National conservatives and Wisconsin Republicans have settled on a new talking point that they’re flogging relentlessly in the recall wars: Scott Walker’s proposal to bust public employee unions is already a success. Mere days after it became law.
In making this claim, it seems that Walker and conservative pundits are singing from the same sheet music. Walker made it on Face the Nation this Sunday; Rush Limbaugh has pushed it on his show; and Wisconsin GOP’ers facing recall campaigns are hammering away at it on the stump and in local media.
The notion that they’re pushing, however, is laughably bogus.
The basic claim focuses on a single school district out of hundreds — the Kaukauna School District, near Appleton, Wisconsin. After Scott Walker’s law went into effect last week, school officials announced new policies that they say will turn a deficit of $400,000 into a surplus of $1.5 million. Conservatives are claiming that this is because of Walker’s reforms to collective bargaining rules — the savings are the result, they say, of the fact that teachers and other school staff will pay more in health care costs and pension costs.
On Face the Nation this weekend, Walker amplified this claim, pointing to this specific school district as proof that his reforms had given schools and local governments the “tools” they need to turn their budgets around. “Those are the things we promised,” Walker exulted.
Limbaugh has also pushed this claim hard, arguing on his show recently that this proved Walker’s critics wrong. “Remember all of those fights, all of those protests, and all the bickering, and all the caterwauling, and all the complaining from these public employees in Wisconsin about taking their collective bargaining rights away?” Rush said. “That law goes into effect and immediately turns a $400,000 budget deficit into a one-and-a-half-million-dollar surplus in one school district.”
But here’s the thing: The collective bargaining ban, in and of itself, was not responsible for achieving these savings and this surplus. As the Appleton Post Crescent reports, the teachers union had already offered up financial concessions that would have produced almost identical savings and an almost identical surplus.
What’s more, the use of this one district to declare Walker’s policies a success is almost comical in its cherry-picking. There are 424 school districts in Wisconsin, and as the AP recently noted, Walker’s policies mean draconian budget cuts to 410 of them, with labor officials and school districts predicting increased class sizes and layoffs.
Walker’s premature declaration of victory — and the right wing echo chamber’s flacking of it — could look awfully silly when the full bill for his policies really comes due. And the notion that this one school district’s fiscal success is in any way a referendum on the most controversial aspect of Walker’s union busting proposal is laughable. This fight has never been about public employees’ unwillingness to make fiscal concessions — and always about stripping them of their rights.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, July 6, 2011
July 7, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Democracy, Economy, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Health Care Costs, Ideologues, Ideology, Labor, Lawmakers, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Press, Public Employees, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Appleton WI, Kaukauna School District, Pensions, Teachers, Wisconsin Recall |
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A telephone help line service for the elderly will not be ringing today in Minnesota.
Blind residents reliant on state funding for reading services will remain in the dark for as long as the government’s lights are turned off. Poor families who receive subsidies for childcare are on their own. The St. Louis Park Emergency Program’s food shelf will have bare pickings for those who depend on the program for sustenance. The Community
Action Center of Northfield will likely be forced to close down its homeless shelter without the state funding upon which it relies to house the homeless.
And yes, 23,000 state workers will be trying to figure out how to care for their families without a paycheck for the duration along with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 construction workers who will be laid off as the state shuts down dozens of road and highway projects.
These are but a few of the consequences of the shutdown of Minnesota’s government.
At issue is how to close a $5 billion deficit in the state left by the previous Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat, had tried to bargain his way toward an agreement by offering up massive cuts in state services. In return, he asked the Republicans to agree to a tax increase for the wealthier citizens of the state to make up the remainder of the funding required to close most of the gap in the budget.
But the Republicans held firm on taxes – even when Dayton made his final offer that would have placed an additional 3% tax on only those Minnesotans earning over $1 million a year, a burden that would have been placed on just .03% of all Minnesotans.
It’s not so much that the state’s GOP leaders had a violent, allergic reaction to those earning seven figures a year having to pay a few percentage points more in taxes. What appears to have ended negotiations were the
Republican demands that Governor Dayton agree to their social agenda issues, including Voter ID legislation and abortion restrictions, as the price for the Republicans allowing the very wealthy to pay a little more.
When the Governor refused to swallow the notion that the conservative social agenda should be used as a tool to resolve budgetary issues, the talks broke down and the lights at the statehouse were turned off.
So, you might wonder, how did the Minnesota GOP suggest that the gap in the finances be met even as they seemed to realize that there was little left for the Governor to offer on the cutting side of the ledger?
You won’t believe it.
The Republicans actually proposed creating more debt to close the gap.
The GOP proposed delaying another $700 million in payments owed to schools, which would add to the more than $1 billion the state already owes K-12 schools.
Republicans also offered to issue “tobacco bonds” of an unspecified amount to cover any remaining budget gap. Sources said Dayton considered the offer, but he criticized it as unwise borrowing late Thursday. Via The Star Tribune
I guess a Republican has to do what a Republican has to do when it comes to protecting the wealthiest in the state from paying a higher tax rate- even if it means creating more debt despite a GOP platform that, allegedly, abhors debt.
If you find the lessons of Minnesota disturbing, get used to it.
What you are seeing is simply the national debate playing out on a smaller stage. I suppose this is what Republicans mean when they suggest using the states as laboratories for what will and won’t work on the national level.
You can bet that every political player on the national stage will be watching to see how the Minnesota public reacts to their situation along with which party gets the lion’s share of the blame for bringing this blight upon their land.
If Governor Dayton caves and simply accepts the GOP budget, we can expect that our Congressional Republicans would take great heart in such an occurrence and be emboldened to stick with the plan.
If the GOP legislators begin to fear that their jobs may be in jeopardy as punishment for shutting down the state in order to protect a little more than 7,000 Minnesotans earning at least a million bucks a year, that too will be noticed.
Watch the polls in Minnesota over the next week or two. They may tell you everything you need to know about what is likely to happen as we move towards resolving the debt ceiling debate.
By: Rick Ungar, The Policy Page, Forbes, Junly 1, 2011
July 3, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Conservatives, Deficits, Democracy, Economy, GOP, Government, Government Shut Down, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Lawmakers, Middle Class, Politics, Public, Public Employees, Republicans, Right Wing, Seniors, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wealthy | Child Services, Disabled, Elderly, Gov Mark Dayton, Minnesota, Minnesota Government Shutdown, Politicians, Public Services, State Budgets, Voter ID |
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On the same day that Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-public employee law takes effect in Wisconsin, public workers in Ohio can celebrate a victory in the battle for democracy.
We Are Ohio, the group leading the effort to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 5, the anti-collective bargaining bill, delivered a record number of nearly 1.3 million signatures to the Ohio Secretary of State today, backed by a “Million Signature March” parade of more than 6,000 people, retired fire trucks, motorcycles, a drum line and bagpipes.
“This is the people’s parade,” said We Are Ohio spokesperson Melissa Fazekas in a news conference after the parade. “You are truly one in a million.”
Ohio’s Veto Referendum
Both Ohio and Wisconsin have had union-busting legislation forced on them by Governors John Kasich and Scott Walker in the name of fiscal austerity, and both states saw massive protests in response to the attacks on workers’ rights and public services. The electoral methods of recourse, however, differ between the states.
Ohio is one of 21 states that allow for veto referendums. A veto referendum is a unique mechanism that allows a new law to be placed on a ballot for voters to either ratify or reject if enough signatures are collected within the statutory timeframe.
About 231,000 valid signatures are required to put the collective bargaining law on the November ballot as a referendum. The 1,298,301 signatures were delivered in 1,502 boxes carried by a 48-foot semi-truck. The Ohio Secretary of State’s office must now sort the signatures by county, count them and distribute them to county boards of elections for validation.
According to the Toledo Blade, “Just the filing of the petitions Wednesday will keep Senate Bill 5 from taking effect on Friday as scheduled. If at least 231,149 of the signatures are determined to be valid, the law will remain on hold until the results of the election are known. If voters reject the law, it will never take effect.”
Wisconsin’s Recall Elections
In Wisconsin, six Republican state senators face recall elections over their vote to abolish public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Three Democratic state senators have also been targeted for recall, in response to their decision to leave the state during the battle that ensued over the controversial legislation. Primary elections for the recalls will take place July 12 for the Republicans and July 19 for the Democrats, with general elections following in August. If the Democrats hold onto their seats and three of the six Republicans are recalled, the state Senate will flip to a Democratic majority, loosening the Republican stronghold on the state.
While papers cannot be filed to recall Walker until January 2012, United Wisconsin, the grassroots organization behind the gubernatorial recall movement in Wisconsin currently lists 189,321 pledges for recall. To prompt a recall election, 540,206 signatures would be required.
“What we saw today in Ohio was a response of millions of people saying ‘no’ to Gov. Kasich’s agenda and standing up for bargaining rights and workers’ rights, because we don’t have the ability to remove him,” said Kris Harsh, spokesperson for Stand Up for Ohio.
Both Mechanisms from the Progressive Era
Ohio does not have a recall provision, thus the referendum drive. But both referendums and recalls are progressive tools that date back to the early 1900s. According to the Ohio Historical Society, “Progressives argued that the referendum made the American political system more democratic.” Referendums were approved as an amendment to the Ohio Constitution in 1912, and the Wisconsin Constitution was amended to allow for the recall of elected officials just one year after Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette’s death, in 1926.
La Follette fought for progressive ideals — such as recalls and open primaries — to empower average people at a time when corporate bosses ruled the political scene. La Follette’s fight was against railroad barons and agricultural monopolies, while Ohio battled the Standard Oil Trust.
The overwhelming outpouring of people standing up for their rights and for their communities in Wisconsin and Ohio today indicate that the progressive tools given to Americans by fighters like La Follette are just as relevant and necessary now as they were more than 100 years ago.
By: Jessica Opoien, Center for Media and Democracy, June 29, 2011
June 30, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Constitution, Democracy, GOP, Gov John Kasich, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Ideologues, Middle Class, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions | Anti-Union, Melissa Fazekas, Million Signature March, Ohio, Open Primaries, Progressives, Protests, Public Workers, Recalls, Stand Up For Ohio, Veto Referendums, We Are Ohio, Wisconsin, Workers Rights |
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At first glance, this will seem deep in the weeds, but this just in from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal constitutes a real break for Wisconsin Dems in their quest to take back the state senate in the recall wars:
State elections officials Monday took a Republican Assembly lawmaker off the ballot in a recall election against a Democratic senator.
The state Government Accountability Board voted unanimously to leave Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) off the ballot in the July 19 recall election for Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) in the 30th Senate District. The board found that Nygren fell just short of collecting the 400 valid nominating signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, finding he collected only 398 valid signatures.
The accountability board had initially found that Nygren had submitted 424 qualifying signatures from voters. But after a number of signatures were challenged by Democrats, the accountability board found that 26 of those were invalid.
In a nutshell, what happened here is that one of the Dem state senators that Dems and labor thought was genuinely vulnerable to a recall challenge — Dave Hansen — will now no longer face his toughest challenger. Once it has been established through signature gathering that a recall election will be held against a sitting official, a potential challenger only requires 400 signatures to get on the ballot in the recall elections. Hansen’s leading challenger, John Nygren, fell short and was disqualified.
Hansen is now all but certain to face a challenge from a far weaker candidate — David VanderLeest. According to Journal Sentinel columnist David Bice, this latest challenger has a court record that includes disorderly conduct.
Kelly Steele, a spokesman for the labor-backed We Are Wisconsin, was thrilled about the new development, claiming that VanderLeest’s “rap sheet reads like a directory of the Wisconsin state criminal code.”
Here’s why this is important. In order to take back the state senate, Dems need to net three recall wins. Six Republicans face recall battles; while only three Dems do. But now one of the three Dems may be far safer than previously thought, which means Dems may have an easier time netting three wins — and that Wisconsin GOPers may have a tougher time hanging onto the state senate.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post Plum Line, June 27, 2011
June 27, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Conservatives, Democracy, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Ideology, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | David Vanderleest, Rep John Nygren, Sen Dave Hansen, We Are Wisconsin, Wisconsin Democrats, Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin Recall, Wisconsin Senate |
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Today, Gov. Scott Walker will sign the controversial state budget bill into law. He was originally scheduled to sign his budget at Badger Sheet Metal Works, a private business operated by a man with six felony tax convictions, in Green Bay, at 2 p.m. on Sunday. However, now that Gregory A. DeCaster’s tax troubles have been publicized, the governor’s office has announced a new locationfor the ceremony: Fox Valley Metal Tech, also in Green Bay.
“While Mr. DeCaster has served his time in jail and paid his debt to society, it is fitting that the governor would choose to sign this budget at a business owned by someone who was once convicted of the felony of tax evasion,” said Marc Norberg, a Wisconsin native and assistant to the general president of the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association.
Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said something quite similar earlier in the day when he told WisPolitics, “Green Bay, and certainly the company that we’re going to, reflects really what this budget and what Gov. Walker’s first term here is all about.”
Will the budget bill be a job creator?
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Walker chose to sign the budget at a manufacturer “to emphasize the budget’s focus on job creation.”
Gov. Scott Walker boasted that his budget proposals and other controversial policies have created 25,000 jobs in Wisconsin since the start of the year at a discussion led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday in Washington, D.C.
CMD contacted the Center for Wisconsin Strategy, a field laboratory for high-road economic development in the state for a bit of perspective on this spin.
“While we don’t think the governor has that much ability to affect overall employment … to the extent that he has, he has arguably hurt the state,” said Sam Munger, managing director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy’s Center for State Innovation.
Munger said a significant amount of provisions in the budget will end up destroying the quality of jobs that currently exist.
According to a recent Center of Wisconsin Strategy report, the 8 percent wage cut Walker issued to the 380,000 jobs under his control could cost Wisconsin about 22,000 additional jobs, “because families that rely on the income from their public-sector jobs will have less to spend in their local communities.”
“If you look all the way through the budget … his primary motivation has not been keeping jobs, it’s been remaking the state as a corporate welfare haven,” Munger said, citing Walker’s refusal of federal stimulus money and federal broadband money and his refusal to engage the state in other job-generating projects, while rewarding the wealthy and corporations with a range of tax breaks.
The budget’s cuts to municipalities will suck money out of localities, Munger said, adding that pulling money out of circulation will cost jobs in an indirect or induced way. In contrast to the rosy news coming from the Governor’s mansion, the most recent data from the Department of Workforce Development shows that unemployment increased in most Wisconsin cities in the month of May. The report shows that unemployment rates increased in 25 cities with a population of 25,000 people or more, with only Stevens Point experiencing a slight drop, from 7.9 percent to 7.8 percent.
Other budgetary measures that Munger said threaten job quality are cuts to childcare subsidies for working parents, making it more difficult to obtain unemployment insurance and rolling back child labor laws.
“Everything that he has done in the budget that related to jobs or employment has either killed jobs, destroyed the quality of jobs or been a giant giveaway to corporations,” Munger said.
By: Jessica Opoien, Opinion Writer, Center For Media and Democracy, June 26, 2011
June 26, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Jobs, Labor, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Tax Evasion, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Badger Sheet Metal Works, Center for Wisconsin Strategy, Child Subsidies, Fox Valley Metal Tech, Gregory A. DeCaster, Mike Huebsch, Municipalities, Wages, Wisconsin Budget, Wisconsin Politics |
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