Wisconsin Gov. Walker Threatens To Deploy National Guard Against Unions

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I just figured I'd drop by with an update.

Right now 3 of the republican state senators will keep their jobs in the near future.

2 lost to democratic challengers in recall elections.

Only 1 race has yet to be decided tonight.


Now if the republican candidate wins it I would point out that the republicans would now be within 1 state senate seat of loosing the state senate. Plus there is a *moderate* republican state senator who did not vote for the attempt at union busting bill. He could become a potential swing vote for bills in the state legislature.

And this is all within districts that republicans won in 2008 when Obama was elected to the White House.

So 2 new democratic state senators is pretty worthwhile even if it isn't the 3 needed to flip the state senate (granted it is unknown if the last state senate seat will go republican or democrat right now).

The remaining state senators become recallable next year. If they are recalled next year alongside Walker the WI state senate may flip back.

 

Wow, the unions spent $14 million to try to recall the Republicans, but failed in 4 of the 6 (per the latest poll numbers])

Now we have to wait until next week when there are recall votes on two Democrats, but no matter what it looks like the GOP will maintain control in Wisconsin. I'm guessing the longer the law stays in effect the better off the GOP will be as the state, citiies, and towns become more and more fiscally solvent.

 

Snook,

I know those against unions put out a pretty big chunk of change as well.

I live within the media area one of the recall elections took place in and pro-GOP ads were there.

And keep in mind that yesterday's elections were limited to state senate districts that voted in republicans at the same time the state voted for Obama in 2008.

If all of the state would had been allowed to have recalls there is not much of a question that the state senate would have flipped this month.

 

The law has nothing to do with being fiscally solvent and you know it doesn't. Once people lose their rights they won't notice it until it impacts them in some personal manner. Then they will be crying.

 

Sorry if I'm doing a bit too much of thread necro.

But its interesting to see where things are in my state now where 1+ million signatures were turned in to recall Walker. I'm suspect some of those signatures aren't valid but there are so many I'm pretty sure enough are.

 

If they do recall Walker (which I hope they do), I will be kind of glad that this whole fiasco played out, so people can match the extreme right wing rhetoric with what it actually is in practice. No economic rights, very little hope for a better life if you're employed and not the employer. I say "extreme" right wing even though it's become more the standard mainstream ideology simply because there are Republicans like Larry Wilkerson who do the party good and would never do such a thing.

 

I haven't posted here in a while (sorry for thread necro).

And I haven't gone back into discussions I was having because I've had other things on my mind.


But here is something that popped up.

What are any of your thoughts relating to it-this was relatively unknown video from the January before the protests started (in Feb). I have thoughts of my own (and am willing to share them) but I don't want to bias any of you. So, for the moment, what do you think?

http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/video/?bctid=1632690236001

 

And the union thugs go down in defeat. All week long the news stations have been reporting that it was going to be a squeaker (except for Fox). I guess the mainstream media has a different definition of a close race then the rest of us.

 

I live right at the border of Wisconsin and Illinois. My wife's family is mainly from Wisconsin. Seems to me, even to the local media here, it was a surprise win for Walker.

 

I'm normally all for belt tightening. Unions can sometimes go overboard. However, my question is this: Walker wants to have workers take a financial hit. Is he asking the fat cats to take a similar hit in his efforts to balance the budget? Or are the rich getting richer and the poor dying young, as my father used to say?

When Lee Iacocca took over Chrysler, he reports that he reduced his salary to $1. He made management take pay cuts, telling them that they couldn't expect the workers to take cuts without taking cuts themselves. That makes sense to me.

 

I know Dems don't believe there is such a thing as "liberal bias" in the media, but it will be really hard to convince me that this wasn't a case of reporting it closer to keep the Dems motivated and hopeful.

 

Snook,

The media here is pretty Blue, as in all other areas, so there is some validity to that remark. Though not all reporters are Blue here in the stateline area. But, has Wisconsin not been historically Blue?

 

I had thought it was mainly the unions themselves insisting that it was going to be close, which is to be expected. No one wants to admit that they're going down to defeat until they absolutely have to.

 

That's why I go to fivethirtyeight.com for most of my political forecasting. Media reports generally make predictions based on selected polling, and make no doubt that there are both liberal leaning and conservative leaning polling firms. The lead writer for fivethirtyeight is Nate Silver, and while surprises do happen, he had Walker as an 80% favorite to win last night, and has had him with the lead for a long time.

There were several reason for this, most of which stemmed from there being a whole lot of challengers in the primary. The Democratic candidates were spending every penny they could get their hands on in the primary, leaving them relatively little for the general election, and Walker had a huge fund raising advantage. Add in the incumbent advantage, and that the measure has proven fairly popular in non-union households, and it all pointed to a likely win for Walker.

It wasn't a surprise that Walker won - if anything was a surprise it was the margin of victory. Even Nate Silver wasn't expecting that big of a win.

 

That is the salient point. He isn't.

As far as businesses go, Walker is more than accommodating. The problems in Wisonsin are not unions per se but, perhaps at times, excess. In crushing the Unions proper Walker is pouring out the baby with the water if addressing excess was what he is after. But alas, he isn't.

What this is actually about is IMO destroying the classic Democratic campaigning strategies in the time after Citizens United. It is worth recalling that Wisconsin's fiscal emergency was the result of Walker generously cutting taxes, depriving the state of tax revenue, which then 'required him' to 'really tighten the belt'. He provoked the fiscal crisis deliberately, for a political end. Now, Wisconsin just cannot afford paying union wages because it isn't 'in the budget' any more. With the remaining traditional public workers unions wrecked, the Dems will lose a big chunk of their grass roots base and that will hurt the Dems in their campaigning. How ... fortuitous. That is enough to make unions a primary Republican target, coupled with the usual right wing paranoia about unions being socialists and the denial that unions in any way address legitimate grievances or interests. This is scorched earth politics.

And as a result, campaign money will come from where the money is, and that is corporations. As a result, the Dems are going to be more pro-corporation than they already are.

 

So how did Loki escape Thor at the end of the Avenger's movie and become Wisconsin's governor?

Maybe it wasn't Loki but Burke from Aliens.


Sigh..

I really wanted a better governor this summer.

BTW it isn't just that Walker wanted to cuts union workers' pay it is that many of the unions were wiling to take the cuts and he wouldn't make that deal because it was about breaking unions and not fixing the budget.

At least Wisconsin still has a governor that is #1 for something..

 

A little late, but this is what I was talking about regarding polling agencies in my last post, and why depending on the poll you refer to, you might not get a good idea of what the race actually looks like. Polls are supposed to be neutral, but the way they word the questions they can tend to get people to answer them in certain ways. This can result in a "House Effect" where certain polling firms systematically have a lean of several points to either the Republican or Democratic candidate.

As for a couple examples (and these are major polling firms), Public Policy Polling has a distinct Democratic lean. If you're looking at one of their polls, it might not be a bad idea to subtract a few points from the Democratic candidate and give it to the Republican. Conversely, Gallup is chronically off on the Republican side of things, so there you'd dock the Republican candidate a few percentage points.

Final thing to keep in mind is that the total effects are actually double what is stated. If PPP is listed as D+3, it means the Democrats score was three points too high, but it also means that the Republican score was three points too low, resulting in a net swing of six points. Needless to say, six points can make a huge difference in an election.

Full Story

 

Once you necro a thread you can't go back...

I saw this today.

 

Well since this thread is back let me point out that one of the judges in the 5-2 opinion on Act 10 pointed out in his opinion that he felt Act 10 wasn't needed and caused damage to relations within the state.

He voted with the 5 majority because he thought the legislature has the ability to change the law but noted that the claimed reason for Act 10 could easily have been dealt with in another less contentious manner. But this assumes that Act 10 was actually intended to deal with the issue Walker claimed it was.

Now of the other 4 judges that voted in the 5-2 decision guess which political party they essentially belong to.

A new twist in the 2nd John Doe investigation into Walker's campaign & a 3rd party group that seems likely to have broken the law as it coordinated with it in the recall is that if there is an appeal of the case it could end up before the WI state supreme court. Considering that most of the majority has received a large amount of money from the 3rd party group (during their respective last election or re-election) being investigated what are the odds ethics rules would indicate they should recuse themselves from the case.

Then again these are high level republicans in Wisconsin's current political situation, what are the odds they will let ethics slow them down?