JD, so true. They are playing with fire and our future generations will get burned.

I want to know why everyone who works for 30 years doesn't get pensions?

When all of us are entitled to pensions from our employers, on top of Social Security, you'll see me support this. Only then.

Great point Tim. These employees have their retirement funded from your paycheck even BEFORE you get to put any aside for your own.

Wait until the Great Unfunded Retirement Crash happens in many states and localities,. All hell will break loose when the taxpayers are put on the hook for the failure of the politicians to fund the plans.

well joe you have that part right, its not the unions causing the problems ,its the politicians that do not correctly allocate the funds brought in.

Agreed. Our "public servants" do pretty well for themselves once they get into public office, and they should be the first ones to take a cut in pay or contribute more to their pensions. However, they represent a small portion of the problem, because there are so many public employees represented by unions, their representatives do not care if the contracts they are negotiating are sustainable. Once again, the taxpayer, many of whom don't even receive a pension have to foot the bill, and asking them to pay more in taxes for someone else's pension takes some kinda balls.

union and proud of it.thank you. also funding my own retirement.

Unions are a real conundrum. If you don't have them, workers get abused. If they get too powerful, they kill profits unfairly. Striking the balance between the two is damn near impossible with all the clout they have with the donkeys.

However, please, BlutAusNord - let's not pretend Republicans both state and federal haven't spend as badly as Democrats. Ehrlich's spending went up 30% over the life of his term in office, for example (just going from memory, I looked it up a couple months ago and was shocked).
Then there's Republicans and their reckless war spending and tax cuts in the 2000's.

Historically, Republicans haven't spent like drunken sailors...but they are every bit as guilty for the mess this country is in today as any Democrat. In fact, I'd argue they are worse. At least Democrats TAX and spend. Republicans in recent history cut taxes and still spend.

A GREAT story about Solyndra. Here is a great American.
"Many Americans were upset when solar-panel maker Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last September owing taxpayers more than $500 million, but retiree Robert Grady Jr. was different. The more he read about the failed company, the more irritated he became.

Finally, weeks after the bankruptcy case began, Mr. Grady did something he’d never done before. He filed a claim in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. It turned out to be the biggest single claim in the case — $535 million — but it wasn’t on behalf of himself. Rather, Mr. Grady, 57, made the claim on behalf of U.S. taxpayers because he said he didn’t trust Department of Energy lawyers to look out for taxpayers’ interests.

The retiree said he wasn’t looking for any money. He just wanted the loan money returned to the U.S. Treasury. Now, after more than a year, the bankruptcy case finally is grinding to a halt. Among the thousands of claims filed in the case, Mr. Grady’s is perhaps the most unusual."

"Mr. Grady filed his $535 million claim on a one-page handwritten form submitted to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware on Nov. 11, 2011. In response to a question with regard to the basis for his claim, he wrote, “Money Loaned by DOE, representing U.S. taxpaying citizen.”

Solyndra received $535 million in federal loan guarantees in 2009 and was championed by, among others, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, but its bankruptcy last year fueled an ongoing congressional probe and turned into a big political headache for the Obama administration.

In the 10 months since Mr. Grady filed his claim, he has followed the case closely from his computer at home in Redmond, Wash., and he has read just about all of the more than 1,000 docket entries filed so far during the proceedings. Yet he has never had any contact with anybody from the bankruptcy court or with any of the many lawyers in the case.

Still, a few weeks ago, Mr. Grady noticed finally that somebody in the case was paying attention."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/12/solyndrasuit-fullrefund-totaxpayers/

BlutAusNord: Fair concerns. I do support several major Democrat 'planks', and I support some Republican ones as well that liberals generally can't (or refuse) to see reason on.
I'm not a fan of this reckless spending, nor am I a fan of QE3, which isn't going to help anything imho. It's only the Fed panicking, and it's only going to make matters worse for this country going forward. Printing more money is what banana republics do.

Look, I'm not an apologist for either party these days. For most Democratic spending fiascos, I can probably name a Republican one, like Haliburton.

The Keystone Pipeline is an interesting situation. Clearly, it benefits the country more then it harms - because it's Canadian oil. Obviously, there are environmental concerns, but for me personally, as long as we aren't mining our own country largescale, I'm fine with it. If Canada wants to strip mine its own country and sell us the oil...then I'm all for it.