Organized labor has suffered punishing blows in recent days and weeks, in Wisconsin and Ohio, with the promise of further attacks on collective bargaining to come in other states, such as Indiana, Michigan and Florida.
“This has been about the worst year that I could have ever imagined happening,” Ed Muir, AFT's deputy director of research and information services, said at the opening plenary session Friday….
He derided what he called “gilded age budgeting” in state houses, which, he said, has favored tax cuts over public services and salaries. “It's horrifying. It is disgusting. They know no bounds,” he said before running through a litany of budgets proposed in states by Republican governors whose names provoked hissing from the audience….
New Jersey's budget would provide $2.5 billion in tax cuts for businesses (though also for larger property tax rebates) in exchange for concessions from public employees. Michigan's spending plan would replace the existing business tax with a flat corporate income tax of 6 percent, while cutting aid to higher education by 15 percent (unless the colleges curb tuition increases), ending the earned income tax credit and taxing pensions. Pennsylvania's budget would not impose taxes on industries that will begin extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, but would cut in half the state's support for four-year institutions of higher education.
Education has to live with a new normal, said Muir — one in which that sector is expected to adapt to lower levels of support while “the rich need our love and care.”
“The word for this, I believe, is evil,” said Muir.
(Warning: the IHE piece was apparently linked by a right-wing blog yesterday, which explains some of the idiotic comments that follow.)
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