Social Worker Killed In The Line Of Duty

On Friday afternoon, a child welfare worker in Vermont ended her day and was going home.  She never made it.

On her way to her car, she was shot and killed in cold blood:

A mom who lost custody of her 9-year-old girl less than a month ago used a high-caliber hunting rifle to kill the social worker involved in her case as the state employee left the office for the day, authorities said.

Witnesses tackled Jody Herring at about 4:45 p.m. ET Friday outside of a downtown office building that houses a Vermont Department for Children and Families office, Barre police Chief Tim Bombardier said late Friday. They had seen her take two shots at close range at Lara Sobel, who had worked for the agency more than 15 years.

Sobel died at the scene.

Herring, who is now in state custody, lost custody of her daughter July 10, Bombardier said. The child remains in state care; Herring will be arraigned Monday.

"We're doing the best we can to support our staff," agency Commissioner Ken Schatz said. "Any sort of death is a tragedy. In this situation we lost one of our own."

This woman's husband and little daughter will never get to see her again, never feel her touch again, never hear her voice again.

This hits close to home for a couple of reasons.

One, I did child welfare work for Milwaukee County for six and a half years. During that time, I have been verbally abused, threatened and even assaulted once.

Secondly, on Wednesday, the building I work at had to be evacuated due to a bomb scare. This was the third time in the past few years that we had to leave due to safety concerns.

Despite the dangers of the job, there are a lot of people - way too many people - that see public sector workers as the enemy.

People who cheer on Scott Walker as he falsely brags of "taking on the special interests" of public sector unions.  The people he attacked are your neighbors, your relatives, your friends.  People like me.

Instead of giving us the support and the respect we need to do our jobs to the best of our abilities, we get pilloried, we have our pay cut, we have our rights taken away and our safety further imperiled.   We see our budgets cut annually, leaving us to trying to do more with less until something tragic happens.  Even then, instead of giving us what we need, we get attacked some more.

Fortunately, not all people or politicians are as myopic and hateful as Walker and his supporters.  From the article:

"I am beside myself," said state Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell, a Democrat from Windsor, Vt. "These men and women put their lives on the line each day, and we don't understand the serious nature of these cases.

"This could happen in any state office or court," said Campbell, who is also a state prosecutor. "We do not pay them enough and respect them enough."

Hopefully, these politicians are doing more than just lip service and will actually do something about it. It is a shame that something like this has to happen to wake people up.

We've got all we can do to keep the public safe and make sure we get home to our families that we don't need to worry about being attacked by greedy, hate-filled politicians on top of it.

The right wing's war on the public sector serves no one and harms everyone.  It must stop now.

The Plutocrat's Poisoned Pilsner

On Tuesday, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele's office sent out this email:

To the lay person in the private sector, this might seem like a nice thing.  The boss showing appreciation for his workers by giving them a chance to enjoy the new traveling beer garden at a discount rate.

But think about it for a moment.  Abele has cut every worker's pay* by more than 10% and up to more than 20% in the three years he's been in office.  Now he wants his employees to spend whatever free cash they have - if any - to support his rolling bar.

The email sparked a considerable amount of cynicism, ranging from questioning whether Abele would have people there to photograph workers with their county IDs drinking beer to make it look like they were drinking on the job (remember, this is the guy who tried to frame a former supervisor) to whether they would start implementing "random" urine testing starting with third shift workers.

This stunt does raise a larger and more serious concern.

Milwaukee County Ordinances include a code of ethics (Chapter 9) which explicitly states that county officials and county workers cannot accept or give anything of value.  Abele is fully aware of this from two years ago when he tried to implement a "merit system," which was nothing more than a way to reward his cronies.  As I wrote at the time:

Not only does Abele’s “merit system” have the smack of being cronyism, but it is also illegal. It violates a number of county ordinances, from the civil service codes to aspects of the labor contract which Abele had just signed into law. It also flies in the face of Milwaukee County’s Code of Ethics, which explicitly forbids any county official or employee from giving or receiving anything of worth.

What makes this especially egregious is that the fact that Abele tried to start a cynical campaign to have this law struck down, using the untimely and tragic death of Sheriff Deputy Sergio Aleman, whose widow is also a county employee as an excuse. Abele’s office was telling people that they would be in violation of the ethics code if they contributed to Deputy Aleman’s memorial fund unless the law was tweaked to allow this sort of thing.

This is why public sector workers don't get things like Christmas bonuses or other perks that the private sector enjoys.  It is to prevent cronyism and nepotism which is running rampant since Act 10.  Without a rigid set of rules and a ratified contract, the doors are wide open to the corruption we are seeing in both Walker's and Abele's administrations.

To be honest, my first reaction was to warn people away from this event.  People like Abele and his supporters will fabricate things to attack their opponents (just ask Marina Dimitrijevic, David Bowen and Johnny Thomas).  There is no sense in giving them anything they could use.

But after some thought, I would suggest that people go to this event.

The workers at the behavioral health complex, at least the ones that aren't being forced into mandatory overtime, should go down there and talk to Abele about the mistake he is making. The retirees, who Abele has been avoiding, should go down there to talk to him about how he is robbing them blind and threatening their very homes with his greed.  All county workers should go down there to talk to Abele about how he is trying to illegally take away things that are proprietary and thus protected.

City of Milwaukee workers should most definitely go down there and talk to Mayor Tom Barrett about how the city wants to follow Abele's cloven footsteps and significantly cut in their paychecks to pay for his whims.

By all means, I encourage all public sector workers to go down to Red Arrow Park and share their views on these austerity measures.

Just make sure you pay full price for your beverages.

*That does not include the staff in his office, to whom he's given raises at a scale similar to what Scott Walker gave to his political appointees, like Cindy Archer.

Scott Walker's Top Ten Ways To Tell You Might Be A Public Sector Worker

At the end of public service recognition week comes this fitting reminder of what Scott Walker really thinks of public sector workers:




H/T to Jud Lounsbury

Who Is Worse To Workers - Scott Walker or Chris Abele?

As I had noted, I attended the Milwaukee County Board's Budget Hearing on Monday evening.

During the hearing, infamous real life troll Orville Seymer of the grossly misnamed Citizens for Responsible Government lashed out at the Board, specifically targeting Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic.  But Seymer also demonstrated that his ignorance is vast by attacking county workers, claiming that they are underworked and overpaid.

Unsurprisingly, he is dead wrong.

This chart is from an EPI briefing paper and the pre-Act 10 days:

Click to embiggen

The chart shows that before Act 10, public sector workers did get better benefits than private sector workers.  The trade off is that the public sector workers also got lower wages and did not get things like Christmas bonuses to enhance the income.

But since Act 10, the benefits have been greatly lowered and the cost for them have skyrocketed, meaning that public sector workers not only get much lower pay but also have reduced benefits.  This is why there is a growing turnover in the public sector that one wouldn't normally see.

No where in the state is that more true than in Milwaukee County.  I have often said that Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is actually worse than Scott Walker.  People have scoffed at me when I made these statements, but the following chart, which comes from Abele's own 2014 budget, shows how the fringe benefits for county employees stack up to those for state workers and employees of the City of Milwaukee:

Again, click on image to embiggen

As the gentle reader can see, in almost every category, county employees are not only paying more for their benefits, they are paying extremely more.  I would also point out that state employees are paid more money than county workers, making the percentage of county employee checks being taken out that much larger.

Abele claims he needs to do this to set the county on the "right path" towards financial solvency.  Yet neither Tom Barrett or even Scott Walker need to be so draconian to their workers to balance their budgets.  Abele however feels that he cannot perform his duties unless his aides get paid in excess of $120,000.  He is also able to find the money to help build a 44-story Bic lighter and move freeway ramps that will benefit his friends at the Greater Milwaukee Committee as well as his own ventures.

Now, the county board has done some work to alleviate the extraordinary and unfair burden that Abele has put on county workers, but it's still not exactly anything to brag about:

While it's considerably better than what Abele wants to do to the workers, it's still like being told you're only going to receive 15 lashes of the whip instead of 50.

In summary, one can see that the supposedly Democratic and self-claimed progressive Abele is already much worse to workers than Walker ever dreamed of being.  And that doesn't even begin to talk about what Abele wants to do to workers rights and civil service laws.

But Bus Drivers Are Paid Too Much

Yet another report of a bus driver viciously assaulted while doing their job, this time in Madison:

According to the Madison Police Department, they received a report of a battery on the 1100 block of East Washington Avenue about 8:00 p.m. on Saturday. The suspect, 53-year-old Tommy Crawford from Madison, boarded a Metro bus on State Street and created a disturbance on the bus.

The bus driver stopped near the Metro headquarters on East Washington Avenue to get Crawford off the bus. Police say Crawford punched the employee in the face and then ran away.

He was found at the North Transfer Point. When the investigating officer informed him he was under arrest, Crawford kneed the officer. He was taken into custody and is booked in the Dane County Jail on tentative charges of substantial battery, battery to a police officer and disorderly conduct.

The Madison Metro employee has a fractured nose and was taken to a local hospital. The officer sustained a minor injury.

Every time I see a story like this, I think of the usual suspects - like Charlie Sykes, Brian Sikma, Mark Belling, Scott Walker, Chris Abele - who are always bad mouthing public sector workers.

Funny thing is if the pay is so high, why are there not more people applying for these jobs?

I also wonder how much any of these blowhards - who've never done a day of hard work in their lives - would want to be paid if they knew they could be physically assaulted like that. Then I bet the pay would be nowhere near high enough.

Cartoon of the Week

You would think, but there are still Teapublicans who never stop complaining.  Some people just don't get it.

I Am Not The Enemy

True dat:

Defeating The Purpose

From the incomparable Stuart Carlson:

It would also go to explain why Scott Walker has not been creating the jobs that he claims he has.  His attacks on the public sector workers has only been backfiring on all of us for a year and a half now.

What burns me is that people are only now starting to realize that the jobs that Walker has been claiming came from Jim Doyle's budget and policies.  That's what I've been saying for a long time now.

Public Servant

Yup, us public servants, we know what side we're on!

A Tale Of Two Snow Storms

On Christmas, the East Coast got nailed with a blizzard that dumped nearly two feet of snow.  New York City was paralyzed for days.  Mayor Bloomberg, trying to save his political career, came out days after the storm to boast that every street in the city had been plowed and that things were returning to normal.  Many other elected officials saw it differently and pointed their fingers right at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg then took the common defense of blaming the public sector plow drivers for the failure to recover from this storm.  The problem for Bloomberg was that this attempt at shifting the blame didn't work out.  It turned out that the Mayor had first scaled back spending, cutting the number of employees in their Public Works Department.  In addition, in the name of "saving money," Bloomberg had privatized a majority of the plowing services.   When Bloomberg failed to call a snow emergency, meaning the private sector workers never had to come in until the next day, leaving a relatively dew public sector workers to tackle the Herculean task alone.

Now fast forward to Monday, January 31, 2011.

Milwaukee and the rest of Southeastern Wisconsin got hit with a snow event with dropped some six or seven inches of snow.  Public sector public works people from Milwaukee County and every municipality therein went to work and cleared the streets nicely.

However, that was just the warm up.  The next very next night, Tuesday, the real storm hit.  The entire southern part of Wisconsin was clobbered, with the worst of it centered on Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee Counties.  The stormed dumped at least fifteen inches, and up to two feet, of snow overnight in white out conditions with wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour.

The entire region was paralyzed.  All the schools were closed as were most businesses.  Even the local governments told their non-emergency employees to stay home.

Yet the public works people bundled up, buckled up and went right back to work.  They did this despite having already pulled long shifts.  They did this despite being given excessive furlough days by politicians that were using them (and the tax payers) to further their political aspirations. They did this despite being vilified by local talk radio hosts and right wing bloggers alike as well as the local paper.  They went right back to work despite all of these people, including the tea partiers, telling them that they aren't worth the money they get paid.

They went back to work because they are professionals and this was their job.

They went back and continued to put in the long hours.  They put their all into it, dealing with the same miserable and dangerous weather that kept the rest of us snug in our homes.  They dealt with the weather as well as the idiots that, despite snow emergencies being called, went ahead and left their cars parked on both sides of the street.

And if I may say it, they did one hell of a job. This is not surprising, however, since we already knew that they were among the best of the best in the state.

The main roads were plowed at least to be passable by morning.  The city started showing signs of life before noon on Wednesday, just scant hours after the storm had ended, as opposed to the days it took New York City to bounce back.

They did so well, and the storm was so immense, that even those that like to scapegoat public sector workers every chance they get, were forced to say their thanks and respect.

This would be a good chance for our elected leaders, and those who are currently running to be elected leaders, both on a local and the state level, to reflect on their positions when they go on and on about their willingness to privatize public services.  The decision should never, ever be based solely on the bottom line.  Rather, it should be based getting the best value for that dollar spent.  What good does it do the tax payers, or for public safety, to say you saved a few thousand dollars by privatizing a service if they can't or won't do the job as well as the public sector workers?

Furthermore, our elected leaders, on all levels of government, need to remember the truism that was mentioned in the article regarding New York City's debacle:

This is why it's such a bad idea to run government like a business. This isn't a business, it's agovernment. It has to provide basic services, no matter what.

Cross posted at Milwaukee County First

Just Another Overpaid, Underworked, Lazy Gubmint Employee

RIP Jayme Biendl.

Ms. Biendl was a correction officer at the Monroe Correctional Complex in the state of Washington.  She was put in an unsafe situation, being the sole guard in the prison chapel.  Despite her expression of fear for her safety and protests from the unions, they continued with this practice, to save money.

Now Biendl is dead, at the hands of a convict who was trying to escape from the prison.

It is needless tragedies like this that really tick me off.  Because some group of wing nuts think that public sector employees shouldn't be treated with the respect that they show their dogs, they are put in dangerous positions in jobs that the same wingers wouldn't do in a million years.

To make matters worse, the wingers never seem to be able to put two and two together.  Or if they do, they would never admit it.  And then they wonder why the country is going to hell.

The Gumshoe Gets It

Brewtown Gumshoe states it better than I could:

Infrastructure - water, roads, garbage, etc. - should be handled by public workers: unionized, well-paid workers. First, the public sector acts as a safety cushion. During economic recessions they still spend - using restaurants, movie theater, concerts, buying appliances, doing remodeling, etc. - enabling businesses to stay open and workers to keep their jobs. Establishing, at least, a respectable floor during downturns. Second, they maintain the roads, water ways, sewers, airport, and on and on, that we all - businesses and individuals - count on for nearly everything we are able to do in our daily lives. This is kind of an important function for a civilized society. Not something to be privately controlled by the best-connected bidder.

We as citizens and taxpayers should, through our investment (taxes), be building/exporting a model that gives individuals a step up. People attack public employees because they have health care or because they have a pension. Are these not assets that any worker should want? How does criticizing and thereby disintegrating such achievement of labor help anyone? The more bargaining power one group of workers gains (and thereby increased wages), the more every worker is able to achieve better pay.

Why is it that taxpayers criticize public worker earnings, yet they defend CEO compensation? The same CEOs that are subsidized and bailed out with our tax dollars. Public workers actually perform a service for you. What did AIG do for you?