Govenor Scott Walker (R) WI

The BBQ Pit
1303

Are you kidding? First of all, I’m not talking about contracting. Contracting can be controlled and regulated in other ways, such as demanding open bidding processes, publishing winning bids online so competitors can examine the fairness of them, whatever.

I specifically said ‘handouts’. Paying someone for services rendered is not a handout. You intentionally chose to blur this distinction so you could make your ridiculous point.

But your point would be ridiculous even if I had included contracting, because one obvious way to reduce such corruption would be to simply scale back the size of government so it doesn’t contract as much stuff in the first place. In fact, I specifically said that you will always have corruption when government distorts the economy, and you need some government, but such distortions and corruption are an argument for making government smaller.

Any way you wish to look at this, your argument that eliminating handouts to business necessarily means that government must take over the entire business community is just ridiculous.

If I behaved like you do, I’d now resort to a screaming hissy fit and start shouting “LIAR!” at you. But instead I’ll just be charitable and assume that you’re simply blinded by your hatred and/or ideology and spewing half-formed thoughts and wild interpretations of what your opponents are saying because you don’t have the mental or educational tools to keep up with the real debate.

So are you going to seriously make the assertion that Wisconsin’s FY2011-2013 budget is balanced, and that the only reason it shows a 3.6 billion dollar deficit is because of requests for things that no one has any intention of delivering?

But in any event, I think you’re playing fast and loose with the numbers. You do know that the $137 million figure is just the shortfall in the FY2010 budget, which ends on June 30? Yet your side is trying to portray this whole thing as a ‘manufactured crisis’ caused by business tax cuts, and that a mere 1.5% surtax on the rich is all that’s needed to ‘fix the problem’. In fact, that may be true in the sense that it covers the bills that need to be paid by June 30, but without deep structural reforms, as soon as the FY2011 budget kicks in, Wisconsin would be deep in the red again.

You seem to think that the projected budget deficit of 3.6 billion dollars is not a real number, but rather something that someone made up by requesting a whole bunch of money that actually won’t be allocated. Well, that’s what this whole debate is about! It’s about making cuts to the public sector so that there isn’t a 3.6 billion dollar deficit.

You appear to have no actual idea of how the budgetary process works. You seem to think that a proposed budget is somehow completely irrelevant to this debate. Your argument that the previous budget request asked for $3 billion more than it got is completely irrelevant - the budget process goes through several phases until a final budget is turned out. The issue is that all the departments have made their requests for allocation, and this has left a 3.6 billion dollar hole. The governor then has to make the tough choices over what to cut in order to bring the budget in balance, AND THAT’S WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT. This 137 million number is a sideshow - an attempt at obfuscation by the forces opposing Walker. It’s a charade.

I assume you’ll accept a cite from the Huffington Post? If so, maybe you’d like to read this and educate yourself.

It’s a projected shortfall because THAT’S WHAT BUDGETS DO - THEY PROJECT THE NEXT SURPLUS OR DEFICIT BASED ON ASSUMPTIONS BAKED INTO THE BUDGET.

Your portrayal of this as irrelevant is just ridiculous. If you think that shortfall doesn’t exist, you’re free to go read the budget document and tell me where the extra 3.6 billion is that can be easily removed. Go for it.

By the way, the $137 million number is also a projected deficit. It’s projected because it isn’t in the past. I know that’s a hard concept to grasp, but try.

I didn’t lie about at thing. It’s you who is frantically spinning the numbers in order to avoid confronting a very obvious and very large hole in the Wisconsin budget. You took issue with my widening the discussion to public unions in general, and chose to characterize it as a ‘lie’. It clearly wasn’t.

Ah, the old reductio ad absurdum argument. I hope you understand the logical fallacy behind that.

Except that the union dues are forced. That makes it a fairly gray area. The actual union members never see that money. And the union leaders are the ones cutting deals with the government.

How impressive. Usually one has to hang out in an elementary school hallway to hear arguments of that quality.

And I already explained to you how wrong you are about that. I just don’t think you’re capable of understanding. In any event, it’s a stupid comparison. You might have a point if companies withheld part of every employee’s paycheck and used it to fund political campaigns without the employee having a say in the matter. But that’s illegal when companies do it. Unions, not so much.
Your stock in trade is drawing tortured analogies, reducing/twisting arguments to ridiculous levels, making sweeping assertions based on your ridiculous analogies, then declaring yourself the victor and your opponent a stupid liar. Your tactics are beneath contempt, and the fact that you resort to them tells me that you really aren’t very well educated on these issues.

1304

While it is certainly true that people generally don’t count their commute time as time worked, how many people average 28 hours above 40 without overtime pay? I imagine not too many (tho’ in my line of work, the week is 60 hours, and overtime for most begins after 12 hours (mine is only when I work a 6th day)).

1305

Why don’t we just make unions corporations? The fucking conservatives will go crazy trying to figure out how to stop them from getting tax breaks and donating to political causes.

1306

The error is that people think without unions we will not go back to the days before they came. It is wrong. Look at the abuse of minors with constant battles between the union and the owners over safety. The owners have no problems mistreating workers. They are simply tools to make money and should shut up and follow orders.
The owners have not changed. They were forced by laws to treat workers better.The laws are disappearing and it will go back like it was.

1307

Excellent post. Very informative. And funny in the way it juxtaposed facts with SFG’s frenzy & froth.

1308

What a surprise, the cretins applaud the morons. What a wonderful thing payroll deduction is, because the workers don’t actually see the money, it means that it stays perpetually taxpayers’ funds.

1309

No, you’re ignorant because you don’t know shit.

I’ll name two (in what I’m fairly sure will be a failed attempt to educate an ignoramus) to help you get started:

Ben Cohen
Jerry Greenfield

1310

Amen and amen. That’s our SFG in a nutshell.

1311

Bolding mine.

Sorry, your syllogism requires that a contract be the only form that a “handout to business” can take. And it also assumes that he agrees that the government procurement process actually constitutes a “handout.” Have you gotten him to agree to those definitions? He can plausibly consider that a contract isn’t a handout unless it contains some extra benefit to the contracting business that is added on to the quid pro quo of the basic transaction (on-time fulfillment bonuses, for example, or a cost-plus compensation plan). He can also plausibly claim to believe that “handout” means “tax break/credit”, no more, no less. Or the release of rights to exploit the nation’s natural resources with little-to-no royalties. And he’s perfectly capable of withholding those details of the definitions he uses until he thinks he’s elicited a sufficient level of stridency from an opponent.

Seriously, you’ve been around long enough to know how to recognize tactics like these, and to take steps to undermine them in advance.

ETA: in light of post #1303, I’d like to apologize for being so late off the mark.

1312

People don’t seem to be disputing that Walker has had his way with the truth.

Ah well. Y’all are stuck with him for at least the better part of the year. Might as well see if you can wring any juice out of this turnip before you replace him with… another turnip.

1313

I’m trying to understand what you’re saying here - are you suggesting that I was using some kind of tactic by withholding details of my definitions in hope of misleading someone so that they fall into my wily trap?

If so, that’s ridiculous. The word ‘handout’ is commonly used exactly the way I used it - government giving out freebies. That’s what a ‘handout’ IS. The only reason you perceive any ambiguity in what I said is because Shot From Guns chose to torture the meaning of that so as to be able to make the ludicrous claim that opposition to government handouts means opposition to any possible interaction between government and business and therefore necessarily means that I must support the complete government takeover of all business activity.

That claim is so incredibly ridiculous on its face that it surprised me that anyone would have either the chutzpah or the lack of brain cells to make it. As I said, even if I took a much more expansive view of what a ‘handout’ is, claiming that I must therefore support the wholesale nationalization of business as an unavoidable logical conclusion is crazy.

But perhaps I misread you. If so, please clarify.

1314

Nah, I don’t really think you carry “maintain definitional booby traps” in your debating toolkit. I probably should have worked a little harder and crafted my post to avoid giving the impression that you do. I do prefer that people who share the right side of a policy issue (the one I’m on) make sure that they’ve resolved the definition issue before they extrapolate an opponent’s position from a comment the opponent has made. Treating their opponents’ arguments AS IF they had wily traps set within would probably let them avoid quite a few erroneous extrapolations.

And, you’ll have to take my word for it, but I didn’t really share SFG’s somewhat idiosyncratic definition for “handouts.” This is why I was trying to persuade her back from the brink on that particular point, which I see as non-essential to the larger policy argument (besides being quite difficult to defend).

FWIW, ISTM that you adopting her definition of “handout” would be less, rather than more expansive, that is, narrower (and out in left field, too).

1315

Like sports teams? The threat is not always carried out because it costs a lot to move operations. They you have to obtain a working crew of the same caliber in a rural area, where taxes are lower.
It is a time consuming and expensive process.

1316

Yeah, that’s the one aspect of the letter I didn’t care for. Who the hell includes their commute time in their hours worked?

However, the numbers I pulled from it *didn’t *include the silly commute numbers. 2,720 is **30.8% more hours **than a year’s worth of 40-hour workweeks, which would be just 2,080. And those hours are crunched into about nine months of the year, so when school is in session, this teacher is working much more than 50 hours a week.

And go where? Wisconsin companies already contribute well below the national average in state and local taxes–to the tune of over $1.3 billion annually. We could raise corporate taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars and *still *be hundreds of millions *under *the average.

The Republican agenda in this state has been to hand out benefits (e.g., tax breaks and contracts) to anyone who supports them, and then slash programs to anyone who doesn’t vote for them when the funding gaps their cronyism has created start to become apparent.

So when the government pays a company for doing work, that’s a contract, and there’s no conflict of interest or reason for corruption. But when the government pays a public employee for doing work, that’s a handout, and there’s a conflict of interest and reason for corruption. Gotcha. Glad we cleared that up.

Oh, and for someone who’s so concerned with “handouts,” you sure are spewing forth a lot of support for a bill that includes a provision that would allow the sale or contracting out of the state’s public utilities without any bids or the approval of Wisconsin’s independent utility regulator.

There is no budget yet. There is a series of requests. That’s how you arrive at a budget–you look at what the various groups asked for, what you think they actually need, and what you can afford to fund, and then you allocate the money as appropriate.

It is a fact that we were in the *exact same *situation when *this *cycle’s budget was being established, and there was no “crisis.” There was no panic. There was no pressing need to vote NOW NOW NOW and push through legislation that strips people of basic rights.

This is not about the money. This has *never *been about the money. This is about crippling Democratic power in Wisconsin by attacking groups that typically vote for Democratic candidates. If this were about the money, Governor Walker would have compromised the second the unions offered him everything he was asking for, except stripping them of their right to collective bargaining.

That you continue to insist otherwise reveals, again, that you are either a liar or a moron.

Okay, so that’s a vote for “moron,” then.

Every dollar that funds a political campaign is a dollar that didn’t go to paychecks, or bonuses, or benefits, or investment in the company. So, yeah, that’s exactly what happens–they’re just not as straightforward about it.

The job of the union is to work for its employees’ best interests, which includes helping to elect people to government who will respect those interests. Similarly, the job of a corporation is to work for its or its shareholders’ best interests, which includes ehlping to elect people to government who will respect those interests. Yet somehow, to you, it’s legitimate for a company to help elect those who will serve the interests of the company, while it’s inappropriate for a union to help elect those who will serve the interests of the union.

1317

It’s possible that the letter-writer actually works during his commute, if he takes a train or bus. Teachers do a lot of their work outside the classroom: lesson plans, grading papers, making up activity kits…

1318

That all depends on what you think is more important, reducing the distortions created by government activity or engaging int he sort of activity that government engages in.

For example, the public school system and subsidized student loans grossly distorts the market for education. Would we be better off without some of that education?

Regulation of the financial markets distorts economic decisions made by financial institutions, should we get rid of those regulations?

Reducing teh size of government for teh sake of reducing teh size of government without taking into consideration the value of the government activity seems a bit illogical.

Perhaps its not balanced but teh 3.6 billion dollar number is a gross distortion of the truth, isn’t it? And even if it weren’t, we are not going to be able to balance that budget on the back sof government employees, its going to take a recovering economy and some additional tax revenue.

Well, perhaps the WHOLE thing isn’t a manufactured crisis, but a lot of it is and a surtax on the rich will cover at least as much of teh deficit as busting unions would, or is there some cost savings associated with busting unions that reduces government spending?

Yeah actually I thought that is exactly what we were taling about here.

The unions already accepted the cuts, what is the purpose of the rest of teh bill that elminates margaining rights?

How large is the proposed budget compared the the 2010 budget?

there is a difference btween a bduget deficit for a year that has already been funded and one that is a a wishlist from agency heads.

I didn’t lie about at thing. It’s you who is frantically spinning the numbers in order to avoid confronting a very obvious and very large hole in the Wisconsin budget. You took issue with my widening the discussion to public unions in general, and chose to characterize it as a ‘lie’. It clearly wasn’t.

Ah, the old reductio ad absurdum argument. I hope you understand the logical fallacy behind that.

Except that the union dues are forced. That makes it a fairly gray area. The actual union members never see that money. And the union leaders are the ones cutting deals with the government.

How impressive. Usually one has to hang out in an elementary school hallway to hear arguments of that quality.

And I already explained to you how wrong you are about that. I just don’t think you’re capable of understanding. In any event, it’s a stupid comparison. You might have a point if companies withheld part of every employee’s paycheck and used it to fund political campaigns without the employee having a say in the matter. But that’s illegal when companies do it. Unions, not so much.
Your stock in trade is drawing tortured analogies, reducing/twisting arguments to ridiculous levels, making sweeping assertions based on your ridiculous analogies, then declaring yourself the victor and your opponent a stupid liar. Your tactics are beneath contempt, and the fact that you resort to them tells me that you really aren’t very well educated on these issues.
[/QUOTE]

1319

Doesn’t sound like it.

However, I actually screwed up the numbers a bit, since I forgot to account for a non-teacher’s vacation time–we should be comparing his 2720 hours in a year for the teacher versus a 40-hour/week, 50-week/year schedule, which would be 2,000 hours, not 2,080 as I was calculating. So this teacher works 36% more, not 31% more.

1320

Good point.
Living in Wisconsin, my personal experience is driving to work.
I guess my problem is that teachers tend to overstate the out of classroom work.
You teach second grade, how many papers do you grade in the evening?
You come up with a different lesson plan every year when you teach the same grade in the same school? How many hours does it take?

I often figure out how to fixture a part for inspection, or what details to machine in what order on a workpiece, late at night when my brain is creative. Should I consider those hours worked? Sorry no, billable hours are hours worked.

1321

You read the letter, right? Did you miss the part where this guy knew exactly how much time he spent working because all of it was at school? He’s not counting the stuff he’s also thinking about at home–just the hours he’s physically in the building, working.

ETA: You seem to have a lot of contempt for teachers’ jobs that solidly rooted in ignorance. You have no idea what their jobs entail. I don’t know what a lot of people’s jobs entail, but I don’t automatically assume that they’re a bunch of cakewalking, overpaid slackers.

1322

See, was that so hard? After all contractors provide value in exchange for t6heir no bid contracts while government employees are like welfare recipients who get money for sitting on their collectively bargained asses.