Category: Class War

We’re getting drilled in Pennsylvania

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Will Bunch on Gov. Tom Corbett’s new budget proposal:

If there was a moral to the story that Gov. Corbett spun Tuesday in his much-anticipated, first-ever budget talk, it was that all wealth is not viewed equally – at least not when it comes to Corbett’s notions about bailing Pennsylvania out of its $4 billion budget hole.

To middle-class state employees, to upwardly mobile college students at Pennsylvania-funded universities, to the working poor who’ve looked to Harrisburg for affordable health insurance, the newly inaugurated governor sent out more sacrifice signals yesterday than a third-base coach on a built-for-speed baseball team. He even urged that teachers take a one-year pay freeze — an issue not under his direct control.

“If government is here to share the taxpayer’s wealth then everyone needs to share in the sacrifice,” said the new governor, whose relaxed posture and shock of white hair threw off an aura of imperial calm, even as he metaphorically jabbed a budget dagger so sharp that would have made Caligula proud. “Educators, Pennsylvanians await your decision.”

But there’s another group that’s tapping into big-time wealth – a buried treasure right here in Pennsylvania — that isn’t facing those kinds of tough decision that causes a pay-frozen schoolteacher’s family to cut back on groceries or cancel a weekend down the shore.

That would be the economically booming, mostly out-of-state natural gas companies and their multi-millionaire CEOs, who continue to rapidly expand their aggressive form of drilling known as hydrofracking, or simply “fracking,” across large swaths of upstate Pennsylvania. The companies take in hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any dedicated Pennsylvania tax — even as such levies are imposed in the other 14 of the top 15 gas-producing states, even in red-state bastions of free-market libertarianism like Dick Cheney’s native Wyoming and George W. Bush’s Texas.
Continue reading “We’re getting drilled in Pennsylvania” →

If you don’t already hate investment bankers

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

You will by the time you read this:

Most family incomes in Bronxville are in the six and seven figures, ranking the village among the wealthiest enclaves in America. But even an additional $100 to $200 tacked onto property tax bills has met enough resistance to make town officials think twice.

Some residents argue that the town should be more businesslike, cutting other costs to offset the outlay for smaller classes. Peter P. Pulkkinen is one. A 40-year-old investment banker, he and his wife, Sarah, moved here in 2004 from the Upper East Side and their two oldest children are now in the first and third grades. He wants small classes for them. But rather than raise taxes, he would restrict the compensation of existing teachers — particularly their benefits.

Displaying a sheaf of charts and projections that he and a friend prepared for a school board meeting, Mr. Pulkkinen said in an interview that if property taxes continued to rise in Bronxville at roughly the trajectory of the last decade, they would double by 2020 — and by 46 percent in the unlikely event the “austerity budgets” of the last two years continued through the decade. “I think it is a false paradigm to have to choose between radically diminished services or exponentially higher taxes,” he said, “without first addressing the structural issue of teacher compensation.”

So far, he said, Dr. Quattrone and the school board have not done so. Instead, they have chosen “soft targets.” One hour a week of Spanish instruction to grade-school students, for example, was eliminated last year. Mr. Pulkkinen instead would attack “structural” expenses like tenure, the accumulation of unused sick days and the rising amount the school board pays for pensions and health insurance.

And he’s not even the tiniest bit aware of what that sounds like, coming from a member of the single most destructive (and heavily subsidized) industry in the nation. Amazing.

Oh, and here’s my other favorite part. Really, the rich are so often bastards, aren’t they?

“My income in retirement is pretty fixed,” Mr. McBride said, “and there comes a time when you have to say, ‘Whoa, whoa.’ ” Mr. McBride, who describes himself as “antispend, not antitax,” is reluctant to support the superintendent’s proposal to add two elementary school teachers without offsetting the cost.

“We outsourced the custodians last year and the teachers initially rebelled; that to me was inexcusable,” he said. “In private industry it could not have happened. When the boss says, ‘I have to have X amount of savings out of your division,’ you don’t say no.”

Poor retired man on his fixed income! This is a resident who can afford to pay $60,000 a year in real estate taxes, and he pushed to outsource custodians — who, of course, no longer make a decent living and no doubt lost their benefits.

Guillotines are too good for them.

Michigan

~ susie

Backbone is contagious:

In a scene similar to protests in Madison, Wisc., hundreds of firefighters and union members from around the state have jammed the rotunda of the Michigan Capitol building protesting what they call anti-union legislation percolating in the Legislature.

Loudly chanting, “Shame on you” and “We are union,” the protesters can be heard loudly in the Senate chamber, where bills to strengthen the powers of emergency financial managers for distressed cities and school districts were expected to be acted upon today.

It is the first time a union-led protest — several in recent weeks — has spilled into the Capitol and caused a ruckus. The Senate continued its agenda, but the shouts from the lobby were a distraction.

“They’ve awakened a sleeping giant,” said Bill Black, a lobbyist for the Teamsters union who stood in the crowd closest to the Senate chamber.

F*ck the banks

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

You know, fellas, we do remember how to use cash. It’s bad enough that we let you guys charge us for the automatic cash machines that first allowed you to lay off thousands of bank tellers when you first came up with the idea. But now you want to just keep upping the charges for using the debit cards you gave us — again, yet another device that let you cut labor costs? You bankers really have no shame:

WASHINGTON — It seemed a good idea last year, when the financial crisis had turned banks into Public Enemy No. 1 and lawmakers were looking for ways to reward consumers still bitter about billion-dollar bailouts and executive bonuses.

Without much warning or debate, the Senate passed an amendment directing the Federal Reserve to reduce the hidden “swipe fees” that banks collect from retailers each time a customer makes a purchase with a debit card.

Merchants, who had complained that the $20.5 billion in annual fees were biting into their profits, were elated. Banks were stunned. Their lobbyists tried to reverse the move, but when the overhaul of the nation’s financial regulation was passed by Congress last July, the debit card cut survived.

Now, as the Fed faces a deadline in April to write the rules for the lower fees, banks and debit card companies are engaged in an all-out assault on Capitol Hill, enlisting a growing cadre of lawmakers and lobbyists to push for changes, delay or outright repeal. Banks contend the proposed cut in fees — to 12 cents per transaction from an average of 44 cents — will leave many of them unable to afford to issue debit cards to customers or will force them to raise other consumer banking charges to cover the costs. They also claim retailers will reap unfair profits.

A coalition of banks and card companies have plastered subway cars and Internet sites with ads warning, “Bureaucrats want to take away your debit card!”

“I am appalled that our members will shoulder tremendous financial burden and still be on the hook for fraud loss while large retailers receive a giant windfall at the hands of the government,” John P. Buckley Jr., the president of Gerber Federal Credit Union of Fremont, Mich., told a House of Representatives subcommittee last week.