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February 23, 2011 09:28 PM UTC

At Lest He's Not your Bought & Paid For Union Busting Governor

  • 32 Comments
  • by: MADCO

The link to the Buffalo Beast is not working – so read about it it on HuffPo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The R esponse is going to be along the lines of see, the governor is only saying in private what he says in public

But that’s not quite true.

In public he talks about the WI budget impact – and the unions have already agreed to the wage and benefit concessions, so now it’s just about ending collective bargaining.

In public he doesn’t talk about paid protestors or hired “troublemakers.”

In public he doesn’t talk about stopping the directly deposited paychecks of government employees.

In public he doesn’t acknowledge that Breitbart on the scene is a good thing.

In public he doesn’t talk about Wisconsin just being the first step in a succesion of states’ busting unions.  

In public he doesn’t talk about Reagan busting unions being the defining moment of his life.

In public he says he’s not going to talk to anyone.

Comments

32 thoughts on “At Lest He’s Not your Bought & Paid For Union Busting Governor

    1. a) If the glove fits, smell it.

      b) It’s not my word. And if I could have edited it out, I would have. It’s also not the start.

      c) What did I ever do to you?

      4) What no R eply?

      As for substance – is it true that Wisconsin had a budget surplus until the governor cut corporate taxes and is only now able to use the resulting deficit as an excuse to bust unions?

      As for civility – I’m not convinced it helps.

      But i’ve never sworn at you.  I’m not convinced you don’t owe me money (see HMan, and GOPWarrior) but I’ve let it go.

      1. PolitiFact says that the surplus claim, which we as progressives have been using widely, is misleading (they say outright false).  The numbers we’re using to support that claim, from the Wisconsin guy in charge of budget estimates there, exclude a number of expenses because the WI Legislature hasn’t yet done something about them – but they will be spent (think Giardino lawsuit outlays type things).

        But they rate Gov. Walker’s claim that he’s doing it to save the state finances as “Pants on Fire!”, mostly because the unions have already stated their acceptance of the budget-affecting changes Walker proposed (increased co-pays into health care and pensions).

        This is about union busting, plain and simple.

        1. Rachel Maddow show, isn’t that there already was a surplus but that they were on track for a surplus, which I take to mean 1) reaching a surplus was within the realm of possibility and therefore the sky wasn’t falling until 2) Walker largely created the Chicken Little level desperation deficit crisis by handing out $140 million in tax cuts for business.

          And, as you point out, surplus or no, since the Unions have already stated their readiness to give in on budget affecting changes, the insistence that collective bargaining has got to go, that there can be no negotiation, along with several other non-budget related draconian measures proves that…

          This is about union busting, plain and simple.

           

          1. And that, according to the quotes on PolitiFact’s site, is what Maddow and others claimed.

            In any event, their budget problems were not severe or long-term by comparison to ours or to most other states for that matter.  In the hundreds of millions range worst case, not the billions like most states.

            Walker’s corporate tax breaks and purposeless re-allocation of money to funds that didn’t need it really exacerbated the state’s budget problems over the next couple of years.

            Which, in case someone hasn’t figured it out yet, means that…

            This is about union busting, plain and simple.

            Well, that, and about corporate cronyism.

            1. “on track for” and “projected” being pretty close.  I’m pleased that we all care about accuracy.  Wish it wasn’t so much easier to get people worked up by mindlessly repeating unchecked crap like the Tea Partiers do.

  1. It helps to read the HuffPost first which I have to admit I didn’t do.  Went to the first 10 min. video and had to backtrack.  My mistake.  

    Question: Doesn’t Koch have a legal/impersonation lawsuit on this one? Federal crime?  This brings up any number of questions including are some of the D’s ready to go back as Walker says?

    1. Don’t know answers to either.

      I was surpised that they guy got to Walker without being vetted better.

      I’m not sure I see the federal crime  – unless the false impersonation thing is a thing.

      Walker wouldn’t need the D’s to return if they would take the collective bargaining thing out of the budget bill.  The quorum required is higher  for the budget.  SInce the D’s have already agreed to the wage and benefit concessions, and the collective bargaining restriction  has no immediate fiscal impact, the only reason to keep fighting is the politics and the drama.

      Either way, it’s going to pass eventually as long as Walker holds out.

      1. The budget bill in WI is bad for more reasons than just the union busting.

        It also empowers the governor/executive branch with the ability to sell any or all government property without legislative oversight, with or without a bid.  It also allows him to contract out current state services to private contractors without any oversight or bidding process.

        So here’s to hoping that the Wisconsin 14 don’t return until the bill is actually fixed from “I’m a robber baron!” to “this is a thoughtful conservative budget”.

      2. and to keep this on the front burner. If the protestors had gone home after the first few days and the Ds hadn’t fled this wouldn’t still be getting daily coverage, support protests wouldn’t have been scheduled in other states for more local coverage.  This is far from pointless.  The longer they keep this drama going, the more chance for the truth about what is at stake here and what Walker and fellow R Governors and the Koch brothers are really trying to do to make a dent.

        People in the Arab world are risking their lives to keep the pressure on. We here risk nothing anywhere close by showing up at protests but I’m still very grateful to pleasantly surprised by the sustained effort by the protestors and Dem legislators of Wisconsin for keeping this front and center.  

            1. is for Wisconsin to be a Koch corporation with the apparently dim but eager to please Walker as their front man in the guise of a tin pot dictator but on a short Koch leash.  

              As we heard on the incredible but genuine audio of Walker’s long wet kiss up to the phony Koch, the hope is for this type of corporate owned dictatorship to spread to every state, ending for good all of that inconvenient of the people, by the people, for the people nonsense. The elite like their middle class (hey,they still need some professionals and high class service providers to serve their needs) small and completely dependent on the ruling class with a big fat majority of working poor for cheap, ignorant labor, too busy trying to survive to make much trouble for them. At least until things explode, as they always eventually do in such societies.

              In other words, what they really want is a nice Banana Republic on steroids to call their own.  Is that so wrong? Why should two bit third world dictators have all the fun?  

    2. then should we arrest the folks who impersonated pimps at the ACORN offices?  I doubt Koch will do anything because it would expose his sleazy operations that he is funding in Wisconsin.

      The real story here is that this whore of a governor refuses to talk to the state opposition leadership about a reasonable compromise but will grab the phone a heart beat without any vetting to talk to a rich conservative billionaire from Kansas about how his entire strategy is about busting the unions.

      This man is a Dan Maes who made through the General.  This is the kind of leadership we would have had in this state.  Put Republicans in charge and they immediately show that they are the liars who refuse to deal in good faith.

      1. then every pro-life advocate who sat on their couches and celebrated when cruise missiles slammed into Baghdad should be arrested for pretending to care about human life.

    3. or gained anything I have doubts it’s illegal. Koch is certainly out something, but it’s not exactly tangible.

      Just watching the rest of the events, so I can’t do anything with the last bit. I only kind of know this because of an odd identity theft incident.

    4. on trying to turn the situation so that it is somehow not the fault of conservatives that they turn out to be liars and bad faith negotiators.

      “Don’t pay any attention on the governors lips pressed against the buttocks of the rich.  It is his opposition that is criminal in exposing the servile behavior of this “public” servant.

      Of course she did support someone who lost an election to Dan Maes.  Seriously

        1. OK.  I apologize.

          Ellie never ever tries to deflect attention away from conservative failings like plagiarism or negotiating in bad faith.

          Let’s stay focused on how mean those liberals are for entrapping a lackey for the rich into divulging his back stabbing strategies.  It’s those damn liberals fault.

    5. I’ll bet this SCOTUS could find somewhere that the founders would not have approved of some commoner impersonating a billionaire.  (Too bad for Koch that this didn’t happen in Colorado — Suthers would find a reason to get after it.)

      I suppose that if the law doesn’t already exist in Wisconsin that Walker and his goons can get it passed while the Dems are in exile.  Hell, they could probably get it made retroactive.

  2. but heard part of this when I started the car this morning.  Probably will be covered by both Ed and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this evening and picked up widely from there.  

    Let’s see:  Walker inherits a projected surplus so he creates a budget deficit with tax cuts for business the state can’t afford, then tries to solve the created “crisis” by busting only those public worker unions whose members mainly vote D while giving police, firefighters and state troopers unions, whose members mainly vote R, a pass. Now this.  

    The Koch brothers’ poodle is so excited to report how he’s doing their bidding, scheming to destroy the opposition’s only competitive source of funding, I bet the rug in the Governor’s office needs a cleaning with pet stain remover.  

  3. any more than does the US House GOP budget bill:

    WASHINGTON — Budget referees and transportation officials in Wisconsin have informed Gov. Scott Walker (R) that if he were to pass his controversial anti-union legislation into law, he could be forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in federal funds for transportation.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

    1. More importantly, why did some Democratic State House members propose an amendment to exempt the transit workers so they wouldn’t lose the money?  Why couldn’t they have waited until some Republican who cared about the state’s budget proposed the amendment?

      Nevermind – I think I just answered my own question…

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