The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

A question posed by our forums anti workingman's organization poster. Exploiting workers is pathetic.

But the real question  "are these union people?" should be aimed at Congress. Congress is the most powerful union in the world. But there's no outrage here about the Congressional Union exploitation of you and me, their boss.

I saw this morning where Congress plans to only work 109 sessions in 2012. Would you give full pay for 1/3 time worked? And on top of that these creeps get full benefits, a pension, and have access to any corporation willing to buy their vote.

No wonder the Congressional Union approval rating is down to %9. They are the one's we need to frustrate.  And you might wonder what in the world the %99 Movement is all about?

If you consider 5 days at 40 hrs per week, 2 weeks vacation and 10 holidays per year full time, that would be 241 days per year.  109/241 = 45%.  Then there are the junkets business trips.  Would you consider the business trips you may make to be on your time or the company time.  Do you get paid for that time?  Of course being salary exempt kind of covers that.  Still there would appear to be not enough work for the pay and benefits. 

However, we may be lucky they don't "work" more.

They don't work now....their over sized staffs, perhaps....

 :o

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxuCeHUxoBY[/youtube]

Constitutionally speaking, being a senator or representative was never intended to be a job, and certainly not a career.  It was intended to be a sacrifice.  We need to go back to that.

Teatown is right, they have become as bad if not worse than any union.

We would get a far better caliber of representation if those who chose to serve did so in the spirit of service and sacrifice rather than for power and privilege.

I suspect that many of our politicians do initially get into it for that reason, much as many of those who join the military do it out of that spirit of service and sacrifice. When faced with the realities of spending the amount of money it takes to get elected to the House, much less the Senate or Presidency, I doubt that idealism ends up sticking around much past the first campaign.

Warren Buffett, America's potentially biggest Union buster,in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the
     best quotes about the debt ceiling:
       
  "I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just
         pass a  law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more       
         than 3% of  GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible
         for re-election.
 
         The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds)
         took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified!  Why? Simple!
         The people demanded it. That was in 1971 - before computers, e-mail,
         cell phones, etc.
         
         Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year
         or less to become the law of the land - all because of public pressure.
         
         Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to
         a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask
         each of those to do likewise.
 
         In three days, most people in The United States of America will
         have the message.  This is one idea that really should be passed
         around.
 
         _*Congressional Reform Act of 2011*_
 
         1. No  Tenure / No Pension.
 
         A Congressman/woman collects a salary while in office and receives no
         pay when they're out of office.
 
         2.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social
          Security.
 
         All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the
         Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into
         the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the
         American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
 
         3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,  just as all
        Americans do.
 
        4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
         Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
 
        5. Congress loses their current health care system and
         participates in the same health care system as the American people.
 
         6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the
         American people.
 
         7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void
         effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this
         contract with Congressmen/women.
 
         Congressmen/women made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in
         Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers
         envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their
         term(s), then go home and back to work.
 
         If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will
         only take three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive
         the message.  Don't you think it's time?
 
         THIS IS HOW YOU FIX THE CONGRESSIONAL UNION!

opinions, TNF union bustees?

The 3% deficit thing is true, but the rest of it is just cooked up somewhere else.  Most of it very good.


Congress isn't a union.  The big difference is very obvious.  Unions have always acted as a reactive element - they respond to the actions of management.  

Congress is mostly the exact opposite, acting as a proactive element, starting s$$$ every chance they get.  Occasionally they do respond in reactive mode, but usually only after a near uprising by voters.

I have always thought they get paid a little too much for the effort they put forward, but also think about this.  While they get paid approx 170k (depending on status), they also have a budget for a support office.  I have looked for a figure on this but the only thing I think I have found is that members of the House receive a 1M dollar budget (so approx 435M per year for House staffing).  I haven't been able to find anything on the senate though, from what I understand it is a bit more, but if anyone has any info, I would love to know.  They should be required to be in SS, and should not be allowed in the federal retirement system (FERS or CSRS).  They like to gripe a bit about entitlements, but they are one of the biggest abusers.

The money they get paid is nothing compared to the money they actually make.  When they retire (or are defeated) many of them then sell access as lobbyists.

I would like to see a 8 year term limit. 

The difficulty with term limits is that they increase the churn time for a given legislator.  We have a well-documented revolving door problem, with legislators turning into lobbyists at a crazy rate.  Term limiting them just transforms their time in Washington into an 8 year lobbyist training course.  

It also doesn't help that corporations now have unlimited free political "speech" rights, and can spend essentially anything they want during (and not during) campaign season.  There's no way the individual citizen can counteract the scale of that kind of influence.  

EDIT:  re: term limits . . . certainly there has to be a better way to limit $$$ influence while they're in office, rather than limiting what might begin as a genuine desire to fulfill a civic duty.    Term limits assume that everyone will, given enough time, be corrupted by Washington.  It doesn't assume that there can be a successful or useful career politician. 

All ya gotta do is vote that way!  I have for decades.  It's just the rest of the people in this state who don't.

There should probably be a "non-compete" style agreement that legislators should be engaged in related to their term limit.  8 year term maximum, and 8 years without direct or indirect involvement in lobby efforts.

As for the involvement of corporations in the campaigns, I am coming around to the idea that we need to engage stricter limits.  After seeing billions of dollars funneled directly to donors, bundlers and non-viable corporate entities in the name of imaginary stimulus, it has become painfully apparent that lobbying efforts have now gone far beyond the promotion of legislation intended to help private sector entities grow.  We now have an administration willing to blatantly engage in pay-for-play even when they know that the bulk of the spending will be lost on non-viable enterprise.

Lobbying used to be corporations courting government so that they could be more profitable, expand, and ultimately grow the economy.  It has now become corporations courting government for taxpayer money so that they can pay back campaign donors and gamble risk-free.

You just hit on one of the biggest problems we have in this country...the granting of "personhood" to an artificially created entity!  If there were to be a desperate need for an amendment to the Constitution these days, this would be it!  Something along the lines of limiting the First Amendment protections to actual human beings like the words in the First say.

And I quote;

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's that pesky "the people" part.  The Supreme Court defines a corporation as a "people".  Will require an amendment, or get rid of the five idiots whose votes were bought and paid for.

When was that? 

Or rather, when was it never not both? 

No matter what era you study, business and government in the US have always been intimately intertwined.  It's certainly nothing you can lay at the doorstep of this administration specifically . . . and actually something that goes back a couple centuries.  It's worse now because of some major cultural changes in how the government operates (cf. Citizens United decision), the global scale and funding of corporations, and how a certain voluble subset of our political class views the role of government as it relates to industry -- namely that government should be teensy, unobtrusive, and laissez faire. All of these things have contributed to the capture of government by other interests (which, btw, I don't limit simply to corporations . . . unions, and other NGOs also have influence, but by sheer size of resources, corporations win out).

And yes, if we could find a way to institute a non-compete policy without somehow limiting a representatives essential freedoms, I'd be all for it.  I don't think there are ways to make it a perfectly incorruptible system, but taking active steps to limit influence peddling?  Yes please.

Yep, nail hit squarely on its round head:
Our government is for sale, and not just to big business, coal, oil, the Koch brothers and unions. Foreign entities can pay to play as well.

Moreover, they have the nasty side effect of decimating institutional knowledge, thus making Congress much less effective and eroding its power relative to the other branches of government. It also makes us more likely to get a bunch of freshman nutjobs like we have in the current House. I, for one, appreciate a relatively moderate Congress, even though it often frustrates me.

Actually, I'd think term limits would make legislators less beholden to more extreme interests and I still think 8 years is plenty of seniority and knowledge base.  I mean really, the only thing that happens beyond a few years is legislators become more entrenched in the political and fund-raising processes to ensure their survival and that erodes their objectivity, IMO.

As well, a more rapid turn-over rate might keep one party from dominating power for any length of time.