OBAMA: I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees or denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon. We need to attract the best and the brightest to public service. These times demand it. We're not gonna attract the best teachers for our kids, for example, if they only make a fraction of what other professionals make.
(Truth to tell, I have to agree there. The way kids are these days - hell, the way they were when I was going to school, they need hazard pay above and beyond what they normally make.)
Obama continues and then Rush weighs in:
OBAMA: We're not gonna convince the bravest Americans to put their lives on the line as police officers or firefighters if we don't properly reward that bravery.
RUSH: Mr. President, this is so disingenuous. "We're not gonna attract the best teachers for our kids if they only make a fraction of what other professionals make"? Um, they're making twice what their private sector counterparts are making, and they're being paid by those people! How many of you have seen the documentary Waiting for Superman? Have you seen this? Well, go get it. Go download it on iTunes. Go get it from Amazon. It's like an hour-21 minute documentary. It's amazing. I can't believe something like this got produced. It is an indictment of the public school system. It is an indictment of public sector teachers.
It is dead on accurate, and it makes the point that the last thing on the mind of many of these public sector union teachers is teaching. It's all the other stuff. It's the pension, it's the welfare, it's the sick days, the vacations. It's the money. It really is well done. I'm stunned not only that it got produced, I'm stunned that it survived once it got produced. But it's out there, called Waiting for Superman. In fact, it just made it to DVD in Blu-ray. Yeah, you ought to, folks, take a look at this thing because the timing of this thing hitting DVD right now is awesome for it to be part... (interruption) WaitingforSuperman.com is the website
Then he shares Governor Walker's response to Obama
So, anyway, anyway, after Obama makes the statement that you just heard, Governor Walker responded in Wisconsin. He issued a statement. "I'm sure the president knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits, while our plan allows it for base pay." They're not doing away with it in Wisconsin. They're only allowing it for base pay and not for all the benefits.
And said the governor, "I'm sure the president knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope the president knows these facts. Furthermore, I'm sure the president knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin, and I'm sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin and isn't acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another." Folks, this is dynamite. I mean, that is knife sharp. That is just a fabulous statement.
What it further shows is that Governor Walker does not fear President Obama on this. Now, there's a New York Times poll in today's paper. The headline: "Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions. John Steele Gordon at Commentary, the Contentions blog site, says: "The Times thought the story so significant that it put it on page 1, above the fold, and even sent out a news alert last night via e-mail. According to the Times: '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, ..."
"'Asked how they would choose to reduce their state's deficits,' the Times adds, 'those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one.'" Does anybody buy this? If this is the case, how in the heck did Walker win election? How did the Republicans take over the Senate? I mean, this is an out-and-out lie. "How do you square these figures with the results of last November's elections, in which anti-tax, anti-deficit, anti-public-union forces swept to historic victories in federal and state elections across the country? Well, you can't, of course. The Times doesn't even ask this blindingly obvious question, let alone try to answer it.
____________
In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
No comments:
Post a Comment