TBayXXXVII

It's more or less big projects & employment that cost the most money. For example, roads and highways. Major subdivisions and local road re-alignments. Putting in new water and sewer lines. For the most part, it's construction... which are the big ticket costs. It costs at least twice as much to pave a mile of road in NJ than surrounding states and more than 5x the national average. Why? We have the same access to the same products as companies in PA, DE, and NY. Sure, Delaware is smaller, but both NY and PA are substantially larger, so size of NJ should be closer to the national average. The vast majority of projects involving construction in NJ is done by vendors who's employees are union members... whether they're done at the state, county, or local levels. I know multiple people in the field (who don't have union workers), who've done projects for fractions of the costs of the union backed companies. One example is the Rt 295/42/76 interchange, that I'm guessing you know about here in NJ, just off the W.W. Bridge. There were multiple contracts that were issued for that... 4 companies got these contracts... 3 of which were union. Christie's regime awarded the first two... one union, one non-union, and Murphy's the next two... both union. This was a supposed to be an 10 year project (started in 2013), that is heading into year 12, and it's not project to be done for 2 to 3 more years. This project was supposed to be $900M... what it ends up being, I don't know... but multiple people (involved in decision making), told me at the time that it should cost less, around $550 to $600M. The bulk of the money to pay for all of this, is coming from the federal highway commission... so everyone on this board has a hand in paying for it. After construction, there's employment. As I noted before, elected officials hire people as kickbacks to donor's. Those hires are now union workers. Unless you can find wrong doing, they can't be fired, so the only recourse is to hire someone else. This gets compounded town by town, county by county, and at the state level. I can give you 3 examples, one at each level, where I know it's happened. The taxpayers are constantly paying for... not just wages, but also benefits and retirement packages of employees who don't really have a roll. They have a job that requires them to sit at a desk and literally play solitaire on their computer. Now, smaller towns, it's not that big of a deal because it's probably only 1 person, maybe 2, but in bigger cities, it's just theft. For example, the city of Camden. I know someone who works in the finance department and they have 11 people in there. Of the 11, only 7 actually do work and 3 of them don't even do work that the other 4 can do. The remaining 4, literally show up in the morning, clock in, and do absolutely nothing. From time to time, they'll make some copies. That's 11 people, doing the job that 5 can do. So the citizens of Camden are paying over $100/hr in wages (A DAY), plus benefits, plus retirement packages (pensions), for people who do NOTHING. The next time a politician needs a job, they won't fire one of those 6 people... they'll just hire a new one. Tons and tons of wasteful spending, because the employees are union and can't be fired without proof of negligence.

Maybe it's an NJ thing then, because it's rampant around here.

Crap! Then I need to finish first.

While I agree with you on how that should be the case, I don't think things like that should be regulated. I don't like controlling how people spend their money, because all they're are going to do is find a new way to get it done. I however have NO problem with limiting the government. If you remove their ability to exploit the situation, you remove the need for it to be exploited. We as citizens should 100% control how the government operates, not the other way around.

Any employee that is "on call" so to speak, like fire, rescue, police, utilities... a union is fine. However, office workers, teachers, sanitation... 8 to 5 type, nope. These people being in unions only protects people who are underperforming, to keep their jobs. It also promotes the increase of jobs that aren't necessary. For example... the mayor may want to help out a backer, so he hires the backers kid to work in the tax assessors office. This kid has NO experience and isn't qualified to do anything department worthy, so he makes copies and such, making $15/hr. Well, 8 years later, there's a new mayor and that mayor needs to have work get done in the tax assessors office. Does he fire the current person who's only job is to make copies? Nope, he just hires someone else, because he has no just cause (because that person is backed by a union), to fire that person. So what does the new mayor do? Hires someone else to do the job that the current position holder is supposed to do. Now, this person is getting paid $19/hr because the other person is making $20/hr now, because over the last 8 years, the government union required the government to give said employee, a 4% raise every year (and the new person can't make more than the current person). So now the town is paying $39/hr for two people (PLUS BENEFITS, and pension, etc), do the job that one person making $20/hr can do. Governments put our RFP's (requests for proposals), where they tell the public what they want to do and companies bid on them. Here's the rub. The government agency in charge already went to a company who they want to win the bid, as to what to put IN the RFP that goes out. In those RFP's, they'll include things like experience from the crew doing the work, minimum number of jobs worked on, etc. Things that reduce the number of bidders as to almost ensure who gets the job. Some RFP's will even include that the contracting company use union employees. Now, some states that are right-to-work don't endure that, but there are some that don't. In the ones that don't, the RFP will include things that heavily favor union backed companies like the number of employees that are "apprentice" level workers. Union shops may have 3 or 4, while non-unions may have 1 or 2. There's ways around limiting how many non-union backed companies bid for a job. Yes, Private Company X can do the same thing, but now you're talking smaller towns and much smaller kickbacks that probably won't impact anything. If there's real money involved, you're talking about big cities. Not just major cities, which is where the bigger corruption is along with at the state level, but towns that aren't your small backwoods towns either.

Like I said in the OP, in the private sector, I have no issues with unions... it's only the ones where the government is involved. Right, you just want to keep talking left vs right instead of a topic both are guilty of, where wasteful spending is involved. Got it. I'll await your complaint's in other threads where you whine about no one talking about something other than left vs right.

I was under the impression that donations are capped. Are they not?

Yeah, we all know Democrats are very pro union, but Republican's aren't all that opposed either, because in the end EVERY politician's #1 objective is to be re-elected. It's not to serve the public. Getting money and kicking it back is the most important thing a politician can do to help getting re-elected.

I have an issue with restricting where people can put their money. If people want to donate to politicians, so be it. BUT, I have no qualms with restricting the government. In fact, that's our job of the citizenry, to force the government to be fair and impartial. Force them to rule in the best interests of the public. It's not fair and impartial to favor individuals over another based on donations. It's not in the best interest of the public for a politician to pay off kick backs with taxpayer money. If you remove the bias from the government, you remove the necessity for donations. You'd get what you want. You wouldn't have companies donating to campaigns willy nilly if there isn't enough assurance that they'd get it back.

Yes, but why? It's because they know they only need to undercut the unions by a little bit, to be the low bid. It's the existence of the union backed company bids that allow. So, in the prior example, the job should cost $75k, but Jane has a non-union backed company and sees that Jim bid $100k. She needs only to bid $90k to make it look better. So now she gets the contract and just lines her pocket with the profits and again, the tax payer is footing the bill on the excess. Also, government agencies don't need to always take the lower bid... they can tip-toe around that by saying the higher bid comes with (and I quote... because I've seen it), "a better comfort of known quality". They'll point to reputation or prior work done, or technicalities not even written up in the original proposal requests (RFP's, as they're known).

Union labor "wage" costs aren't the issue. The companies jack up the prices of the products they use, because they know the governments going to pay them... because they're kick backs from campaign contributions and alliances from the union. Jim owns a contracting company and his employees are backed by a union... a union that is aligned with political group in Smithtown. Jim's going to get the bid because of politics. He's going to charge Smithtown $100k for a project that only needs to be bid at $75k. The reason for the extra cost is kickbacks from the party back to Jim and the union. The politicians don't care, because that's tax payer money, not money out of their bank account. The only loser is the tax payer because when these issues are compounded over projects and years, you're talking about millions upon millions of tax payer dollars going from tax payer to help unions and politicians.

I'd have thought that about EVERYONE up until the big DEI movement. Now, my assumption is that anyone not white IS a DEI hire.

Well yeah, I already knew that.

In. Hopefully I finish somewhere outside of the top 2.

No unions allowed in government. Period. Current unions get disbanded and the people in their current jobs are like any other person with a job, that isn't union.

I agree. I think he looks for a job like the Chargers.

It's in the message. Government. Governments can't use unions. Only private businesses.

I watched this one... and another one with LGBTQ conservatives and liberals. In both videos, guess which one was the hateful, demanding, pompous bigot? Yup, you guessed it... the white liberal. LOL

Never met anyone who didn't.

No, my point was that I doubt he was the first. You need only scroll up to see that he wasn't.

Without reading all 18 pages... can I just assume that despite Democrats believing Trump should've been impeached for Russia Collusion (which was falsified info created by the Clinton campaign), and Quid pro quo (even though Biden readily admitted to literally doing just that), they think that Republican's going after Biden is an unfair political attack?

Apparently the tree did make a sound. Scroll up 2 posts.

Yeah, because EVERY family had one, right? LOL When were you born, 1995? LOL Not everyone knew of any "World Championships" for these things in 80's. I knew a ton of kids who beat all kinds of games. It was just something you did. I'm not saying millions of kids beat Tetris, but I'm sure it was done. Hey, great for this kid who did it... good for him. Good for all them. I'm just saying that I doubt he's the first.

You might be a leftist if... -- You call someone racist/xenophobic because they think we should have closed borders. You might be a leftist if... -- You think Climate Change is a "Crisis". You might be a leftist if... -- You call someone a racist for pointing out statistics. You might be a leftist if... -- You think Pro Life is "alt-right". You might be a leftist if... -- You think there are more than 2 genders. You might be a leftist if... -- You resort to -ist/-phobic/-hate name calling because you don't have a real answer. You might be a leftist if... -- You think race, gender, or ethnicity should be a consideration for anything, instead of treating everyone equally. You might be a leftist if... -- You think straight white conservative men, are evil in any way, just because they're straight white conservative men. You might be a leftist if... -- You think socialism (including "Democratic socialism"), and/or communism (or it being done "the right way"), is preferable to capitalism. You might be a leftist if... -- You think Donald Trump is any different than any other politician.

"Very blah"? "Some" talent? LOL I have no idea what they're going to do, but they need to make him a top 5 paid WR in the league, or they're going to lose him. If he hits the open market, they're screwed because someone's going to pony up a 4 year+ / $110M contract. Kansas City comes to mind immediately. I just hope that they don't have to bring Mayfield back to do it.