Wisconsin Gov. Walker Threatens To Deploy National Guard Against Unions

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Actually, from what I have understood so far Gov. Walker didn't fully start the crisis - the budget was in the red anyway. However, the tax cut that he signed not even a month ago won't help any - and when on top of that he goes after the teachers' unions with some "cut spending" measures and continues even when they agree to the spending cuts is political slimebaggery at its finest.

It was too good a crisis to let it go to waste, I suppose

 

For those of you who believe this is about the budget, here are Walker's own words:

It's interesting that it took a prank call to get the truth out of the liar.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/article_531276b6-3f6a-11e0-b288-001cc4c002e0.html

I agree

 

I doubt that it will prove to be accurate. I doubt the wisdom of basing any serious policy off of such an analysis without any evidence that what it predicts will actually come to pass. Such an analysis must make an assumption about how well the tax cuts will work as a lure to new business. Any such assumption is uncertain at best. If people were quoting a range, I would consider it more trustworthy, but they aren't. They're citing a number.

 

"At least the WI Governor only discussed it. A Dem Congressman seemed to want to start a riot."

Snook, I'll sign a petition against your congressman if you'll do the same against my governor.

And the scary thing about my governor is not that he "only discussed it" but that this was one of those discussions that could matter. Where decisions get made-including having bad options on the table.

 

You are aware that in your argument you treat the assertion as made by Walker that these tax cuts will lure in business as a real possibility. In doing that you assume he is serious in making that argument and not just using it as a pretext (which people may be forgiven to understand it as in face of his deceptive manoeuvring). On the other hand you dismiss the assessment of the Wisconsin Budget Office (WBO) as speculation because they only 'cite a number'.

How is that not giving Walker the benefit of a doubt?

Or are you just so jaded by politics that you don't believe anything from anyone, allowing and enabling you to more efficiently assess matters based on gut feeling i.e arbitrarily? Along this line: That you treat the idea that tax cuts attract business as a real argument, suggests you probably feel sympathetic to the argument, and thus probably prefer it over the other one, which after all, only cites a number? In that case you wouldn't be making an argument at all.

Now, as far as I am concerned 'citing a number' is eminently more rational than asserting that tax cuts and loss of tax revenue make Wisconsin more competitive in attracting business, because ... because.

The latter is just ... voodoo, whereas one can argue, with real arguments, where that 'cited number' comes from and how the WBO got there - which I am certain the WBO is able to do. The Walker position is merely the otherwise unspecified default Republican article of faith that tax cuts are always good, for and against anything, and that they will inevitably generate growth. Walker isn't interested in talking concrete numbers. He is interested in selling the abstraction that the tax cuts (and union busting) will attract business and create a for Wisconsin in which everyone lived happily ever after ... ah well, maybe it doesn't ... then at least dogmatic purity is maintained ... Walker's approach is simply frivolous.

Oh yes, and that's assuming Walker's tax cuts and the corresponding deficit were not a mere pretext under which to bust unions and hurt the Democrats by undermining on of their bases while rewarding campaign donors by cutting industry specific taxes and getting government smaller*. And there we are at it again - the question of giving the benefit of a doubt.

Spoiler

* i.e. looting ... as suggested in clause 16.896 of Walker's Budget Repair Bill allowing no-bid sale of government power plants

i.e. it would allow for the selling of state-owned heating/cooling/power plants without bids and without concern for the legally-defined public interest ... I assume, boldly, I know, that this clause didn't find its way into the bill by sloppiness or accident. Now where is that smell of something rotten coming from?

 

No deal. My Congressman is a waste of chemicals, whereas your Governor has the opportunity to do something great for our nation. If he succeeds it will be the first chink in the armor of the public service unions. The amount of unfunded obligations that the federal, state, city and towns have to the public service union members really concerns me.

 

No, Ragusa. You don't get it. I dismissed the WBO's assessment resulting in only one number because they base that on an assumption. Whether that assumption is that the tax cut will result in no new business, or X amount of new business, is irrelevant.

Because lowered taxes for small businesses will mean that small businesses that move there or start up there will pay less in taxes, which means they'll have more money to invest in the business, or more profit for the owner, thus more incentive to actually do so? That's not voodoo. It's a reasonable attempt that has worked in the past. It's not guaranteed, certainly not as much as some Republicans would claim it is, but it's only your own anti-republican hate that makes you call it voodoo.

So, you assume that the WBO has done a strict analysis and knows with absolute certainty what impact the tax cuts will have, while Walker's only motive in all this is a grand conspiracy to bust unions, and that he really has no idea what the tax cuts will actually do? You're right, I do assume that Walker's tax cuts actually have some chance of attracting new business. Because the other assumption would be a much bolder, crasser, and more ignorant assumption. I leave those things to you. You're so good at them.

And I would also point out that I have never said that Walker is blameless in this. He may well have done all this to attack unions. And I have no idea about that clause you cited (though one thing I've learned from working at NASA is that these things aren't always the crimes against public interest they appear to be). I'm just not assuming he's the Devil just because he's a Republican like you are.

 

Taking away liberty and rights is never "great" for any nation, especially just to save a few bucks. But that's not what this is really about. You think it's great because you hate the Democrats, hence the unions, which support them. This is the kind of big Nanny government move that reminds me more of the Bush years. Nevertheless, try not to be so obvious, Snook.

 

Couldn't be further from the truth. I do not hate Democrats, I tend to think they are misguided on many issues, but I'm sure the reverse is true and they think I'm a big meanie.

As to my distate for unions, yes that is true, but not because they overwhelmingly support Democrats. I believe what they accomplished and stood for in the past was very noble and a necessary part of our nation's history. Now, they don't have those burning issues that used to and instead have turned into political entities. In a heartbeat I would agree to the banning of corporations making political donations if unions were put into the same boat.

I also consider public service unions a different breed of union. They never served a purpose as government workers as they didn't have the dangerous and abusive working conditions that industry unions did. Industry unions protected the workers from corporations, public service unions protect the workers from the taxpayers and I have a problem with that. Probably the funniest statement I heard was that FDR had the stomach to work with Stalin, but was unwilling to work with public service unions. In my opinion JFK's biggest mistake was to allow them and he clearly only did it to strenghten the Democratic party.

To reverse it on you, you are so focused on your hatred and distrust of The Republican party that you are willing to overlook the damage that is being done by these unions. Even the most partisan Democrat has to be able to see the enormous debt already incurred and when the actuarially calculated future service debt is considered I don't know how some people can sleep at night.

I am comfortable with the amount of debt I currently have on my house and car. The reason I don't have a second home is because I wouldn't be comfortable with the amount of debt it would entail. The unions and the government don't seem to care about debt because they don't consider it theirs. As long as people get re-elected and union members get paid everything is rosy. Well it doesn't take an Einstein to know at some point the gravy train has to come to an end.

The public service unions and the governments have made deals that are just not sustainable. The cash is not there. You posted somewhere that when you filed your 2010 taxes you paid $0 in federal income tax. Well that means someone else had to pick up the slack for you. But that is only federal income tax, how will you feel if your local property taxes have to triple in order to cover the pension and health payments for city workers? Also remember, these are people that are getting benefits that you will not get as you are not a city worker. The only thing you will have when you retire is your social security (hopefully) and whatever money you have managed to save. Good luck with that.

I consider what the WI Governor is trying to do heroic. We are already starting to see other states start to file legislation to do the same thing. Of course they are states with large "Tea Party" representation, but I think once we have some successes, I think out of necessity we are going to see some of the more liberal states follow otherwise bankruptcy may follow. I don't think even the most ardent leftist believes that the cities and states are financially sound.

 

Snook - The first part of your post is very good, until you get to this:

The unions have already agreed to the pay and benefit cuts, but it is stripping the liberty of its members that has become the issue, just as the governor has so loudly proclaimed that it is. So this is no longer about money.

Absolutely, I hate what the Republican Party is doing to the country. It is destroying everything that is good and decent about America. However, it never used to be this way. While it is true the Republican Party never cared about the poor, or people who were struggling, AND they had a certain class of "country club" Republicans, they were always for working class and middle-class citizens. They knew that it was on the backs of the working class that this country was built. That is now the past. The current bunch of Republicans spend their time taking money from the 98 percent of the country's citizens and shoveling it into the pockets of the rich.

Why is it that many moderate Republicans are gone as a result of the Tea cornies [AKA corporate communist party]? and that the really good Republican writers and thinkers such as David Frum writes this about the Right:

Or how about David Brooks? Another good conservative, IMO. He doesn't like the public sector unions either and presents his case in a fair manner [even though I don't agree]. Nevertheless, he sees how unbalanced the governor's proposal's are:

http://www.frumforum.com/why-the-rights-beck-backlash-is-not-enough
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/opinion/22brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks

Look, dude, where was all this stuff about the budget during the Bush years, while money was being shoveld to Hali and Blackwater? And pallets of US cash were flown in by military cargo planes? Or this:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_Bridge_Strategies

Your people didn't give a damn about the budget when it was they who were doing the spending and it was the rich who were making the killing off the taxpayer and it hasn't changed except you want to balance the budget on the backs of the working class, the sick and the elderly. Talk about being able to "sleep at night." You guys never cease to amuse me.

Edit: please note the inserted pieces on New Bridge.

 

I have to disagree with you on this. I will be the first to admit that Bush was spending like a drunken sailor and I didn't approve of it then and as Republican President's go I do not consider him a great one by any measure. I still think he was better than John Kerry or Al Gore could have been, but that is like having an IQ contest between three retards (sorry for the politically incorrect term).

It is time to stop fixating on the past and who said what or who did what and it is time to stop the problem. The boat is sinking and arguing if it is the engineers fault or the welders fault doesn't change the fact that water is pouring into it.

Fixing and solving the debt problem will be painful for everyone involved. People employed in government are going to lose pay, and lose benefits. Retirees are also going to lose benefits. People who work for a living are going to have to live with reduced government services and higher taxes (probably at all levels), the poor are going to lose many of their entitlements, etc. It will not be fun, but getting out of debt never is.

 

The day you are for cutting military and corporate welfare, I will say yes, except for taking liberty away from any citizens, even the rich or union members [they have already agreed to cut in pay and benefits, but not giving up their hard won liberty]. We should all be on a level field, that includes the unions, as well as the rich fat cats.

BTW, that proves you don't care about the budget. If Gore had been prez there never would have been massive tax cuts and the Iraq War would never have happened. How much do think those would have saved us?

 

This is what I want to see more of in the Republican party. With an emphasis on everyone. More and more Republicans are open to the idea of cutting military spending (the Republican budget actually has less money for the DOD than Obama requested *gasp*), but there are still far too few of them who realize that cutting spending just won't be enough by itself. We need to raise taxes, too. Kill public sector unions, or at least the ones who have proven to be counter-productive (i.e. you can't value the work of a teacher, therefore you can't fire any of us) or overly greedy (total average annual cost of a teacher upwards of $100K), but realize that's only going to do so much.

 

That was reasonable except for this: The asserted need to kill public sector unions.

Why is that a necessity? It still assumes as a precondition that public sector unions are leeches. I question that. I still don't see how public sector wages as negotiated by unions for jobs in the public sector are excessive in comparison to comparable positions in the so called free market. It is a pretty far reaching step, and call me old fashioned, before making something like that there better be a good case for it and more than just a belief or assertion that this is so. I have yet to see a compelling case for it.

In the case of Wisconsin, the different treatment of the pro-Walker unions compared to the other public sector unions suggests that unions per se are not the source of the budget crisis. If unions were the problem he would have been required to bust them all. He didn't.

Spoiler

PS: I don't think Walker 'is the devil because his the a Republican'. I look at his duplicity, and look at what he does (and compare that to what he says) look and what he has done in the past and came to the conclusion that he is so crooked that he needs a corkscrew to put on his pants.

Get rid of your bipolar world view (Liberals vs Conservatives/ Democrats vs Republicans/etc pp). The worlds is more complex than that, and so am I. I have no loyalties in the US political system, and I believe governance is one of the first functions of ... government. Walker, like many other GOPers and Tea Parties run for office on a platform of wanting to ... practically abolish governance (for which there are interesting if troubling ideological foundations) - and they get elected. Remarkable.

I come from a city that, no matter which party is in power, has a reputation for an informal sort of .... deal making ... to an extent that there even is a dedicated word for it, 'Klüngel'. Never mind that, it is Kindergarten compared to what I see from GOP quarters since the days of the K-Street project and today in places like Wisconsin.

 

Please note that I did add a condition of proven leeching. And I think the analyses of public teacher pay plus benefits compared to private teacher pay plus benefits (or even average educated worker pay plus benefits) is plenty proof that the teacher's union in Wisconsin has become just that. Add that to their opposition to any kind of critical analysis of performance and we see a union that's primarily interested in getting money, not doing a job.

Have the police and fire-fighter unions acted similarly? I haven't seen anything about them blocking efforts to analyze their job performance.

 

So you care more about partisanship *and* ideology than if someone belongs in jail-not that I expect Walker to end up there but the man is a slimeball.

And let me point out what someone at the Washington Post noted about him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022503021.html

Getting things done? Nope, ideology matters more to him than accomplishments (which he has few, if any, of).

Plus he is a slimeball-as discussed by:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/116877633.html



Rags

He didn't run on doing this. He ran on many things including saying he wanted to create jobs, teachers would be well paid, and that he would be a breath of fresh air from the past (the prior governor could be underhanded but not to the scale of this one).

He won because of the dumb luck of being the GOP candidate during an anti-democratic party year.

I'm not sure but I'm suspect a few people have pointed out that he plans to ban collective bargaining on workplace conditions. I had a conversation with someone from the federal government that said that is one thing he/she (online discussion) would not want to see removed.

I'm not surprised some federal (as well as state workers) have dangerous jobs. Plus jobs that aren't dangerous can be made so-such as by making federal workers do their work in a building with asbestos.

Also workers on the state level made things safer for their patients by pointing out that they couldn't keep as good an eye as needed if given too many patients to handle (not that different from teachers with overfull classrooms).


NOG

About unions stopping bad people from being fired.

To an extent you are correct. Bad employees stay on the job longer because they have the right to ask the union to review their termination.

However someone pointed out a different problem here. Often administrators at a local tech college failed to document when a teacher had been reprimanded or whatever he/she had done wrong in the first place. Administrators can fall down on doing their job and then scapegoat the union when a poorly performing employee doesn't get a deserved axe.

Now if there are real cases where unions have been abused in order to keep bad workers around the a logical way to address that is to see if there way to deal with it directly-not disrupting unions as a whole.

PS My governor was misleading people about me and thousands of others today by claiming we weren't residents of this state. I've lived here my whole life, visited elsewhere sure but this is what I see as home and would like to keep it that way.

Its funny how when leaders annoy segments of their own population they lie by blaming it on outsiders.

 

That article is reading a lot into those words. I listened to the whole thing and, while I admit it doesn't make Walker look good, I didn't take those words to mean anything like that. More like, 'He's not a conservative, so you talking to him probably won't help matters any. He's just a down-to-earth, pragmatic guy with liberal beliefs, not one of the liberal loons like the rest of them.'

I had noticed that, and it surprised me. I'd rather see a ban on wage negotiations (which his bill still allows), than on workplace conditions. Those are the one area where I think even public sector workers should absolutely have the right to collectively bargain on (again, provided it isn't abusive, but that's less likely to be).

pplr, the unions protest against the entire idea of performance measurements for teachers. That's what I object to. The occasional individual that needs to be fired not being so is sad, but acceptable. That kind of thing happens even without unions. It's when the unions institutionalize a whole system of it that I have a problem.

 

Actually, how is a union legally different from any other public organization that aims to represent a group and collects funds to do so?

 

They donate to Democrats. Except those that give to Republicans (as police, firemen unions tend to in Wisconsin). In contrast to the former, the latter are also not leeches.

But in particular unions are inevitably socialists. That is for instance why we had catholic unions in the Rhineland prior to 1932 and still have the Kolpingwerk. The ever astute Glenn Beck was right to warn of Social Justice being code speak for Socialism, Communism and Fascism. Indeed, the terms are practically synonymous.

NOG, you are not seriously suggesting, that public sector unions oppose performance evaluations per se. It sounds eerily like a half truth to me - yes, the unions may oppose Walker's (probably lopsided) ideas of performance evaluation, but not performance evaluations per se. There are very likely already procedures for that in place.

The point is that they under the bill very probably have been changed to the worse, for instance by allowing for subjectivity (akin to having Walker, without having to take into account trifles like the legally defined public interest, decide who to sell power plants to, and for what). Since Walker's bill already introduces for his office powers decide matters unilaterally and essentially arbitrarily, it is exceedingly unlikely that that view on executive power is an exception. Just a hunch. You may want to look into this.

 

Ragusa, I realize you're in Germany, so you may not be quite as aware of things going on in the US, but teachers' unions across the country are known for protestign against performance testing, or merit-based pay, or in-class evaluations, or anything like that. They've done it repeatedly in NY. They've done it in Chicago. They've done it in LA. They've done it in San Fransisco. They did it in D.C. until Michelle Rhee practically held them at gunpoint (and still offered a huge pay raise if you performed well) in 2008. They still protested, but they eventually agreed. School performance went up by 6-15% pretty much across the board. Still, opposition to this kind of system, as well as loyalty to the seniority system, is as much a matter of faith for the teachers' unions as tax cuts are for the Republicans and welfare programs are for the Democrats.

Actually, it seems you're wrong on that. I've seen nothing to indicate there is anything directly about the contract conditions in the bill (meaning you'll have to quote it to me if you want me to believe it's in there, especially as much as this issue has been on the news), and pay is the one area where teachers are still allowed to collectively bargain.

Actually, that may not cover firing conditions, but I'm not sure. It will definitely cover merit-based pay, the most popular kind of performance evaluation system.