American Federation of Teachers' Randi Weingarten on PBS NewsHour

[alp227]

Run time: 12:42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-AHRpKkLrk   Posted on YouTube: February 19, 2011 By YouTube Member: PBSNewsHour Views on YouTube: 421   Posted on DU: February 22, 2011 By DU Member: alp227 Views on DU: 661

 
Transcript here

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, appeared on Friday's PBS NewsHour to discuss the Wisconsin union protests alongside Jonathan Williams of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group representing conservative state legislators. The interview starts after a 2-minute report on the protests.

Among her points:
- Scott Walker manufactured this crisis.
- Defined benefit packages worked better in West Virginia than did 401k-type investment plans.
- The governor refuses to talk to the workers, and revoking collective bargaining won't help anything with the budget.

An interesting moment at the end of the interview where Weingarten makes Williams admit he lied:

JONATHAN WILLIAMS: I think states are living in a fantasyland if they think that they can continue under the business-as-usual system that's racked up these billions of dollars of shortfalls and trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities in pension systems.

And so I think many states are going to have to take the approach of Wisconsin and Ohio and the other states to start to bring these benefits in line with the private sector. If you look at it, the benefits for state and local workers are 69 percent greater than those of their private sector counterparts.

That's just not sustainable. If money grew on trees, we could all make a million dollars a year and have retirement security for life.

(snip)

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Jonathan is actually not telling the truth, because the -- the salaries of these workers are far below the salaries of private sector workers.

JONATHAN WILLIAMS: I was mentioning benefits, but thank you.

[Hulk]

1. A perfect little reichwinger....

What a smart ass. He was blowing republiCON talking points out his ass and his ass. Such smirky pricks make me want to vomit.

[democracy1st]

2. I know its sickening