Pam lives there. What’s your point?

As a person who participated in one of those contract negotiations that resulted in a sweet pension plan many years ago here’s how it works in most cases. Public employees are paid less (usually much less) than those in the private sector. They are excluded from making extra money by freelancing in many locations. So the municipalities, cities, counties, states, etc. put this on the table: “If you stay with us (we don’t want to lose the best workers to private sector jobs) and accept much lower pay we will guarantee you good benefits and a nice pension when you retire.” That has been the agreement for a couple of generations now.

Then Christie Todd Whitman, as governor of NJ, decided to try something new — not paying the state’s share to keep the pensions funded and call it balancing the budget. She succeeded in getting by with that legerdemain so it spread like wildfire across the country. Reagan changed the game also, allowing pension funds, which had previously been untouchable and fully-funded by law, to be used as bank accounts and the enforcement and monitoring became lax to non-existent.

Way back then many of us warned that eventually they would claim poverty and insist that the pensions would be done away with, leaving the workers who fulfilled their part of the bargain holding an empty bag as they became to old and infirm to return to the workforce. And here we are.

Sadly, some progressives, as seen on this very thread, have bought into the conservative stealth pension destroying logic by claiming that we simply “can’t afford to meet our obligations” anymore.Yeah, that’s because we stood by and let them not pay their bills to the pension funds for the last 25 years, not because the workers didn’t do the work or add their contributions. The greedy bastards counted on the stock market and housing bubble to make up their stinginess and deadbeat approach to funding pension plans through record interest payments but we all know how that turned out.

Nice to see your comrades ready and willing to stick in the knife in the backs of all these dedicated public workers who spent their lives in public service and now are facing the possibility of an impoverished and frightening old age, all to prove a point for the conservative goons. Nice.

And once again the Nuance Nannies come to disarm the progressives and liberals to ensure that they go to the knife fight of today’s Republican politics armed with limp noodles of nothing. Kind of deflates the whole point of a IOKIYAR post, doesn’t it?

Republicans like Christie let fly on their opposition without hesitation, spewing the most foul invective they can imagine. Democrats, on the other hand, aren’t allowed to return fire — that makes some on our side embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Instead of defending ourselves in kind, we are told, we must be factual, nuanced, careful of feelings, and avoid any kind of personal hurt so we automatically lose the war of words before the battle is even engaged.

My advice to sonofthedude and Margaret is to stop taking your battle plans from shooter242 and let your skin thicken a little bit and allow the front line troops some viable ammunition that the opposition understands and respects because it’s what they use.

If we lived in a just world where political fights were conducted in a fair manner and being above the personal attacks gave you any chance to make a difference then the pearl-clutching worries that some on our side aren’t being very nice might sense.

As it is it just makes us look weak and unable to defend our own no matter how personally superior it may be to rise above the fray. This ain’t high tea people nor is it an academic discussion held in an ivory tower. These conservatives fight to the death and we want nuanced fairness and kindness. Good grief!

Someonw posted on Facebook today that if Tebow takes the Broncos to the Super Bowl then Bill and Gloria Gaither will replace Madonna as the halftime entertainment. I threw up in my mouth. A lot. And I am a person of faith. The adulation and idolatry of these people is deeply troubling to me but I guess Tebow is the last great white evangelical Christian hope for a dying demographic. Or something. Yuck.

It’s actually worse than you imagine, Pam. School cafeterias here in Florida, where I teach, are forbidden to cook fresh food. Everything must be heat and serve and purchased from the mega corporations whose lobbyists own congress and the state legislature.

A few years ago they were still making grilled cheese sandwiched. That’s not even allowed now. Pre-made microwavable grilled cheese sandwiches in plastic wrappers only. Because of the short funding they pay the corporations to process the fresh foods they get under FDA guidelines since they don’t have the capacity or money to process the foodstuffs into actual edible food.

A far cry from my own school cafeterias from 40 years ago where local farmer’s wives made homemade biscuits and hot rolls, fresh spaghetti sauce, freshly fried fish fillets, pinto beans and cornbread, fresh desserts, etc.

We do have a grant now that provides a snack 4 days a week of local produce so the kids can try new and unusual vegetables and fruits in a small portion. When the grant runs out that will be the end of that. All vegetables served in the cafeteria are from cans. Fruit is the only fresh food that is actually processed in the cafeteria itself rather than reheated or microwaved nowadays.

Sad and disgusting but perfectly acceptable to Tea Bag America where the idea of poor children (both of the brown and white varieties) should be thankful for whatever disgusting stuff is served them because most are on free and reduced lunch. USA! USA!

Autumn, I felt the same way. It brought back that horrible day in 1979 when Dan White got away with the cold-blooded murders of Moscone and Milk. I never would have dreamed that 32 years later we would have made so little progress in the American justice system. I have now been asecond class American citizen for 50 years and I despair of ever achieving equality in my lifetime.

Treat them as animals and see what happens. Your smug assurance in laws and protections is sad. When the social contract goes down anarchy reigns. What you choose to ignore is that they don’t care how you treat them anymore. They’re long past that. They have nothing left to lose while you have everything to lose from your steadfast belief in the System. Good luck with that!

I have no reason to shrink anywhere. I stand by my words. This is an animalistic side of human nature. Is it warranted or just? The historians will make that call. But some of us have seen this coming for quite a while and have warned about the dangers. Unlike you, I don’t pretend that were I in the same circumstances that I could rise above it all by natural superiority.
I’ve been around for a long while and seen this ugly face of humanity before many times and I’ve seen it in preety much every class and group there is so I know it’s human nature and that means all humans.

I watched a History Channel show today about the French Revolution. So a propos. You know who shared this clueless person’s attitude and indignation? The first ones to head to the guilloyine. Not a good time to be self-righteous and condemnatory right now, I believe.

Somehow what you feel doesn’t register for them even. Amazing isn’t it — your being apalled and all and in high dudgeon because you are seeing the ugly side of humanity for the first time apparently. This is the part that made things like death marches and death camps and picnic lynchings and mass rapes possible. Your disapproval is good because it means you recognize how base it is. Maybe read “Lord of the Flies” and see what the author had to say about human nature when social norms disappear?

Much like the innocent bystanders in any conflict, they are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I ampraying for them but your amazement at this shows either great inexperience or naievete. This happens daily somewhere in the world and has for time uncounted. Does that make it good? No. But it is who we all are. This kind of collateral damage has been happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, in encounters with police here in the good old USA this very summer. Didn’t you know? time to wake up!

Ask the bankers for a loan?

Approval or disapproval means nothing. The riots are happening and they will spread. Go read up on the French Revolution.

Once the animal is unleashed it won’t be contained again. It must wear itself out. This is basic survivalism and mob rule in action, a perverted form of justice for those who have nothing left to lose. Humans are animals, remember?

Condemn and rant all you want. It won’t change a thing for them or us. Power is being met with power and it is ugly, bloody, and dangerous as hell. That’s reality.

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
— Frederick Douglass

I’m in Florida — Tea Bagger heaven. We have a new “teacher evaluation system” that we will learn about next week and that includes a 50% of pay determined by test scores and constant observations. They have been scrambling to create the tests this summer since they weren’t already in place outside of reading, writing, math, and science grades 3-12.

My young new principal last year (not this year — I transferred) let 17 senior people go, including custodial staff, nurse, and senior teachers and teaching assistants. The district has been moving to get senior, experienced people to retire early and has replaced them with younger, business-oriented, “reform” disciples.

The message couldn’t have been more clear: only new hires and inexperienced teachers with 3 years (or less) experience were allowed into leadership positions, committee assignments, etc. Only those who carry the water for the new agenda get hired by the district.

I am sick at my heart. I love teaching, I loved my school, I loved my district. It has become a business-oriented, anti-people automaton and all based on Arne Duncan’s and Obama’s Race To The Top nonsense.

David, I don’t trust Arne Duncan or Obama at all when it comes to education “reform”. The devil, as they say, will be in the details. I am mad as hell that the NEA endorsed Obama without input from the wider membership but the milk has been spilled. Reg Weaver and Randi Weingarten are firmly in the veal pen and nothing will dislodge them at this point.

Things have gotten so bad that many of my colleagues come to school sick to their stomachs or crying every morning and it will only get worse. This administration’s “reforms” have been far more immediate and egregious than NCLB and I will never forget nor forgive Obama for hugging Jeb Bush and embracing his education platform in service of the plutocrats.

Public education is an endangered species in the United States of America, as are public school teachers. Those who can are retiring and those who aren’t old enough to retire are being driven out by the reformers that Duncan and Obama have helped usher in.

It was made very clear to our faculty last year that experience and longevity are now liabilities rather than assets and our days are numbered. Obama and Duncan’s RTTT put in place the mechanisms, through test score based teacher evaluations, to remove us easily outside of the union’s due process channels. There is no recourse left to us at this point, too little too late to undo Obama’s Heritage Foundation/Jeb Bush reform agenda.

I see you have no real world experience engaging with Tea Baggers. It is impossible to change their views on anything. There are numerous scientific studies that have been released in the last few years that show this fact definitively. It is all nice and liberally to take the “can’t we all just get along?” tack but they do not accept your facts as facts. They do not see truth the way you see truth. They will continue to blame liberals for the ills brought on by the fascists until the world ends.

But good luck with your reasoned approach.

Just like global warming, the Nigerian birth, evolution, and so many other rightwing memes this will never prove that austerity is a wrongheaded approach and a vicious failure.

Conservatives never, ever, ever admit being wrong or being defeated. Liberals in government (at least in the US)will eventually concede this point just like they’ve already conceded that the deficit matters, that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid must be cut, that taxes must remain at a historic low, etc.

We have crossed the Rubicon, gone through the looking glass, and now live in a 24/7 Bizarro World of backwardness. Unless and until conservative “thought” is eradicated as being serious and worthy of equal consideration we are doomed to fail as an empire and a country.

It makes me sick to stomach to think and say these things but I can no longer deny that America is dying. Love live America!