#1
...the alliance between "progressive" interests and public employee unions has grown more and more puzzling -- what's progressive about cutting services to low-income people so that public employees can lead affluent lifestyles?
In Oakland's case, police staffing will be cut in one of California's most crime-ridden cities. In New York and Washington DC, transit agencies have been forced to raise transit fares and cut bus and rail service, as they struggle to cope with pay increases awarded to transit workers in arbitration. In New Jersey, most teachers will get 4 percent raises this year while localities decide whether to raise property taxes or cut positions.
Public workers now typically make more money than the citizens they serve. The median family income in Oakland is $47,000, far below the starting salary for an OPD cadet. In New York City, transit workers are earning an average of $94,000 in total compensation, even as the MTA cuts dozens of bus lines that primarily serve lower-income New Yorkers. These bizarre priorities can't be justified as a stimulus measure, and point to an employee compensation system that is broken
Feature, not bug. Again, one of the hallmarks of Peronist and other forms of latin-style oligarchy is the alliance between the political class and powerful public sector unions such as the unionized employees of state-owned Mexican oil company Pemex. The employees get a grand lifestyle with "Cadillac" benefits, and the pols get a lock on power thanks to loyal employee shock troops who raise funds and vote in lockstep for the ruling social welfare party. Mexico's PRI maintained power for over half a century in this manner way.
#2
You'd think the employees would get wise when the pink slips start flying. Maybe these people just aren't very smart.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/21/2010 13:00 Comments ||
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#3
You'd think the employees would get wise when the pink slips start flying.
The union anticipated that long ago, and mitigated the harm with their seniority rules. It's the junior members who are at risk of gettign pink slips. The senior ones are golden. This btw is the main reason that heavily unionized countries in western Europe such as Spain and France have extraordinarily high rates of youth unemployment.
Senior labor union members aren't working class. They're aristocrats, members in full standing of the crony capitalist elite.
#5
That's more than a City of Oakland Civil Engineer makes. Just turned in a application and saw the pay brackets for myself. An Assistant City Engineer pays $5,102 a month (That's with a year min. experience), a new police recruit starts (at day one, with a h.s. diploma) at about 5,414 a month. So much for higher education paying off in the end.
I don't know what a city engineer maxes out at, but I have seen no salary higher than 126,000 a year, probably for a director. I wouldn't care to see them make the money if they weren't such an ineffectual bunch of snotty little bastards.
#6
The union anticipated that long ago, and mitigated the harm with their seniority rules.
So when the old guys get fat and slow (hey, I resemble that remark!) they cannot be replaced by the faster, stronger, young whippersnappers. Sounds like built-in inefficiency.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/21/2010 17:47 Comments ||
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#7
"Sounds like built-in inefficiency."
Yep, that's a union.
I quit my first full-time job because I found out I would have to join a union. (I was 18 and had moved there from a right-to-work state, and had foolishly thought everyplace was like that.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/21/2010 18:24 Comments ||
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#8
bigjim-CA, on the other hand, a civil engineer doesn't usually have to worry about whether or not the car he just pulled over for a broken tail light has a gang-banger with an uzi in it, or the husband he just arrested on a domestic violence call will get defended by his wife/girlfriend with a frying pan.
Frankly, you could not pay me enough to be a police officer - anywhere.
On the other hand, the city council members pulling in 800K in another city in CA is truly obscene.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/21/2010 18:47 Comments ||
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#1
Is there a way to make public the entire Journolist email archive?
Does the Daily Caller have all the emails?
Given that the supposed benefit of a free press is transparency ie the "public's right to know," methinks the public has a right to know how media figures collude in the selection and presentation of news stories.
Time for some thorough investigative journalism into Journolist.
In response to yesterdays first installment of The Washington Posts Top Secret America series on the Intelligence Community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a document dispelling some common myths surrounding the ICs use of and relationship with contractors.
In the document, ODNI outlines some widely held misconceptions about the IC and contractors, including insufficient oversight of contractors, private contractors inappropriately performing inherently governmental functions and contractors costing more than their government counterparts.
Addressing the belief that there is a lack of proper oversight of contractors, ODNI wrote how the IC in 2006 instituted its first-ever, annual inventory of core contract personnel, resulting in an intelligence policy directive. With four specific objectives, the directive reinforces the prohibition on the use of contract personnel to conduct inherently governmental activities; prescribes the circumstances in which contract personnel may be used to support IC missions and functions; and beginning in 2011, requires IC elements to plan for and project the number of contract personnel they require.
On the myth about private contractors carrying out inherently governmental activities, ODNI said the IC neither condones or permits contract personnel to perform inherently governmental intelligence work. However, core contract personnel may perform certain activities, such as collection and analysis.
[H]owever, it is what you do with that analysis, who makes that decision, and who oversees the work that constitute the inherently governmental functions, ODNI stated. Allocating funds, prioritizing workload, and making critical decisions remain strictly within the purview of government employees.
Addressing the topic of cost, ODNI acknowledged that while contractors on average are more expensive than their government counterparts, there are certain occasions when hiring contractors is more economical.
[I]n some cases, contractor personnel are less costly, especially if the work is short-term in nature, easily available commercially, or requires unique expertise for immediate needs, ODNI wrote. Overall, core contractors enable the Intelligence Community to rapidly expand to meet short-term mission needs or fulfill nonrecurring or temporary assignments, and then shrink or shift resources as the threat environment changes.
In addition to publishing the myth-dispelling document, ODNI also released a Q&A-formatted pdf addressing the post-9/11 IC, which answers questions on whether there been a proliferation of new intelligence offices, why there still are numerous problems related to information sharing, and what ODNI has accomplished so far.
#3
There has never been a great deal of love lost between DoD, career, unionized federal employees and intelligence community (IC) contractors. Oftentimes, contractors have acquired their skills and security clearances through professional, uniformed service in the one of the branches of the military. Even though many DoD federal employees began as members of the military, they sometimes view the uniformed military with contempt. If a problem does exist, it has been my experience over the years that it probably originates not with the contractor (who can be terminated in an instant without cause), but rather the unionized federal employee.
The solution is rather simple. Just do away with the civilian contractors. But then who would the government get to deploy to these crap holes overseas or surge here in CONUS to do the thier bidding? I'm afriad obese, lazy, unionized feather merchants who can't or won't deploy, can't be granted or hold the required clearance, or fail to pass a polygraph or refuse to take a urinalysis won't be much assistance.
Here at Tara we permit the field hands eat under the trees beyond the barn where they can't be seen or heard.
#5
There's enough of both types to supply plenty of evidence for any argument. In fact lots of them fit into both categories at different times in their careers. Sort of like any large number of people.
However, unions have had a uniformly deleterious effect on every industry they have organized. Those in the government should be cognizant of that fact as they allow the power of union thugs and goons to infiltrate their formerly secure if only moderately rewarding sinecures.
#6
If a problem does exist, it has been my experience over the years that it probably originates not with the contractor (who can be terminated in an instant without cause), but rather the unionized federal employee.
The solution is rather simple. Just do away with the civilian contractors.
Wouldn't it be better to terminate the union before it destroys the Union?
Last week, federal jurors in Brooklyn heard tapes from an undercover informant in what one prosecutor called one of "the most chilling plots imaginable," a 2007 Islamist plan to detonate underground fuel tanks at JFK International Airport.
On the tapes, defendant Russell Defreitas promised "high-tech," "ninja-style" tactics that included releasing rats in the main terminal to distract security. "We got to come up with supernatural things," he told the informant.
Despite his bluster, Defreitas seemed unaware of the technical difficulties involved in igniting hardened underground pipelines, and he never secured explosives.
The JFK plotters' trial follows May's attempted Times Square bombing, in which Faisal Shahzad -- trained in explosives at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan -- failed to set off a bomb made of gas cans, propane tanks, fireworks and nonflammable fertilizer.
You ever get the feeling that some of these guys aren't the sharpest scimitars in the shed?
If so, you're not alone. The notion of "savvy and sophisticated" Islamist supervillains is "wildly off the mark," Brookings' Daniel Byman and Christine Fair write in Atlantic magazine.
Many Afghan suicide bombers "never even make it out of their training camp," thanks to the jihadi tradition of the pre-martyrdom "manly embrace": "the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests." (Theological question: Do you get fewer virgins for an own-goal?)
On the American home front, al Qaeda and its sympathizers often don't look much brighter:
" In 2006, an FBI sting rolled up the "Liberty City Seven," whose ringleader, the Washington Post reported, "wanted to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, which would then fall into a nearby prison, freeing Muslim prisoners who would become the core of his Moorish army. With them, he would establish his own country." Sounds like a plan!
" 2007 saw the arrest of six Islamists who planned to launch an armed attack on New Jersey's Fort Dix, but were rounded up after they "asked a store clerk to copy a video of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad."
" In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed associate Iyman Faris went to jail on charges involving a plan to topple the Brooklyn Bridge by severing its suspension cables with a blowtorch.
" The 2005 Jose Padilla indictment revealed that some Islamic terrorists haven't quite mastered speaking in code. One of Padilla's co-defendants insisted he was just talking about sporting goods on the surveillance tapes, but couldn't explain why he'd asked his co-conspirator if he had enough "soccer equipment" to "launch an attack on the enemy."
Lest you think I'm just cherry-picking particularly incompetent jihadis, recall that the Bush administration once considered Padilla, an American citizen, too dangerous for a civilian trial, and cited Faris' capture as the crown jewel of successes with its warrantless wiretapping program.
The fact that many terrorists are morons doesn't mean all are, and even morons get lucky sometimes, so vigilance remains essential.
But the myth that al Qaeda is 100 feet tall has fed dramatic government growth since 9/11. The Washington Post's new series on "Top Secret America" shows that D.C. has erected vast pyramids in the name of homeland security, with some 1,200 agencies and 850,000 people trolling through e-mail and clear-cutting forests to produce mounds of useless, redundant intelligence reports.
We've given al Qaeda power over us they don't deserve. When we recognize that they're often inept and clownish, we weaken their ability to sow terror. For the sake of our liberty and security, it's prudent and patriotic to allow an occasional smirk to cross your stiff upper lip.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/21/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Not on that jugalo list is the one about the guy who said, "I just want to learn how to fly, I don't need to learn how to land."
Its not that AQ is 100 feet tall, it is the 100 feet wide; thats its charter.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/21/2010 17:59 Comments ||
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#3
Exactly. I assumed it was going to be a story about how the press is starting (a little bit) to turn on Obama, or at least not sing his praises as loudly.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/21/2010 18:50 Comments ||
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The effect of Murdoch's approach has been something like the last scene in the classic film musical Singin In The Rain. Remember how Gene Kelly and friends pull the curtain up to reveal that the famous actress's singing voice belongs to another woman standing backstage? Simply by telling the news straight, Murdoch revealed that it was the voice of the left speaking when the mouths of mainstream news readers moved. When they told us the war in VietNam was at a stalemate or that a conservative election result amounted to a tantrum or that the tea party was racist or--as this past week in the Los Angeles Times--they downplayed the Islamic motive of terrorists, they weren't attempting to do their job and convey information but were trying instead to guide us in right attitudes and thinking--attitudes and thinking to be determined by themselves.
Why would anyone but a slave pay for such a service? The fact is, we won't. Newspapers and network news are dying. And it isn't, as Bollinger would have us believe, because of the internet or any other new technology. If that were so, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal wouldn't be thriving as they are. Mainstream news outlets are dying because they distort the news in the name of leftism--and there's simply no reason to use a news source that lies.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/21/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
A secret player in all of this is the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, a newspaper supported by a wealthy "sugar daddy" who insists that they remain a traditional, objective newspaper.
It is an almost breathtaking enjoyment to read a newspaper written like newspapers used to be written. Which explains why their circulation has been increasing by thousands every year.
Right now they are ranked nationally at #38, but at this rate, in just a few years, they will be in the top 25.
#2
Agreed, 'moose. I used to look forward to Paul Greenberg's editorials that often appeared in the local paper as syndicated op-eds - back when I still bothered with the local paper. I think he's even won a Pulitzer or two.
Hadn't thought of that paper in years. Think maybe I'll take another look. I miss having a real paper.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/21/2010 14:36 Comments ||
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#3
I think there are a handful of them left moose, and they're all very popular. They probably all need a sugar daddy to get them off the ground though, actual reporting is expensive.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Last week, federal jurors in Brooklyn heard tapes from an undercover informant in what one prosecutor called one of "the most chilling plots imaginable," a 2007 Islamist plan to detonate underground fuel tanks at JFK International Airport.
