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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (94941)	11/8/2010 7:03:08 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 224757

No problem..hard working tax payers will pay illegals unemployment. Calif. borrows $40 million a day to pay unemployment Unemployment payouts push California deeper into debt The state is borrowing $40 million a day from the federal government to provide assistance to jobless workers, but has resisted changing the formulas it uses to determine and fund those benefits. November 06, 2010 \|By Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles TimesReporting from Sacramento — articles.latimes.com California's fund for paying unemployment insurance is broke. With one in every eight workers out of a job, the state is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay benefits at the rate of $40 million a day. The debt, now at $8.6 billion, is expected to reach $10.3 billion for the year, two-thirds greater than last year. Worse, the deficit is projected to hit $13.4 billion by the end of next year and $16 billion in 2012, according to the California Employment Development Department, which runs the program. Interest on that debt will soon start piling up, forcing the state to come up with a $362-million payment to Washington by the end of next September. That's money that otherwise would go into the state's general fund, where it could be spent to hire new teachers, provide healthcare to children and beef up law enforcement. Continued borrowing, meanwhile, means that employers face an automatic hike in their federal unemployment insurance taxes, pushing up annual payroll costs $21 a year for each worker. Those costs are expected to more than double over the next five years if California continues to borrow from the federal government. "It's a fiscal problem for elected officials in our state," said Todd Bland, director of social services at the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office. "The deficit is ongoing and will continue to grow." The state Legislature has turned away two attempts to raise payroll taxes to fix the deficit and ignored a similar proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now California's governor-elect, Jerry Brown, has to devise a way to minimize the tax burden on employers without drastically slashing benefits for the jobless — and get lawmakers on board. Neither Democrat Brown nor his Republican opponent in last week's election, Meg Whitman, publicly focused on the bulging deficit in the unemployment insurance fund. California heads a list of 32 states that have been forced to borrow a total of $41 billion so far from the federal government to pay claims. Putting the fund back into balance, at least theoretically, shouldn't be overly complicated, experts say. "You can increase your contributions, decrease money going out of the fund as benefits, or do a combination of both," said Employment Development Department spokeswoman Loree Levy. "But the hole will keep getting bigger the longer that we go without addressing the problem."

To: lorne who wrote (94941)	11/8/2010 9:55:18 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224757

Union Bosses In Conflict With Members By MARK MIX Posted 07:10 PM ET Top union officials spent an estimated one billion dollars of union dues in an attempt to re-elect incumbent Democrat politicians back into Congress during the 2010 midterm election cycle. But just how do the rank-and-file workers feel about that? Despite the claims by union heads based in Washington, D.C., when it comes to the critical political and policy questions of our day, union officials do not espouse the beliefs of the rank-and-file members that they claim to represent. A nationwide poll of 760 union members from both the private and government sector conducted just before Election Day demonstrates the staggering disconnect between them and national union officials who have their hands in the workers' pockets. The poll, conducted October 26-28 by long time pollster Frank Luntz, found that 60% of union members oppose their union bosses' record political spending in the midterm elections, viewing it a complete waste for union bosses to use union dues and treasuries to protect unpopular incumbent Democrat politicians in Washington, D.C. Gerry McEntee, president of the powerful American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, spearheaded Big Labor's political spending blitz with a $87.5 million "massive incumbent protection program." Earlier this year, McEntee explained to The Hill newspaper that the AFSCME union's futile spending spree was intended "to protect the incumbency in the House (and) in the Senate. It is going to be hard. Those tea-baggers (sic) are out there. There is an anti-incumbency mood out there." As we all saw a week ago, McEntee was right about one thing: There sure was an anti-incumbency mood out there. But unbeknownst to him, that mood also existed within his very own union's ranks. While McEntee recently claimed that "our members are damn happy" about the massive amount of union dues being wasted to protect a Democratic majority, 61% of government union workers polled actually believe that a mostly even balance of power between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill is best for America. Adding insult to injury, a majority of America's union members believe that union boss political spending would have been better spent to "throw the bums out" instead and only 30% supported keeping Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. Additionally, half of all union members view President Obama and the Democrat Congress's health care reform bill as a failure, while only 37% view it as a success. A clear majority also view Obama's stimulus bill as a failure and overwhelming majorities oppose future government spending and debt to rejuvenate the economy. National union officials spent millions securing the passage of both bills even though rank-and-file union members outright oppose Big Labor's political agenda. No wonder 59% of union membership would actually vote to replace their own "union leadership" if given a secret ballot election to do so. So how do union bosses get the money to run their vast political machine? From their government-granted special privileges to force hard-working Americans — most of whom want nothing to do with the union or its politics — to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment. Fortunately, Luntz's poll found that 80% of union members support the Right to Work principle that union membership and dues payment should be voluntary and not required as a condition of employment, perfectly mirroring the same number of Americans in general who support Right to Work. Perhaps that's why a myriad of U.S. House members and five new U.S. senators who proudly support Right to Work won last week despite Big Labor's best efforts, defeating union boss-backed candidates in states like Wisconsin, Florida, and Pennsylvania. With Election Day finally behind us, let's hope that the new Republican majority in Congress will quickly get to work eliminating the union bosses' special privileges to coerce employees to contribute to Big Labor's political slush fund.