Charles Pierce: Organized Labor Was the Real Winner This Election

[eridani]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/cincinnati-pension-overhaul-voted-down-110613

All right, so I've been the skunk at the garden party long enough today. If you want to find a clear -- if largely unacknowledged -- winner in last night's electoral shindig, take a look at organized labor. In Boston, where John Connolly attached himself to the Rhee-ite school "reform" movement and criticized Martin Walsh for being a tool of big labor -- In other words, this was a race between Democrats in which union support was an actually an issue. Never thought I'd live to see that in Boston. -- Walsh beat Connolly fairly handily. And in Cincinnati, a bastion of hard-bar Republicanism in Ohio, a really remarkable thing happened.

Cincinnati voters overwhelmingly rejected Issue 4, a major overhaul of the city's troubled pension system, in Tuesday's election. The vote was 78 percent against and 22 percent for. Peter McLinden, Cincinnati-area Regional Director at AFSCME Ohio Council 8, released this statement: "Today's vote will be heard beyond Cincinnati and sends a message for those on the ideological extremes who think it is ok to impose their agenda on an entire city. Had this passed, outside money and political extremists would have cost Cincinnati taxpayers more money, with less services. ... That said we all are dedicated to working together moving forward to fix the pension system in a way that is in the best interest of Cincinnati public employees and taxpayers."

This was a raid, plain and simple. These pensions are not retirement plans. They are deferred compensation. They are money that workers are owed because they and their unions were willing to compromise on salaries in exchange for moe money after the workers retired. This is the kind of thing that has been going on all over the country for quite some time under the guise of "unfunded liabilities," which, in most cases, are "unfunded" because the people who were supposed to fund these plans reneged over decades to do so. (It is also a scam beloved of new brotastic centrist Governor Chris Christie, among others.) It is generally sold by the grifters promoting it as a rank appeal to worker jealousy. (That garbageman has a pension and you don't? No fair! And everybody forgets to ask why private-sector workers don't have pensions any more.) As such, it has worked extremely well. It certainly should have sold itself in Cincinnati. Instead, mirabile dictu, the voters saw through the charade and shredded it at the polls.

[Mass]

1. Careful, in Boston, union support is not necessarily a sign a candidate is

more progressive. I do not think you can say that Lynch is more progressive than Markey, and in the 2010 election, quite a few union people voted and campaigned for Brown against Coakley (what were they thinking?) [Not trying to say Coakley does not own her defeat, but this is also a fact).

The truth is that there were few differences between Connolly and Walsh except the traditional difference between two types of Dems in MA: lunch pail democrats and upper class democrats. Bashing one of them is not helpful. This is how you end up with a GOP elected in blue MA.

But generally, I agree with the general feeling of the piece. It was certainly a sign that union and progressive issues won.

[Arkana]

2. John Connolly was a Rhee-ite?

Oh God, thank God he didn't win. I had no idea.

[ellie]

3. Unfortunately, the teacher's union

lost in Douglas County, CO, where the whole block of "reformers" won. I am glad I don't have children because this pisses me off. Statewide Amendment 66 to fund schools also lost. People are idiots.