VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

Seriously folks, this kinda BS needs to stop, now. Obviously the answer isn't easy, but there has to be a solution and if out of 240 million people, one of them can't think of it, then we are screwed. I for one, am not giving up though.

Jocutus Obviously types faster than I.

Kuta-Like Stuff said, and as I said earlier THE ONLY ONES WHO VOTED FOR THIS ARE RUNNING UNOPPOSED THIS YEAR.

That means they will win unless some very good potential politicians mount a really good write-in campaign **hint**hint**

Stuff McDicken: Jocutus Obviously types faster than I.

Yeah, but wiht lost fo tpyos.

Who holds the majority in the PA legislature?
/sorry if it was mentioned and i missed it

ALL THIS TALK OF REVOLT AND...

Frankly, I don't see how a revolt is even possible. Stop paying taxes? Get thrown in jail. Violence? Jail, possibly now without trial thanks to Bush. Sit in at the capital? Jail. As far as I can tell, revolting against our government isn't possible anymore because 90% of politicans are too ass backward to realize they're hurting more than helping...


Fark you, PA, for voting for these jerks.

I think everyone is underestimating the point of paying politicians healthy sums of money--

In Arizona, the legislators make less than $20K per year, working for 9 months of the year. As you can guess, this makes many of them ideal targets of big business (esp. the energy lobby) for large "donations." You also have to keep in mind that not everone is from Phoenix, so there are representatives who spent a lot of the year away from their family (or drive 3 hours to the legislature, which ain't fun).

Listen, unless your state is on the edge of bankruptcy, raising the pay of your politicians is USUALLY a good thing. US senators make about $163,000 per year, and that sounds pretty good on paper--but they have to maintain homes in both D.C. and their home-state, they have to spend 6 years NOT living a normal life, 6 years away from their family, and in many cases, finance their own travel when they go outside of D.C. or their home-state.

The state is Republican and Democrats. Republicans somehow pull in the people from the country but the Dem's pull in people from the big cities(Pittsburgh, and Philly).

Its a joke in Pittsburgh for anyone running Republican for Mayor. Democrat always wins by a landslide.

"This used to happen in Congress all the time. Now, there is a constitutional amendment prohibiting it in Congress."


They managed to ram through an amendment to the constitution without me noticing?
I better check what else is in there now. Did they get prayer in schools and no flag burning in there too?

Wonder what percentage of registered voters vote there.
Wonder how many people eligable to vote are registered.
Education level of inregistered voters.
Folks who think voting doesn't help.
Revolution my a$$.
Can't even get folks off the couch to vote.
I might of misspelled somthing, my head hurts.

i and u are real close together on the keyboard
...pwned

Pennsylvania's new state motto - A good place to buy auto parts... Keystone my buttocks...

A few people have said "base their salary on the average income" or something along those lines.

That sounds groovy, but -- "average" based on what? A census? They have to collect that info somehow.

Can you imagine what would happen to the census-taking biz if it was suddenly tied to legislator's incomes? Do you think they'd be able to get any accurate information with all the graft and number-cooking that would be happening?

/A census taker once tried to test me
// Fava beans, nice chianti
/// slurp slurp slurp

Sometimes, I look at situations like this and think,
"Jesus... Now I'm gonna have to become a dictator, just because I'm sick of all this stupid crap with politicans, and come out there and set things right."

/Lemmiwinks for Dictator in 2024!

The money grab continues. Government and corporate executives have been given free reign on all the money and they're taking it all and running. They know the USA is toast and they're leaving the sinking ship to us rats and roaches ( that's how they view the less wealthy ). The future is bleak for anyone not a politician or executive.

rbuzby, you missed the news about a decade or so ago:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

This is, of course, the 27th Amendment, which interestingly had it's start as one of the original Bill Of Rights amendments, but failed to get ratified (it was the original Second Amendment, I believe). It laid dormat for about two centuries or so until a Texas legislative aide noticed it was still out there awaiting state ratifications and got the ball rolling.

It (sadly) only applies to the U.S. Congress...not state legislatures. And due to the...weird...nature of it's ratification (and the scant court challenges to it), many still debate if it's even valid.

texapocalypse
A few people have said "base their salary on the average income" or something along those lines.

That sounds groovy, but -- "average" based on what? A census? They have to collect that info somehow.

Most states already collect income tax. Just add up the "Adjusted Gross Income" of everyone filing a state tax return and divide by the total number of dependents. It'd probably take a couple hundred lines of code and a less than a minute once the numbers were put into the computer.

Of course, state governments generate this kind of info monthly (if not more often), so I doubt they'd even need to have a special program.

I'm a public sector employee, and I haven't gotten a raise this year. I've had 1 raise in the last 4 years. It sucks. You know, there are people in the public sector that do work for a living. Its not all the "government is just out to screw the people" fantasy that all you folks at BitterFark think it is. So kiss my arse.

/didn't RTFA
//don't care to
///where's my raise?!

Yes, this has been submitted before, but I'll say it again.

Governor Ed Rendell has a reputation for sticking it to public employees (going back to his days as mayor of Philly). I work for the Commonwealth of PA, and just got my first cost of living raise (2.5%) in two years because of his schtick of being tough on gov't employees....yet he has promised to sign this passed-in-the-dead-of-night pay raise that skirts the provisions of the state constitution by using backdoor "expense accounts".

What a great Democrat

Pennsylvania legislators = Douchebags

As a PA resident who has worked for the Governor, this issue has been totally blown out of proportion:

The only really sleazy thing that has been done is that the legislators can collect their raises now by calling it an unvouchered expense, completely circumventing the State Constitution which says they can only elect it during an election year. The state courts, though, have ruled in the past that this is a Constitutional tactic. For worse, though, is that the House minority leader punished democrats who didn't vote for the raise buy stripping them of committee leadership position is just wrong.

re: 2:00 AM

In every state legislature and the US congress, major legislation is passed at 2:00 AM simply because debate starts in the afternoon, and half the legislators want to make speeches about the legislation. As a result, it isn't until very late that the vote is actually held.

re: no public debate

Once again in every state legislature and the US congress major issues are not brought up through the committee process but instead introduced as an amendment because the legislation would never get how of committee. Furthermore, the legislators have been talking about giving themselves raises for months. So it's not like no one knew this was going to happen this session.

re: 36%

The lawmakers haven't had a pay raise in over a decade, so of course it was going to be a lot. Furthermore, PA is one of 4 full time legislatures, so that's why their pay is so high. Furthermore, the 3 other legislatures are planning on also voting themselves a pay raise.

re: largest number of legislators

That's a good thing, it insures more representation. The problem with California is that in every level of elected office, from city council in LA, to the state leg and congress, you have 1 person representing hundreds of thousands of people.

The only real problem with the PA legislature is that there are no term limits. As a result, there is an annual turnover rate of like 2%. And the VOTERS are to blame for always voting for the incumbents. Highly qualified people do run, but everyone always votes for the incumbent.

namatad:

actually u want to PAY teachers and politians MORE than is reasonable
you want the BEST people to WANT these jobs

That's very true. One of the reasons we have a hard time finding good judges nationally (except those seeking to legislate from the bench) is because lawyers can make so much more in private practise -- first year associates at major law firms maker more than state level judges. One of the things the pay raise did was increase judicial salaries.

I am glad to know that they are getting paid better in PA for the "work" they do , like what they did to this guy

There was an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days ago about a group of Young Conservatives who put up billboards with the words "Tax hikes, bloated budgets and a 34 percent pay raise" next to a picture of their area representative.

Their comment was, "We need to do more to lower taxes, reduce state spending and create jobs. And no more pay raises after midnight."

The representative's response was "The young man has the right to be wrong, and he obviously is."

I think that about says it all.

Teucer
Some of us aren't TF.

You're not missing anything.

Seriously. I was sponsored and it's repeats galore with no comments on 90% of the threads. The boobies links are unfiltered, so transvestites and FAT chicks pop up frequently.

I think it's more of a social thing...you know, for if you don't get out much.

And oh yeah. TF'ers get to narc on you via this link at the bottom of each thread:

Notify moderators about this thread
(comment-related issues: posting guideline violations, etc.)

It even has narc in the url...how nice ; )

Heinlein did it in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but those were revolutionaries forging an entire new government and were actually coming from positions of the best interest of the people.

These guys are just arseholes.

WELCOME TO TEXAS!

/oh wait...
//fark career politicos!
///I will cast my ballot with a .50 cal im sure.

Oh, and mods, before you ban me, you might want to consider what I'm saying as constructive criticism. TF is free for me and I still prefer regular Fark.

In fact, I'd pay the five dollars for regular Fark if TF was free.

/Did I mention needing to log in twice...once for the TF main page, once for the threads.

Way to stick it to the man GreyAlien
you're quite possibly one of my newest heros.

absolutely ridiculous, but not unheard of. look at congress, they get automatic pay raises each year, the only way for them not to is to pass a bill blocking the pay raise.

This would not have happened if we were not at war. You can believe that!

/War on Terrah, the ultimate distraction to rape, pillage and plunder!

to paraphrase the comic lewis black---how is it that someone doesn't slay this type of people.

Its a joke in Pittsburgh for anyone running Republican for Mayor. Democrat always wins by a landslide.

Don't know if it's still true, but just over the previous election, EVERY elected seat held by Pittsburgh city government was/is held by a Democrat.

From Mayor right on down to Dog Catcher.

2% turnover rate. yeah, right, this is a system that works. farking iraq had a larger turnover with saddam in office!

CannedTangent:

To expand on a comment above, I think that ALL elected positions should be unpaid...just my opinion, but I think it would weed out certain undesireables and put the power of The People into the hands of people who actually give a crap.

Actually, in my home town, the way it works is that the position of Mayor isnt paid nearly enough to be able to do the job. The trick there is the lack of money locks out people who aernt already wealthy, thus keeping the field pretty much limited to the same person/people each election.

Snarfangel [TotalFark]

This is why legislators should be paid a constitutionally-fixed multiple of the average wage (or alternatively, a fixed percentage of the total economy). That way they would have an incentive to improve things for their constituents.

Nice idea, but that would probably just entice new creative ways of measuring economy growth. It's all relative.

well as long as they don't raise their pay by 37 or 38 percent then I'm totally OK with it.

Holy crap, I'm moving to PA.

Really, though, Maine's system makes sense. You get like, 18k a year, plus living (I think.) The good news is, there's no financial incentive to be a legislator, you've got to want to serve the people. The bad news is, it's nearly unsupportable, and therefore the mean age of our legislators is something like 68, and we all know how in touch with current events the 68-year-olds are.

Despite that, Maine's still fairly progressive....

/not sure what I'm arguing anymore.
//Someone tell me - Am I making sense?

Here is some news concerning the people of Pittsburgh PA. When "Fast Eddie Rendell" was running for Governor; The majority of those from PGH and the surrounding area voted against the local guy because he was a Republican and "Fast Eddie" (From Philly) was a Democrat.

Talk about stupid...

Guess where most of the money went??? One clue, PHILIDELPHIA.

Just like when Tom Ridge (A Republican, from Erie)...

Guess where the money went??? NO MORE CLUES.

The worst thing about this whole pay hike was they delayed the budget while figuring out if they wanted to get more money! I didn't get paid one week because these clowns needed a raise. If they would have delayed the budget longer, there was a good chance I could have gone a couple of weeks without getting paid. I know i'm not voting for my current rep next time elections are up! Hell I'll even run.

RINO is a monicker given to asshat repubs that can't deal with what the majority of their own party goes for.