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The Spectacle Blog
This isn’t quite Gilbert and Sullivan, but here is retired Wisconsin music teacher Frank Koczan singing about recalling Gov. Walker, with such memorable lines as:
“We won’t curse him or throw rocks…. We’ll simply get him by the B-A-L-L…..O-T ballot box.”
and
“Scotty is a dead duck.” (A death threat? As you’ll notice, he does get worked up.)
A tragedy of public-sector unions is it can take well-intentioned employees, who might be otherwise apolitical, and turn them into Democratic apparatchiks who will actively campaign against reforms which have already prevented teachers from being laid off.
If you benefitted for an unsustainable taxpayer-funded pension system which you never contributed to, had a guaranteed income for life, and taxpayer-funded gold-plated health insurance, you might be singing a bitter tune as well.
View all comments (22) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Matt Naugle
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/03/14/the-scott-walker-recall-on-bro
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gearjammer| 3.14.12 @ 7:10PM
Weirdos. Truly weird. The public sector-privitize everything. I mean weirdos. Wouild not let them in my house.
Bill| 3.14.12 @ 7:18PM
Help win Gov. walker.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.14.12 @ 7:37PM
The bitter tunes will come as many of the states declare bankruptcy because they can't follow through on their pension promises.
Legislation is being prepared to allow states to go through Chapter 9, shedding their pension obligations. There's going to be an awful lot of disappointed former public sector service employees.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 3.14.12 @ 8:06PM
Holy Crap, why did I watch that!! This explains why new music sucks so much!! That Lady Go-Ga, must have been one of MR Koczan students, huh? And you wonder why Johnny can't read or write, or do math, or understand science, or basic economics, because these are their friggin' Teachers, and they're all obviously retarded Teachers!! I hope Governor Walker wins this recall election, send him some money if you can afford too, I have, because Wisconsin's doomed if these Union Freaks win!!
MarkJ| 3.14.12 @ 8:28PM
I think I found one of Mr. Koczan's recent video productions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
albert constantine jr.| 3.14.12 @ 9:55PM
Well, more than one can play at this game.
Purloining the music of the late limousine liberal and Black Panther ally Leonard Bernstein, I’ve composed a show tune in response to this pathetic video.
The title is “Wisconsin Story”. On the shores of the Great Lakes, two rival factions square off. One, the Sharks, are trying to extort or scam away as much public funding as they can. The other, the Taxpayers, are trying to protect their tax resources to provide essential functions and allow public servants to live life in parity with their private sector neighbors generating the revenue.
In this scene, retired teacher Mister Koczan confronts a bunch of taxpayers about their desire to not continue to pay him and all his colleagues ¾ pay for life, after they did such a miserable job of “educating” their children.
The taxpayers respond with this production number, to the tune of “Officer Krupke”:
(Singing)
Dear kindly Mister Koczan
Ya gotta understand
Your large unfunded pension
Has cost more than we planned
Ya didn’t have to pay in
Not one sin-gle per-cent
SO-NO- WON-DER-
That the cash is spent
Yes Mister Frank Koczan
You don’t teach today
You didn’t do a good job
To earn your pen-sion pay
And now the tax-pay-ers
Are cutting their loss
We’re gonna show you
Who’s the Boss
WHO’s THE BOSS
(Who’s the Boss, Who’s the Boss
Who’s thebig-gest Boss)
Yes the people payin’ are the BOSS
Spoken by Lead Taxpayer:
Mr. Koszan, we find you an overpaid drain on resources who failed to educate our children and focused instead on gaining benefits at our expense. Using our democratic process, we’re going to elect someone to pull the plug.
(singing)
Dear Governor Scott Walker
You campaigned on this dream
To de-fund public unions
And all their draining schemes
To rob us with their contracts
And all their many perks
Or fill the Capitol
With a bunch of jerks
Yes Governor Walker
The budget’s a bust
Our money all is going
To their unfulfilled lust
We need leg-is-la-tion
So call out the clerk
We’ve got to pass a right to work
RIGHT TO WORK
right to work, right to work
There’s a right to work
Oh the unions hate the right to work
Taxpayer giving spoken lines as Governor Walker:
We have to pass a law to limit budget busting collective bargaining and establish a right to work with or without paying union dues, so let’s go to the law makers.
(singing)
The unions ask for money
The bureaucrats say yes
It might be pretty funny
But costs a lot I guess
Its always automatic
The union gets it dues
Lets- give- workers
The -right –to- re-fuse
Yes Wisconsin lawmakers
Your new law’s the one
Our labor laws would reform
So the democrats run
As union thugs swarm us
We pass us a bill
Now come the unions for the kill
FOR THE Kill
(for the kill, for the kill
They’re all dressed to kill)
Here comes the union for the kiil
Taxpayer speaking as Union Boss:
This law that Walker has passed will end our gravy train, so we’ve got to have a recall to fool the voters!
(singing)
The unions make petition
To start a recall drive
And with all their perdition
Their effort seems to thrive
With signatures from Hitler
And other union friends
Now -the –vo-ters
Will tell how it ends
Yes Wis-con-sin Voters
You really must choose
If you don’t sup-port Walker
Then This effort we’ll lose
The union thug bosses
Your budget will choke
Hey Union thug bosses
WE’RE BROKE
(Maybe I'll get my taxes done this weekend instead of tonight)
Paul McGrath| 3.14.12 @ 10:16PM
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This needs to be sent all over the place! Nice.
David W| 3.15.12 @ 8:53AM
Excellent!!! Maybe we can start a "Conservative Dinner Theater" group!!!!
Moreen Carvan| 3.15.12 @ 2:25AM
The Wisconsin public employees retirement system was fully funded and was not "unsustainable". It was, in fact, identified as one of the strongest, best managed and most cost effective systems in the United States. I am not sure why you believe otherwise, and would hope that you would conduct better research before posting such tossed off comments.
Ol' Will| 3.16.12 @ 11:15AM
To me, "fully funded" means that there is an account out there dedicated to the retirement of these people with sufficient assets and income to meet the promised obligations.
Is that the fact in Wisconsin? Or did the legislature "borrow" the money back for general fund expenditures and now the benefits have to be paid out of general revenues as the bill comes due?
Which is it? I'll bet it's the latter.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 3.15.12 @ 3:27AM
Walker deserves to be recalled. I worked for the State of California and was a member of Operators Engineers Local 3. I made $17 dollars an hour. If it wasn't for the health benefits and the pension no one would work for the State of California. Doing the same job for a private company albeit a different union I make $25 an hour plus benefits and pension. Demonizing rank and file state employees as if they're the one's breaking the bank is disingenuous at best and downright corporate propaganda at worst. You think its the state employees and their pensions costing you the pretty penny, but in fact it might very well be the firms with public contracts that are really breaking the bank. It's just like healthcare where healthcare providers know the insurance will cover it so they charge 15 dollars for a box of kleenex. It's no different with firms that have public contracts. They know the taxpayer will cover the bill so they charge a premium. Halliburton was doing the same thing in Iraq hence the reason you had Halliburton truck drivers risking their necks driving empty loads that the corporation was charging the Federal government and "you the taxpayer" for. Public employees aren't the one's to blame. Do you folks truly believe that if all public services were privatized or contracted out that it would save you the taxpayer money? I'm here to tell you it won't. So you may be angry that the public unions are doing the grunt work for the Democratic party in a seemingly incestuous relationship with elected officials, but have no doubts that the corporate/government relationship is no less incestuous and its not meant to save you money nor will it. What will save money is cutting out the contractors and hiring skilled public employees to do "in house" work which would save the taxpayers untold sums of money because it would cut out the profit factor for firms that do business with Federal, State and Local governments.
Le Cracquere| 3.15.12 @ 8:09AM
If you were indeed unionized, then every penny you made was a penny too much--do not presume to weigh & sift the "fairness" of your ill-gotten wages. A local protection racket won't necessarily "break the bank" of the average corner store--but that's no reason not to treat the perpetrators as thieves and scum.
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 3.15.12 @ 1:06PM
This is what the Republican party has come to nowadays. The corporations (most of whom are global and not American) give you the talking points and you get riled up and have a knee jerk reaction whenever unions are mentioned. That's not critical thinking my friend. That's being a "useful idiot" of the union busting corporate machine that controls DC and state houses across this country a thousand times more than you accuse unions and union members of influencing the political process. I was working rotating 12 hour shifts keeping a public highway that uses a car carrying ferry to cross a river open 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. So you can take your "ill-gotten wages" rhetoric and stick it up your ass Le Cracquere
Le Cracquere| 3.15.12 @ 5:30PM
Hey look--it's trying to think and communicate. To quote Agent Archer, "he thinks he's people!"
It'd be almost cute if it weren't repulsive. But bandying words with such creatures is roughly like arguing with a termite infestation in your wall. For the latter, what you really want is the exterminator. For the former's ilk, you want a well-equipped army of Pinkertons. Here's hoping.
Ryan| 3.15.12 @ 9:15AM
There are several positions that you need to defend.
1. The inability to fire for incompetence and slow work.
2. Promotion based on tenure rather than merit.
3. Why public unions should be allowed - as an entity - to contribute to politicians and thereby "negotiate from both sides of the table."
Dimitry Aleksandrovich| 3.15.12 @ 1:27PM
Ryan the difficulty to fire a public employee has less to do with public unions (which really have no teeth, I never met our union rep when I worked for the state) and more to do with the nature of public employment itself. Federal employees don't have a union but like their state counterparts I would bet that its very hard to fire a Federal employee.
As for your second point about promotion based on tenure. I'm not sure I know of any examples of that at least not where I was working. When I worked for the State of California being eligible for promotion meant you had to have the tenure but to actually be promoted you needed to pass a test just like you have to be promoted in the military.
My defense of public unions is that I truly believe that all workers (including public employees) should have the right to collective bargaining. If you don't believe that public unions serve a purpose consider the unions for police officers and firefighters. Given the dangerous situations both of these public servants deal with during their shifts not to mention the politically correct environment that police are subjected to I don't think you would argue that they don't need unions. Now consider the highway workers and the danger they face during their shifts. When I worked for the state our union could not demand raises for California public employees. Our wages were set by the legislature. Neither could we strike. I believe we were under a no strike clause. All in all we were union public employees but for the state of California our unions really lacked any teeth. The most powerful public employee union in the state of California is actually the prison guard union known as CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officer Association).
LiveFreeOrDie| 3.15.12 @ 3:18PM
"Federal employees don't have a union..."
Tell that to the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest "Federal Employee Union" in the country according to it's website, www.afge.org
Or how about the NFFE, or National Federation of Federal Employees. (nffe.org) Or maybe the NTEU, (nteu.org) The Union for Federal Employees. Or the Ames Federal Employees Union (afeu.org)
Since most of your post rested on this false premise, I wonder if you've reconsidered your position?
Bob K.| 3.15.12 @ 3:49PM
Dimitry,
California's public pension system is going broke and it is only a matter of time before it formally becomes bankrupt so I hope you are saving some money.
See this website out of California:
www. pensiontsunami.com
It also has information on many other states,
Bob K.| 3.15.12 @ 3:52PM
www.pensiontsunami.com
Bob K.| 3.15.12 @ 3:44PM
School Teachers pensions in PA are funded from taxes on Real Estate.
This means that everyone who owns Real Estate, no matter their income and no matter whether or not they have children who are in school are funding Teacher's retirements.
Taxes needed for the pensions are raised as needed by the elected School Boards of each school district and there are 500 in PA.
Teachers are allowed to strike but there is a law in the State that requires 180 days of school each year. When that time frame becomes threatened the local courts enjoin the strike and the teachers go back to work. They always end up getting a full years pay under this scenario and they never lose money by striking, but the parents are inconvenienced, always around holidays and often deep into the summer to meet the 180 day minimum.
If this is the way it is done in other states the taxpayer is getting ripped off there also.
Teachers in PA routinely retire with pensions approaching $60,000.00 including benefits after 35 years. Administrators make even more.
See: www.pensiontsunami.com for coverage of real pension horror stories most of them coming out of Dimitry's California!
The days of reckoning are coming!
Bob K.| 3.15.12 @ 3:51PM
www.pensiontsunami.com
Marty| 3.15.12 @ 10:23PM
It's enough to make you want to just say the hell with it, let 'em starve in their old age when the State runs out of money.