FAUX News declares open season on its next target, public workers

[Hannah Bell]

Today I was in a situation where I was forced to watch Fucked News just in time to catch their Goebbels Propaganda Show.

It had two guys, I don't know what the names of their so-called "journalists" are so I'll call one Adolf & the other Joe. The "report" went something like this:

Adolf: So Joe, I hear the state pension fund in the socialist city of Gotterdammerung, California, is underfunded by 700000000 brazillion dollars.

Joe: That's right, Adolf, and it's because of all those overpaid state workers sucking off the public teat for so many generations.

Adolf: So Joe, can't the hardworking citizens and taxpayers just cut the pensions and benefits of these bloated, greedy, selfish parasites who still want more while the good, hardworking people are losing their jobs? I mean, they work for *us,* right?

Joe: Well, you know Adolf, they'd have to agree to it. And you know they're so selfish they'd never do such a thing. And you know they have their powerful greedy unions backing them every inch of the way. In fact, if they don't agree, I think the only way to get out of the union agreements would be for Gotterdammerung to declare bankruptcy. It's quite a dilemma.

Adolf: Yes it is Joe. So this is what you're telling me: The choice is that you & I & all the good people can work our fingers to the bone until we die, & our children after us, so that these bloated fat cats can retire in style & lay around eating bon-bons while we drop in harness to fund their decadent lifestyle? Or else we have to declare bankruptcy? Can this really be America?

Joe: I'm afraid so, Adolf. This is what the unions have brought us to -- a choice between feeding our families or feeding public workers.


At which point I stood up in front of the other people in the room & said "I won't watch this fascist propaganda anymore" & changed the channel.

They looked at me strangely but no one objected. Maybe they thought I'd go postal on them.

It was disgusting.

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. Good move on your part

gotta get peoples' attention that FAUX is FUX'd

[pinboy3niner]

2. Sounds like the story posted in the CA Forum Oct. 4

The source was LAT:

Nearly 200 L.A. County employees took home more than 250K in compensation last year
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=141x38378

The poster is no longer with us. :evilgrin:

Ed. to fix broken link.

[Hannah Bell]

3. look for a concerted, targeted attack similar to the attack on teachers, coincident

with the announcement of a bunch of cities/counties/states not being able to make payments.

[Catshrink]

14. Look for it?

It's already here, and I do mean here on DU, and will escalate as the privateers and billionaire boys continue their crusade against public education.

[Scuba]

4. Just part of their "divide and conquer" strategy. Thanks for changing the channel.

[quaker bill]

5. We can't allow pensions

If public workers have them, sooner or later everyone will want one. That is apparently no way to be "competitive on the global market".

This is also given as the reason to bust unions. They have the unmitigated gaul to request better wages and benefits.

I think it was Krugman who said we could create millions of jobs at two dollars a day. In fact in many places our corporations are already doing so. The question is whether this is the sort of country we want to live in.

In a nation where uncounted billions go to CEOs and wall street scammers, wouldn't it be a better place if a slice of that provided pensions and better wages for all?

Of course they would say that would make us "uncompetitive" in the same way they say that massive CEO compensation packages makes us more "competitive". Curiously it is all the same dollars coming out of the same accounts.

[HillbillyBob]

6. Those billions of $ are our pensions they have already stolen

or how ever appropriated, remember the 80s when all these MBAs started showing up and selling off assets and filching pension funds? That is when it really started going down hill. MBAs being graduated by the hundreds or thousands and none got any ethics training other than 'don't get caught'. With the idiots voting for raygun and (*)sr, family values bullshit. Frankly I am begining to think that anyone with the balls to say they have an MBA behind their name should get held over to have a look and see how many lives he or she has screwed up for the bottom link and punish accordingly. Yea I know generalization, but if the number of MBAs i have met very few would qualify as human warm.

edit to add my original point. I was at UNC CH med last week and fn was on the tv in the waiting room where i had to wait while my eyes dialated.

I asked it to be changed and an employee said 'company' policy.. I said if i recall that (*) crony is still chief big shit hunh? Yup. I ll wait outside. I cannot recall his name and at the moment my coffee is more important than he is.

[rucky]

8. The whole arguement comes from a lack of understanding of how pensions work.

Well, how they're supposed to work - and who's been mismanaging them.

[quaker bill]

11. True

it also is a lovely to factionalize us. Decades ago the notion was "keeping up with the Joneses", which was done by getting a better job, a raise, and usually buying more stuff. Now it has been turned towards complaining that the "Joneses" are being paid too much and have too many benefits. Knock the "Joneses" down to my level and I will be happy. The problem is that in this spiral downward, we all get a turn at being the "Joneses", a target to be knocked down a level.

If this keeps up, sooner or later we will all be on the level of the greeters at Wal Mart.

[AldebTX]

7. After City Worker's Too

We have our council voting to cut our health benefits because our pension (which we are required to pay into at 7.5% of current salary) is paying too high a rate of return from it's investments. It's unfair in this down economy for City workers to be getting such a high rate of return on their money so we are going to cut their health benefits and make them suffer like the rest of us is the thinking. Then some sort of song and dance is always performed about Chino California and how we are heading down that road when we retire.

One council member was aghast we had a pension. He commented that in the "private" world no one has a pension. He feels strongly we should be paying into a 401K instead so the funds can be better invested into the economy. (Did I mention he was a broker). Of course neither the pension or the 401K are matched and its not their money...except it is...because they pay the salaries...and we of course don't really work, so they should have a say in how we save for retirement....<sarcasm>

[Starry Messenger]

9. Oh god.

Public workers have been crapped on here the entire time teh Ahnold has been in office. I don't know why anyone would be a state worker in this climate.

[mmonk]

10. Yes and unfortunately much of the mainstream media is starting

to carry that ball as well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. kick

[Hubert Flottz]

13. FOX needs to be deported to the Russian front.

Where they came from.

[Hannah Bell]

15. kik