Wis. GOP strips public workers' bargaining rights

Really? Zipping that check out to Uncle Sam without a pesky long form to declare exemptions?

I've paid PLENTY into the system, volunteered and donated, asshole. I like contributing to society. I chafe like all hell under extortion, however.

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil." - Friedrich A. Hayek

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs: when he first appears he is a protector." - Plato, c. 400 B.C.

I paid tuition and for all manner of testing for my right to be a teacher. I earned it my goddamn self: The union didn't get me here and they don't deserve my money.

You were forced to get an education to become a teacher. How is that different from the union? I can't become a teacher if I simply join the union. The state will require that I meet certain requirements. Is that not a shakedown by the state that I would be forced to go to school and spend my money to become a teacher?

You were forced to get an education to become a teacher.

The 'free rider' issue is controversial

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You were forced to get an education to become a teacher.

Even you have to feel like an idiot to follow this ridiculous tack. I had to become qualified to teach. I owe unions nothing.

You owe them your job Lash. Without the union you could not teach in California.

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You were forced to get an education to become a teacher.

Even you have to feel like an idiot to follow this ridiculous tack. I had to become qualified to teach. I owe unions nothing.

In freeing school boards from bargaining with employees over anything but inflation-capped wage increases, Wisconsin lawmakers might have opened the floodgates for districts seeking to drop coverage by the state's dominant - and highly controversial - health insurance provider for teachers.

WEA Trust, the nonprofit company started 40 years ago by the state's largest teachers union, currently insures employees in about two-thirds of Wisconsin school districts. The company's market dominance has dropped in recent years, although not as much as some school officials who complain about the company's costs would like.

After switching the district's nonunion employees to a different health insurance carrier, Cedarburg School Board President Kevin Kennedy said his school system is likely to look at cost savings by doing the same for its unionized teachers after unsuccessful attempts in previous years.

"It's such a large-ticket item; it's such low-hanging fruit," he said. "You can lay off an aide or increase your student fees, but that doesn't make up such a magnitude of saving as insurance does."

The survival of WEA Trust's health insurance corporation will depend on its ability to compete with other providers that have more pricing flexibility and a greater range of services, said Dale Thoma, managing partner for insurance broker Willis of Wisconsin Inc. Until now, the insurer was negotiated into contracts by adamant union leaders.

"They're going to have to compete in a different, more wide-open arena," he said. "That's what other insurers deal with, and their ability to respond to that and just compete, I guess, will ultimately determine their position in the market."

Because WEA Trust is named as the carrier in so many school district contracts, it has been largely shielded from such competition in the past, said Andy Serio, a group health insurance consultant.

"There literally is no competition if you're named in the collective bargaining agreement, so that would be the most dramatic effect on WEA," he said. "Because clearly, if you're in a collective bargaining agreement, you're in."

At the beginning of this fiscal year, last July 1, the Brown Deer School District began using a different carrier after years with WEA Trust. The district saved $170,000 in just one year - the equivalent of at least two teachers.

But Steve Lyons, director of public affairs for WEA Trust, said the company is named in only one-third of the school district contracts where it provides health insurance. And of those, in about one-third of contracts it is named as the "standard-bearer," meaning that districts can switch to other carriers if they can find substantially similar plans at lower costs, he said.

That shows, he said, that the company did not have an unfair advantage, as some critics have contended, based on the company's ties to the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

"What happens at the local level is, in the past, prior to the budget, is the local school boards would bargain with the local union and they would come to a consensus and often they chose us," Lyons said.

"We're very competitive in pricing and have been and continue to be."

Lyons also said in an e-mail that the insurer returns 93 cents out of every health care premium dollar back to the districts in health care coverage, while "some of our for-profit competitors keep more than 20 cents out of every dollar."

But Emily Koczela, director of finance for the Brown Deer School District and a former Shorewood School Board member, said the company regularly resorts to methods other than competitive pricing to keep its business.

Earlier this year, the Brown Deer district's teachers union filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission over the district's decision to switch from WEA Trust. Koczela suspects the move was aimed at protecting the insurance company rather than the employees' benefits, which she said remained the same with the lower-cost carrier.

"They don't know how to compete," she said. "Their way of competing to get my business back is to sue me. That's not how you get business back."

She said she expected the company will encounter a similar reaction from other business managers who have had difficulty in dropping the company in the past, even when they thought they had a contractual right.

"They've provided good service to the teachers, but they haven't provided good service to the people in the business office who sign their contracts," Koczela said.

ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC and NPR Ignore Death Threats to Wisconsin Republicans
By Noel Sheppard | March 13, 2011 | 11:54


Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/03/13/abc-cbs-msnbc-nbc-and-npr-ignore-death-threats-wisconsin-republicans#ixzz1GaSTOGXP

BILL O'REILLY: But first, death threats in Wisconsin and that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points" memo. The attorney general's office in that state investigating a number of death threats against some Republicans who voted to diminish union power.

A radio station obtained this email, quote: "Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will be killed due to your actions I the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell," unquote. Wisconsin authorities are taking this stuff seriously. They have a suspect, has not been charged as far as we know.

Not taking this seriously were ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR. LexisNexis and closed-caption dump searches of "Wisconsin and 'death threat'" produced zero results for these so-called news outlets throughout the month of March.



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/03/13/abc-cbs-msnbc-nbc-and-npr-ignore-death-threats-wisconsin-republicans#ixzz1GaSz8WDT

Madison -- The state's Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating death threats against the lives of some Republican senators, inlcuding email threats against Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Sen. Dan Kapanke.

Fitzgerald received at least one death threat in the wake of Wednesday’s vote to repeal most collective bargaining by public employees, his spokesman, Andrew Wellhouse, told the Journal Sentinel.

And an aide for Kapanke said the La Crosse senator received a disturbing email threatening his life last night. Capitol Police and La Crosse police were immediately notified.

Bill Cosh, a spokesman for the state Department of Justice, told the Associated Press Thursday that the department's criminal investigation division is looking into threats against GOP senators from several sources.

Welhouse Thursday provided to the Journal Sentinel a copy of the text of one e-mail he said was sent on Wednesday night but would not provide the email address or name of the sender. He said the email was turned over to Capitol Police, who are investigating it.

“We have received several more threats over the past few weeks as well, and protesters have actually gone so far as to go up to (Fitzgerald's) house and bang on the windows at 6 a.m. demanding that he come out,” Welhouse said.

Tim Donovan, a spokesman for the Department of Administration and Capitol Police, had no immediate comment Thursday morning.

Here’s an excerpt of the email provided by Welhouse:

“This is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assault (sic) you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, this isn't enough. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message. So we have built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent…"

The threat against Kapanke stated:

"We will hunt you down. We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning."

An incorrect and self-serving attempt at metaphor... I contribute materially, and with my time and sincere effort. I'm committed to several important social issues. Just because I hate mandatory union compliance doesn't feed your inane little scenario, doofus.

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Really; and you think the Vietnamese could ever have killed and maimed so many of us if we had not given them the opportunity??? What of the North Koreans???

You said the "Communists" couldn't have - now, you've amended to "Vietnamese." Quite a difference.

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We get some damned theory in our heads about dominoes and apply it to world politics and economics... What is the cost;

What cost is the domino theory? You seem to be devolving into some word salad, Fido. Seems like an emotional rant. Gather your thoughts and make them coherent, please.

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They say: Communism is good in theory but terrible in reality.... Since all people every where have survived some form of communism and we have all come out of it, the opposite must be true, that is is terrible in theory, because it succeeded well in reality; but recreated out of an ideal, it has been a failure, and still as a failure, in many respects successful...

Who is "they"? Again, I think you are in a really small group of people who think Communism "succeeded well in reality"... Ask a Russian or a former resident of the USSR what they think of the brand of Communism they lived under. I have. Those of us who thought it was a living hell were correct. I haven't had one person to say differently. Something happens to the human spirit when you are stripped of personal rights. I feel comfortable guessing that the vast majority of people would choose the strictures of Capitalism to those of Communism. Neither is perfect - but one is a great deal better than the other, imo.

I don't mind that you don't agree.