Good Lord. You really have no idea how it works, do you? Speaking for my state, we have a bipartisan Civil Service Commission that negotiates with the unions, however the wages are pretty much set by the state beforehand. The legislature does not get involved and thus no potential for collusion between legislators and unions.
Don’t you think a complicated issue like immigration needs more than a “Its bad” stance? Trump’s stance is clear because its simple and easy, but what it is certainly not is thought out and comprehensive.
For instance, what does he plan on doing with kids of illegal immigrants? Round them up and drop them off at the borders?
Also, what about kids born here of illegal immigrants? The 14th Amendment states they are citizens, is he planning on deporting just their parents and leaving the kids here alone? Or is he going to personally revoke their citizenship?
And about this wall he wants to build and Mexico to pay for, how’s he going to do that? He is going to go to war with Mexico if they don’t pony up the cash? Is he going to stop buying things from Mexico, thereby making things here more expensive?
Its easy to be clear on a position when you have no nuance and so far no explanation with how you’re going to get things done except for “We’ll do it!” That’s like saying you’ll lower the crime rate by lowering it
While I certainly don’t want Walker to be president, or even Governor of Wisconsin, I’ve got to agree with this statement. Since 2010, Walker has won the governorship three times.
I think he’s a very serious candidate for the nomination.
The “leaks” from his advisers have him announcing July 21 in Columbus.
The difference between public employee unions and private sector unions is the player base.
Joe Klein writes:
(my bold)
The union negotiators represent the union, and the local governments represent the taxpayers from whom the money is to be paid. The union is able to lobby the local government with money extracted from concessions of the local government in a twisted incestuous way. And with defined benefit pension plans, the cost of such concessions are foisted upon future taxpayers many years down the road. The adversarial nature fo the relationship between management and labor is not the same in the case of public sector unions.
On top of that, public sector unions operate in areas where the government has a virtual monopoly to act. In these areas, the workers charged with performing government services can hold hostage those that depend on those services with no recourse.
When he proposed a wealth tax.
Better than the likes of Jindal, Cruz, Kasich and others, but Walker is hardly the most moderate in the race. He is not more moderate than Bush or Pataki.
Evidently not as unpopular as you think. He’s won three elections in Wisconsin.
Why on Earth would anyone consider Walker a moderate? If anything he is by far the most conservative of the bunch.
Better Know A Candidate: Scott Walker:
That helps too!
Walker will be Jeb’s running mate.
Somewhere, Scott Walker is laughing at this thread.
Boy you really must think Scott Walker doesn’t have much going on right now. You keep saying this..
He’s not the most conservative, but nearly so. From FiveThirtyEight’s analysis, Cruz is the most conservative, then Huckabee, then Santorum and Walker are tied.
That doesn’t mean he won’t win. More moderate candidates were chosen in the Republican primaries the last two times, maybe Republicans will try something different this time.
He did win a fairly decisive victory in his first election in 2010. But the second election he won was the recall election for him in 2012. It reflects well on his popularity that he won and was able to stay in office, but reflects less well on his popularity that a recall election happened. His third winning election in 2014 was a toss-up race for most of it, with the polling not sure of who was going to win.
So I don’t know if he can be called unpopular, but I don’t think he could be called popular either. If I knew literally nothing else about him other than the results of his elections, I don’t know if I would pick him as a winning presidential candidate.
True, but I think you need to take into account that there is a group fervently opposed to him. The fact that he was able to withstand everything that the liberal left and the labor unions threw at him—and win—in what is usually reliably a blue state is pretty remarkable. The recall vote was not so much the masses rising up against him but the teachers unions and the left trying desperately to get him out and undo his good work.
As much as it pains me to say this (being a liberal who grew up in Wisconsin)…I don’t think that Wisconsin can be termed “reliably a blue state”, and that’s probably been the case for a while.
Walker’s predecessor, Doyle, was a Democrat, and served two terms, but the governorship was held by Republicans for 16 years before that. One of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats has been held by a Republican for 26 of the last 34 years. And, five of the eight seats in the House are currently held by Republicans.
Thanks for the facts. I was just going by what I recall hearing both during Walker’s elections and during Presidential elections. Ignorance fought.
The state has typically voted Democratic in recent presidential elections, so there is at least some truth to that part of it.
Madison is certainly a liberal bastion, and urban Milwaukee (which is 40% black and 17% Hispanic) tends to vote Democratic, as well. But, most of the rest of the state seems to be pretty staunchly conservative these days.
Anecdotally, when I go back to Green Bay to visit my parents, it definitely seems like Fox News Nation up there. My parents, and a few of my friends who still live up there, are liberals, and they bemoan the feeling that they’re found themselves surrounded by arch-conservatives.