Pay cuts or layoffs

[UpInArms]

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk1JmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2NjgzOTQwJnlyaXJ5N2Y3MTdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5Mw==

LITTLE FALLS - Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale stood in the Meat Cutters Hall on McBride Avenue Friday before several hundred men and women in uniform and asked them to consider a choice: collectively take a pay cut this year - or face the threat of layoffs.

"I can't do without one of you. I don't know what I'm going to ask you to do. But I need to know that I can depend on you to be reasonable and at least think about the options," the sheriff told the workers he summoned to the union hall in the wake of the county's budget troubles.

County officials project a budget increase of $16 million to $17 million this year, which they say is largely due to the rising cost of utilities, health care and other employee benefits. The Sheriff's Department represents 20 percent of the county's preliminary $338 million budget, County Administrator Anthony DeNova said earlier Friday.

<snip>

The proposed pay deferral requires employees to postpone two weeks' pay this year - which the county would reimburse when they retire, quit or leave the department for any reason. One day's pay would be taken out every two weeks for 20 weeks. When employees leave, the county would deliver the deferred paycheck at the workers' future salary level.

...more...

[donco6]

It's tough to be magnanimous in this situation. eom

[Skittles]

more casualties of the bush economy

I hope all those people know it

[rocktivity]

3. DING DING DING! Skittles, you're our grand prize winner!

What people aren't told about tax cuts is that the states have to make up the difference. And if they can't, the state employees feel it first...

:scared:
rocknation

[cliss]

6. Yes, good point!

I'm starting to see some sweaty armpits at my office. Some huge Bush supporters are starting to sweat. Several of them live far away, in McMansions outside of town. As the price of gas is going up dramatically, they are starting to feel the pinch.

My boss is actually getting quite frightened about the whole thing. He and his wife drive a combined 600 miles per week to get to & from work. Just imagine how this is hitting them. Also, he must realize that his $639,000 house (how do I know the value of it? He keeps bragging about it) will go down in value because people can't afford to live in houses far away from town.

The other Repub is a fat, lazy slob who has been arrogantly spouting his right-wing rhetoric for about 3 years now. He recently got in trouble for bragging about the new Bankruptcy bill. He boasted that he would "break the debtors' legs", and he practically took credit for pushing the bill through Congress at a recent speech.

People have finally started to complain about this creep. He was in big trouble on Friday at the office. He looked scared, was humble & quiet all day. I LOVED IT.

[Indykatie]

12. How Disgusting It Must Be

to have to listen to some republican idiot who can afford to live in a $600,000 house whine about the price of gas. Imagine the financial impact the high prices are having on people with minimum wage and modest salaries. If that's the only negative impact to him at this point he should count himself damn lucky.

[AndyTiedye]

16. If They All Move Into Town,Will You Still Be Able to Afford to Live There?

$639K would barely get you a starter home down here.
It would probably be a "fixer-upper".

Prices in the City are even higher.

He and his wife drive a combined 600 miles per week to get to & from work.

Sounds like she doesn't work in "town", or at least not the same town.
It's not just Repiglicans that have this problem.

It can be extremely difficult for a two-career couple to find jobs
close to each other, and when you do, it's only a matter of a couple of years before one of the offices moves or closes. Offices in-town are
the most volatile, due to high downtown office rental rates. These are
constantly moving out to the 'burbs.

The reverse-commute in San Francisco is as big as the regular one,
and a lot harder to accomplish by public transportation.
Living in town doesn't always save you from having to commute.

[fortyfeetunder]

17. Tell your GOP colleagues boo effing hoo

I have absolutely no sympathy for them. May they be innundated with the adverse consequences they created by voting for *.

[UpInArms]

18. I ran into this commentary piece yesterday - it looks like

the wingers are starting to feel a bit of pain - and the next step might just be cognitive dissonance:

COMMENTARY: Regulation may be needed to end oil price-gouging

http://www.desertdispatch.com/2005/111417609191885.html

In researching my work for this piece I found myself increasingly directed to left-wing publications and Web sites. The kinds of places that spurn meat-eaters, portray George Bush as Hitler, and revere the ACLU. Simply put, my fact-finding missions have taken me to places I would rather not have gone, but that's an indicator of how far I had to go to find the truth in this case.

Even the old broken clock is right twice a day. The same is true with these hard-left groups. I think they distort every issue that faces George Bush because they hate him so much. They hate war, they hate capitalism, and now they even hate Social Security reform just because Bush proposed it; never mind its merits. Yet here I am, right along side millions of Americans getting robbed daily at the gas station, and there's no outcry. Sure there are no guns or violence involved, this theft is so much easier than that.

There are a few basic truths at work in this country; we have a Republican oil-man from Texas in the White House. Gas is ridiculously expensive. Oil companies are shattering profit records while pretending that crude prices are costing them dearly. Is there collusion at work here? I don't know, but I know the extent to which George Bush is reviled in a great deal of newsrooms across the country, yet none of the haters have picked up on what I consider one of the most significant lapses of this White House.

The Web site Common Dreams, billed as "Breaking news and views for the progressive community," featured a rant about the immediate need for alternative energy. The last line of that piece from 2000 entitled "Time to cap big oil's profit gusher" is likely the saddest and most true point that can be made about the scam that is big oil. "Only direct government regulation will stop the oil oligopoly from persisting in its price gouging."

Let me be clear and say that in most cases I loathe regulation, and despise government intervention. Intervention however, is needed in places where government regulation plays a role in the initial creation of a beast that is feasting mightily on the American working people who simply have no choice when it comes to driving.

...more...

Realizing that the truth is not on MSM or rightwing sites???

Oh MY!

But then he has to go and denigrate and discredit the left a lot :(

[Dark]

1. Decriminalize weed.

It'll generate some revenue.

It'll lower court costs.

It's not a final solution, but it's a start.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. If they decriminalize it, I could live on less. I believe it's Greed that

Shrub won on, more than any moral highroad, or fiscal responsibility.

[Eloriel]

4. Hooray!

This is exactly what the plan is. It's the plan for private employees, and the plan for public employees. I'm saying Hooray because maybe the sooner we get there, the sooner we can start climbing out of "there." (Well, sorry, but that's about as optimistic as I can muster these days.) Here's a good link on the subject (with a bit of an excerpt/summary):

********The Economic Tsunami : Coming Sooner Than You Think
(The country has been intentionally plundered and will eventually wind up in the hands of its creditors as Bush and his lieutenants planned from the very beginning....This same Ponzi scheme has been carried out repeatedly by the IMF and World Bank throughout the world; Argentina being the last dramatic illustration.)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=118706&mesg_id=118706
Link: http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_16735.shtml

[Indykatie]

7. Hopeful vs Optimistic

I totally agree with your sentiment and while there is nothing to be optimistic about at this point we certainly can be hopeful that people are beginning to wake up.

[UpInArms]

19. my other half says it like a virus

and we have to let it run its course. My fear is that the virus will prove fatal to our democracy.

[Career Prole]

5. And thus Stage 3 will begin.

Children felt it first in Stage 1 when the failure to fund NCLB mandates left school districts cutting services and raising taxes in a frantic attempt to replace needed funds which instead went to Iraq and to the wealthiest of Americans.

Stage 2 saw America send its soldiers off to war woefully, tragically unprepared and under-equipped because a horribly bloated defense budget had been focused on further lining the pockets of the wealthy investors.

Now it's to be law enforcement biting the bullet to finance the Miserable Failure's miserable failures.

We may as well face it...we live in the most hopelessly self-centered nation on the planet, and now it has even taken to cannibalizing itself to feed its rich.

[progressivebydesign]

10. Stage 3 includes the Victims and Witnesses Fund.

Bush gave that the axe recently, too. Compassionate Christian.. indeed!

[Bombero1956]

14. face it folks

This country has become profit crazy. Services that were once provided by local governments have been turned over to private for profit corporations. This started with privately run prisons and trash collection. They are now going after law enforcement and schools. Just this past week, a private company from Rosedale New Jersey was hired to provide payroll services to my city at an annual cost of $500,000 plus another $600,000 for startup costs.The office staff will be reassigned to other duties. The governor wants to hire a private company to run our local Civic Center.Those employees will be laid off. Mitt Romney has a stated objective of turning minicipal services over to private sector profiteers and we all know that if providing a service is going to reduce profits, they will just not provide the service.He even attempted to privatize the Turnpike Authority, but the legislature put a stop to that. This is happening all over this country.

[mike_c]

8. the downward trend in social services needs to be documented...

...comprehensively, to make the human impact of the repig economic agenda utterly clear to every American. I'm convinced that Americans would stop voting against their own self interests if they were made more aware of the real impacts. Everywhere I turn these days I hear news stories about social service decline-- teacher layoffs, municipal budget failures, library closings, cessation of health care plans, suspension of family services, rolling up of the social safety net, and so on. Many local businesses are failing as the economic ripples spread. There appears to be a general downward trend in living standards, such that the working poor are increasingly being driven into chronic poverty and the middle class is becoming the new working poor.

These events are being reported-- when they are reported at all-- as though they're disconnected, coincidental. Layoffs here, health plan failures there. The media seems not to be linking these events as the shared consequences of economic policies designed to concentrate the nation's wealth into as few hands as possible (and no, the Republicans are not solely responsible for this-- many dems are likewise owned and operated by corporations whose interests are served by this trend). People blame their mayors and governors, their local service providers, rather than the Congress and the Bush administration because they never seem to hear the full context for these events.

[progressivebydesign]

9. When will the average American GET IT?

Bush and his republican cohorts are STRANGLING our once-great, once-strong, Country! The republicans are like petty theives.. stealing a dollar here, a dollar there, until they've cleaned our entire vault out. Cutting State funds repeatedly, cutting law enforcement funds, cutting victim's assistance funding, mental health funding, etc. etc. etc. The average American doesn't see the fucking correlation!!! Unless it's on American Idol, they don't give a shit. Sometimes I think we deserved the garbage we get because we're so anesthesized by tv and legal drugs, but it sucks for those of us that are paying attention.

[Merlin]

11. This is a smart sheriff and a wise proposal. It also may wake people up.

Hard to believe people are still seduced by the macho bullshit of * and his cronies, as the pockets of average 'Merikuns are picked clean by a system that thinks taxes are evil, but doesn't mind paying CEOs 600 times what it pays the typical worker.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

13. NJ gets back...

$.57 for every dollar it puts into the general fund. Where does the rest go?

South.

[against all enemies]

15. To those Puke red states, they are a drain on the blue states.

Can the blue states recede?, please.

[cornermouse]

20. I bet they do both.

After they secure the paycut they'll probably return with an "oops".

[Ernesto]

21. St Ronnie returns from the dead (his spirit lives on)

Welcome back to the '80's folks! Ain't it wonderful? For those not old enough to remember, this is just what St Ronnie brought the country.