Wisconsin Gov. Walker Threatens To Deploy National Guard Against Unions

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Aldeth

I agree with you.

A complicating factor is that state law says people have to wait until the person being recalled has been in office for at least 1 year.

Since many of the the state senators were (re)elected last year this means they are not able to be recalled yet-some of the new republican state senators that gave them a majority in that part of the legislature came from those elections.

Those state senators who were already in office at the time of last year's elections were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

So for this year recall campaigns were started against equal numbers of state senators belonging to each party.

So despite that rule which makes it harder to recall-at the moment-Republicans as a whole the unhappiness you refer to is having a greater effect.

 

Surprise, surprise. Democrats in MA vote to strip collective bargaining rights over healthcare decisions. Where's the outrage? I haven't seen much in the news cycle over it the past few days outside of a few articles here and there. Nothing like the coverage the WI incident got.

 

That's what you get for watching FOX. This story has gotten considerable play on MSNBC. But as has been pointed out, the two situations are a bit different. The one in WI is clearly crafted to break the union and that is it's major purpose.

KJ - Check about halfway through, only if you don't feel like watching the whole thing:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/42809727#42809727

 

The other major difference is in WI it was the evil GOP trying to squash the poor and the middle class. In MA it was the benevolent Dems who have the best interests of everyone in mind.

 

That was the obvious part....

 

As for those unilateral emergency powers to replace elected officials mentioned a while back ... they are now being used.

 

Please ... No, he is just withdrawing their authority and taking over their jobs, replacing them functionally. They are elected, and remain elected and in office, but they cannot do zilch since they have been made powerless.

Arguably, whether they have been replaced or just robbed of their ability to act in their elected function is a distinction without a difference.

 

Arguably? You concede too much.

 

Its been a little while since this thread was used to discuss something current but something else surprising has happened in my state.

I appears one WI State Supreme Court Justice has indicated another put her in a "chokehold" during a disagreement in her chambers.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/124605454.html

The accused Justice was Justice Prosser who recently was re-elected this year in an unexpectedly close race.

EDIT

At first no sitting Justice was talking about this then the story broke over the weekend. To which Prosser made a statement with little in the way of details claiming the accusations were false. Justice Bradley, the Justice whom was alleged to have found herself in a chokehold then made her own statement mentioning that she had asked Justice Prosser to leave her chambers and that others could spin how they wanted but that doesn't change the fact that his hands ended up around her neck.

An unnamed source defending Justice Prosser claimed that she had charged him with fists clenched however nobody as of this time has said she actually took a swing at Justice Prosser which means that the first individual to actually act physically on the other (in my suspicion) was likely Justice Prosser.

That it came out during the election that Justice Prosser sometimes has anger issues does not seem to help his case in my eyes, however just because someone may have anger issues doesn't mean he (or she) couldn't be put in a situation of having to defend himself.

So it is possible Justice Bradley is the offending party. Now, I'll be willing to change my mind if more detail come out but it appears (at least at first glance) that Justice Prosser did not act with proper conduct towards another WI Supreme Court Justice.

 

They should both be kicked out. No way for either Justice to act.

 

Rotku

Why Bradley?

If Prosser (or any other judge-including Bradley) physically did something to another judge I can understand having that judge removed.

But why remove Bradley? If she didn't take a swing at Prosser then she didn't start a fight. They both may have been upset but there isn't even an indication she was resorting to childish name calling.

If she has to resign because he did something to her is that doesn't really seem fair. At least to me.

 

Based on your comment here:

But then, in saying that, one of our Ministers broke some other MPs nose the other year (or at least took a good swing at him), in Parliament, and didn't step down. Probably got more votes because of it.

 

I agree getting into fist fights isn't proper behavior and it may be that any judge who does has to resign.

However the claim is that she charged him. If she did then why is there no claim she actually tried to punch or slap him?

I can see her walking rapidly up to him being upset if he made remark she disapproved of but, and my opinion will change if it turns out she did take a swing at him, I don't see that as automatically meaning she would try to hit him.

 

Judges are usually pretty level headed people, and women, much less women judges, usually don't get into fistfights with men in the workplace.

There is something with this campaign statement of Prosser:

What? Complement??! If that's his attitude that may be something to drive fellow judges into clenching their fists. It may have that fist clenching effect on me.

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I like it when he denies that him having been Republican speaker of the house would in any way impact his views on a given issue. No doubt. Because his brain is in his hat, changing hats changes everything. Which doesn't address matters of the heart and gut but I digress.

 

Why, I'm inclined to trust him. I'd say he has felt the same way about things even before becoming House Speaker.

 

I anchor my gut feeling on this one to the non-denouncement of the complement part.

I think it is less likely that a judge who had been active as a politician, and as speaker of the house he was an active politician in a leading role, will be a non-partisan judge. Now he may just be that epitome of neutrality, and beyond partisanship. The man may have an angelic character and I may do him wrong, but then, angelic characters don't call a fellow chief justice from the other side of the isle a "b*tch" and threaten "to destroy" her.

 

It looks like the public service unions are really gasping for air if their latest strategy is to try to bad mouth a judge. Everything I've seen over the past few months show that Walker has clearly won this fight. It even looks like the "recall" elections are actually trying to recall the Democrats who fled to Illinois rather than do their job.

This is going to be a great political experiment. I'm curious as to how this will all work out over the next couple of years. Will the government remain solvent? What will be the impact on the economy? What will be the impact on the schools?