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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

"“F*CK Tea” ..."

 

Could not resist

Blatant but straight forward...

The Shadow

Let me guess, you feed off the Taxpayer.
It would explain a lot.

"“F*CK Tea” ..."

 

Could not resist

Blatant but straight forward...

The Shadow

 Counter:There are many who feel that "taxpayers" should get their work done for free.  You seem to be one of them.  You would not ask a plumber to fix your whatever for free so why should you not expect to pay for the services that you receive from public employees.  Now, you may be able to do your own plumbing but are you able to make sure that your food is safe when it comes from California (for example)?

Now it so happens that what I may receive from the taxpayers is nothing more than their contractual and legal obligations as prescribed by law and contract (or should public employees not have the benefit of contract law)?  Or perhaps "taxpayers" should be exempt from the obligations of contract law.  And if you worry about unions remember the freedom of association where individuals are (or should not be) no different from businesses with common interests.  And if unions overreach so do business associations.

Further, every "taxpayer" is subsidized by other taxpayers in the form of tax loopholes and preferences/deductions so perhaps the "feed of the taxpayer" rhetoric should be dispensed with.

So we are all in the same boat and we sink together and I believe that the Tea Party has the drill to make the holes that will sink us faster.  And by the way my opinion is as right or as wrong as is yours. 

The Shadow

With your quote you are biting the hand that feeds you.
Good luck with that attitude.

Sometimes, contracts are defaulted upon.
Sometimes, the payer goes broke.

Don't kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Else, you'll be the one who is F*CKed.

Blatant but straight forward...

"“F*CK Tea” ..."

 

Could not resist

Blatant but straight forward...

The Shadow

Believe it or not we all feed each other.  In effect we take in each other's laundry.

Yes sometimes  contracts are defaulted because the payer goes broke because of bad luck/errors etc. but contracts should not be broken for political/ideological reasons or like those who can pay but default on their mortgage contracts because their property values have dropped.

If you want the services pay for them.   And don't knock public employees because I hazard to say that you do not have a complete idea of the many invisible ways you are served/protected.  (I had his discussion many moons ago)

With your quote you are biting the hand that feeds you.
Good luck with that attitude.

Sometimes, contracts are defaulted upon.
Sometimes, the payer goes broke.

Don't kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
Else, you'll be the one who is F*CKed.

Blatant but straight forward...

"“F*CK Tea” ..."

 

Could not resist

Blatant but straight forward...

The Shadow

How much waste should we tolerate for unobserved services?

"Waste" is in the eyes of the beholder.  Actually if you do not know the service then you can't opine whether it is waste or not. 

The Shadow

Does the same not apply to the benefit as well?

Fact: The State of Ohio is broke.
Fact: STRS is broke. (Their own reports state they will not be able to meet future obligations with any reasonable evaluation of the current inputs.)
It will take massive tax hikes to cover obligations of both.
If implemented, taxpayers will leave the state in greater numbers than they already have.
Businesses will leave the state in greater numbers than they already have.

You can talk about contractual obligations all you want.
There will be no one left to fulfill them.

In all seriousness, public employees should be the first to scream from the rooftops to stop the waste, fraud, and abuse so that legitimate obligations of the State are not defaulted upon.

The taxpayers' ability/willingness to be taxed is not without limits.
It is also true that taxpayers may not be able to afford the benefits they ask the State to provide. (a.k.a. not unlike real life)

Changes that need to be made will require radical adjustments.
Tweaking these problems around the edges won't get the job done.

For your own sake, demand fiscal responsibility and accountability.
Demand a set of financial reports from your government(s) that adhere to generally accepted principals.

Don't let the politicians kick this proverbial can down the road.
If we wait any longer the problems will be mathematically and practically impossible to fix.

Does the same not apply to the benefit as well?

Benefits are a part of the contract.

Counter

your pessimistic view is realistic.  I have been saying that for years and watching the brain drain continue (including friends, offsprings of friends and more recently family members.  Ohio has been in a downward spiral for years with upward blips here and there.  Ohio has been content (including when Kasich was in the legislature) to sit on its past laurels and neither educate a new generation of workers for the world to come.

If STRS can't fulfill its obligations you can thank the "free market" which has given us Enron (loss of over 100M) and other notable business mismanagement plus more recent losses in their passive (index) investments.  Waste, fraud and abuse are easy slogans to yell about but no one has ever shown that they exist to the magnitude that would change Ohio's reality.

Ohios' problems are compounded by the fact that with so much loss of personal income, Medicaid expenditures have ballooned.  It is a vicious cycke.

The old rhetoric will not solve the problem and yes it is not possible to tax ourselves out of the hole.

The Shadow is and has been pessimistic.

As I see it, the three reforms that would best reduce waste are:

1: Pressuring the General Assembly to control the purse
2: Reduce job security for state workers.  Administration seems to resort to attrition rather than letting employees go who are no longer needed.  Rather than be grateful for the standard of living provided by the state, many find a way to push the little weight they have a long way.  Not only this, ban the practice of retirement rehires.  Staff retire when it best suits them per OPERS rules then have their departments rehire them at the same salary.
3: Edit expenditure policies of the state to crack down on permissible purchases with General Funds, e.g. "Business Meals".

...but what do I know

Shadow, you must not have gotten the memo. All the Sunday News Shows have progressive after progressive after progressive falling all over themselves claiming the Tea Parties aren't racist. As with all progressive positions, once they read the polls, the facts change. No longer are they racist, they are still thinking up a new political approach to pass off as "fact" for all the useful idiots to fall in lock step and spread the lie. The progressives found out the hard way that the tea parties were being filled by independent voters. By calling them racist is simply proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the cry of racism is nothing more than a political tactic on the left. When they called conservatives racists and indepents didn't have reason to doubt becasue they "trusted" the progressives as being honest people. Now they are getting the progressive treatment and they now know the progressives don't have positions or arguements, they simply have distraction smear tactics. BTW Shadow, attend a tea party, I bet you will see many of your Democratic Friends.

[many of whom have Democratic Party ties, surfaced almost immediately.]

Good ol' democrat scum....

Tea party candidacy filings under suspicion

BY KATHLEEN GRAY


When Aaron Tyler started getting letters and calls about his candidacy for the Oakland County Board of Commissioners, he had no idea what the callers were talking about.

He had gotten a new job and moved from Springfield Township to Phoenix in late July and had no intention of running for office.

"I figured it must have been some sort of mistake," Tyler wrote in a letter to the Oakland County Clerk's Office. "I believe a fraud was committed."

Tyler was one of 23 candidates nominated at a tea party movement convention last month. But suspicions about the candidates, many of whom have Democratic Party ties, surfaced almost immediately.

Read more: Tea party candidacy filings under suspicion | freep.com | Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/20100821/NEWS15/8210359/1322/Tea-party-candidacy-filings-under-suspicion#ixzz0xHgTotft

V.O 
Control the purse.  Easier said than done.  The problem is that Medicaid (36.3%), School funding (and local tax relief) (27%), higher education (10%) and corrections(7%) consume 80% of the general fund revenues.  Public assistance (welfare) 1.1%.   $4.9B goes for all other expenditures and I saw a figure that if you let ALL public employees go you would "save" 2.4 B.  We could of course abolish the general assembly  (about $ 9 million in legislative salaries) plus whatever else there is. 

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/profileind.jsp?rgn=37&ind=33&cat=1

The issue of retire-rehire is only one of perception (jealousy).  It does not cost the retirement system anything more than it would if the individual simply retired and as far as the position it also costs nothing more.  One could argue that a younger cheaper individual could be hired.  But in general the rehire is for experience and efficiency.  I am sure there may be a few other cases out there.  If the retirement system pays for medical care it is a definite advantage for the rehiring organization.

Snowball:  nice to see you again 

Anyway;  "Shadow, you must not have gotten the memo."  What memo?

As far as I am concerned the Tea Partiers are misguided, with no short term memory (they either forget or do not want to remember when the mess started and that TARP was instituted under Bush) They also yearn for a world that no longer exists (I don't blame them for that).  The funniest (NOT) thing for me is watching the oldsters on Medicare yelling against "socialized government run health care"  or the young ones who do the same forgetting that their parents or grandparents are on Medicare.

As far as racism there probably are some racists in there (as in any other group) who can't accept that an African American was elected President.

The Shadow is happy to share

Shadow,

No waste, fraud, or abuse here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100822/ap_on_re_us/us_taj_mahal_schools

LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation

But don't worry though, it is kind of like pornography; I'll know it when I see it.

(In all seriousness) I'd look in to cashing-out that STRS pension; the money is probably safer buried in the back yard. (I'd cash out SS if I could.)