http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/fbi-arrests-10-in-long-is_n_1034776.html
The Public sector unions want a “millionaires” tax to balance the state budget. Maybe if the union members would stop stealing from the state we would not need to raise taxes.
I don’t see the connection you are making. The article makes no mention of the millionaire ‘tax’. It deals with 10 individuals that committed a fraud and will have to answer to this allegation. You are implying that all public sector employees are thieves and fraudsters. There are criminals at every income level and social strata. I believe that the role of unions needs to evolve. The fact remains that in 1980 most CEOs earned about 30x the average worker, now they mave over 300x the average worker.
I don’t see the connection you are making. The article makes no mention of the millionaire ‘tax’. It deals with 10 individuals that committed a fraud and will have to answer to this allegation. You are implying that all public sector employees are thieves and fraudsters. There are criminals at every income level and social strata. I believe that the role of unions needs to evolve. The fact remains that in 1980 most CEOs earned about 30x the average worker, now they mave over 300x the average worker.
I am making a mention of the millionaires tax, because some of the most prominent proponents of this tax are the public sector unions.
It is lot more than 10 individuals involved, those ten are just the current indictments. Ten people did not steal $100 million dollars each. If you read the article it is pretty evident there may be thousands of people who will ultimately be charged. They have not started indicting all the people who got the fake disability claims from the doctors.
The fact that there are criminals at every level, does not excuse the behavior. This is outright fraud. A great deal of financial shenanigans (e.g. crony capitalism, or more appropriately rent seeking behavior) is actually legal (the laws need to be changed). It might be “wrong”, but until we change the laws it is not a criminal offense. It is not a criminal offense that the CEO of Nabors has collected $750 million in compensation over the past 20 years while the company has underperformed the S&P 500; however it is hard to argue that this was right. Still this is no defense for the looting of public coffers occurring due to public sector unions.
The fact that your first reaction is to make light of a potential $1 billion defrauding of taxpayers and then make excuses that everyone else does it, doesn’t say a whole lot about what you stand for. There is not defense for this. This involved hundreds of members of a union, could be one of the largest examples of white collar crime (in terms of overall dollar value and the number of participants) in US history.
http://blog.rochelleberliner.com/2011/10/nypd-police-misconduct/
For some reason I am just missing all the instances of fraud and criminal behavior by the rank and file who are not in unions. Please feel free to post some examples.
I am not sure I follow this. This is two people who started a fraudulent business. They did not steal from their employer. They stole from a bunch of morons who handed over their money without any due diligence (Actually this sounds a lot like paying taxes)
Stealing directly from your employer is much more prevalent among public sector workers (most of whom are unionized) than in the private sector. It is a lot harder for employees in the private sector to steal from their employers, because the company is in business to make money and cannot tolerate the theft and someone actually pays attention. Since the public sector has largely become a jobs program for the incompetent and is not held accountable to real fiscal standards it is much easier to steal, nobody is looking. Do you think a for profit company would be able to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in pension fraud over a decade without noticing (If the company was called Olympus they might have;)
The fact remains that in 1980 most CEOs earned about 30x the average worker, now they mave over 300x the average worker.
In the public sector?
This is all CEOs (most are private sector), my point was the average annual pay increase at the top has far outpaced that of the average worker.
I actually agree that there is a disconnect, and it is a problem, in the private sector, but this thread is about the public sector unions, and I’d bet that the 30x number has probably gone down for public sector employees.