Monterey Bay Forum

government union pays $65 K a year compared to $15 K for private sector Social Security

The average public sector retiree gets $65 K a year compared to the average private sector social security benefit of $15 K. It’s an accurate statement to say that taxpayers are enslaved to the public sector unions and why collective bargaining by government employees must be limited. See article that appeared on the web site.

Government Employees – The True “1%”
By Wayne Allen Root, on March 6th, 2012

Editor’s Note: The claims made in this commentary by Wayne Allen Root are incendiary. But they are true. We are on track in the United States to pay more money to 20 million public sector retirees – at an average pension of $65,000 we will pay these retirees $1.3 trillion per year, then we will be paying in social security to 80 million private sector retirees – at an average social security benefit of $15,000 per year that will cost less, about $1.2 trillion per year. Providing a level of retirement security to government workers that only the wealthiest 1% can enjoy in the private sector is not “protecting the middle class,” it is economic enslavement by government unions over the taxpayer. This article originally appeared on FoxNews.com and is republished with permission by the author.

How did America become broke and insolvent? How did we build up an unimaginable $115 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities? How did we allow the American Dream to become a nightmare? (more…)

National Organization for Women (NOW)   has a long  list of links– not updated since 2005–  to various left wind organizations including Color of  Pink and Common Cause.

NOW in addition to Color of Pink and Common Cause are  organizations which  oppose ALEC and want  to shut ALEC down.  ALEC is pro free markets and has provided legislation that is pro-business.

For more about ALEC go directly to their site.

ALEC And The Left’s War On Free Speech

Posted 05/16/2012

Advocacy: If you want an insight into today’s left, look at its multifront war against the American Legislative Exchange Council for committing the grave sin of pushing free-market bills in state legislatures.

At a recent meeting in Washington, Aniello Alioto of ProgressNow Colorado summed up the left-wing’s campaign against ALEC: “Never relent, never let up pressure, and always increase.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, ProgressNow was one of several left-wing groups meeting at AFL-CIO headquarters earlier this month to plot their ongoing campaign against ALEC. Other groups included Common Cause and the Color of Change.

So what’s got the left so agitated? Is ALEC involved in organized crime? Has it stolen money from state treasuries? Bribed officials? Polluted the environment? Clubbed baby seals?

Nope. The left is targeting ALEC for the simple reason that it’s been effective in promoting pro-business, free-market ideas and policies, mainly by drafting model legislation that lawmakers can use as a template in their own legislatures.

Those bills, mind you, still have to make it through their states’ representative bodies, and then get signed by their governors.

In other words, it’s democracy at work.

But the mere fact that ALEC has succeeded in pushing back on the liberal state has the left in a state of apoplexy.
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Instead of debating the group, or working to counter it with their own liberal legislative efforts, they’re trying to shut it down.

For a while, the left had little success, until the Trayvon Martin shooting, which it dubiously tied to ALEC’s advocacy of state “stand your ground” laws.

As a Common Cause spokeswoman told Businessweek, “The Trayvon Martin thing was like a gift.”

Since then, the left has mounted a fierce campaign to target companies that donate to ALEC, acting like reverse extortionists who threaten a PR nightmare unless the companies stop paying up.

They don’t even bother to deny it. Color of Change talks about flooding targeted companies with “thousands of phone calls” and how it will “escalate pressure” with radio ads and threats of public action, the Free Beacon reports.

And the Center for Media and Democracy’s Lisa Graves boasted to the Washington Post a while back about the “enormous work and preparation behind the scenes by numerous public interest organizations and researchers and writers and journalists across the country,” and how it was finally paying off.

As ALEC’s Ron Scheberle correctly described it, “this is an all-out intimidation campaign.”

Unfortunately, more than a dozen risk-averse corporations have since capitulated, severing ties with ALEC.

Meanwhile, Common Cause has filed an IRS whistle-blower complaint claiming ALEC violated lobbying rules, and it’s asking state AGs to investigate the group.

If it all seems out of proportion, it’s because this campaign isn’t about ALEC. It’s about the left’s desire to silence voices with which it doesn’t agree, and it’s about bullying companies into giving only to left-wing causes.

As ALEC’s experience shows, the left doesn’t want open debate and dialogue or freedom of speech. It wants forced conformity.

What’s worse is the fact that “journalists across the country” — including those at the Washington Post and New York Times — who normally pride themselves as champions of free speech, have decided to play along with this campaign rather than call it out.

government freebie fantasy time from NASA

James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies says:We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month.

The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices.
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The American doyen of global warming hot air wanders from fantasy to fantasy. He expands now to social engineering in the name of fighting global warming.

JAJ48@aol.com linkscolor = "000000"; highlightscolor = "888888"; backgroundcolor = "FFFFFF"; channel = "none";

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