who called him blamed them. He flat out said to us in a conference call today the unions were not involved.
AAA Bonds
@Mike Kay (True Grit):
Who are you talking about? The RCP? Or liberals on a rival blog? Because I’m unable to parse your fantasies.
mclaren
@The Dangerman:
Speaking of unions and the California state deficit, chew on this one, buckaroos: Highest-paid UC college admins threaten lawsuits over retirement pay.
There’s a reason why California has a 28-billion-dollar state deficit this year…
mclaren
@AAA Bonds:
Let me help: to a crank like Mike Kay, “far left” means “sane people.” So substitute that in and you get:
That’s an excellent description of the typical Mike Kay post on this forum, as it happens.
AAA Bonds
@mclaren:
I just marvel at these characterizations of people as “far left”. There isn’t a “far left” in America. The handful of people who espouse far left positions in America aren’t connected with liberal critics of Obama at all.
That’s one reason why the “far right/far left” false equivalence is so silly, and really, so dangerous.
AAA Bonds
@Nick:
That’s some wild shit. I mean, it’s the Post, so not really wild, but this story is just eating up Google News right now and every version I can find says Halloran blames the unions (and every last one is obviously getting that from the Post story).
Anne Laurie
@Mike Kay (True Grit): Dial it back, you’re overcompensating.
Chroist, at least the Church Lady contributes to pet posts sometimes. You’re all up in our bidness 24/7, pecking at the “Must never criticize Our Preznident! ! !” outrage like a labratory pigeon hitting the pellet bar.
If President Obama is half the man you want him to be, he just doesn’t care that much. It’s only fReichtards and paid trolls that have to gum up every friggin thread with the same blattering deeee-fense of the guy in their (hopefully imaginary) Officially Authorized Leadership Portrait.
Mike Kay (True Grit)
@Anne Laurie: I need to buy a word salad descrambler.
Nick
@AAA Bonds:
Direct quote from Councilman Halloran
“The unions were not in the equation”
I swear on my life. I heard him say it today. I was there.
mclaren
@AAA Bonds:
Yes, it’s truly amazing how the average person slings around the term “far left” to describe…Joe Biden. Or Barack Obama.
This is what the right wing seems to see when they look at president Obama.
I remember what the far left was really like. The Black Panthers were far left. The Weathermen were far left.
This is a picture of the actual far left.
I don’t see a lot of Democrats standing around wearing Che Guevara berets with bandoliers of ammo and shotguns at the ready anymore, do you?
mclaren
@Anne Laurie:
If Mike Kay dialed back the crazy, he’d disappear in a puff of character assassination.
Jan
Did I miss anyone mention New York’s Taylor Law, which allows public employees the right to be in or decline to be in a union and prohibits strikes by public employees.
http://www.nysegov.com/citguide.cfm?ques_id=338&superCat=36&cat=439&content=relatedfaqs
http://www.perb.state.ny.us/stat.asp
Anyway, public employees have become the whipping boy for the government financial ills. Simple to blame them. Easier than realizing that they don’t pass the budgets, they just clean your roads, educate your kids, put out your fires.
Church Lady
In July and August of 1978, members of both the Memphis Police Department and Memphis Fire Department went on strike over failed contract negotiations. Saying is wasn’t fun is somewhat of an understatement. The sundown to sunrise curfew was memorable, as was the sight of the National Guard patrolling the streets.
Just to make things fun, and make their point, members of the fire department decided to practice a little arson. One night, there were something like 350 fires burning all at the same time, with only Fire Chiefs and the National Guard to put them out. Between that, and the crime running rampant because there were no policemen on duty, many citizens sat in their houses at night, armed to the teeth.
Strikes by Public Safety employees are not a particularly good thing.
agrippa
There is no ‘far left’ left in the USA. As a practical matter, the DSA is the ‘far left’. And, we all know how ‘far left’ they are.
As for people talking bad about Obama, I suspect that he handles it fairly well. He may not care all that much, certainly not enough to get his knickers in a twist over it. You do not get into an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
It is true that Congress and the WH did not do what needed to be done. That does not prevent anyone from blaming them. Life is unfair.
It is also true that any conceivable alternatives to the officeholders would have done no better. Again, life is unfair. Further, deserve has nothing to do with it.
agrippa
There is no ‘far left’ left in the USA. As a practical matter, the DSA is the ‘far left’. And, we all know how ‘far left’ they are.
As for people talking bad about Obama, I suspect that he handles it fairly well. He may not care all that much, certainly not enough to get his knickers in a twist over it. You do not get into an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
It is true that Congress and the WH did not do what needed to be done. That does not prevent anyone from blaming them. Life is unfair.
It is also true that any conceivable alternatives to the officeholders would have done no better. Again, life is unfair. Further, deserve has nothing to do with it.
Suffern ACE
@Nick: Too late.
Augie
I won’t click through the link to see who wrote this but since he/she is a right-winger I’m just going to assume they have the good heart and intellectual consistency to suggest banning doctors from organizing in the AMA since this organization also has the potential (and has successfully done so) of holding this country hostage in the name of excessive wages.
Erik Vanderhoff
“I think it’s highly questionable to concede that you should the right to go on strike.”
Yeah, that would be why the state agency that employs me has a no-strike clause in our contract.
Idiot.
Suffern ACE
@Erik Vanderhoff: There wasn’t a strike. Someone found a supervisor who either was a dick, a moran, or was following a the policy manual and has decided to hang it on the union. Sanitation supervisor does not equal union does not equal high ranking official. Does not equal wildcat strike or inside job. Did I say low level bureaucrat?
goblue72
@mclaren: That might make a whif of sense if the UC admins issue was at all related to unions, BUT ITS NOT. The UC administrators threatening to sue over their pensions are executive management – UC-Berkeley law school dean, various senior execs managing the UC investment trust, etc. THEY ARE EXECUTIVES. NOT union members.
Basically, they are the same class of pigs as the banksters whining about not getting bonuses.
But nice try, thanks for playing.
goblue72
Sadly for the right-wing morans, the vast majority of jurisdictions make it illegal for public safety officials to go on strike (cops and firefighters). In addition, many public sector union contracts have no strike clauses. What the right-ring morans can’t fathom is that society has already thought about this effing “problem” already and long had a solution to it.
Police and firefighters get (or do not get, depending on your POV) out-sized pay/overtime/benefits deals b/c local politicians don’t want to be seen as soft on crime come election time and don’t want to piss of the cops/firefighters unions’ electioneering warchests. If you are a city council member, a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions here or there really do make a difference.
Nancy Irving
“When you’re a position where your job is one that is essential to the operation of the city…”
Wow–did a conservative just acknowledge that some gummint employees actually perform valuable–nay, ESSENTIAL work?!