Today the New York Times reports its new poll (3/1/11):
As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
That's big enough news, and once again cuts against the People-Don't-Support-These-Overpaid-Union-Workerstrope.
But there's more.When the poll asked about fixing the deficit, peoplehad a message rarely heard in the media:
Asked how they would choose to reduce their state's deficits, those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes, 22 percent chose decreasing the benefits of public employees, 20 percent said they would cut financing for roads and 3 percent said they would cut financing for education.
Imagine if the corporate media conversation about deficits were driven more by what the public thinks we should do. Raising revenue is hardly even part of thediscussion.
And a bonus finding–which group of peopleis most supportive of cutting workers' pay? The Times explains:
Although cutting the pay or benefits of public workers was opposed by people in all income groups, it had the most support from people earning over $100,000 a year. In that income group, 45 percent said they favored cutting pay or benefits, while 49 percent opposed it.
The cut-their-pay pundits don't reflect public opinions, but theydo a decent job of representingtheir class.
About Peter Hart
Peter, it's the only time the corpress can accurately be called "a class act", innit?
[...] http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/03/01/the-public-vs-the-media-on-unions-deficits/ . [...]
[...] would be folks in the media who wouldn't like the recent CBS/New York Times poll that found strong public support for public workers. Sixty percent of those polled oppose stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights; 56 [...]
[...] would be folks in the media who wouldn't like the recent CBS/New York Times poll that found strong public support for public workers. Sixty percent of those polled oppose stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights; 56 [...]
It makes it easy to ignore public opinion that doesn't jibe with your mindset if you just say you don't accept it. How many FOX PAC pundits and talking heads do that every day? They like Rasmussen and even have him on all the time.
Sadly the issue is not what people think but what governments can afford. Nor is it the pay levels though in any system there is fat. The difficulty is how to pay for promised pension and retiree health care benefits. Politicians found resonance in promises and told us we could afford whatever it took for them to gain favor and get elected using union power. We did not act wisely and stop the corruption of benefits for votes. Shame on the voting populace but the politicians cannot escape the real blame.
Public sector workers pay 100% of their pension benefits. For example, here in Albuquerque, firefighters have 25% of their pay taken out for their retirement. So, they get along for their entire career on 75% of their pay. Taxpayer's PAY NOTHING for retired firefighters. Same is true all over the country.
What is truly incredible is that WALL STREET PERPETRATED A GLOBAL FRAUD and UNION WORKERS ARE BEING BLAMED for it.
I hope what Roger is saying is that taxpayers should never pay dime one into unions
The Albuquerque example Rodger cites is worthy of note but the situation of one group of employees in the 34th largest city in the US seems anomalous. In San Francisco, a city 1.5 times larger, the controller announced recently that the pension fund is $4.0+ billion underfunded! Rodger\'s second point about union workers bearing the blame for a financial fraud committed by others is just wrong. Credit and liquidity together did mislead us as to what people can be paid in all sectors, however. The credit bulge can be blamed on our entire populace. The liquidity crisis does lie at the feet of the financial industry but does not answer the question of what we can afford to pay people.
Corruption of inflated compensation does not end with public employees. It goes right up the corporate ladder to CEOs and senior executives and into higher education, where university presidents, chancellors and professors demand enormous salaries and benefits. In private organizations there is always a tendency to keep inflating compensation below to permit bigger rewards at the top magnifying the problem. The corruption throughout our culture needs to be recognized and stopped. Our lives cannot be about how much money we earn and what we can buy. Public employees and their unions are not alone in this scrutiny. They are just more obvious to taxpayers.
[...] by public employees retiring at 65 with cushy benefits? This is not at all supported by recent polling data. You know what would help clarify things? Rose could consider anon-airclarification or [...]
What happened to pension funds? Why are they "underfunded?" Because the public employee pension funds, fed entirely by a portion of each paycheck (and ZERO tax dollars, beyond the the public wage/salary), were invested in Wall St, which took a dive in response to the massive fraud engineered by bankers.
High-finance bankers stole the money, which collapsed the banks. The banks were bailed out by you and me, and now pubic workers' unions, one subset of victims of this horrendous crime, are supposed to pay for it all.
Why aren't those who profited from the collapse of the housing bubble being asked to pay for the destruction that resulted from their windfall?
Onewhoreads
The answer you seek is the same answer my wee little nephew used to give me when I asked him why he did something wrong………..BECAUSE!That is all the answer you shall get in all this.
The sub prime mortgage failures key players(FANNY and FREDDY)now have an unlimited loan from the FED- paid for by you and I.The legislators who ran it are in charge of the financial restructuring.Go figure.That" pile of human stupidity" started this fiasco and yet…..
Moving forward the public taxpayers can not pay for anything anymore.We are broke.WE must re-boot.A lot of regular folks are gonna take it on the chin.As usual the wealthy will fair better.I don't say that in any disingenuous way to those among us who have excelled.It is just a fact.
Fannie and Freddie were not the subprime mortgage failures key players:
Joe Nocera NY Times
"Fannie and Freddie\'s affordable housing goals were not the main reason. Rather, it was the rise of the subprime lenders â┚¬” and their ability to get even their worst loans securitized by Wall Street â┚¬”Âthat was the main culprit. Fannie and Freddie lowered their standards mostly because they were losing market share to the subprime originators."
Helen i spoke in front of countless audiences before the crash,warning over and over about an insanity called Fanny and Freddy.I knew only to well the pressure Reno and Clinton put on "lenders".I had Dodd ,Shuman, and Reed lie to my face.Promises of how strong and solvent F and F were.I love it when i here it said no one saw the crash coming.That is a lie.It was obvious.The only question was how far.Believe me i had tons of libs yelling and screaming at me how wrong I was.I used to end every talk with "When this comes tumbling down you will have to work hard to blame corporate America or Wall Sreet or the Republicans.But i have faith in you.Because i know you will try"(from my notes)So Im not surprised.I predicted it.And Where were you then?You were in that audience yelling you don't care for the poor.Bla bla bla.Now that the horse is so far out of the barn to try to blame it on wall st…..Even in some connective sense is just such a waste .Liberal posturing .Wall street is a vulture that comes after- and feeds on the dead.They make money winning or loosing.But they did not drive this.it was a socialist program jammed down our throats
Fannie and Freddie did not cause the crash. the CRA did not cause the crash.
Morgage boilerrooms like those at Countrywide did not issue one loan that they didn't want to.
The way the loans were repackaged and rated cause the crash. This was totally on Wall Street.
Alan Greenspan thought the financial industry would police itself if regulations were lessened. Even he admitted he was wrong about that.
[...] there's been little evidence of this supposed [...]
[...] Keeping Social Security as is, reducing Medicare drug prices, raising taxes on corporations, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…. I'm sorry, are theseideassupposed to sound absurd on their face? Someone should tell the people, since much of this would be broadly popular. At least, that seems to be the case when the people are asked what they think. [...]