State Senator Hopper (R-WI) Admits Political Guilt

Re-call this deceitful man.

Right Now In Wisconsin....

The Political Situation In Wisconsin

Well, it looks like the GOP is acknowledging reality in Wisconsin, as they are seriously fearful of defections on Governor Walker's union-busting bill. I guess when even Rasmussen says you're viewed negatively by 57% of your state, people in the GOP will take notice. Walker is now admitting he's negotiating, and they seem to understand that 3 Senators are likely to break.

That's because the Democrats are launching re-call efforts against 8 GOP Senators in Wisconsin who support Governor Walker. No one is willing to give up their job to defend a Governor who appears to be lost. The only thing that may save him from a re-call himself is time, and we will see if that even helps.

All of this comes amidst polling showing the President is recovering in Wisconsin, and would win solidly right now. This is not what the GOP had in mind last November.

The Latest On The Wisconsin Situation/GOP Assault On Public Workers

Well, in Ohio, the anti-union bill passed. Sure, the margin there was 17-16, and they had to change the rules as they went, but it passed. In Tennessee and Indiana, the battles go on as well, with the GOP showing no signs of interest in negotiations that would change their bills. Only in Wisconsin does it seem like the GOP is breaking.

In Wisconsin, Walker looks pathetic. His own party clearly has members in the Senate wavering on his bill, which doesn't look good for a guy who won't negotiate. Facing recalls, his party is getting pretty crazy looking for a way out. They are now proposing an unconstitutional police search and detainment of all absent State Senators, namely the "Wisconsin 14" Democrats in Illinois. Basically, Walker needs a way out, and bad.

Democrats in Wisconsin should not give him any olive branch. He either capitulates completely on his union busting, or he goes under in the tide coming to get him. Collective bargaining is not up for discussion, nor should it be. The union has already come to the table and agreed to pay exactly what he's asking for, no questions asked. There's no more room to talk. Walker must be broken here, and that is exactly what the Senate Democrats should demand. Polls show the man would lose re-election, and may even be re-called after a year. The risk is on him now.

National Nurses Association To Obama: Get Off The Sidelines

Playing the fence doesn't work too long. Yes, President Obama has called out Governor Walker's power grab in Wisconsin. Yes, he's taken fire from the right over it. He's also stayed relatively quiet, and avoided going to Madison himself. Now, the National Nurses' Association Union is calling him out for standing on the sidelines.

Spot on. There's a time to fight for everyone. This President has mostly avoided bruising fights for progressive causes and institutions, such as the Public Option, which was popular, during the health care fight. He's been measured in winding down the wars he inherited, and reserved on financial regulatory reform. Take off the gloves and throw a punch, Mr. President. You're doing a good job in the office, and your supporters know it. We'll back you.

Wisconsin House Passes Walker Bill

I'm not there, so I'll let the words of those there stand:

Roughly an hour ago, after 61 hours of debate, the Republican state Assembly Speaker unexpectedly called a vote and then left the voting open for only seconds until a bare majority present had cast yes votes and then closed the voting, too quickly for most of the Democrats in the chamber to even get a chance to vote. Democrats erupted into crimes of "Shame, Shame, Shame" as Republicans filed out of the hall. Here's our report from the scene.

Or from their person on the scene:

MADISON, WI -- The Wisconsin State Assembly has just passed Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill, including its controversial provisions to eliminate almost all collective bargaining rights for public employee unions as well as many other provisions to weaken union organizing.

After much buildup in the 61-hour debate -- of Republicans wanting things to be over, and Democrats railing against Republicans who they said would cut off debate -- at about 1 AM Speaker Pro Tempore Bill Kramer (R) announced that he would hear a voice vote for a roll call on final passage. Immediately, the majority Republicans shouted their ayes, and the Democrats were booing, as they tried to be recognized to demand a separate motion to cut off debate.

Then Kramer called the vote. Within seconds, the digital vote system on the wall announced 51 ayes and 17 nays, and voting was suddenly closed. With a total of 96 members, that got to a majority for the bill but left 28 members who hadn't had a chance yet to vote.

At that point, the Democrats got up, chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and similar exclamations, as the Republicans filed out of the room.

There were many Democrats I spoke to and overheard in the chamber, who said they didn't get a chance to vote, or that they were pushing the "No" button at their desks as hard as they could -- keep in mind that a majority of their 38-member caucus was recorded as casting no votes at all. (Interesting to note there were also four Republicans who voted no -- after having joined every party-line vote against Democratic amendments. Some Dems speculated that the GOP leadership had allowed some Assembly Republicans in marginal districts to skip the vote or vote 'no' on the final tally.)

Wow. These guys are willing to go down with the ship I guess. Let the re-calls begin. Oh yeah, and for anyone who thinks not being recorded on the vote will help them, wrong again.

The Latest In Wisconsin

Well, the endgame could be coming in the Wisconsin House. It appears that the Walker-Bill will pass the House, without amendments. This was always the likely outcome there.

Things have changed drastically for Walker though. After the prank "Koch call," the press has turned on Walker badly. With the rumors of Republican Senate defections coming soon, this bill may crumble under itself soon. About the only nice thing being said about Walker is that he gets power. That's being said though at the expense of anyone thinking he understands budgets and legislation.

Activists for issues besides labor are fighting to be heard too. Disability Rights groups are taking their shots:

MADISON, WI (FDL) – Members of a disability rights group have occupied the Wisconsin Republican Party headquarters in Madison, and vow to stay until Governor Scott Walker takes out the Medicaid provisions in the budget repair bill. The news of the occupation was met with thunderous cheers at a noontime rally in the Capital Rotunda, which featured Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and a large contingent of firefighters from around the state.

ADAPT, the nationwide disability rights group, took over the headquarters to protest the portion of the budget repair bill that switches authority over Medicaid and BadgerCare over to the Department of Health Services. Governor Walker appointed Dennis Smith to run the Department of Health Services, a senior fellow from the Heritage Foundation who has repeatedly argued that states should drop Medicaid altogether. Under the budget repair bill, Smith would have near-unilateral authority to carry that out if he chose. Jonathan Cohn has written extensively about the Medicaid changes in the budget repair bill.

“We are asking the GOP to intervene,” said Jason Glozier with ADAPT, one of the organizers of the occupation. “The changes to Medicaid Assistance have been ignored in this bill. People’s lives are at stake.” Glozier believes that if medical assistance for the disabled is underfunded or unfunded, people will lose jobs and many disabled Wisconsinites would be drastically affected.

Amazing. Basically, the Governor wants to end Medicaid, as well as collective bargaining. Extreme much?

Governor Walker continues to grow more isolated. He's isolating himself from the public, and even from his own party. The Democrats shouldn't just seek to kill the bill. They should take the fight straight to the Governor. He could be the first casualty of the GOP's overreach in 2011.

What We Now Know About Walker.

Some are questioning his legality. Others are questioning what it says about access to his office. While good points, I think they aren't getting deep enough.

Scott Walker is not very smart. He got played out by a blogger. His staff isn't so smart either. They put him on the phone with that blogger just for saying he was David Koch. Walker is very used to people saying nasty stuff about his opponents though, and he doesn't say anything to stop them. And yes, apparently any rich, Republican donor, can get the Governor on the phone, but the Democratic Senators up there can't. He's also minimally delusional on how this is going for him, or a good liar to his supporters. The guy's also obviously arrogant and out of touch, thinking he's Reagan, and all the other grand ideas he espoused about himself and his actions.

Basically, he's not really up to this level of fight. You don't see national figures get played out by a blogger. I just wonder who's going to be the Republican to walk him off this ledge. He's either going to fail miserably and not be taken seriously in the legislature, or succeed, and potentially be re-called or simply beaten soundly in 2014. Neither option goes well for him. He should take the open hand of the unions and take their concessions now, and call it a win.

Scott Walker's Threat Filled, Talking Point Driven, Fact-Less "Fireside Chat"

Oh Scott Walker. How much longer are you going to keep up this fake, tough-guy act? If the Democrats don't come home by Friday and let your bill through, you say you're going to lay people off. So, "do what I say, or they get it?" Wonderful, let's act like children here. I thought Republicans wanted to "have an adult conversation?"

Walker spends several minutes rambling about how unions get a better deal on benefits, and how the state can't afford it, and how the public knows he's right about asking them to pay in more. Here's the problem with that: that's NOT an issue. Everyone has agreed to pay more, there's no debate on this.

Walker laid his biggest whopper by coming up with a new rationalization for how collective bargaining costs money. He says the system doesn't work, because when the unions don't concede, people get laid off. Ok, so that's your rationalization for getting rid of collective bargaining? Ok, so let me get this straight then: they necessarily won't lose their jobs, benefits, and even salaries without collective bargaining? Where's the assurances on that, and if you're taking none of the above away, how are you saving? Texas doesn't have public sector unions, and they still lay people off. It's a weak, weak argument. Besides all of that, this is a budget bill, so how does this save any money? He says it costs local governments money to bargain? No, it costs them money when they give out stupid contracts, but that's their fault, not the workers. This is why we have elections, to remove bad officials. Basically, please show me a way besides politics in which his proposal is useful in this bill?

Through the whole speech, we heard every buzz word: tough decisions, sacrifice, growth, cut spending, etc., etc., etc. Did we hear anything convincing? No. Just more drivel from a Governor losing control of the first major fight of his term. His party is about to break with him in the legislature. His plan isn't popular. The only thing I hope is that he drags this out long enough to permanently destroy his standing in the state, and get himself re-called in a year.

Despite Rasmussen's False Polling, Walker's Moves Not Popular Nationally

Well, looks like Rasmussen WAS wrong (shocking, I know):

The public strongly opposes laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions as a way to ease state financial troubles, according to a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll.

The poll found that 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to one being considered in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such a law.

Ohio and several other states that have new Republican governors and legislative majorities are considering laws that would reduce the power of government employee unions to bargain over benefits and work rules.

Wisconsin is the first state to consider the limits, prompting protests that have closed schools and drawn tens of thousands of protesters to the state Capitol in Madison.

Very interesting stuff. Really interesting, because of the implications in Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states with new, right-wing Governors.

Before you go thinking being a Governor is easy though:

The survey of 1,000 adults was taken Monday night. It has a margin of error of 4%.
Key results:
• 71% oppose increasing sales, income or other taxes while 27% are in favor that approach.
• 53% oppose reducing pay or benefits for government workers while 44% are in favor.
• 48% opposed reducing or eliminating government programs while 47% were in favor of cuts.
Despite the opposition to reducing spending or raising taxes, those surveyed agreed overwhelmingly that their state faces a budget crisis. Sixty-four percent said their state was in financial crisis while only 5% said it wasn't. The rest were unsure.
The poll found people divided on whether public employee unions are a good thing.

You have to love the public. In any event, I think you'll see Governor Walker's side crumbling real soon now.

In Wisconsin, Public Workers Aren't Getting Rich

The Economist takes Governor Walker and Paul "Boy Wonder" Ryan to task.

All of this is coming up now because Wisconsin has become the showdown state for the public-sector union controversy, and Scott Walker, the governor, is claiming he needs to destroy the state's public-sector unions' ability to negotiate in order to deal with its budget shortfall. State workers, he says, are paid too much. But the Economic Policy Institute tells us that, in Wisconsin, public-sector workers are not in fact paid more than their private-sector counterparts. They're paid less. You can only make it appear that public-sector workers earn more by ignoring the fact that "both nationally and within Wisconsin, public sector workers are significantly more educated than their private sector counterparts."

Nationally, 54% of full-time state and local public sector workers hold at least a four-year college degree, compared with 35% of full-time private sector workers. In Wisconsin, the difference is even greater: 59% of full-time Wisconsin public sector workers hold at least a four-year college degree, compared with 30% of full-time private sector workers....Public employees receive substantially lower wages, but much better benefits than their private sector counterparts. Wisconsin state and local governments pay public employees 14.2% lower annual wages than comparable private sector employees. On an hourly basis, they earn 10.7% less in wages. College-educated employees earn on average 28% less in wages and 25% less in total compensation in the public sector than in the private sector.
The EPI study does find there's a class of public-sector workers who earn a bit more than their private-sector counterparts: those without high-school degrees. In other words, district attorneys earn less than corporate lawyers, but janitors at the district attorney's office may earn more than janitors at a corporate law office—provided the government hasn't outsourced its facilities staff to the same private company the law office uses, which it may have, since governments have been targeting low-skilled workers for outsourcing precisely because that's how they can save money.

Not only have the Republicans lied here, particularly Ryan, trying to say that these workers do better than the private sector, they've made $45,000 a year workers look like the poster child for deficit causing at the state level. All of this, to attack unions' existence, and to kill public education. What's going on in Wisconsin is an attempt at generational theft, by the GOP.

What Scott Walker Doesn't Want You To Know....

Ezra Klein completely bloodies Scott Walker's argument in Wisconsin:

Of course, the fact that public-employee pensions didn't cause a meltdown at Lehman Brothers doesn't mean they're not stressing state budgets, and that the pensions they've been promised don't exceed what state budgets seem able to bear. But the buildup of global capital that overheated the American housing sector and got packaged into seemingly riskless financial products that then brought down Wall Street, paralyzing the economy, throwing millions out of work, and destroying the revenues from state income and sales taxes even as state residents needed more social services? The answer to that is not to end collective bargaining for (some) public employees. A plus B plus C does not equal what Gov. Scott Walker is attempting in Wisconsin.

In fact, it particularly doesn't work for what Walker is attempting in Wisconsin. The Badger State was actually in pretty good shape. It was supposed to end this budget cycle with about $120 million in the bank. Instead, it's facing a deficit. Why? I'll let the state's official fiscal scorekeeper explain (pdf):

More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).

In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, "public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

But even that's not the full story here. Public employees aren't being asked to make a one-time payment into the state's coffers. Rather, Walker is proposing to sharply curtail their right to bargain collectively. A cyclical downturn that isn't their fault, plus an unexpected reversal in Wisconsin's budget picture that wasn't their doing, is being used to permanently end their ability to sit across the table from their employer and negotiate what their health insurance should look like.

That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions, a group much-loathed by Republicans in general and by the Republican legislators who have to battle them in elections in particular. And note that not all public-employee unions are covered by Walker's proposal: the more conservative public-safety unions -- notably police and firefighters, many of whom endorsed Walker -- are exempt.

If that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will. Let's be clear here, no one's saying it's out of bounds to ask unions to give something back in a deficit. The deficit isn't their doing, but they need to help fix the issue. Fine. That's not what Walker's after. He's after political victory, and that's it.

An Update On Wisconsin

Well, the weekend is over, the protests continued in Madison, and Governor Scott Walker is sticking by his position. Yes, even unmoved by Charles Woodson coming out against him. The Packers captain and Super Bowl Champion said:

STATEMENT FROM GREEN BAY PACKER CHARLES WOODSON IN SUPPORT OF WORKING FAMILIES IN WISCONSIN

Last week I was proud when many of my current and former teammates announced their support for the working families fighting for their rights in Wisconsin. Today I am honored to join with them. Thousands of dedicated Wisconsin public workers provide vital services for Wisconsin citizens. They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. These hard working people are under an unprecedented attack to take away their basic rights to have a voice and collectively bargain at work.

It is an honor for me to play for the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers and be a part of the Green Bay and Wisconsin communities. I am also honored as a member of the NFL Players Association to stand together with working families of Wisconsin and organized labor in their fight against this attempt to hurt them by targeting unions. I hope those leading the attack will sit down with Wisconsin's public workers and discuss the problems Wisconsin faces, so that together they can truly move Wisconsin forward.

Charles Woodson, Green Bay Packer cornerback and one of the team's elected representatives to the players union.

Now, he's a cultural icon in Wisconsin, so without saying, he'll get coverage (we think, who knows with this media). Of course, that media also treated Saturday's competing pro and anti-Walker rallies as equals, even as the AP reported that anti-Walker protestors outnumbered pro-Walker protestors by a 35-1 margin. Oops. Guess that coverage isn't quite right. The rallies weren't exactly "equal."

The word is getting out: Walker is overreaching, and this isn't about the deficit. I wonder if he can't pass it in the next few days if Republican legislators will start cracking on him and defecting from this extremism.

Tea Party Thugs Look To Cause Mayhem In Wisconsin?

This isn't good.

Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there) (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters. (7) if I do get the ‘in’ I am going to do my darnedest to get podium access and take the mic to do that rant from there…with any luck and if I can manage the moments to build up to it, I can probably get a cheer out of the crowd for something extreme.

These nut-jobs never cease to amaze me. If they pull this off in one state, Fox will focus on it for days. I doubt there is coordination on this, but there are bigger worries than coordinated tea-bag efforts. These are people who take guns to political rallies in some parts. I worry that things will get out of hand in the name of these folks defending their corporate friends. This could be awful.

The Koch Brothers Keep Trying To Purchase Wisconsin

You know, billionaires have it tough in this country. Most of their money gets taxed at 15%, while the rest of us pay higher. They have vacation homes in luxurious areas while the rest of us get foreclosed on. They get to own their companies and outsource the jobs, while the rest of us lose our jobs. They get to pollute the world while the rest of us have to live in it, without the profits. They can even spend millions to deny you health care. So rough.

In the case of the Koch brothers, they can even purchase a House of Representatives and Governors. Their rich enough to make sure guys get elected who will give them tax cuts, gut out the rights of their workers, and won't regulate them. Needless to say, amidst the drama of Wisconsin, it turns out that they are involved heavily in that state.

Koch Industries is a major player in Wisconsin: Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant....

Koch Industries was one of the biggest contributors to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, funneling $43,000 over the course of last year. In return, Koch front groups are closely guiding the Walker agenda. The American Legislative Exchange Council, another Koch-funded group, advised Walker and the GOP legislature on its anti-labor legislation and its first corporate tax cuts.

Oh of course. They would donate all the money to a guy who guts out the labor movement. Oh yeah, and of course, they would sponsor the rally to support that Governor, sending their "astroturf" movement, complete with buses to bring in people from wherever, to take on a genuine grassroots reaction to that Governor. I'm not for even a 35% tax rate, but with the Koch's, I wish the government had a 100% tax rate on them.

Is Walker's Backing Breaking Apart???

I have to admit, I think the Democrats, unions, and left is missing their best attack on Governor Walker: His whole "budget plan" only closes the budget hole by 10%. While it only closes the budget deficit 10% of it's total, it destroys organized labor, which by and large opposed his election, 100%. If you needed any more proof of his real intentions than that, you're blind. We're not using that enough.

With that said, the protestors are doing an amazing job in Madison. New polling shows that Wisconsin-ites initial sympathies are with the state workers and not the Government, by a 44%-38% margin. People are seeing the faces of real people at these protests, and realizing that we can't just leave them behind. The Assembly is taking notice too. They adjourned without a final vote tonight. Even more importantly, in the House, where most thought this was a done deal, they rescinded their vote to go to final passage, and are back in a stage where amendments can be considered. The Governor gave a televised statement tonight where he ignored his own attack on collective bargaining, and attempted to say this is all about concessions. There's good reason he may be lying, or at least hedging: 65% of Wisconsinites think he went too far here, the Chamber President in Milwaukee declined to endorse this bill, and the local business community may be turning on him. I'd be skittish too, if I were him.

The truth is getting out about Walker's bill. Ezra Klein writes:

In it, Walker proposes that the right to collectively bargain be taken away from most -- but not all -- state and local workers. Who's left out? "Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes." As Harold Meyerson notes, these are also the unions that happened to be more supportive of Walker in the last election. Funny, that.

Walker tries to sell the change in collective bargaining as modest. "State and local employees could continue to bargain for base pay, they would not be able to bargain over other compensation measures." But that's not really true. Read down a bit further and you'll find that "total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum." In other words, they couldn't bargain for wages to rise faster than inflation. So, in reality, they can't bargain for wages and they can't bargain over other forms of compensation. They just can't bargain.

The proposal doesn't stop there, though. "Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues." These rules have nothing to do with pension costs or even bargaining. They're just about weakening unions: They make it harder for unions to collect dues from members, to negotiate stable contracts or to survive a bad year.

The best way to understand Walker's proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state's labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin's unions can't deliver value to their members, they're deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

You may think Walker's proposal is a good idea or a bad idea. But that's what it does. And it's telling that he's exempting the unions that supported him and is trying to obscure his plan's specifics behind misleading language about what unions can still bargain for and misleading rhetoric about the state's budget.

And it is becoming clearer and clearer. This is about 2012 and beyond, and the GOP's attempts to cripple anyone who disagrees with their corporate agenda. American Majority Action, a corporate funded, "astroturf" Tea Party group will stage a rally in support of the Governor tomorrow, with their leader going so far as to say this is the first shot in the 2012 battle. As is usually the case with extremist right-wing, corporate groups, they are fighting for a lie.

The facts are the facts: Wisconsin's deficit in the coming years is $3 billion. This bill closes it by about 10%, or $330 million. It not only isn't a budget "fix," it's also a union busting bill. It basically proves what progressives have been saying: even if you gave public-sector workers as crappy of a deal as the private sector workers get usually, it won't fix the deficits, which proves that the cause of state level deficits is usually NOT public sector contracts. The facts don't back up the Governor, and he's going too far.

Kill the bill!

The Leader Speaks

Lawmakers Flee, Walker Persists With Union Busting

Wisconsin Democrats in the Senate fled the State Capitol today, putting a halt to all business in the capitol. With no quorum, the Governor's union busting bill could not pass the Senate. It will have to wait until 20 Senators show up, out of the 33.

With the plan hanging in the balance, apparently labor efforts are hinging on 3 members of the Senate. The Governor is saying he will lay off 6,000 workers if he does not get the bill he wants, which would end collective bargaining, and give him the power to cut off health care programs for residents temporarily. Thousands of protestors are in the capitol to protest the bill, which could pass the House tomorrow.

This bill simply kills the right of workers to bargain for a better wage. People like Paul Ryan claim these public workers are doing so much better than the private sector employees, and he's just wrong. Wisconsin public-sector workers make less than their private sector counter-parts, and that's even more so true when you consider education levels. Should workers just continue to accept less and less? Or is there a point to show backbone?

I say it now, and I'll say it again: If this bill passes, they should not go back to work, and should continue to protest. There's no point in going back to jobs where the Governor can simply take away your benefits and pensions at a moment's notice. He claims he won't lay off workers if he gets his bill, but is there any reason to trust him? With unions removed from the equation, he can simply do what he wants, and no one will be there to stop him. This needs to be fast-tracked to Federal jurisdiction, and needs to be defeated there. In the meanwhile, workers should exercise their rights to protest, and should stay in that capitol until the bill is defeated or repealed.

Walker's Extremist Bill Passes Committee

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's union-busting bill passed out of the Senate committee by a 12-4 margin last night. This pure politics, power-move is being exposed now:

Major elements of the budget-repair bill remain in place. It would require most public workers to pay half their pension costs - typically 5.8% of pay for state workers - and at least 12% of their health care costs. It applies to most state and local employees but does not apply to police, firefighters and state troopers, who would continue to bargain for their benefits.

Except for police, firefighters and troopers, raises would be limited to inflation unless a bigger increase was approved in a referendum. The non-law enforcement unions would lose their rights to bargain over anything but wages, would have to hold annual elections to keep their organizations intact and would lose the ability to have union dues deducted from state paychecks.

The most significant change the Joint Finance Committee approved would require local governments that don't have civil-service systems to create an employee grievance system within months. Those local civil-service systems would have to address grievances for employee termination, employee discipline and workplace safety.

The bill also gives Walker's Department of Health Services the power to write rules that would change state laws dealing with medical care for children, parents and childless adults; prescription drug plans for seniors; nursing home care for the elderly; and long-term care for the elderly and disabled outside of nursing homes.

The programs that could see changes under the proposal would include the BadgerCare Plus and BadgerCare Core plans, Family Care and SeniorCare.

Disgusting. This is about crippling the ability of public-sector workers to take part in politics- and of course taking health care away from people. The savings of $330 million do little to nothing about the $3 billion shortfall in coming years to Wisconsin. There could be a Senate vote today.

If this law passes, these workers should just not go back to work. I don't know if there are enough unemployed people in the state to fill the state workers' positions, but i'm sure there aren't enough "qualified" people out there. They should just shut down the state by not taking work under these terms. This is little more than extremist, power-grabbing, people hurting politics from a Governor who is too much of a coward to admit it.

30,000 In The Streets, Schools Closed In Madison, WI

Schools closed as over 40% of the teachers in Madison, WI called out sick, and joined in the 30,000 person protests in the streets of the Wisconsin Capitol, as the legislature ponders whether to accept the sick plan of Governor Scott Walker to gut out all collective bargaining rights from state workers. Under his backward plan, public workers would no longer be able to negotiate their retirement or health benefits, and would only be allowed to negotiate compensation raises under the rise in the consumer price index.

They should not leave the streets of Madison, and if this legislature in Wisconsin passes this plan, they should not go back to work either. Too often we hear that public sector workers "should have to sacrifice like everyone else." They do. Most of them make the "$50,000" average wage, and accept doing hard jobs without getting rich, so that they can have decent security- good benefits, retirement, and regular, modest raises. If you think your teachers, fire fighters, and cops are driving you broke, you know nothing about budgets. If you think they are causing deficits, you fundamentally don't understand that spending levels rise and fall with many factors besides "runaway contracts." If the basic protections public workers have are removed by a Governor elected in an off-year, lower-turnout election, those workers shouldn't take it lying down. They should simply stop doing those jobs. What's the point of being a sanitation worker if the protections and guarantees of rights are gone? Why teach students in tough schools if the ability to earn a living is gone. Maybe it's time in this country we make the counter demand- no, public workers shouldn't accept a crappy deal, private sector workers should demand a fair deal. Millionaires should pay their share, and lose their loopholes. It's time to fight back. I support those state workers in the street, and am inspired by them.