tazzygirl
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Joined: 10/12/2007
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Sooooooo back on topic.
Why would Walker refuse to bargain with the Unions?
Walker said Monday afternoon he wasn't interested in compromises that have been floated by public employee unions and even a Republican state senator. He spoke inside his heavily guarded conference room in the Capitol as thousands of people screamed and stomped outside his office to "Recall Walker!"
Walker reiterated his longstanding position that his proposal is about balancing Wisconsin's budget and not busting the unions. He called one of the proposed compromises a "non-starter."
"For those 14 Senate Democrats, you've had your time," Walker said. "Now it's time to come home."
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller said Democrats were waiting for Walker to compromise.
"It's right in front of the governor," Miller said. "He just needs to pick it up and allow us to move on. .... This is a no-brainer."
Under one deal, the unions said they would accept paying more for benefits as Walker wants but still retain their collective bargaining rights. Another compromise offered by Republican Sen. Dale Schultz would remove collective bargaining rights just for two years.
Walker has repeatedly rejected both offers, saying local governments and school districts can't be hamstrung by the often lengthy collective bargaining process and need to have more flexibility to deal with up to $1 billion in cuts he will propose in his budget next week and into the future.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/21/133945476/wisconsin-governor-refuses-unions-compromise
Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”
Could this be true?
It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.
In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
Some background: Wisconsin is indeed facing a budget crunch, although its difficulties are less severe than those facing many other states. Revenue has fallen in the face of a weak economy, while stimulus funds, which helped close the gap in 2009 and 2010, have faded away.
In this situation, it makes sense to call for shared sacrifice, including monetary concessions from state workers. And union leaders have signaled that they are, in fact, willing to make such concessions.
But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.
The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.
Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.
So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.
In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=4&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1298383344-yjNJFOYrdwyxlGSNkZBrRg
Sadly, many dont believe it ends there.
The new Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was just one of many Tea Party/GOP candidates inserted into office by the Koch Brothers, under our new Supreme Court ruling allowing corporate bribery. Now their puppet Governor is trying to bust the remnants of unions in this country.
But the Koch brothers are in the fossil energy business. The fossil energy industry hardly has to bother about such impediments. Why would they care about unions? It turns out, there’s more!
Thomas Content at The Wisconsin Sentinel is reporting that a little-noticed section in the rest of the bill (the part that will get passed once one side or the other relents on the union issue) allows Walker to sell state owned power plants at pennies on the dollar.
It bypasses the public utility commission oversight, specifying “no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary”
SENATE BILL 11
AN ACT relating to: state finances, collective bargaining for public employees, compensation and fringe benefits of public employees, the state civil service system, the Medical Assistance program, sale of certain facilities, granting bonding authority, and making an appropriation
SECTION 44. 16.896 of the statutes is created to read: 16.896
Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants.
(1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state.
Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/21/wisconsin-union-busting-concealing-a-koch-brothers-power-grab/
Im hearing the phrase... Now you know the rest of the story.... anyone else?
< Message edited by tazzygirl -- 2/22/2011 10:29:56 AM >
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RE: SCOTT WALKER for President - 
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