The protests against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker are getting ugly. Fox's Megan Kelly reported today that Walker and his family are receiving threats and protestors are showing up in front of the homes of lawmakers. Typical union thuggery. Eight school districts have been shut down due to teachers calling in sick-then heading for the state capitol in Madison to protest.
None of which discourages President Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan from speaking out in support of the deadbeat teachers and their union goons.
In my humble view, these teachers should be fired. In effect, those who call in sick fraudulently then head for the protest rallies are stealing form the public. I would also like to know if the tax-payers of Wisconsin are paying for their Democratic lawmakers to hide out in a Chicago hotel so as to avoid their duties as legislators.
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I am proud to number, among the Democrats who have courageously called Scott Walker by denying him a quorum in the legislature, those who represent me in the assembly and state senate. They are doing what we elected them to do.
Scott Walker declared class war -- which was invented by the elite, not by the working class -- and he's getting exactly what he asked for.
Most students are cheering their teachers on. Walker got elected with a low voter turnout because he has a cute face, some facile slogans backed up by no substance, and, most important, because the Democrats were burdened by their usual infatuation with "name recognition" when voters indeed wanted a fresh face. They're a bunch of damn cowards, but there is a new generation that seems to have some spine. Watch for more getting elected in the next two to four years.
Like I said before -- time to "walk like an Egyptian."
Milwaukee Common Council President Willie L. Hines, Jr., and Alderman Robert Bauman today released a statement criticizing the State’s Budget Repair Bill for its political pandering and significant policy inconsistencies.
“Governor Walker and the Republican-led State Legislature profess to spearheading a reform agenda that will restore fiscal sanity to Wisconsin,” said President Hines. “However, the largest portion of every municipal budget – close to 70 percent for the City of Milwaukee – is exempt from these reforms. In order to have integrity and truly be responsible to taxpayers, the State Legislature must not create a caste system that favors particular unions over others, based on politics. Everyone should be at the table to solve these financial shortfalls.”
The two aldermen also took issue with the draconian proposal to entirely do away with collective bargaining and eliminate any safeguards to ensure worker’s rights.
“It’s one thing to ask government workers, including teachers, to make economic concessions at the bargaining table – it’s another thing to do away with the bargaining table completely,” said Alderman Bauman. “Many workers have already made economic concessions and are willing to make more, but they must retain their basic right to organize.”
Siarlys,
As a former federal employee I believe that govt workers should not belong to unions.
Clear enough?
I am in the market for a teaching job. I prefer the middle school level. Texas is cutting the budget and it will not bode well for the kids, but I am willing to move to Wisconsin to work. Well probably not. My wife might have something to say about that. I have found Wisconsin to be pretty, very clean, and pleasant in the summer. Not interested in the winter though. One thing; I have always been a fan of the fairer sex and the women in Texas and the south in general are very nice to look at. Not so much in Wisconsin I have noticed. Don't know why that may be actually, but I stand by my statement.
On a serious note. It does not appear to me that the state is really asking all that much from the teachers. I don't believe I have heard about asking them to take a fifty percent cut in pay or anything so drastic. Here in Texas teachers are getting laid off and it will actually have a detrimental effect on the quality of education. Not that it is any great shakes anyway.
And another thing. In Texas there is no need to join the Teacher Union." It appears to have no real effect on teacher salary, classroom management, etc. etc. The only thing going for it that I can see is that if one is a member, pays their dues, then they have access to an attorney should it become necessary. A school district will drop a teacher in the grease over the slightest problem or allegation.
The only thing going for it that I can see is that if one is a member, pays their dues, then they have access to an attorney should it become necessary.
Trust me, BC, with some of these parents that we have, it definitely becomes necessary!
Nice to hear you're looking to be a teacher - welcome to the club!
It comes down to this. When you have public sector unions, you have unions negotiating with legisltors for increased benefits and salaries. The trade-off is votes. The money involved is that of the tax-payers. The inevitable result is corruption. All you have to do is look at California.
Siarlys - "Time to walk like an Egyptian?" Funny. I don't think the two protests can be compared. While, as I have previously stated, Egyptian "freedom" is of no concern of mine and in fact I believe their "freedom" will prove to be the spark that sets the region in flames, to compare a bit of whining in Wisconsin to complete upheaval which may eventually cost American lives (and further damage our economy), is a bit strange. Don't you think? Of course our president did say something about "taking a lesson from the Egyptians" or a least something similar. Did he not? Not the sharpest tool this Obama. Tool perhaps but just not a sharp one.
As one Washington paper put it
"In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful. But there's no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions' target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer.
At bottom, this is the unions versus the people.
For much of the Left, though, this about protecting the power of labor. Again, this ignores the fundamental difference between public-sector unions and private-sector unions. Even Franklin Roosevelt said, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."
As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, campaign contributions by government-sector unions, collected through mandatory dues, help elect the public officials who are then supposed to negotiate with them: "The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table."
With this kind of leverage, it's no wonder that unions are thriving in the public sector -- only 6.9 percent of private-sector workers are unionized while 36.2 of government workers are. Moreover, as conservatives have long argued, when unions overreach in the private sector, they drive their employers out of business, and so unions only flourish under those employers -- governments -- that can't go out of business.
While governments won't go out of business, they are going broke. The electorate apparently now has an appetite for austerity, as evidenced by the Tea Party's success, Chris Christie's election in New Jersey, and Walker's election in Wisconsin."
I made the same point but not as well.
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Your personal opinion has never been in doubt Gary. Like your liberal California neighbors, you see everything going on across the country as an expression of California's home grown problems. We don't have anything like your budget deficit, nor your kind of legislative gridlock.
Miggie, the union members ARE some of the people. Not all, but some. It's not like "taxpayers" live on one planet, and "public employees" live on another. We all vote. We all pay taxes. Public employees are no more entitled than well connected businesses to extra lard at the expense of the general public. Likewise, the general public are not entitled to cheap labor from public employees on the ground that it will "save taxpayers money."
What EVERYONE needs to get a grip on is, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Walker, like most Republicans, is offering free lunch just as surely as the tired old Democratic committee chairs. They just offer a different menu, and hide the prices at different ways.
Does the public want GERBILWIDGETPRESERVATION? If so, pay the people decently necessary to staff the program. If not, cut the program. If we want it and don't have the money to pay for it, raise taxes. If its not worth raising taxes, cut the program. A little honest would go a long way, because NOBODY is providing it.
Cabbie, you seem to have missed the entire point. Nobody is crowding the state capitol to protest any level of wage or benefit cuts or share of cost. They are stopping complete roll back of a collective bargaining law passed in 1969. Walker is an autocrat, not an innovator.
It is simplistic to note that the teachers in the union live among us. Of course they do. But the problem is that they have acquired a flaw in the democratic process and they have exploited it.
The teachers pay dues into the teachers unions which, in turn, pay politicians who need the money to finance their political campaigns and careers. Once the politicians are elected or re-elected to their offices they repay those who have helped them, especially when the time comes to negotiate teachers' contracts. The unions are negotiating with their paid representatives!. Of course they are going to obtain fantastic contracts because the tax paying contains only a tiny subset of teachers in the tax paying base.
If the negotiations were between a union and a business and the union negotiated too sweet a deal, the whole company would go bankrupt. (Auto industry) Only government employees can kill the golden goose because the government won't go broke (yet).
There should be no unions in the public sector especially for this reason.
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Let me be quick to point out the problem on the other side ... big corporations giving perks and jobs to legislators after their public service. It is a problem, but a separate and different problem. The corporations give inducements, they don't have a stranglehold on the politician whose primary problem is financing his next political campaign.
There should be strongly enforced regulation that prohibits politicians for going to work for companies they were involved with or regulating when in office. There should be investigations and penalties into any such arrangements.
While favorable legislation may the same outcome, there is quite a bit of difference in the two situations.
Corruption and favoritism are hard to fight but it can be done. However, a flaw in the democratic system with unionized public servants will never be fixed as it stands.
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Miggie, what you describe is called Democracy in action. If it is so overwhelmingly effective, as you suggest, how did Scott Walker and his minions get control of state government in the first place. Oh, I guess there must be other forces collecting money and funneling it to their favorite politicians too. Walker is in the back pocket of the concrete and highway construction industry. That's why he opposed a rail link between the state's two largest cities.
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