Kathianne
06-10-2012, 11:05 AM
secretly I think the parties know it, which is why they always panic at the end:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/08/the-real-lesson-from-the-wisconsin-recal
When the issues were clear, voters were rational.“The art of government is to make two-thirds of the voters pay all it possibly can for the benefit of the other third,” wrote Voltaire, in one of the most counterintuitive yet accurate quotations about modern governance. Why are voters so willing to pay more of their hard-earned money to support the demands of a minority of their fellow citizens?
That’s not the question most of us are asking now, after public-sector unions were dealt devastating blows in Tuesday's elections in two of the most progressive states, Wisconsin and California.
Liberals are asking whether Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s overwhelming victory in a failed recall will spur similar “anti-worker” reforms across the country. Republicans are asking whether the Wisconsin vote—including the victory by three out of four Republicans in Wisconsin Senate seats targeted by the unions—spells doom for President Obama’s re-election.
Instead of wondering about short-term political implications, we should be asking why it took so long for voters to behave so rationally. Even in Democratic bastions such as San Jose, the public supported serious efforts to roll back benefit levels even for current employees. San Diego voters not only backed pension reform, but they OK’d a ban on union-only project labor agreements in the city and the reformist mayoral candidate took top place, although he will face a November run-off with a union Democrat.
Tuesday’s vote, however encouraging, is just the beginning of the broad-based reform movement that’s necessary to save states and municipalities from insolvency, to improve the nation’s increasingly decrepit public services, and to restore the proper balance between the citizen and the government official. But it is just the beginning.
Over the past decade, California governments have dramatically increased the pay and especially the benefit packages of public-sector workers. We have firefighters earning average total compensation packages of $175,000 a year in many jurisdictions, and majorities of police officers in some agencies retiring on questionable disabilities. The standard retirement package for the ever-expanding class of “public safety” officials allows them to retire at age 50 with 90 percent of their final year’s pay—and that’s before all the add-ons and scams. Miscellaneous members—the rest of public employees—aren’t far behind, and we’ve seen absurd enrichment schemes and salaries in one scandal after another.
I’ve watched a sea of proposals pass that give government employees special privileges that would never be allowed for mere private citizens, such as a recently passed California bill that allows many officials to shield their personal information from public property databases. These privileges encourage arrogance and misuses of power. Pensions are now consuming 16 percent of California’s discretionary budget, and in cities such as San Jose, pension costs escalated an eye-opening 350 percent in a decade.
Collective bargaining has made it nearly impossible for agencies to fire bad workers or pursue cost-saving alternatives. Although California leads the way in most absurd trends, the vast expansion of government compensation and special privileges is a nationwide problem, and in Tuesday’s election voters across the nation said they have had enough.
How did it get this bad?
...
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/08/the-real-lesson-from-the-wisconsin-recal
When the issues were clear, voters were rational.“The art of government is to make two-thirds of the voters pay all it possibly can for the benefit of the other third,” wrote Voltaire, in one of the most counterintuitive yet accurate quotations about modern governance. Why are voters so willing to pay more of their hard-earned money to support the demands of a minority of their fellow citizens?
That’s not the question most of us are asking now, after public-sector unions were dealt devastating blows in Tuesday's elections in two of the most progressive states, Wisconsin and California.
Liberals are asking whether Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s overwhelming victory in a failed recall will spur similar “anti-worker” reforms across the country. Republicans are asking whether the Wisconsin vote—including the victory by three out of four Republicans in Wisconsin Senate seats targeted by the unions—spells doom for President Obama’s re-election.
Instead of wondering about short-term political implications, we should be asking why it took so long for voters to behave so rationally. Even in Democratic bastions such as San Jose, the public supported serious efforts to roll back benefit levels even for current employees. San Diego voters not only backed pension reform, but they OK’d a ban on union-only project labor agreements in the city and the reformist mayoral candidate took top place, although he will face a November run-off with a union Democrat.
Tuesday’s vote, however encouraging, is just the beginning of the broad-based reform movement that’s necessary to save states and municipalities from insolvency, to improve the nation’s increasingly decrepit public services, and to restore the proper balance between the citizen and the government official. But it is just the beginning.
Over the past decade, California governments have dramatically increased the pay and especially the benefit packages of public-sector workers. We have firefighters earning average total compensation packages of $175,000 a year in many jurisdictions, and majorities of police officers in some agencies retiring on questionable disabilities. The standard retirement package for the ever-expanding class of “public safety” officials allows them to retire at age 50 with 90 percent of their final year’s pay—and that’s before all the add-ons and scams. Miscellaneous members—the rest of public employees—aren’t far behind, and we’ve seen absurd enrichment schemes and salaries in one scandal after another.
I’ve watched a sea of proposals pass that give government employees special privileges that would never be allowed for mere private citizens, such as a recently passed California bill that allows many officials to shield their personal information from public property databases. These privileges encourage arrogance and misuses of power. Pensions are now consuming 16 percent of California’s discretionary budget, and in cities such as San Jose, pension costs escalated an eye-opening 350 percent in a decade.
Collective bargaining has made it nearly impossible for agencies to fire bad workers or pursue cost-saving alternatives. Although California leads the way in most absurd trends, the vast expansion of government compensation and special privileges is a nationwide problem, and in Tuesday’s election voters across the nation said they have had enough.
How did it get this bad?
...