What's with Brown and the Pensions?

[DemocracyInaction]

I live 3,000 miles from CA but have an asshole running for governor who would love to get his repuke hands on the retirement system. Sooo, all of a sudden I hear the news item about Brown's un-hung up phone and the "whore" thing. What stopped me in my tracks was not the word "whore"; it was what Brown was discussing. Maybe I heard it all wrong but it sounds like Jerry is pitting himself against the Union out there and after the retirement system. Do I have that right? If this is the position of a Democrat, it makes me sick.

[bemildred]

1. Jerry has always been fiscally conservative.

Not like Raygun or Shrub, where you spend like crazy while babbling about "restraint", but more like getting a good deal for the public's money. He is not against unions, and most unions support him because they know that - unlike Whitman - he's got their back.

[mike_c]

2. I'm a californian who belongs to a public service union...

...and we're working hard to defeat Meg Whitman. Jerry Brown is a bit of a fiscal conservative, but if Jerry wants to talk about pensions, at least we know it's not anti-labor union bashing. That is ALL Whitman is up to.

[David Zephyr]

3. Almost every union here has aleady endorsed Brown.

In the case of this particular union, Whitman had made all these claims that she was going to lay off 40,000 state workers and end the pension system putting workers, from this point on, into 401K programs. She bragged about this in the debate. But Jerry corrected her publicly pointing out that she'd cut a special deal with one union to leave their pension system as it was.

Jerry has said from the beginning that he favors a two-tiered pension plan for state workers rather than forcing new workers into 401K programs and this is what he has worked out with the other unions. Whitman cherrypicked one union and tried to keep it on the down low in order to get their endorsement. It's the sort of two-faced campaign she has run here. She has ads in Spanish saying one thing and ads in English implying the opposite.

Jerry's union endorsement list is sterling. I hope this was helpful.