The day before yesterday, Joe Scarborough led off on Morning Joe (Yes, I watch. Propaganda watch should go beyond FOX) by spotlighting the sort of "liberal" he loves, e.g., Gov. Cuomo for his Gov. Christie-like behavior, on whom he lavishes praise on an almost daily basis.
But 2 days ago he lauded yet another sensible "liberal" (Joe's "L" word usage here, not mine, given it's him -->>), Richard Cohen, quoting from his latest column in the Washington Post. What Joe's reading spotlit for me was how Richard Cohen would make Rasmussen pollsters envious, given the way he skews his "data" in order to attack the gluttonous public union retirees and assist conservatives attack on them.
One need only look at Joe's opening salvo, which was a quote from Cohen's opening salvo, to raise the red flag high. (Joe liked this mess so much, he made sure to repeat it throughout the show...)
It is this:
In New York City, the No. 2 guy in the fire department retired on a pension worth $242,000 a year.
No!!! Be still my outraged heart! The NUMBER TWO GUY???!!! Horrors must end! How dare that #2 guy make as much in retirement as #2 guys make in two hours on Wall Street, America's sacred bull, from that sliver of most wealthy/least taxed 1%ers!
I would say more, but I am simply too outraged to waste another word on this money sucking unionized pig. (Surely, #2 guy has singlehandedly brought NY's economy to its knees! No wonder Cuomo has turned to Christie.)
Moving on... Next, Mr Cohen, please!
Next:
In New York State, a single official holding two jobs and one pension took in $641,000.
A single official? Who?! Name him, please, Mr. Cohen, so we can drag him into the town square and pelt him with 641,000 rotten tomatoes! Surely, as you are implying, if this single official makes that much in retirement, then ALL retirees on the public payroll make that or close to it, like that #2 "guy" you started off with. If not quite up to that high a level, I'm sure they will be demanding the same thru that horrendous "collective bargaining" - you can bet your bottom $641,000 dollars!
You, Mr Cohen, have unearthed the wormy hidden agenda of the Wisconsin teachers/public employee protests, have shed sunlight on the evils of collective bargaining. We must show gratitude to you, Joe Scarborough, and ethical billionaires like the Cocks (Kochs?) who are onto this and launching a counter-attack for the sake of the people.
Readers, I pause now to assert, on behalf of Mr Cohen, that we can trust his workingclass sympathies. I know so because, in his own words:
"I pause now to assert my bona fides. I got my first union card while still in college and remained a member of the Newspaper Guild throughout my career, paying dues even when I no longer had to. I can whistle union ditties [... ]"
And he aint just whistling Dixie... well, maybe so, if Right to Work comes to mind...
Cohen blows his whistle some more...
Yes, believe it, there's yet more Cadillac-bennied outrage dished up via our workingclass insider. Can our shock absorbers weather yet another violation of our moral code via his excellent fact-gathering? Ahhh... tough as it is, we must try... for the sake of the people, for the sake of shared sacrifice.
A lieutenant with the Port Authority police retired with an annual pension of $196,767, and...
I will end the torture, poor outraged citizens, by completing that last quote just down below. It's The Closer from Mr Cohen's helpful bag of union excesses. Please, just hang in there. We cant let our favorite scapegoat du jour, the TEACHERS and their unionized greed, fly under the radar, can we? Richard didnt. He saved the best for last.
... 738 of the city's teachers, principals and such have pensions worth more than $100,000 a year.
Oh my gawd! I'll leave it to others to pelt their furry tomatoes at the lieutenant. (THE lieutenant.) I need every last one of mine for that blood-boiling greedy gang of 738 "teachers, principals and such!"! In case you missed it, let me spell it out - that's seven hundred thirty-eight public union greedsters!
First off, what really roils is how much moolah those "such" characters are sucking off the public teat! It'd probably make a Wall Street mogul blush. The Koch brothers themselves! Listen up, Mr "such" (and such), you public education payroll bloodsucker, the free ride is over! We can only imagine how you - and all those TEACHER cronies - live the high life at the cost of so many - your mansion surely tops Derrick Jeter's work in progress! (Taj Mahal, move over.) Arent you ashamed that a public sector pensioner like yourself makes private sector wage earners like Jeter look shabby by comparison?
Jeter's shabbyshack in progress, below... (Hands off the Jeter, tax man! All kneel and worship... )
All snark aside...
One can feel Cohen's 'pain' if they fail to acknowledge the FACT that he has served up a highly fact-deficient, disingenuous, skewed and muddied dish of anti-union/anti teacher propaganda. One must, of course, avoid the FACT that Cohen's nefarious gang of 738 includes: "principals" and the cryptically troubling "and such".
Anxious, apparently, to add his two cents to the (glorious) Wisconsin (+ other states) public union/teacher revolt, fact-mangler Richard Cohen lumps NYC teachers in with "principals and such" - teachers who number 80,000 in the NYC system (I dont know how many retire each year, but you wont find but but a drop in the bucket of them in the group he highlights).
However, we are supposed to see this number, 738, writ large, as Cohen wants us to - distortion amplified, as Scarborough was so eager to flog it throughout his show. How many are teachers? Who cares? Not Cohen, obviously, when he chose to dish up this horribly distorted view of teacher/union employee 'greed' via collective bargaining in the public sector. And not Scarborough, who repeatedly made hyperbolic accompanying statements, like public unions/collective bargaining are "breaking the states' backs..." Using Cohen's bullshite as "evidence." (Scarborough has a long string of anti teacher/union-bashing comments to his discredit)
FACT: NYC Teachers start at 45K, base pay. Yes, teachers are finally getting their due as they move up the salary ladder - a decent, middle class salary for NYC and the region - after years of low pay, with starting salaries in the early eighties that were less than those of city sanitation workers' starting salaries... (I kid you not - and that was with lunch duty, no preps, scantier supplies, etc... But at least back then you could still find an apartment you could afford on such poverty pay... if you shared the rent, lived in a high crime neighborhood and got all your clothes and furniture off the streets. NOTE: Luckily, a lot of used stuff was sold on the streets back then, or discarded for the picking, in a far funkier NYC.)
Now NYC teachers can and do make 100K at the top of the scale, full pension is 59% of their final years' average salary. And, I might add, since this is NYC, at the end of quite a few years of blood, sweat and tears, often working in tough, disadvantaged neighborhoods ("Hey, my car has just been stolen from in front of the school! Hey, I just stepped on some colorful little vials... Oh my, they're everywhere! Oh my, they're crack vials!" "Hey, watch out, here comes another pack of abandoned wild dogs, roaming free!" "Hey, someone is waving to me from that burnt out bldg! Oh wait, it's just a city-painted decal, to give the illusion of cheerful occupancy..." I give you the Bronx, circa this era, and well into the nineties...)
Teachers have contributed out of pocket expenses, year after year, not just to supply their grossly under-supplied classrooms, but also to get mandatory Masters' degrees to stay credentialed, and then ever more credits beyond those, not just to get raises but also to keep their certification/job. Yes, now one must jump thru more hoops, even after getting certified. It's not called "permanent" anymore.
They spend this time off the clock, along with all the teaching duties off the clock. So take that into account, take it mixed in with principals, who make over 100K as base pay... and assistant principals who start at 100K if they work in "troubled schools" for 3 years (... and "such"? Or perhaps some other cushy administrative job?) For principals who take troubled school assignments for 3 years, the starting salary jumps to 125K.
Currently, the average retired teacher pension is: $42,000. And the cost of living in NYC? Dont. even. ask. Just like Mississippi, of course! (Now buy this Brooklyn Bridge.)
Here is the other side of the coin, from NYC teacher's union president, Michael Mulgrew:
Acknowledging serious budget problems, UFT President Michael Mulgrew ripped into Mayor Michael Bloomberg for “protecting millionaires and billionaires on the backs of working people” at the Jan. 19 Delegate Assembly.
He contrasted the mayor’s desire to let the millionaire’s tax sunset this year —which he said would blow a $5 billion hole in the state budget — with the mayor’s insistence in his State of the City address that the city needed to be able to reduce pension benefits and lay off “more expensive” senior teachers to cut costs. He charged the mayor with “misleading everyone” about the true cause of — and solutions to — the budget crisis.
Of the mayor’s wish to strip veteran teachers of any job security, Mulgrew asked incredulously, “People should lose their jobs for dedicating their lives to children?”
Mulgrew scoffed at the mayor’s threat that the city could go bankrupt if the unions don’t agree to scale back pension benefits. He told delegates, “Remember this fact: the average teacher’s pension is $42,000.” The real money is elsewhere, he said, noting that New York State has the widest income gap between rich and poor in the nation, and it’s worst of all in New York City.
Half of the households in New York City have incomes of less than $30,000, he noted, while the top 1 percent of city households average $3.7 million.
Mulgrew accused the mayor of protecting wealthy manipulators in the financial industry while ignoring the fact that the city’s pensions had taken a $13 billion hit over a 15-month period as a result of Wall Street misdeeds.
Mulgrew called on the Strong Economy for All coalition, of which the UFT is a founding member, to lead “the war” in Albany to protect working people and stop the millionaire’s tax from expiring.
But thanks so much, Mr Cohen. Thank you for playing! You and all those who will be misinformed by you or just happy to use your rightwing smears to further their rightwing agenda - like Christie, like Walker, like the cushily-employed, Starbucks-sucking, millionaire Joe Scarborough who thought your opinion (with pretense to fact) so nice, he read it thrice.
(Is this guy an arsecap phony wearing the scabhat of the day - 2 days ago - or what?!)