Wrestlin' in Wisconsin

I think they mostly try to clarify based on facts, though, so I'll probably continue to use them as a resource for fact checking. I usually check the links they provide to back up their claims anyway. Do you think they have a political bias favoring one party over the other? I haven't seen much of that...yet.

And there is at best limited evidence that unionization played a causal role in shaping differences in test scores.

...limited evidence that unionization played a causal role in shaping differences in test scores.

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) praised the Assembly’s action in a statement. However, the Assembly Republicans’ late-night procedural shenanigans fly directly in the face of commitments Walker made on the campaign trail, where he promised to end late-night votes because “nothing good happens after midnight”:

He promised to sign legislation if elected governor that prohibits the Legislature from voting after 10 p.m. or before 9 a.m.

“I have two teenagers and I tell them that nothing good happens after midnight. That’s even more true in politics,” he said in a statement. “The people of Wisconsin deserve to know what their elected leaders are voting on.”

What I haven't been able to figure out is the simple fact that many conservatives-Republicans work for unions in this country.

What I haven't been able to figure out is the simple fact that many conservatives-Republicans work for unions in this country. Why are they silent? Are they intimidated by their own party?

In these circumstances it is easy to understand that some union members don't agree with the political views of their unions and simply go along because they have no choice in the matter. Moreover the unions are adept at using everything from gentle social pressure to outright intimidation to maintain "solidarity"

Of course, the fact that public-employee pensions didn't cause a meltdown at Lehman Brothers doesn't mean they're not stressing state budgets, and that the pensions they've been promised don't exceed what state budgets seem able to bear. But the buildup of global capital that overheated the American housing sector and got packaged into seemingly riskless financial products that then brought down Wall Street, paralyzing the economy, throwing millions out of work, and destroying the revenues from state income and sales taxes even as state residents needed more social services? The answer to that is not to end collective bargaining for (some) public employees. A plus B plus C does not equal what Gov. Scott Walker is attempting in Wisconsin.

In fact, it particularly doesn't work for what Walker is attempting in Wisconsin. The Badger State was actually in pretty good shape. It was supposed to end this budget cycle with about $120 million in the bank. Instead, it's facing a deficit. Why? I'll let the state's official fiscal scorekeeper explain (pdf):

More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).


In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

But even that's not the full story here. Public employees aren't being asked to make a one-time payment into the state's coffers. Rather, Walker is proposing to sharply curtail their right to bargain collectively. A cyclical downturn that isn't their fault, plus an unexpected reversal in Wisconsin's budget picture that wasn't their doing, is being used to permanently end their ability to sit across the table from their employer and negotiate what their health insurance should look like.

That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions, a group much-loathed by Republicans in general and by the Republican legislators who have to battle them in elections in particular. And note that not all public-employee unions are covered by Walker's proposal: the more conservative public-safety unions -- notably police and firefighters, many of whom endorsed Walker -- are exempt.

I don't think unions should be compulsory and that should along with some other changes should be looked at and changed. However, there is still no good reason to deny workers their collective bargaining rights so that they don't have a voice at the table. Furthermore, I don't see how denying collective bargaining for most government employees but keeping it for others has any effect on balancing the budget in Wisconsin when unions had nothing to do with their budget problems in the first place.

Is that your intent?

Of course all of this gives a new meaning to the "collective bargaining rights" mantra endlessly reported by union hacks. There are no such rights.

You're doing it again; your making assumptions that I never even suggested.

... we threw in with the corporate class when they pushed to eliminate borders and governments control of wealth, ...[/quote ]

This doesn't at appear to be at all compatable with

Quote:

THere is a solution, it is to empower free will and to allow individuals to control their domains. I argue else where that we need to depower government and return power to the citizens...

I infer you want more tariffs and legal restraints on the flow of capital - all to limit the outsourcing of work to cheaper climes. I suggest you study the history and real consequences of past attempts by governments to deal with external competition by such methods. The results weren't what was intended - disaster was the usual result.

I believe you need to think and study a bit more.

Very confuesd and confusing. Are you advocating the restoration of "government control of wealth"? as in

The government now is controlling wealth now so there is hardly a need to restoration the problem is that the control now being used to take wealth away from the middle class with government help and move it to the upper class.