Mayor Gatsas Goes after The “Benfit Plan One-Percenters” in Manchester

Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas is singing a tune we like to hear and one that I have advocated for myself.  What is it?  Hidden in the Cadillac plans of public sector employees is a revenue resource that must be tapped.

Gatsas is standing up for taxpayers, and defending the spending cap, in his negotiations with the Teachers union with regard to Manchester’s School budget.

He said teachers still enjoy plans with zero deductibles, $5 co-pays and $50 charges for emergency room visits, while the police union, among others, recently made concessions to avoid layoffs, shifting to a plan with higher co-pays, deductibles and $150 per emergency room visit.

“With the $3 million in savings, we hired more police officers,” Gatsas said.

So why can’t the teachers do the same thing?  It’s a great question.

There are literally millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars state wide, tied up in paying for the kind of health care benefits and retirement plans that most private sector employees only dream about–the very people funding the plans of the benefit-one-percenters.   And in his particular case, Mayor Gatsas is only looking for Manchester teachers to go where the other Manchester Union employees already have, so that the city can free up 4.4 million…for education.

(If it’s really about the kids….?)

That kind of agreement would be but one small step for benefit equality, though it still would not bring those public employees anywhere near parity with their private sector counterparts.  We’d need the contract negotiation equivalent of hydraulic fracturing to get even close, but you have to start somewhere.

And this is a well that must be tapped, and not just in Manchester.  Town, county, and state wide elected officials have to go after these plans in every contract moving forward, and they have to ask these folks to make that choice.   They can choose to lean toward benefits parity with the people who pay for those benefits for them, or they can explain why we have to cut cops, fire-fighters, teachers, or services because the public employees refused.

Grow-government-first politicians, at every level, who think that they can keep milking taxpayers while many public employees continue to enjoy their One-Precenter benefits package’s, are only setting everyone up for failure.  The pension deficit is no joke.  The economy is no joke.  The kinds of co-pays and retirement plan funding that many have enjoyed in the past is a sick joke—and it is unsustainable.

But if everyone in the public sector accepted that over the next few years they will need take more fiscal responsibility for their own retirement, and accept that they must pay plan rates and co-pays more in line with the rest of us, and that may include paying for a majority if not all of their own future 401K and pension plan payments from their own pockets, this would free up hundreds of  millions of dollars annually, across the state, for all of those other things they also claim cannot be left unfunded.

So put your money where your mouth is.  Admit that you’ve had a sweet deal.  Accept that people who are paying your way can’t pay your way, their own way, and sustain the growing cost of existing government, along with millions more annually in more of it.  Yes, you will feel the pinch, but that ride has to end.  It is unsustainable in any economy–it is nearly criminal in this one.

And it has to end or you may find that if you still even have a job when it comes time to retire, there is nothing there because there never really was.

H/T Union Leader

by Steve MacDonald . cross posted at GraniteGrok

The Left’s War on Education

The left's objection to even one tax dollar finding its way into the hands of a church is legion.  It is (apparently) a matter of even greater concern that we might engage in tax policy that accidentally encourages others--by allowing them to keep more of their own money--to give some of it to a religious group.

Such is the current quandary, pressed into the arms of the New Hampshire Superior court judiciary; if a business owner is incentivized by the state to give their own money for a k-12scholarship to a non-profit that manages such scholarships, and some kid or their parents just happens to use their qualified scholarship award at a school run by a religious group, has the state shown an establishment of religion?

While progressives, secular humanists, and left-wing political pundits nod wide-eyed, in unison, like bobble-head donkeys peering out the cloudy rear window of the hopey-changey bus, let us consider instead what the state may have actually done.  It may have committed a crime much worse.  It may have permitted an establishment of "encouraging children not to attend public school."  They may also have encouraged the act of doing something selfless with your own money for the good of the community in place of the all-caring State; 'educating' minors (see also; education camps) is still one of the lefts greatest 'greater goods' regardless of how their government-institutionalization has ruined it, by first running it through the kidneys of the bureaucracy and the teachers unions.

And there in lies the true problem.  The Democrat establishment, of which both the ACLU and Barry Lynn's Church of The Separation of Church and state are a prominent part, are really just carrying water for Democrats who are beholden to teachers unions and the government monopoly on k-12 education.   Everyone on the left demands the primacy of government run schools but they do not necessarily want the potential PR disaster of having to answer the question: "why won't you let poor kids have scholarships to better performing private schools, because it sends a message that there are better performing private schools and, hey--why is that anyway?

The answer to that questions is...because of the government bureaucracy and the unions, but left wing blood is thicker than water.  The Progressive Family, however dysfunctional, comes first.  And in reality, Democrats don't give a damn about education, all they care about is the teachers unions and preserving the state monopoly, and it matters very little which level of government you peer into to confirm that observation.  Democrats kill scholarships every chance they get, regardless of whether a kid might seek attendance at a religious school or not, because it threatens their iron grip on your kids.

Ironically, one of the more likely reasons why home school kids are so much more adept at civics than their homogenized bricks-and-mortar counterparts could be because their parents have to keep driving to the state House to defend their right to home-school them.  The act in itself is a teaching experience denied the chattel of the public education monopoly, who are instead favored with dynamic class schedules, Orwellian named curricula, all passed down from distant left-wing wizards, sequestered away in impenetrable white-towers into which no contrary statistic or weal of common sense can penetrate.

They even screwed up the school lunch program.

And while I'm ranting (and talking about lunch) it is the left who complains so much about childhood obesity...but who had the bright idea to stop sending kids to gym class five days a week after just a semester or two in High School?  I had Gym every day for four years straight.  We ran, played sports, worked on exercise equipment, did track, archery, soccer, floor hockey, basketball, volleyball, did something every day we were in public school, it cost less, and there were more of us.

Modern educators, at least in my district, send them to gym on all manner of odd schedules, up until their freshman year and then excuse them from it the next three.  My kids didn't have to take any phys. Ed. once they became sophomores.  And I bet if you left lunch alone, and went back to putting them in gym shorts five days a week, we'd see some changes.

And if educating kids in public schools is so damn important, and so much so that feckless (#!*&!)'s like Barry Lynn can file suit in our state, to overturn a law on the outside chance that a private business owner, incentivized by the opportunity to keep more of the money he made from actually being taxed, gives a scholarship donation to a non-profit,  that gives it to a kid, who ends up attending a private catholic school, how is childhood obesity not the fault of white-tower education professors who convinced local school districts to stop sending kids to phys-ed the last three years they are nestled in the bosom of governments taxpayer-stuffed decolletage?

And how is it that these private schools, secular or religious, manage to produce better-educated (and probably healthier) kids on significantly lower overall budgets and costs per student?  And if the government is not the best place to put your money when it comes to education what are the odds that it is not the best place to put your money for much of anything else?  Not good. Even the liberals who pledge un-ending fealty to the secular super-state take every opportunity to pay as little in taxes as they can.

And it is no coincidence that given the means, the same liberals give as little of their kids over to their government run schools as well.

And maybe Barry Lynn and his church of the separation of church and state should first ask why it is acceptable for the state to use taxpayer dollars to accredit religious schools if he objects so strenuously to business owners funding scholarships in exchange for not getting burgled by the state.

Personally, I think this presents an opportunity for New Hampshire Republicans.  The "separation of church and state" is a shibboleth of the left.  An out of state left-wing influence, with the help of the ACLU, has come here to tell us that business owners cannot use their own money to fund scholarship programs for underprivileged kids in exchange for not being taxed as much.  They don't want to let the "greedy bastards™" give of themselves to help families in need.  And they have intentionally filed suit to overturn the law in the county most likely to get them what they want.

Why?  What do Democrats have against business owners using their own money to help kids get the best education possible?

You are reading  "The Left’s War on Education"   by  Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com (Home)

Steve has been recognized as the Americans For Prosperity Blogger of the month for December 2012

Did The NH Teamsters Local 633 Just Offer to Bribe Our State Senators?

by Steve MacDonald 

From The NH Senate Right Work Hearing Transcript.

“Let me just be frank. The big, the elephant in the room here and I know it’s been said is the politics of it… This group gives to this party; it doesn’t give to this party. Well part of my job essentially is to ensure that at least the teamsters look at the individual, not necessarily the party per se… and see if they agree with their views…Senator, I would be more than happy to go back to my boss if you guys want to vote to kill this bill. I’d be more than happy to talk to my boss about helping you out and if you guys want to help the teamsters, I’m sure my boss would be more than happy to sit down with you.”

Rip Holden, rep Teamster Local 633

You scratch our back, and we’ll scratch yours.  Screw the taxpayers and everyone else.  So is this how a sliver of the population manages to dictate statewide policy?   We know it is how they bought up and corrupted the Democrat party.

You are reading Did Teamsters local 633 just try to bribe the NH Republican Senate by Steve Mac Donald originally posted at GraniteGrok.com. (Home)

Be Pro-Choice: Vote For The Right To Abort The Union.

The argument the left always falls back on when it comes to abortion policy is that no one is making anyone get an abortion.  What makes this particularly galling is that same people who promote abortion as a choice no one is forced to make are also against abstinence education.  They are therefore promoting the number one cause of unwanted pregnancy.  So sex is encouraged, increasing the odds that a woman might have to make the choice that no one is in theory forcing them in to.

So it should follow that if joining a union was a right like abortion, no one would force you to join and everyone would have the right to choose.  Some liberal justice would have long ago ensconced that "right" into the US Constitution and we would not be having a debate in New Hampshire about the impending Veto Override vote in the NH House.  Workers could just decide if they wanted to abort the union.  But Democrats are hypocrites and choice is not choice, particularly in the workplace.  You will not, cannot be permitted to choose for yourself.  Unions are mandatory.

And of course the left and the unions go to great lengths to whine about adding jobs and livable wages, and workers rights.  Democrats have spent trillions pretending that the Government can actually create jobs.  Union Jobs, that is.   And they are serious about denying you a choice. Democrat Party leaders like Nancy Pelosi have indicated that the Federal government ought to be able to close down companies that are non-union or whose workers will not vote for collective bargaining.  And the Unions, who finance Democrat campaigns with mandatory dues dollars all agree.  So to Democrats the choice about joining a union is not an option.  There is no choice.

This is wrong.

Anyone who is qualified to perform a job should be able to accept it without being forced to pay tribute to union bosses and their partisan agenda.  It is nothing less than a government mandate to pay for a service to a third party, you do not need or want.  And any Republicans who buys into this progressive nonsense or allows themselves to be intimidated by unions to vote no, or into not voting at all, is sending a message that their vote is not about rights, or choice, or freedom, it is about politics and power.  They are in essence promoting or permitting the forced funding of the entire Progressive agenda.

Right to work allows you to abort the union.  No one is making you do that but it at least gives you a choice.  The Democrat party offers no choice; in fact they want to force unionization and mandatory dues (which end up in their campaign coffers) on every business and every industry.  The Democrats and the NLRB are doing everything they can to intimidate industry, to intimidate states, to do whatever it takes to deny you that choice.  That is not good for worker, workers rights, freedom, prosperity, or New Hampshire.

Override the Right to Work Veto in New Hampshire.  Give people the right to choose.

Cross posted: Be Pro-Choice: Vote For The Right To Abort The Union.

New Carol Same As The Old Carol

Just cleaning Up the CSP detritus so let us call this Carol-SEIU Saturday morning.

This tidbit fell in my lap while I was looking for the photo in a previous post.  It is a clip of the top six donors to Carol's 2012 re-election campaign from OpenSecrets.org.  While it is still early in the funding season you may notice some similarities to all her previous efforts. Unions!

I realize this is another captain obvious moment for activists who pay attention to such things but we are all quick to forget; not how Democrats demonize opponents they claim are owned by some special interest but who owns them and how much they will work to distract us from that.

One other point the left obsesses over when it comes to funding election: 53% of Carol's dollars in this cycle are already from out of state.

Pass the popcorn please.

Cross Posted: New Carol Same As The Old Carol