Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appeared Friday on Fox News, and explained to Neil Cavuto that a judge’s ruling Thursday that struck down his controversial anti-public employee union law, based on a procedure involved in passing it, would not be a major issue — that the state is appealing the decision, and in any case they could simply re-pass the same law without the procedural defect.
“Governor, what do you do now?” asked Cavuto.
“Well, for us, the clear thing that was — we found out of that ruling is not that the law was not valid, but that the process was used, at least according to the circuit court, was not correct,” said Walker.
“So, either next week when the Supreme Court starts to hear this case, either by the time they’re done in June, or ultimately by the end of June, when we have to have the legislature passing a state budget — one way or the other, either through the Supreme Court or the legislature, these reforms will be put into place, and we’ll ultimately be able to protect middle-class jobs and middle-class taxpayers here in the state of Wisconsin.”
Walker also explained to Cavuto: “the process was not the vote itself, it was the timing of the vote, and how far in advance notice was given. They could take this same vote again, as part of the state budget process, or in separate legislation, and still have the same outcome.”
On Thursday, Dane County (Madison) Judge Maryann Sumi — who had previously blocked Wisconsin’s controversial anti-union law from taking effect, pending litigation — officially ruled that the manner in which the bill was passed violated the state’s Open Meetings law, and that the law itself is therefore not valid.
The matter revolves around a key conference committee used to advance the bill — and to get around the state Senate Dems’ walkout from the state — and whether it violated the state’s Open-Meetings law by failing to give enough prior notice. Therefore, it is ruling on procedural grounds, rather than on the substance of the bill itself, which was not addressed. And as such, it would be possible to pass the bill again, giving full notice for all the meetings involved.
Two months ago, Sumi blocked the law on these procedural grounds, issuing a temporary restraining order on the grounds the plaintiff, the Dane County District Attorney, had a likelihood of success in his complaint.
The Walker administration then made multiple attempts to disregard the ruling and implement the law anyway, before ultimately backing down in the face of repeated orders.
By: Eric Kleefeld, Talking Points Memo, May 27, 2011
May 28, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Democracy, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Ideology, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Anti-Union, Class Warfare, Dane County, Judge MaryAnn Sumi, Madison, Neil Cavuto, Open Meetings Law, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Legislature, Wisconsin Senate, Wisconsin Supreme Court |
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The current assault on collective-bargaining rights shows that ideology and smash-mouth politics can triumph over economic reality.
Unions did not cause our economic mess: Greedy bankers drove the financial system to the brink of collapse. Moreover, public workers’ desire for decent wages and benefits is not busting state budgets: The same recession is starving states of essential revenue.
Destroying unions will do nothing to create more jobs or balance budgets, but it will further impoverish millions of American workers.
Yet, with the national union membership rate barely more than 10 percent, why should the rest of the work force care about unions? There are three reasons everyone who works for a living should want to rebuild the American labor movement.
First, if you want a job with a living wage and decent benefits, then you want a strong labor movement. When unions decline, many workers — whether organized or not — see a drop in their standard of living. And driving down wages does not help the American economy, which depends on strong consumer spending.
Second, if you like spending time on the weekends with your friends and family, then you want a strong labor movement. Unions struggled for many decades to get laws mandating an eight-hour day, a minimum wage and a ban on child labor. Given what is happening across the country today, with basic rights being heaved out the window, working people need unions to preserve the gains they have made.
Finally, if you believe in a healthy democracy, then you want a strong labor movement. Many unions work for more than just good wages and benefits; organized labor has also campaigned for access to affordable health care and for protecting the rights of immigrant workers.
So regardless of whether you belong to a union, every working American should be worried about the current open season on workers’ rights.
If the labor movement is weakened further, we will lose one of the last bulwarks against unbridled corporate greed and one of the last champions for dignity at work and a decent standard of living.
By: David Zonderman, CommonDreams.org, Originally published in The Providence Journal, May 26, 2011
May 27, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Banks, Collective Bargaining, Democracy, Economic Recovery, Economy, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Health Care, Ideologues, Ideology, Immigrants, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Lawmakers, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions | Benefits, Minimum Wage, Politicians, Public Workers, Wages, Workers, Workers Rights |
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The Wisconsin board that oversees elections rejected most challenges Monday to a recall effort targeting three Republican state senators, clearing the way for a July 12 election.
The Government Accountability Board rejected the challenges made to recall petitions targeting Republican Sens. Dan Kapanke of La Crosse, Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac and Luther Olsen of Ripon.
They are among nine lawmakers, six Republicans and three Democrats, targeted for recalls for their positions on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal taking away collective bargaining rights from most state workers.
Democrats are pushing the recalls as a way to gain majority control of the Senate, which they lost in the fall 2010 election. Democrats need to pick up three seats to gain a majority.
Republicans currently control both houses of the Legislature, providing GOP Gov. Scott Walker a clear path to passing his legislative agenda.
It was passage of Walker’s collective bargaining proposal that motivated all nine recalls. Republicans were targeted for supporting the bill while the Democrats were targeted for leaving the state for three weeks in an ultimately vain attempt to block passage of the bill.
The law has not taken effect pending a legal challenge.
State lawmakers are considering passing the law again, as part of the state budget in June, if the courts have not resolved the issue by then.
Most of the recall elections are likely to take place July 12, unless delayed by a court challenge. If a primary is necessary, that would occur July 12 with the general election likely Aug. 9.
The other Republican lawmakers facing recall elections are Sens. Robert Cowles of Allouez, Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls and Alberta Darling of River Hills. Democrats facing recalls are Sens. Dave Hansen of Green Bay, Robert Wirch of Pleasant Prairie and Jim Holperin of Conover.
The board plans to evaluate the challenges to those six recall petitions at its May 31 meeting, and likely would certify all the petitions that same week.
By: Jason Smathers, Associated Press, May 23, 2011
May 23, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Democracy, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Lawmakers, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Dan Kapanke, Government Accountability Board, Luther Olsen, Madison, Randy Hopper, Recall Petitions, Wisconsin Elections, Wisconsin Legistature, Wisconsin Recall, Wisconsin Senate, Wisconsin Unions |
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Mitt Romney’s defense of the Massachusetts health care reforms was politically self-serving. It was also true.
Despite all of the bashing by conservative commentators and politicians — and the predictions of doom for national health care reform — the program he signed into law as governor has been a success. The real lesson from Massachusetts is that health care reform can work, and the national law should work as well or even better.
Like the federal reform law, Massachusetts’s plan required people to buy insurance and employers to offer it or pay a fee. It expanded Medicaid for the poor and set up insurance exchanges where people could buy individual policies, with subsidies for those with modest incomes.
Since reform was enacted, the state has achieved its goal of providing near-universal coverage: 98 percent of all residents were insured last year. That has come with minimal fiscal strain. The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a nonpartisan fiscal monitoring group, estimated that the reforms cost the state $350 million in fiscal year 2010, a little more than 1 percent of the state budget.
Other significant accomplishments:
The percentage of employers offering insurance has increased, probably because more workers are demanding coverage and businesses are required to offer it.
The state has used managed-care plans to hold down the costs of subsidies: per capita payments for low-income enrollees rose an average of 5 percent a year over the first four years, well below recent 7 percent annual increases in per capita health care spending in Massachusetts. The payments are unlikely to rise at all in the current year, in large part because of a competitive bidding process and pressure from the officials supervising it.
The average premiums paid by individuals who purchase unsubsidized insurance have dropped substantially, 20 percent to 40 percent by some estimates, mostly because reform has brought in younger and healthier people to offset the cost of covering the older and sicker.
Residents of Massachusetts have clearly chosen to tune out the national chatter and look at their own experience. Most polls show that the state reforms are strongly supported by the public, business leaders and doctors, often by 60 percent or more.
There are still real problems that need to be solved. Small businesses are complaining that their premiums are rising faster than before, although how much of that is because of the reform law is not clear.
Insuring more people was expected to reduce the use of emergency rooms for routine care but has not done so to any significant degree. There is no evidence to support critics’ claims that the addition of 400,000 people to the insurance rolls is the cause of long waits to see a doctor.
What reform has not done is slow the rise in health care costs. Massachusetts put off addressing that until it had achieved universal coverage. No one should minimize the challenge, but serious efforts are now being weighed.
Gov. Deval Patrick has submitted a bill to the Legislature that would enhance the state’s powers to reject premium increases, allow the state to limit what hospitals and other providers can be paid by insurers, and promote alternatives to costly fee-for-service medicine. The governor’s goal is to make efficient integrated care organizations the predominant health care provider by 2015.
The national reform law has provisions designed to reduce spending in Medicare and Medicaid and, through force of example, the rest of the health care system. Those efforts will barely get started by the time Massachusetts hopes to have transformed its entire system. Washington and other states will need to keep a close watch.
By: Editorial, The New York Times, May 20, 2011
May 22, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Affordable Care Act, Conservatives, Consumers, GOP, Governors, Health Care, Health Care Costs, Health Reform, Individual Mandate, Medicaid, Medicare, Mitt Romney, Politics, Public, Republicans, State Legislatures, States, Under Insured, Uninsured | Fee for Service, Health Insurance, Health Insurance Premiums, Massachusetts, Small Businesses |
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Is this really what Wisconsin voters had in mind last yaer?
Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some – but not all – of the rights afforded married couples.
Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.
With no real understanding of the state constitution or the anti-gay measure approved in 2006, I can’t speak to the merits of the constitutional argument in any depth. But as E.D. Kain noted, “Walker is literally going out of his way to prevent two people in a loving, committed relationship from visiting one another at the hospital. In other words, at what is quite likely a couple’s darkest hour, Scott Walker wants to impose legal restrictions barring two people from being with one another. Imagine that your wife or your husband was in the hospital and you were legally prohibited from visiting them. Is this the role we want our government to play in our lives?”
Doug Mataconis added:
I won’t speak to the legal side of this issue because I’m not up to speed on it, but I really have to wonder what kind of person would seek to prevent two people who are in a relationship from making whatever arrangements they want to allow the other to visit them in the hospital, and what right the state has to tell hospitals that they cannot honor those requests.
Is the GOP hatred for gays so pervasive that they could really be this cold and heartless?
Apparently, yes. Cruelty, in some circles, is a “family value.”
For months, it’s been assumed that Scott Walker’s agenda was primarily focused on punishing school teachers and other state workers. We’re now learning his hostility for some of his constituents is broadening.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly, May 19, 2011
May 19, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Conservatives, Democracy, Equal Rights, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Human Rights, Lawmakers, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, State Legislatures, Teachers, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Families, Family Values, Gay Marriage, Marriage, Patient Rights, Same Sex Couples, Wisconsin Constitution, Wisconsin Family Action |
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