Well. I watched the Rachel Maddow episodes people have mentioned- no, not the one with the dubious debt figures. “It’s not about the budget” from 3/8.
She makes a fairly compelling case that ties these actions in with Citizens United. She points out that part of the justification of *Citizens United *was that unions can make unlimited contributions to campaigns just the same as corporations can, therefore it is oh so fair and expressive of the will of the people.
Then pointed out that among the top 10 contributors to political campaigns (nationally I think), only 3 tend to support the Democratic side of the equation. And all 3 of those are public unions.
And now public unions are being outlawed in states with Republican governors. If this continues, not only will the middle class get the rug pulled out from under them in the name of Profits for Billionaires, but there won’t be much to fund anything other than pubbie candidates. I haven’t verified the information yet.
It was also mentioned that in Michigan, there is a proposed law in which cities which have been declared to have a “buget crisis” can have their local governments “dismissed” and replaced with a governor-appointed chief of some kind, one who has the power to disincorporate the town. No input from the citizens is necessary, or even possible. The best part is that they are manufacturing budget crises in Michigan the same way they are doing it in WI!
It’ll be nice if these notions get debunked. So far it is starting to look like a kind of plutocratic revolution. Buh-bye democracy! Buh-bye government representation!
There is no need to “manufacture” a budget crisis in Michigan. Too many years of getting “blown away” by Granholm has made a budget crisis very real. The anti-business climate here makes one question the business sense of ANYONE who would consider starting a business here. One boon job here is driving empty moving vans back to the state.
I’ll offer another bet to anyone willing to take it: if the Democrats do retake power (I think they will), they will not restore the unions to their pre-Walker collective bargaining position.
Bricker, do you have any legal analysis concerning proposition no. 1? Are you relying on “Bush v. Gore” type reasoning, that the 4 Republicans on the Wisconsin SC outnumber the 3 Democrats and will therefore merely vote in favor of what their own party wants?
BTW, they’re both technically based on a loophole. The modern filibuster is actually built on two, one in the Constitution (no rules about how long you can debate), and one in the senate rules (the two-track system that allows you to go to other business once a filibuster has been insinuated.)
If anything, the “leave the state” method is better, as much more of the state legislature has to be shut down for this to work, thus being a disincentive, and why this is only now being used. I doubt even the lock step Republicans would have left the country to stop health care reform.
Oh look, you can spit up more propaganda! Here are some more facts for you:
1.) State employee compensation is only 8.5% of Wisconsin’s budget.
2.) State employees are, as I’ve explained to you repeatedly, undercompensated compared to their peers in the private sector.
3.) Eliminating collective bargaining rights doesn’t solve budget problems, because budget problems aren’t the result of collective bargaining. The proportion of non-collective bargaining states that have budget shortfalls of 20% or more (3/11 or 27.3%) is almost identical to their over all proportion in the country (13/50 or 26.0%). The state with the largest budget shortfall, Nevada, bans its state employees from collective bargaining. And 8 of the 13 non-bargaining states (61.5%) have larger budget shortfalls than Wisconsin currently faces.
Oh, what a shock, you’re wrong-wrong-wrong again! The unions will only be able to bargain for wages, and they will be limited to a *maximum *of the rate of inflation. All they will be able to do is beg to *please *be paid the equivalent of what they were paid last year.
Tiny nitpick: I’m a her, not a him.
The problem is not so much potentially privatizing our utilities as it is privatizing our utilities with no bids and no oversight. Especially damning is that it loops back to the infamous Koch Industries, who’s *already *hiring for powerplant managers in Wisconsin.
Actually, if the Democratic Senators hadn’t followed the example of Republican Abraham Lincoln and use “filibuster by flight,” the bill would have been jammed through with no time for any Wisconsinites to realize what Gov. Walker was trying to pull. Instead, we were able to examine and discuss the bill, mount protests against it, and make it clear that a *significant majority *of the state (60% even by conservative pollsters) does not agree with what Walker has been doing.
So far now we’ve had multi week long, hundred thousand strong protests in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. As Rachel Maddow has said, this is the Democratic base that’s been silent and been ignored for so long.
Question for people with better google fu than me:
What has been the response from President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Kaine or anyone else at the national level?
It’s pretty common knowledge (well, at least for people who are familiar with the subject :rolleyes:) that lowest bidder government contracting has been a cost and efficiency fallacy for a long, long time. Shoddy work, defective product, inadequate staffing and other features await the owners of lowest bidder government contractors. It’s been proven time and time again over the years.
No, it hasn’t. Which study are you looking at that says that those things are inevitable?
They are all possible, of course, but not inevitable and not the only result that has ever come about through lowest bidder contracting. Prove me wrong, troll.
