{"id":13997,"date":"2011-11-10T18:35:40","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T18:35:40","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-11-10T18:35:40","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T18:35:40","slug":"missing-the-point-on-pension-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/10\/missing-the-point-on-pension-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Point on Pension Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pundits and electeds take entirely wrong message from Tuesday’s election results<\/i><\/p>\n

by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, voters in a few communities across the state approved pension reform measures.  That one of these communities was San Francisco, you know with its San Francisco values, makes a whole lot of uninformed people think that they know something about the electorate.<\/p>\n

Except that they have no idea. Take San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, ostensibly a Democrat, but backed mainly by the so-called “business” interests (ie developers).  He’s not a knee-jerk anti-union guy, but hardly in the pocket of labor either.  His thoughts on the San Francisco vote was so wildly off-base as to be laughable.<\/p>\n

The results cheered local officials such as San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who’s seeking a March special election on his own controversial pension reform proposal, as well as advocates for a statewide measure aimed at slashing the costs of public retirement packages.<\/p>\n

“It certainly demonstrates solid public support for pension reform,” Reed said Wednesday. “Even in a labor-friendly town like San Francisco, 68 percent said yes.” (BayAreaNewsGroup<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His quote makes absolutely no sense.  Why? Well, that would be because the pension reform measure that was passed by San Francisco voters was supported and funded by labor<\/i><\/b>. So rather than being in-spite of SF being a labor friendly town, that was the reason that SF gave 68% of the vote to Prop C.  On the other hand, Prop D, opposed by labor, went down hard with about 66% voting no.<\/p>\n

Take that combined with the results in Ohio, what you should get is not that Californians want to shove something down labor’s throat.  Rather, perhaps Mayor Reed should consider how Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors worked with labor and other stakeholders to get a deal that everybody can live with. I assure you, not all union members are happy with Prop C, I spoke to many that said they were voting No.  However, a deal could not get done without labor or by simply forcing Ohio\/Wisconsin type ideas into California.<\/p>\n

Pension reform is possible, that is what San Francisco showed.  But it should be pension reform that is negotiated. A compromise can be reached without bullshit ballot measures with right-wing funding. You know some organizations can calmly sit down and discuss issues, even ones that rise to the existential level. Perhaps now is the time for some discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pundits and electeds take entirely wrong message from Tuesday’s election results<\/i><\/p>\n

by Brian Leubitz<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, voters in a few communities across the state approved pension reform measures.  That one of these communities was San Francisco, you know with its San Francisco values, makes a whole lot of uninformed people think that they know something about the electorate.<\/p>\n

Except that they have no idea. Take San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, ostensibly a Democrat, but backed mainly by the so-called “business” interests (ie developers).  He’s not a knee-jerk anti-union guy, but hardly in the pocket of labor either.  His thoughts on the San Francisco vote was so wildly off-base as to be laughable.<\/p>\n

The results cheered local officials such as San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who’s seeking a March special election on his own controversial pension reform proposal, as well as advocates for a statewide measure aimed at slashing the costs of public retirement packages.<\/p>\n

“It certainly demonstrates solid public support for pension reform,” Reed said Wednesday. “Even in a labor-friendly town like San Francisco, 68 percent said yes.” (BayAreaNewsGroup<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His quote makes absolutely no sense.  Why? Well, that would be because the pension reform measure that was passed by San Francisco voters was supported and funded by labor<\/i><\/b>. So rather than being in-spite of SF being a labor friendly town, that was the reason that SF gave 68% of the vote to Prop C.  On the other hand, Prop D, opposed by labor, went down hard with about 66% voting no.<\/p>\n

Take that combined with the results in Ohio, what you should get is not that Californians want to shove something down labor’s throat.  Rather, perhaps Mayor Reed should consider how Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors worked with labor and other stakeholders to get a deal that everybody can live with. I assure you, not all union members are happy with Prop C, I spoke to many that said they were voting No.  However, a deal could not get done without labor or by simply forcing Ohio\/Wisconsin type ideas into California.<\/p>\n

Pension reform is possible, that is what San Francisco showed.  But it should be pension reform that is negotiated. A compromise can be reached without bullshit ballot measures with right-wing funding. You know some organizations can calmly sit down and discuss issues, even ones that rise to the existential level. Perhaps now is the time for some discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[7516],"class_list":["post-13997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-7516"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3DL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}