His concern for those earning over $ 750,000.00 per year is consistent with his recent application for 2 million dollars in tax breaks for Widewaters. However his suggestion that the 3 million dollars due to teachers and other workers be given back is ironic when considering his lobbyist/lawyer role in the application for that $ 2 million in corporate tax breaks.
His advocacy of corporate welfare for Widewaters is consistent with right wing attitudes. He places New York’s funding woes on “ increased demands for K-12 education spending, Medicaid costs, and health and pension costs for public workers."
Public employees and eduction are easy scapegoats for conservative commentators; it seems easy to blame education costs and employees for our economic woes. I suggest that the real reasons for our economic woes are decreased federal funds caused by bailing out banking gamblers, deficit-causing tax breaks for those people earning over $ 750,000.00 per year and the conduct of two wars – one of which was a preemptive war of choice.
Our teachers deserve the money they earn trying to improve the next generation. Even Mr. Faso’s concern about 3 million dollars in “give backs” pales in comparison to the 175 million paid a single Health Insurance executive. It is also a tiny percentage of the bonuses being claimed by many of those earning over 750,000.00 on Wall Street. Billions of tax dollars given for those big earners does not seem to be a problem for the conservative, Mr. Faso.
Why not join President Obama and many others in calling for the return of bonus money by the corporate gamblers instead of the teacher's "give backs" of health and retirement benefits?
Why should a highway worker have to give back a raise that is small because of the increase in his/her health insurance or the increased co-pays and deductions?
Except for “ K-12 Education”, the other two woes quoted by the Mr. Faso in the Register Star are related to the high cost of Health Insurance. The cause is high insurance is not necessarily due to high cost of health care. The physicians, nurses and other health care professionals receive only a part of the health insurance premium. Insurance companies get the rest and much of that goes to obscene executive pay.
Perhaps, Mr. Faso’s photo at last summers “Tea Party event” shows his consistent conservative attitude toward Health Insurance Reform.
Why not join President Obama in seeking Health Insurance Reform?Why not join President Obama in seeking a return of the bonus money taken by the banking gamblers instead of tapping teachers pay and benefits.
Who is better able to pay for what our economic “woes”?
Consider the following:
Gross domestic product and historically high productivity growth should have raised paychecks up and down the income ladder, but instead the benefits of that growth have bypassed most of the people who made it possible. From The State of Working America found at http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/.
Also, 34.6% of all income growth over the past three decades has gone to the top one-tenth of 1% of all earners. By contrast, the bottom 90% of all earners has collectively seen only 15.9% of all income growth over the same period. The above information is taken from the Economic Policy Institute Web Site found at:
http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/a_long_and_persistent_middle-class_squeeze/
