They won't rest until everyone and everything is bankrupt. The next step after that probably hasn't been considered yet but never mind, let's all get bankrupt!

Anyone been paying attention to Greece? While the unions are in the street protesting for pay raises, the country is really almost bankrupt. Some people have not received pay checks in several months. Hospitals are running out of supplies because they can't pay bills. Once the country begins to run out of gasoline and food the riots will start.

And the union folks will still be chanting for 100% pensions at age 40. Anything else would just be unfair.

Our grandkids are going to ask us someday why we didn't solve this problem before the Pension Wars broke out.

Is this one of those deals where judges, themselves also invested in the public retirement plan, get to "objectively" decide how much politicians can roll back the largesse?

Gigantic multigenerational Ponzi scheme, the PERS system.

I think people wouldn't be frothing at the mouth against unions quite so much if they didn't hear about all the screamingly nepotistic double-dipping that goes on after people retire on generous pensions, and then come back for more...

Someone also please needs to explain what is so holy about the bodies of public employees that they require Cadillac health insurance plans to guard them against the vicissitudes of fortune.

Wisconsin seems almost certainly to be heralding a very big wave of change. It is the most progressive (whatever this means), educated state in the country by some measures (eg NEAP scores), and yet they are unplugging the Democratic party union life-support machine by a resounding margin.

Avanti.

In Oregon, state and municipal judges are in PERS. I don't think that's the case in California, though I claim no expertise in regard to their CALPERS system.

As for Wisconsin: in view of the fact that they were the first state to permit public employee unions, their about-face is most interesting. In addition to requiring public employees to pay a portion of their health-care benefit costs, and requiring as well that they contribute to their pension funding, what really frosted the unions were two things: membership became optional, and "dues" could no longer be sent from payroll to union offices.

This latter is the real killer, because with automatic deduction (much like income tax withholding), most people didn't notice. Most folks just look at the net pay line. By killing auto-deduction and requiring union members to send the money into the offices themselves, "loyal union brothers and sisters" suddenly realized that they were sending $1000 or so off to the union offices. And since they now have the option, some 54% of AFSCME and SEIU "brothers and sisters" decided they'd just as soon hang onto the money.

You'd see that here, if Oregon became a right-to-work state, rather than a forced-union environment.

This is the start of a long and painful slide in the fortunes and membership numbers of public employee unions. It can't happen soon enough given how many states have underfunded pension plans.

I'm sure the new Kitz-Czar, Rudy Cruz, will be respectfully forcing OEA to deeply modify all their union benefits.