Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Paul V. who wrote (134054)	5/31/2012 12:02:09 PM
From: tonto	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224704

Paul, you are not telling us the truth again. The University of Missouri tuition is as follows: University of Missouri is a public institution that was founded in 1839. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 24,901, its setting is urban, and the campus size is 1,250 acres. It utilizes a semester-based academic calendar. University of Missouri's ranking in the 2012 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 90. Its in-state tuition and fees are $8,989 (2011-12); out-of-state tuition and fees are $21,784 (2011-12). In state tuition is cheap.

To: Paul V. who wrote (134054)	5/31/2012 7:00:27 PM
From: longnshort	6 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224704

Union Membership Plummets in Wisconsin Union Membership Plummets in Wisconsin By: Brian Sikma Unions in Wisconsin are no longer delivering enough value to their members to cause members to voluntarily stay with the union. Union membership in public sector unions in the state has plunged since Governor Walker and legislative conservatives enacted collective bargaining reform last year. According to a front-page story in today’s Wall Street Journal, 34,073 AFSCME members left the union in Wisconsin over the past year. The paper notes that most of that decline came from state workers deciding they no longer wanted to pay union dues. A provision of the Walker law that eliminated automatic dues collection hurt union membership. When a public-sector contract expires the state now stops collecting dues from the affected workers’ paychecks unless they say they want the dues taken out, said Peter Davis, general counsel of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. In many cases, Afscme dropped members from its rolls after it failed to get them to affirm they want dues collected, said a labor official familiar with Afscme’s figures. In a smaller number of cases, membership losses were due to worker layoffs. The fact that most members simply stopped sending dues money illustrates just how much labor was relying on coerced membership to survive. Private sector unions have been forced to adapt to their members’ needs, and yet with a growing global economy that is even now seeing a slight resurgence in American manufacturing these unions have continued to lose members. The heavily unionized public sector has until now faced very little comparative competition to force the unions to be more responsive to member needs. Private sector unions have had to compete with workers in nonunion companies, but there is often no competition for the work that local and state governments do. Without competition the unions are able to amass tremendous financial and personnel resources that make them fearsome political powerhouses. The long-time dominance of union membership in the public sector has dovetailed nicely with the Democratic Party. Liberal candidates promising more government are good for unions that thrive off of a membership almost exclusively comprised of government workers employed in both useful and useless jobs. It is no surprise then that Big Labor has been in the driver’s seat of liberal and progressive party politics for so long. At stake in the Wisconsin recall election is not just the administration of Governor Scott Walker, but the identity of Big Labor within the Democratic Party establishment. If the alliance between far left ideologues and progressives on the one hand, and organized labor on the other, falls short of ousting Scott Walker, it will likely create an identity crisis for labor leaders. To be sure, the will still hold a position of power in the Democratic Party, but they may shift from setting the tone and making political decisions (as they are doing in the Wisconsin recall elections) to standing by as an obedient force of disciplined and capable grassroots organizers. If that happens, it could mark the beginning of a long journey to irrelevance. mediatrackers.org