#336 – Dick Bernard: Part 6. Our "fellow Americans", Corporate personhood and the Wealthy American

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Feb. 22, as the debate continued to rage about Wisconsin public employees and the right to bargain, I got an e-mail from a 41 year old man, a good friend who is one of those loyal employees who make corporations succeed. He was responding to my blog post of February 21.
I know this young man well: he is hard-working and loyal to the corporation he works for. In many ways he can legitimately claim he’s self-made, overcoming some personal obstacles to achieve moderate success. He despises unions largely because his Dad’s union – his Dad was a public school service employee – was headed by someone even I knew to be somewhat notorious and disreputable back in those days. I’ve gathered that my friend had some struggles in school, and didn’t get the help and encouragement he needed then. During the time I’ve known him he attacked and essentially conquered a serious learning disability, on his own, I think. He’s not high on public schools. All of these things seem to be his armor against what he seems to feel are lesser beings who need unions. His apparent attitude: real people, like he is, attack their problems and succeed on their own. (He knows my job for many years was representing people in these very unions.)
In his e-mail to me, Tuesday morning, he said this: “Just saw the news about John Deere and Cat[erpillar] moving the small equipment production to China by 2012. The unions will lose about 20,000 jobs in the Midwest (Iowa and Minnesota). No word from the unions and how they are partnering with business to keep the jobs in the States. This is an issue that’s getting some heat, finally…is the union involved with bus driver/busing issues? I know the cost of diesel fuel is forecast to be $4.25 to $5/10 during the 2011-2012 school year. Any cost containment proposal from the union leaders?”
I responded at considerable length to the questions, knowing that the response would fall into something of a ‘black hole’ of non-acknowledgment that I might know something as someone who’s ‘been there, done that’ and is 30 years his senior. In very brief part, I noted “sometimes I wonder what the companies think their responsibilities are (other than to the very rich people who are the major shareholders.)” They have fought hard, after all, to be considered persons just like my friend and I, and they’ve succeeded. Against me, they’re far bigger than Goliath, but “persons”, every one of them. Unions are pesky inconveniences.
Tuesday afternoon I went to the union rally at the Minnesota State Capitol. Compared with other assorted rallies I’ve been to, this one was huge and extraordinarily high energy. I wrote about my experience there, yesterday.
Wednesday morning I read, as I always do, my copy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the state’s major newspaper. I expected there would be something significant about the rally in the paper. There was almost nothing – a paragraph buried in another article. This had nothing to do with newspaper deadlines, or interest in conflict. The same paper was full of stuff about Wisconsin, and Libya and other uprisings. Minimizing the news about what was happening at the Capitol was a deliberate editorial choice.
I always read, first, the editorial and opinion pages of the “STrib”. This day was a long column by the papers editorial page editor D. J. Tice. It speaks for itself. It is about another 40-or-so year old, a member of Minnesota’s mobile elite: some apparently successful guy who can hold governments hostage by not-so-idle threats to move to more favorable places, as he decides*.
I thought of my comment to the other 41 year old I know (see above). I’m going to send Tice $5 as a contribution to his friends plane fare to help that guy get out of Minnesota if he wants to leave. After all, it’s suggested that I can’t count on this greedy person for support of a strong state. He’s self-made and maybe self-obsessed.
I believe the big-shots, like the Koch brothers, Scott Walker et al (linked is the YouTube of the now famous conversation between a Koch impersonator and Gov. Walker, Part I of 2), know that there are short and long-term consequences to their actions to bludgeon workers into submission. But lust for power and greed are powerful drivers.
It will be beleaguered and underpaid and under-appreciated workers who will have to stand up and be counted in the coming days.
I’m there in solidarity with them.
Previous posts on this topic on February 17, 18, 21, 22, 23.
I am sure there will be a Part 7 to this series. And maybe more.
* – Doug Tice’s commentary reminded me of another Star Tribune column I read over 17 years ago. It was headed “How will future reckon with Cousin Kenneth” and is Cousin Kenneth ’93 STrib001. I don’t know how Cousin Kenneth has fared, overall, these past 17 years. It would be interesting….

#335 – Dick Bernard: Part 5. "Solidarity forever"

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Tuesday afternoon I went over to the Minnesota State Capitol to join the demonstration in support of public workers.
I’ve been to lots of demonstrations and gatherings in that rotunda. Never have I felt as much pride as I did yesterday. There was energy in that space as I have rarely felt. I didn’t hear a single word of a single speech. I don’t know who talked or what they talked about…there were too many people and the sound system was not up to the challenge.
What I could hear was roar of those within hearing distance; and what I could see was the sea of people of all ages, all exemplifying firmness and civility and solidarity.

Close as I could get to the rotunda


On the stairs I struck up a conversation with an AFSCME member, and a member of the AFSCME union field staff who was along with her. I asked if I could take a photo for this blog. The staff member thought it most appropriate to take a photo of a member of the Union, and so Natalie, who works in Superior WI, did the honors.

Out the front door of the Capitol, and heading towards my car and home, a member of the National Association of Letter Carriers caught my eye, giving witness to her union and its work for the citizens of this country.

Back home Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was given some air time on the 6:00 news for part of his “fireside chat” with Wisconsin residents – we live ten miles from Wisconsin so what is happening there is local news. Of course, he said he loved Wisconsin public workers, but the taxpayers can’t afford them, and on and on with the standard talking points. It struck me that he never once looked at the camera, rather at whatever served as his teleprompter to his left. His effort to make “public workers” as an alien class, something different than real “taxpayers”, was very obvious. Wisconsin will judge his performance. The local news analyst suggested that Walker had lost the momentum he began with. That is how these things can work. Take nothing for granted.
It’s been years since I’ve been in harness, working with public sector union issues as best I could.
Were I to give advice, I’d urge the leaders to let the followers take the lead, and to take the message back to their local communities. There is scarce a family that does not have one or more public workers within its constellation. They are the real people, not the union spokespeople. There is an immense amount of deliberate misinformation out there, about the reality of public employees compensation, the supposed burden of taxes, etc.
The intense focus has been on making the public employee the villain, with no talk about other solutions. There needs to be some truth telling. If there are disequities – too much or too little – these need to be pointed out and acknowledged. Basically untold is the story of the huge inequity in wealth in this country, and that the wealthy are doing very, very well – thank you – in these difficult times. They are to be insulated from this sacrifice.
Maybe there were 2,000 in that rotunda area yesterday. If each of those concentrated on ten people who supported their cause; and those ten found ten, and so on, there would be serious momentum very fast. But it takes effort to keep up momentum. Power has the means to wait out the Powerless. It will be work.
Minnesota legislators and others are waiting to play copycat if Walker succeeds in his gambit. They will be tempted otherwise if the momentum shifts.
Each of them, behind the bluff and bluster, is wondering about votes in the next election.
They need to be very worried.
They need to know that they can not step on a truly exceptional group of employees on which citizens of every state depends.
Solidarity forever!

#333 – Dick Bernard: Part 3. What Wisconsin Means

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For 27 years between 1972 and 2000 my full-time job was to advise and represent public school teachers in matters relating to collective bargaining and grievance processing ending in arbitration. My work was completely in the public sector.
You learn a great deal in 27 years.
For instance, I pay very little attention to how the media or the folks at the microphones or in front of the cameras define the “issues” at Madison, Wisconsin. I know from very long experience that while one or more interpretation might be right; they might as easily be wrong; they might be truthful; they might be intending to mislead. At the micro level there are, in fact, multiple definitions of “issues” particularly in very large conflicts like the one taking place in Wisconsin, with lawmakers in other states waiting in the wings to see what ultimately happens there.
If one can get past their particular bias, and look behind the curtain, there are things which can be very clearly seen.
What Wisconsin means, in my opinion, is very, very simple, and should be very, very troubling to the vast majority of Americans, including those who self-describe themselves as “Tea Party” fanciers.
What Wisconsin is about is the destruction of the Middle Classes ability to represent its own interests, and not only government workers rights. Wisconsin is the ultimate power-play of certain extremely wealthy and powerful business interests to drive the final nail in the coffin of collective bargaining for workers, using the wild horses of supposedly populist rage and resentment (“If I can’t have it, neither can you”; “I hate unions”* (or “government”)….) to provide the negative energy to actually pull off the coup d’etat. The Koch Brothers (big oil) and the United States Chamber of Commerce loom largest among many of these wealthy constituencies out to take control. These ties are very easy to find if one has any interest in looking (these wealthy folks know that most aren’t interested.)
What Wisconsin is not about is recovery from out of control government spending. Government is, in fact, very efficient, even cheap, if looked at over all. At the same time, Government “waste and corruption”, in fact, is very, very good for business. Government money is low-hanging fruit: witness the rampant AMERICAN corruption during the Iraq War (Halliburton, et al); excess or phantom billings for Medicare, etc. Business getting more tax relief as the Wisconsin Governor rammed through for business in his first days in office in 2011, and you have another indirect Government benefit to big business, paid for by unaware taxpayers.
The Middle Class will rue the day if this cabal, and their representative Scott Walker and a temporary majority in the Wisconsin state legislature carry the day.
So will Scott Walker and his backers and financial supporters.
Wisconsin represents the death struggle of the American dream.
How do I define “the Middle Class”?
The Middle Class is the people who, primarily in the last half of the 20th century, worked for a living, bought the new refrigerators, sent kids to college, made the difference in so many ways.
There are endless definitions of “Middle Class”. The Middle Class is huge. Usually the top 2-3% of Americans are considered “wealthy”; with a pretty common floor for “wealthy” being an annual income of $250,000 a year. This leaves 97-98% of Americans as “Poor” and “Middle Class”, and by far the greatest number of these are “Middle Class”.
The average teacher in Wisconsin makes roughly $50,000 a year, with a starting salary of about $25-$30,000. This is the compensation for approximately 180 work days, the typical work year for a public school teacher. Unlike many seasonal occupations, there is no “unemployment insurance” for the summer layoff from teaching. “Summer pay” is simply earnings deferred to summer. I don’t know the specifics about the rest of the average teacher compensation package in Wisconsin – non-teacher contributions to things like health insurance premiums, teacher retirement and the like. A very liberal rule of thumb addition would add perhaps 25% to that $50,000 average, making a truer average a bit over $60,000 a year….
School administrators make a bit more than teachers; other school workers like bus drivers, custodians, secretaries, cooks, aids, etc., make less. The average school employee wage is considerably less than the average teacher salary.
I don’t know about you, but I worked hard for a living over a long career and I never got close to a six figure income ($100,000), much less $250,000 a year. I had a lot of college education, and I think I was respected in my trade.
I’m retired now, with a private pension, social security and not as much savings as I think I need. Ditto for my wife.
Personally, I’ll do whatever I can to prevent Wisconsin from becoming what I truly believe represents the coming American tragedy: the destruction of the Middle Class for the craven ambitions of the super-wealthy in this society.

Related posts: here and here.
*
* UPDATE: Friend Jeff, an international businessman and son of a small town bakery owner, provided an interesting discussion of the word “union”:
From the American Heritage dictionary:
Union
1. The act of uniting or the state of being united.
2. A combination so formed, especially an alliance or confederation of people, parties, or political entities for mutual interest or benefit.
# Agreement or harmony resulting from the uniting of individuals; concord.
“labor union” is the 6th definition given.
The Republican party: a union
The Tea Party: a union
The Burnsville Soccer Club: a union
A neighborhood association: a union
Why is it that in Egypt and parts of the middle east people are demonstrating and in some cases losing their lives , for certain rights which includes the right to form “unions”
But in the USA some political interests are interested in destroying the right of people to form unions?

#332 – Dick Bernard: Part 2. On the treatment of "public servants"

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A reader took umbrage at something I said in yesterday’s post on the Wisconsin stand-off at the State Capitol.
The comment was succinct: “Enough of the…bashing [of the power group to which the writer belongs]. Please remove me from your email listing and future emails.” The writer is a prominent actor in the political arena with a lot of influence in the legislature.
I decline to remove the writer from the distribution list. He can delete the messages or mark me as spam.
Initially I was puzzled by what the writer could be reacting to. But as I thought about it today, there were a couple of comments in the previous post which could be interpreted as “bashing” of his constituency.
But I left out of that post most of the rest of the story.
My parents were career public school teachers in the good old days before there was any such thing as “teachers rights”. They were phenomenal people, both of them. No taint of scandal or performance deficiency followed them in their career (excepting my mothers first year as a teacher, in 1929-30, when she was scarcely 19, and several of her country school students were almost her age. She resigned at Christmas time and went home.) Both took their work very seriously. But they were always – always – outsiders.
They, especially my Dad, kept records. As I write, in plain sight in front of me, is a brown folder which contains 67 of their teaching contracts. Four of my mothers contracts in the early 1930s escaped the folder, but all the rest are there. For a total of 71 years they taught public school in numerous places.

Every single one of these contracts was ‘at will’ of the local school board which could decide whether or not to rehire for the following year, whenever it wished. There were even circumstances, in the 1930s, when the tacit agreement was that the contract, even if signed, may not mean anything. They’d be paid if the district had the money. Long and short: every year when they signed their contract, they knew it was for a single year. The next spring they could be let go for any or for no reason whatsoever. Cause didn’t matter. There was no due process. They were well educated migrant workers.
In return for that contract, they did everything that was asked, and more. Dad didn’t like to coach, but sometimes he had to coach because there wasn’t a coach available. Often there were implicit rules that married couples wouldn’t be hired because, together, they made too much money, by community standards. Those community standards required them to do certain things, and not do other things. Sometimes those were in the contract; sometimes not.
By 1948 they had five kids, but could never plan anything for sure past the end of the school year. Perhaps they’d be back; perhaps not.
Those stories don’t appear in the folder in those pieces of paper called Teacher Contracts. The rest of the stories took life through the stories my Dad told me in later years.
They retired with dignity, living in tiny houses and a frugal lifestyle. It took two retirements to survive.
They didn’t complain.
So when I watch the fat cat politicians and others posture in Madison and elsewhere, and watch those union members in the street challenging what lawyers would describe as ‘arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable’ attempts to remove hard fought rights, I side with those folks on the street. They’re fighting for survival.
I don’t really care about the details of the items at issue. That is for the parties themselves to sort out in two-sided collective bargaining.
My parents are long dead. I do wonder how they’d see the situation in Madison these days.
They didn’t bash their school boards. They just moved on, and uprooted we kids each time that happened.
But, unfortunately, plenty of those boards well deserved some bashing….

#331 – Dick Bernard: Part 1. "On, [the public employees of], Wisconsin!"

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Thursday afternoon, February 17, we went across the Mississippi River to see a music program at a local suburban St. Paul elementary school. The performers were about a hundred fifth graders, one of whom was our grandson. The audience was classmates from other grades, and the usual assortment of parents, grandparents and others. It was standing room only in the gymnasium.
It was a great program – they always are. Classroom teachers, and all public school employees, on average are genius level when it comes to working with kids. The average civilian would hardly last a day with one-fourth of the students a normal teacher is assigned each and every day. Ditto for those cooks, custodians, secretaries, Principals, etc., etc., etc. Occasional problems? Sure. There are, after all, nearly 50,000,000 kids in those places called “school”.
Thursday we watched one of this large elementary schools music teachers work his magic during the impressively choreographed and timed program with his young charges. Thursday evening the program was repeated.
Teachers – indeed, all school staff – are to be celebrated.
But those same employees are certainly not to be tolerated if they get uppity, and wish to share a tiny bit in the riches of this country.
Across the river, down the road perhaps 300 miles in Madison Wisconsin, at the same time I was listening to my grandson and his classmates, teachers and other public employees were engaging in rarely seen huge protests over an arbitrary attempt to strip them of rights and benefits under the guise of balancing the state’s budget. At this writing, it appears that the employees, with the help of Democrat legislators who literally left the state to prevent the dominant Republicans from achieving a quorum, will manage to at least minimize their losses in the short term, and bring powerful public attention to the problem of attempts to break unions, particularly unionized public workers.
I taught public school (Junior High) for nine years, followed by 27 years of representing unionized public school teachers. Union dues paid my salary and helped fund my private pension. I grew up in a teachers family, and on and on and on. So I am not unbiased when I cheer on those valiant souls who challenged the Wisconsin Governor and hopefully cause he and his slash and burn allies to regret their move (such unanticipated results do occur from time to time.) It’s past time to take a stand.
Public workers are essential to the public good, and not ‘essential’ as defined by those who would wish them to work as, truly, “public servants”.
Many years ago I heard the issue defined well by a colleague: “public employees are the last to reap the benefits of prosperity, and the first to be burdened by the costs of recession.” He was speaking an abiding truth. The public employer gets the leftovers, if there are any, and were anti-union forces to get their way, the good old days of “come to the table and beg” would again become policy.
Probably half of my nine years of teaching were in those “at will” days where the teachers got what the school board wished to give, which usually wasn’t very much.
By happenstance, my career as union staff coincided exactly with the beginning of collective bargaining in my state, and while both sides made mistakes that first year nearly 40 years ago, and later, we did learn, and collective bargaining has worked reasonably well ever since.
Actually, it would work even better for ALL parties, including the public, were the bargaining playing field opened to include all of the abundant issues which face public education, but managers are afraid of bogey-men that exist in their “minds eyes” about allowing practitioners to – horrors – have a say in education policy.
Get rid of bargaining? Honest managers would agree that unions bring stability to employer-employee relations generally. I know. I did the work, and I know people who worked on the other side of the table back then.
I applaud those courageous workers who when faced with an arrogant challenge by a wet-behind-the-ears new Governor took to the streets and made the national news.
May they be an example to their colleagues everywhere.
The writer taught junior high school geography from 1963-72; and from 1972 to the end of his career in 2000 was field representative for the Minnesota Education Association/Education Minnesota. A career long primary interest has been positive relationships between public schools and the public at large. In addition to this blog site, he retains a site with ideas for better public school engagement with the non-school community. You can access it here.

Dick Bernard: Looking at Public Schools from Outside the Walls

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To easily find this page in the future, simply enter the letters OTW in the search box for thoughtstowardsabetterworld.org.

UPDATE July 13, 2012
These are thoughts gathered over time which may help generate additional thoughts and ideas for readers.
1. Thoughts on Organizing:
A. An assortment of thoughts on The Future for Public Sector Unions – Part A: The future for public sector unions Part A
B. Early comments after June 5 on The Future for Public Sector Unions: The future for public sector unions C
2. Uncomfortable Essays here
3. Archival Items on building Community Relationships here.
4. Index of assorted thoughts on organizing at this blog site: Outside the Walls Blog Organizing
5. A message to younger teachers: AssociationYoungTeacherJuly12
UPDATE: August 22, 2012: Excellent commentary, Opening a New Front, on teachers, students, parents and the 2012 election can be found here. The writer, Alan, is retired, a former teacher. His posts, including this one, are long but I’ve found him to be an excellent source of information almost every day, and have subscribed (free) for a long while.

Original painting courtesy of Marie Thielen, Minneapolis MN. Lauzon School, Badlands of SD, between Custer and Edgemont.


INTRODUCTION. This site, commencing May 3, 2011, replaces and is now the primary site for the still-existing-and-functioning Outside the Walls website (2002-2008). Contact site owner Dick Bernard with your suggestions and ideas (see business card below for contact information). If you wish to be a part of an e-list which may become an information sharing group, please provide your contact information.

DICK BERNARD INTRO: one minute 46 second video
Brief Bio: DickBernardBioMay11001
PURPOSE: This page is a continuation of earlier work (see next paragraph) which conveyed ideas from outside the Public School walls to help build positive relationships with the large majority of citizens who have no day-to-day relationship with the public schools.
OUTSIDE THE WALLS (the original site). After retirement from teacher union staff work in January, 2000, the author of this site, Dick Bernard, became interested in helping public schools, in particular, get more positively involved in what he calls the “Outside the Walls” community. This is described here. This site was active 2002-2008. There are approximately 59 short essays, each with timeless ideas, at this site, each describing some means of better connecting with the 75-85% of the population who have little direct contact with public schools. (See the last Archive here.. The four posts are examples of all the others, and, like the others, all still apply to the present day.) Here’s a suggested “lesson plan” for using the archived ideas: OTWideasWeb
INAUGURAL IDEAS MAY, 2011: Reader suggestions and content contributions are solicited for future use:
1. Thoughts on National Teacher Day, May 3, 2011, from Dick Bernard. Follow up column dated May 7 here. UPDATE: Comment on National Teacher Day May 8, 2012 here.
2. Floridian Marion Brady, is very, very actively engaged in education reform issues. His website is here.
3. OTHER OUTSIDE THE WALLS GROUPS AND ACTIVITIES can also be publicized here, such as a joint venture between retired and active teachers, students and community members, World Citizen’s Peace Education program for school teachers. World Citizen, of which I’m vice-president, is in process of moving its training program onto the internet. This process will take place during 2011-2012.
4. This can also be a space for ideas perhaps not noted in other venues. For instance, in 1984-85, there was a highly successful “Year of the School” called “Ah, Those Marvelous Minnesota Public Schools“. It was a year-long public relations campaign, with many ideas which, though many are now dated, are still worthy of revisiting. They can be found here: 1984 Revisited001
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you stop back again, soon.
Dick Bernard
dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom

#305 – Dick Bernard: "Happy New Year"?

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Last night, New Years Eve, we had the final Christmas gathering of a few family members who’d missed the earlier get-together. When they left for home, the 2010 Christmas season was officially concluded, and New Years Eve was winding down to the New Year. I suppose it was about the stroke of midnight in Iceland, perhaps, when my day ended. Cathy was on the phone with a friend. That is how the season is for we older people.
Happy New Year.
One of the guests last night was a 46 year old. His 11 year old son was out of town with his former wife. This family member is unemployed with no prospects other than an hourly part-time job with no benefits which he now has. I would guess that in the statistics he counts as one of the 10% or so who are unemployed as this New Year begins since he qualifies for unemployment, and likely for the extension which passed in the cliff-hanger of last minute legislation in Congress. He is a worker, like most of us, identifying himself through his job. After a month or two unemployment last spring, until about Thanksgiving time he had a temporary full-time job with benefits, but one day he was let go for some unexplained reason. Reasons don’t need to be given, and besides there was no due process protection. I gathered the job was a very stressful one for him so perhaps in one sense it was a small loss.
Christmas Day my wife invited a lady friend, in her 50s, who’s unmarried and now unemployed for over a year, to attend Christmas Day Mass with us. She, too, will benefit from the unemployment extension. Through the friend we see the difficult realities of unemployment. She’s had a knee replacement so can’t do a job that requires long-term standing. She is too poor to afford or keep up an automobile, so any job she gets needs to be accessible by bus. She recently interviewed for a job which, if she had gotten it, would have required a bus trip with five transfers each way. Last Wednesday Cathy took her to a work force office which is not on any bus line, and a very expensive cab ride. She is actively looking for full time job.
Through these two folks, I see the reality of unemployment in this country. The male is obviously emotionally down – what should have been a festive occasion for him was not. He went home by himself last night. The female seems more at peace with her situation, though I know that she wants to work and she has a long history of doing good work. It is easy to say to both of them, “buck up, and keep on looking – good things will happen”. It is not quite so easy in their shoes.
Both want to work, but there are barriers.
It has occurred to me that this unemployment is a difficult issue for our country to gets its emotions around. If there is 10% unemployment, that means there is 90% employment, and most of the employed people are making more or less what they think is a fair wage and have some kinds of benefits. Similarly, retirees like we are generally are not poor; many are, in fact, very well off due to pensions, investments, and social security and medicare. Unemployment is not our problem, unless we happen to have it within our own family – as my wife and I do.
On the other hand, American big business is flush with wealth, profit obsessed, and a major news report earlier this week suggested that a major dent in the unemployment could have been made if that business had hired domestically in this country, rather than opting for cheaper job markets overseas. American business has little if any loyalty to its own countries citizens. In too many ways they are considered a cost to be controlled, rather than a benefit. The corporate ethic has loyalty only to the bottom line….
For business and the already wealthy, I think the “piper will be paid” down the road. It is the poor, and the increasingly stretched middle class, who produce, by buying goods and services, the profit margins lusted after by companies and the rich. The continuation of the tax reductions for the wealthiest Americans further increases the national deficit, and the extra money they retain is normally not part of the national income stream: it is saved, often in off-shore tax shelters, whereas the poor and the middle class keep the money in circulation.
It is not easy to convince the already well off that spreading the wealth is helpful to them, too.
They may have to learn the hard lesson, along with the rest of us.

#293 – Dick Bernard: Continuing the tax cuts

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For the record, some time ago, before the November elections, I wrote my U.S. Senators arguing in favor of letting the tax cuts expire for everyone at the end of 2010 – including my own.
My wife and I are small fish in the economic pond that is the U.S., but even for ourselves I demonstrated by actual numbers that the net effect of those ill-considered tax cuts earlier in this decade had quite a dramatic impact on our personal tax bill. I said that these were tax savings we neither needed nor could the country afford them. We were destroying our grandkids futures, I argued.
I think of this two page letter to my elected representatives in the wake of yesterday’s announcement of agreement in principal between President Obama and the Republicans and the resulting rhetorical tsunami particularly from the left (with whom I am most often in agreement).
The most well reasoned opinion I’ve seen about the compromise is this one from a west coast blogger I have come to like. It speaks for itself.
But Outside the Walls is my blog, and how is it that I think the President of the United States did what he had to do in dealing with a very tough reality?
I spent most of my working life as a teacher’s union representative, charged with making some sense out of the abundant nonsense that litters every one of our lives: trying to help resolve petty and profound disagreements between individuals and groups of individuals and labor and management.
In such a setting you learn rapidly – and then live within – the reality that nothing is ever as simple as it most often is portrayed by the advocates from one side or the other. Even the stark line between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’ blurs.
As I read and listened yesterday I kept thinking of a specific situation that occurred in about 1996 in the very town in which I now live.
It was a bitterly cold January, and the local union here – actually two competing unions which were finally cooperating – was at death’s door heading to a Strike.
In fact, everything was in place for the strike: picket signs, captains, schedules, etc. The strike was to happen at 7 a.m. the next morning.
The State Mediator called the parties together for one more attempt to reach agreement, and anyone who’s ever negotiated knows the scenario: labor and management were in separate rooms in an unpleasant place, sitting with stale donuts and old coffee, considering a mutual reality. If we didn’t settle below our sacred rock bottom bottom line, one side would be out on the streets, and both sides would have to figure out how to save face later.
I said that there were two competing unions in this scenario. I was representative for the smaller of the two. My local President wanted a strike in the worst way.
The night wore on and nobody was budging. The mediator was going back and forth.
Finally came the moment of truth: somewhere around midnight or after the Mediator called out our chief negotiator, as well as managements, and let them know the lay of the land, which was pretty dismal. Essentially, he said ‘you folks figure it out, or its your problem’.
Time went on interminably, and then the chief negotiator, representing the majority union, came in the room and asked me to join him.
The reality struck home. This was what we were going to get. Period. Were we going to strike for the difference? No. I supported settling.
The bargaining team sitting in the room agreed; my local President did not. He was very angry. He’d had a large stake in having that long overdue strike.
It was a stormy, snowy night, and the telephone tree went into effect well after midnight: no pickets in the morning. The 20 miles solitary drive home was very lonely.
A short while later we held a meeting to ratify or reject the agreement. Several hundred teachers came and heard the presentation, and voted in secret ballot. In my recollection, the contract we thought was so deficient was overwhelmingly ratified.
My local President – the one who wanted the strike – held me responsible for selling out and had nothing to do with me for the remainder of his term of office.
Life went on. He retired, and a couple of years later he called and asked me a question about something or other.
It was his way of saying “it’s okay. Life goes on”. And it did.
President Obama did what he had to do. It’s not the best, but the best that is attainable.

#291 – Dick Bernard: Looking at ourselves through "rose-colored glasses"

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My daily hangout for morning coffee is a very busy place, more or less the ‘crossroads’ for the commuting class in my community – a community which would be considered fairly prosperous and definitely middle class.
I am at my station during drive time every morning, next to the front door, so I can see the comings and goings for perhaps two hours every day. Often I’ll drop by in the afternoon for awhile as well. I’m just a creature of habit, I guess.
It occurs to me that, except for the panic days at the end of 2008, the normal clientele of the coffee shop has scarcely missed a beat. It is impossible to tell that there is major concern about unemployment or the like. Sure, a guy I used to see – a small builder who built higher-end homes one at a time – no longer shows up, and I heard he went bankrupt, but people still come through the doors, order their designer drinks, chat a bit, and are pleasantly on their way to wherever.
Life seems good, if viewed through the coffee shop “lens”.
In the same town, between the coffee shop and my house, is a homeowner I know well. He is, in fact, my son-in-law.
He was laid off last March from a corporate job, then was lucky enough to get a state job which, while was to last a year, at least provided some wages and benefits. Before Thanksgiving he was angling to refinance his house to get lower interest and thus lower payments, and things looked promising.
Tuesday before Thanksgiving he was laid off again – his work was not quite up to standards, and there’s plenty of people to replace him. Exactly what he didn’t do right, I don’t know, so I can’t judge. I don’t think he knows, either. His job was taking phone calls from unemployed people and redirecting them. Somebody who listened in (“this phone call may be monitored for quality assurance”) apparently was less than fully satisfied. He wasn’t fired, just let go.
There is no appeal process.
So, he’s back on layoff and unemployment again.
The refinance has now fallen through. He has no job, and thus is of no interest to the people who would have refinanced his house.
The homeowner is in the minority of us – they say roughly 10% are unemployed. The unemployed have no clout, but they are the soft underbelly of our economy and if the country goes down, their lack of work and thus lack of money to spend in this economy will be a big contributing factor.
There needs to be a better way.
***
After writing the previous words, we stopped at a newly opened Dollar store in our town (we are not a Dollar store kind of town – another story). While my wife shopped, I waited.
I overheard one lady ask a manager about jobs at the store – there was a Hiring sign posted outside.
The manager said, no openings. Corporate said no new hires. The woman walked away, sadly.
One of those little dramas repeated thousands and thousands of times each and every day.
Now, apparently, the rich will get the tax cuts they don’t need continued. Those same tax cuts didn’t help the economy earlier in this decade. Why should we expect differently now? But we, “the American people”, apparently don’t want to discriminate against the rich…. Best we clobber our own ‘kind’.

#274 – Dick Bernard: The State of the States, and the People Who Live in Them.

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Yesterday’s New York Times headline hit me when it showed up on my computer screen “Now in Power, G.O.P. vows cuts in State Budgets“.
Who can do anything but love trimming the fat of bloated, hated, “Government”?
It will be an interesting process as a new Minnesota G.O.P. majority in both House and Senate take meat axes to to try to eliminate a huge deficit created by assorted budget tricks the last several years of stalemate between the Democratic majority in House and Senate and G.O.P. Governor Tim Pawlenty. (Minnesota State Law requires balanced budgets, so to get around this little technicality, bookkeeping strategies, like ‘borrowing’ money from school aid to local school districts, were used in the brutal sausage making of legislating in a “veto” environment. Now, just in time for Christmas 2010, the bill comes due. Probably there will be a Democrat Governor in 2011, though when remains a question, as there will probably be a recount and a promised aggressive defense by the challenger G.O.P. The current Governor, G.O.P. and contender for Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, may well occupy the office well into the New Year, the new term.)
“Trimming fat” is an abstract thing, if one chooses not to notice the personal dimensions.
I have a personal example.
In the family constellation of my wife and I are eleven adults. The youngest is Down Syndrome, age 35, and thus not part of the work force. The other ten (including one former daughter-in-law) are all employable at the present time, and all working. So, technically, in our family there is full employment, and no unemployment.
One of the ten was laid off from a corporate job nine months ago, and went on unemployment.
He was only unemployed for a couple of months when he was offered a full-time State job for a maximum duration of a year. It paid far less than his former position, but it was a job and it had benefits, so he took the position.
What he does all day, every day, is receive and process phone calls from fellow Minnesotans who are unemployed. It is his job to redirect them to the appropriate agencies within the State of Minnesota system. The work is not fun. Neither is it in the specific trade he trained for.
Because the State job doesn’t provide adequate income, he works a part-time job, several nights a week.
Because he works during the day, he cannot do the requisite networking to find jobs in his area of expertise, and his expertise is rapidly going stale.
At the end of the twelve months, perhaps sooner if the meat ax reaches him, he will be unemployed again, struggling to find something, anything to survive.
Historically, getting a state job has been an entree into other State jobs. But that is a very unlikely scenario for this family member in this slash and burn time in our history.
There is an 11-year old boy in this scenario. Mom and Dad are divorced. Grandma does a great deal of heavy-lifting.
Oh, how easy to trim the fat of bloated government.
Oh, how easy….