I'm so amazed at people who think the unions of today are anything like the situation that brought the need for unions before. I guess they've been watching thos old movies and tend to glamorize things. Facts are that anyone who tries to talk about health coverage as being a "right" when you get a job...shows their liliteracy, their stupidity. health benefits ONLY came in to being after WWII. Before that, people used their own money to pay for their health care. Notice that once unions convinced people that health coverage is a "right" with a job, health care COSTS exploded. Why? because like most left wingers (who are emotionally still two years old) once you stop paying for something and get it virtually free..you start ABUSING it. Can you wonder why your grandparents or great grandparents fussed at you when you went to the doctor for a cold? Once liberals found out health care is mostly being paid by someone else, suddenly you have half a nation of hypochondriacts. Same applies to a "living wage". NO entry level job is or has ever been something you can "live on" comfortably. If it was...then you'd have East Germany all over again..and you see where that went...

I could dare less about all the trash that passes for TV, but explain why we Christians are NOT allowed to be offended by a TV show with the name "Good Christian Bitches", but a name like "Bad Gay Bitches" would dare be uttered?

This whole thing with the negativity toward the unions is a smokescreen so they, the republican crooks, can raid the treasuries and STEAL all the money for themselves and to make sure no Democrats get voted in. THEY are putting in place all sorts of ILLEGAL maneuvers that were protested and rioted on long time ago. DO WE WANT TO GO BACK TO THE JIM CROW DAYS? I THINK NOT!!!!! I'M NOT GOING BACK! We need to be constantly watching every move these crooks are making and challenge them on all that seems a little off! They have NO scruples or morals and they will take everything away if we let them. Stop believing the lies that they are putting out there to get us to turn on each other. Those of you who have been asleep the last ten years and before the tea baggers started their nonsense need to get educated. They are coming after you too! They are counting on your loyalty until it's too late for YOU to do anything about it when YOU finally wake up! The rich are in it for themselves. They don't care about YOU! There are some out there who are honest, law abiding CHRISTIANS, who really go out of their way to help, but the others are CROOKS, LIARS, THIEVES, MURDERERS (WAR MONGERS), HOMOPHOBES, AND EVIL HATERS. THEY don't know anything about the BIBLE because they keep breaking The Ten Commandments DAILY! Thou shalt not: steal, kill, BEAR FALSE WITNESS (HUCKABEE, BACHMANN, PALIN, BECK, LIMBAUGH AND THE REST OF YOU) have any other gods before HIM (money and oil), commit adultery (Ensign, Sanders, Edwards, Limbaugh, Gingrich, etc.) , coveting thy neighbor's wife and other possessions, (Iraq's and the Middle East's oil). Thou shall honor thy father and mother. They are busy throwing all mothers and fathers under the bus to steal their Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for their insane wars! WAKE UP PEOPLE!

Where on earth did halfmoon ever get the idea that public sector workers are uneducated, untrained and unskilled? Nurses and teachers work in the public sector - they are certainly educated, and have to pass state exams in order to be licensed. Then they are required to earn specific numbers or credits over specified periods of time to continue their certification. Police and firefighters are also part of the public sector. Many state jobs require a college degree. These union "pencilpushers" are the nuts and bolts of government. You don't think the legislators have anything to do with the day-to-day operations of government, do you? When is the last time a state assemblyman processed your tax return? Renewed your driver's license or your car registration? Those guys make the laws according to their own particular whims and then sit back and let public sector workers do all the work, and take all the insults of ignorant people who are unhappy and looking for someone to blame.

If you think state (public sector ) jobs are such a piece of cake, apply for one. You can do so by taking an exam at one of many sites around the state where exams are regularly admininistered.

As far as retiring early, the only public sector workers I am aware of who are able to do so are firefighters and policemen, and they are allowed to do so because of the dangerous and stressful conditions under which they work. I don't know of any public sector workers (except perhaps the highest paid public workers, the governor, state legislators and their staffs) who have anything approaching LAVISH waiting for them upon retirement. Having worked two jobs for 22 years, I anticipated having to watch my expenditures closely. Now that the little tin god has made it his personal mission to destroy everything he can for public sector workers, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to retire. I might retire from my present job, but won't be able to survive without keeping my second job and perhaps taking on another one.

Don't lambast public sector workers, parroting back slurs cast about by a union-hating politician, while not having any idea of what the situation really is.

Our government is not run by the people anymore, it is run by the business leaders. Have you noticed how many more millionaires and billionaires there are now? When is the last time you got a raise? Most of us have taken salary cuts, not gotten raises. If the tax breaks for the rich are necessary for the economy to recover, how did we get into a recession? They had those tax breaks before the economy tanked in 2008.
Maybe the people in the middle east have the right idea. They are trying to take their countries back. We should be doing the same.

This entire country has benefited from unions. There are people that will disagree but if they take a look at history they will find that the living standards have dropped over the last 30 + years. The number of workers that are now without health insurance is about 40,000,000.

In the late 70 ties 30% of the US workforce belonged to a Union. Now, that number has decreased to around 10%. That 10% equates to about 40,000,000 workers.

The right to bargain collectively was hard won. A large number of men died trying to bring in the unions . Also, men died that had been hired by the Companys and Corporations to prevent the Unions from coming onto the property. If we do away with the right to bargain collectively, the middle class in this country will be destroyed.

The Ford Motor Company did not ask for or take TARP money from the tax payers . It did not ask or demand consessions from its employes. The reason? Good management. AIG, General Motors and most of the Financial Institutions not only took the money, but they gave themselves metioric bonuses and their doing the same thing this year. There is nothing wrong with making money. But there is something wrong with people making obsene amounts of money that do not deserve it because of their incompedense.

I agree,trade skills have every right to unionize, but we are talking about people with little or no skills in the public sector! Having been a member of a trade union, Bookbinder, I fully understand how even trade skill unions overreach their mark often, asking for more than they should to just keep up with other skilled worker wages! I could also argue my unionism did not raise or lower the economic status of others, if they had a skill they made a living, if they didn't then they entered the common pool! Public sector employees have no skills, some don't even have a GED, yet they make thousands of dollars more than their counterparts in the private sector, even those who have a few years of college!
Let's stop overpaying these untrained & unskilled pencil pushers and providing a lavish lifestyle after they retire at a very early age. They have robbed the middle class for years by making more and more atrocious demands. Many barely speak can put two sentences together in English! They simply do mediocre jobs like the DMV, Soc. Sec. or unemployment offices! They huddle in masse in government building picking up trash, cleaning waste baskets and mopping floors, these are not rocket scientists, but we pay them like them!
Organized labor has it's place in America, although they have forced most manufacturing companies out of America & overseas, but they always sought to slay the Golden Goose, so they should continue because they haven't all fled just yet! Let's pay people a decent wage for a days work not incendiary wages that drive our states into bankruptcy and we then all go down with the ship!

I agree,trade skills have every right to unionize, but we are talking about people with little or no skills in the public sector! Having been a member of a trade union, Bookbinder, I fully understand how even trade skill unions overreach their mark often, asking for more than they should to just keep up with other skilled worker wages! I could also argue my unionism did not raise or lower the economic status of others, if they had a skill they made a living, if they didn't then they entered the common pool! Public sector employees have no skills, some don't even have a GED, yet they make thousands of dollars more than their counterparts in the private sector, even those who have a few years of college!
Let's stop overpaying these untrained & unskilled pencil pushers and providing a lavish lifestyle after they retire at a very early age. They have robbed the middle class for years by making more and more atrocious demands. Many barely speak can put two sentences together in English! They simply do mediocre jobs like the DMV, Soc. Sec. or unemployment offices! They huddle in masse in government building picking up trash, cleaning waste baskets and mopping floors, these are not rocket scientists, but we pay them like them!
Organized labor has it's place in America, although they have forced most manufacturing companies out of America & overseas, but they always sought to slay the Golden Goose, so they should continue because they haven't all fled just yet! Let's pay people a decent wage for a days work not incendiary wages that drive our states into bankruptcy and we then all go down with the ship!

America needs to understand that w/o the unions there will only be 2 classes of citizen : RICH and POOR ! The rust belt Skilled Trade & other unions are the key to a middle class society. The wages & standards of the middle class are defined by them in this country. Continue shopping @ the big box non full time employment stores where the employees have to pay for insurance out of thier meanial wages and a pension fund is winning the lottery and keep buying foriegn goods and cars & the end result will not be good! God bless America & Organized labor!
T.L.Foote Newport Mi.

Scott Walker borrowed a page from Hitler's playbook when he stood up, pointed at a hardworking group of people and told the world "They are the problem. Your economic crisis is their fault." In doing so, he drove a wedge between the public and private sectors, neighbors, friends and saddest of all, families. He knows, like anyone engaging in sleight of hand (that would be 'adroitness in deception') that in order to pull off the deception, you need to direct the mark's attention away from yourself. His agenda is not only union-busting, but destroying the educational system (one of the best in the nation) in Wisconsin as well. Since he, for whatever reason, couldn't hack higher education, he not only does not value education, but actively seeks to deprive others of it. It is really fishy that ending collective bargaining was a fiscal issue, to save cities, counties and other municipal units time and money, until it served him better to say it is not a fiscal issue so he could illegally bulldoze another part of his agenda through. Actually, if his "War Between the STATE" works out, casualties could reduce the unemployment rolls, as would arms production, etc. He is the single most destructive force (backed of course by his greedy billionaire buddies) Wisconsin has ever seen.