Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
I have already written three posts about Governor Scott Walker, his budget repair bill, and the protesters in Wisconsin. People have been interested in
the Wisconsin story and have left nearly 1,800 comments at my three posts. I’ve even received requests to write up another post so that we could continue the discussion on the subject. I think there are others like me who believe the Wisconsin/Walker story is not over yet.
As I did last week, I’m posting links to some articles on the subject for you—as well as excerpts from some of the articles.
Democrats immediately file suit to halt challenges (Journal Sentinel)
By Jason Stein, Don Walker, and Patrick Marley
Excerpt: Wisconsin is now among the vanguard of Midwestern states embarking on a new era with their rules for public unions. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, signed an executive order in 2005 to eliminate collective bargaining for state employees. Ohio is working on a measure to rewrite its collective bargaining law with public-sector unions.
But the fight in Wisconsin isn’t over – Democrats and unions are already filing lawsuits against the proposal and recall actions against GOP senators who approved it.
“It’s just the beginning,” said Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar). “This is the civil rights issue of this century.”
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Wisconsin’s Legacy of Labor Battles (New York Times)
By Kate Zernike
Excerpt: In her book, “Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950,” Professor Feurer recounts how companies in the electrical industry in St. Louis started a network known as the Metal Trades Association in the first part of the 20th century to fight union organizing. The association had been alarmed by union protests that erupted violently with the Haymarket Square riot in 1886 and the demands for an eight-hour day, which started with the 1894 Pullman strike in Illinois — an early effort by Eugene V. Debs, the former Indiana legislator and future Socialist Party candidate for president.
“That left a legacy of the 1930s and ’40s for employers to form deep right-wing networks,” Professor Feurer said.
That network, she argues, was the precursor to the Midwestern groups that have now been assisting the fight against the unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana: the Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, and Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kan. David H. and Charles G. Koch, the billionaire brothers behind the energy and manufacturing conglomerate that bears their name, have been large donors to Mr. Walker in Wisconsin, as has their advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, which first opened an office in Wisconsin in 2005.
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By Ryan Haggerty and Michael Muskal
Excerpt: Even as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Friday signed into law a bill that sharply curbs collective bargaining for most public employees, his opponents were preparing for more demonstrations, court battles and political infighting over what has become a national test of labor’s power.
Organizers were hoping to attract tens of thousands protesters to the Capitol on Saturday for a rally featuring the return of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state on Feb. 17 in an effort to block the measure from passing. Along with the rally, Democrats are planning to ask the courts to overturn the new law and they have begun circulating petitions to recall some lawmakers. GOP supporters are circulating their own recall petitions, directed at the Democrats.
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Op-Ed: The GOP’s costly Wisconsin Koch binge is a wake-up call (Digital Journal)
The Big Shakedown: Wisconsin and the GOP’s Vision for America’s Future (Common Dreams)
Dane County sues state to block budget bill (The Cap Times)
Union Bill Is Law, but Debate Is Far from Over (New York Times)
My Previous Posts
Scott Walker: A Fiscally Responsible Governor or a Politician Who Is Playing Favorites?
Is the Scott Walker Story Just the Tip of the Koch Brothers’ Political Iceberg?
Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and Protesting Workers: The Story Continues
From Think Progress (3/24/2011)
Indiana Official Reportedly Advised Scott Walker To Stage A Phony Violent Attack By Union Supporters
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/24/walker-false-flag/
During the intense public battle with public employee unions last month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) received an intriguing email from an admirer claiming to be a deputy prosecutor from Indiana. The email suggested that Walker should fake an attack on himself, in order to create sympathy for his cause and damage the reputation of the unions. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has the email:
The e-mail was signed by “Carlos F. Lam.” WCIJ did some digging and discovered that indeed, there is a Carlos F. Lam who is a GOP public official in Indiana. He is a deputy prosecutor in Johnson County, Indiana — which is the same area the e-mail was sent from, according to its IP information. Lam also has a history of anti-union comments online: he’s written that Indiana is “an unsustainable public worker gravy train bubble.” In another, he said “unions & companies that feed at the gov’t trough will fight tooth & nail against anything that un-feathers their nests.”
WCIJ contacted Lam and asked him if the Hotmail address on the email belongs to him. Lam confirmed that it does — but categorically denied sending the email. “I am flabbergasted and would never advocate for something like this, and would like everyone to be sure that that’s just not me,” he said, after being read the email. He said he plans to file a police report about the matter this week.
Oddly, the email was sent on the very same day that another law enforcement official tweeted out violent plans for the protests. Jeffrey Cox, a deputy attorney general for the state, tweeted that police should “use live ammunition” against the protestors. He was fired the next day – but for now, Lam’s boss is backing him. “He didn’t send it,” he told WCIJ.
*****
UPDATE: According to the Johnson County Prosecutor’s office, Lam has admitted that he wrote the email and resigned his post.
rafflaw,
“Senator Johnson just made my list as one of the worlds most disgusting humans. To use your daughter while spreading a filthy lie like that is something I could never forgive. What has happened to the Wisconsin I knew? How could these alien beings have been successful in their bids for public office?”
I agree with you 100%. Lie about yourself – once you drag your kids into your lies, you are fair game. Sadly, there are people who believe Johnson and never think to find out if what he’s saying is the truth.
On another note, I found this article interesting:
Wisconsin’s Lawless State Government
Wednesday 23 March 2011
by: Mary Bottari | PR Watch | News Analysis
The reign of lawlessness continues in Wisconsin.
Last week, a local court issued a stay temporarily blocking the implementation of Governor Scott Walker’s radical proposal to do away with most collective bargaining rights for public workers and cripple labor’s ability to collect union dues. The court put a halt to the publication of the bill (an act performed by the Secretary of State), so there could be a hearing on whether or not the Wisconsin Senate violated the state’s strong open meetings law in its rush to ram the bill through.
This week, Wisconsin Attorney General JB Van Hollen charged into court in defense of secret government. He argued that when legislators break the law — the courts can’t do anything about it. Apparently legislators, like Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, have “immunity” from the enforcement of their very own laws.
Welcome to Fitzwalkerstan, where novel interpretations of long established law are a daily occurrence and the billable hours are stacking up.
Pleadings from Fitzwalkerstan
Wisconsin’s open meetings law requires 24 hours’ public notice of meetings or two hours in emergencies. The amended collective bargaining bill was given less than two hours. As word spread via Facebook and Twitter that legislators were pulling a fast one, hundreds of citizen’s showed up at the Capitol but could not get in to watch proceedings. Shut out, they were forced to chant “shame, shame, shame,” under Senate windows.
Yesterday, the Wisconsin Attorney General filed a motion on behalf of the Secretary of State Doug La Follette to void the stay. Bizarrely, his client was never consulted. Indeed, the Secretary of State had delayed publication of the law because of his own concerns regarding the legality of the Senate’s unprecedented action.
This is just the latest legal madness from Fitzwalkerstan. To ram the astonishingly unpopular proposal though the Governor and his henchmen had to finagle:
•A five second roll call vote at 1:30 a.m. The move was so abrupt, over 20 legislators never had a chance to vote in the Assembly.
•An unprecedented warrant for the arrest of 14 missing Democratic Senators and the deputization of a posse to round them up.
•A gubernatorial budget address in a locked down Capitol in violation of a standing court order on Capitol access.
•An unprecedented conference committee, formed by fiat, meeting in violation of the open meetings law in a tiny backroom.
•A Senate roll call vote on a substitute amendment no one had ever seen.
•A new Senate rule denying Democrats the right to vote in committee (an insane idea quietly withdrawn.)
•The ongoing violation of the court order to restore Capitol access to as it was in January of 2011.
•These astounding events have many Wisconsinites shaking their heads. “Procedures and open government are important in Wisconsin and I can’t remember another time when these procedures have been this disrespected,” says UW law professor Bill Whitford, a life-long resident of Madison.
The courts have ruled against Walker twice so far. Thank heavens for the courts! A breath of sanity in an insane world! Or are they?
http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsins-lawless-state-government68686
From Huffington Post
Newly Released Wisconsin Emails Show GOP Considered Ways To Punish Democrats
BY SCOTT BAUER 03/23/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/wisconsin-emails-gop-punish-democrats_n_839856.html
Excerpts:
MADISON, Wis. — Everything from taking away computers to denying a year of service in the state retirement system was considered to punish the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who fled to Illinois for three weeks to block passage of a bill taking away union bargaining rights, newly released emails show.
Members of Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s staff bounced ideas off one another and the Legislature’s attorneys for days about how to penalize the Senate Democrats for leaving and pressure them to return, according to records released Wednesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The watchdog group obtained the emails from Fitzgerald’s office under Wisconsin’s open records law.
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Senate Republicans approved a number of sanctions during their absence, most notably voting to find the missing Democrats in contempt and ordering police to compel them to return. The emails show that Fitzgerald’s staff knew the state constitution barred them from actually arresting the senators other than for committing a crime or acts of treason.
“It now seems that monetary penalties and removal of privileges may be our only recourse,” Fitzgerald legislative aide Rob Richard wrote on Feb. 20, citing the constitutional prohibition on arrest.
The Senate voted on March 3 to find the Democrats in contempt and ordered the sergeant at arms to use police force to compel the senators to return. Fitzgerald said at the time that while the action was technically not an arrest, under Senate rules police could force absent members to return.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, arguing Fitzgerald should be sanctioned for earlier sending state patrol officers out to look for the missing senators. The group said the emails show he knew the senators could not be arrested when he sent the troopers out.
Fitzgerald said Wednesday that troopers were only sent to assist the Senate sergeant at arms, who was looking for the Democrats, and never were expected to be asked to make an arrest.
“I knew they couldn’t be arrested,” Fitzgerald said. “That would have been a public relations nightmare.”
Elaine,
Great updates. Walker is such a fraud that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he is actually losing jobs by the droves.
From Firedoglake
Scott Walker: Bad for Wisconsin Business
By: David Dayen Wednesday March 23, 2011
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/03/23/scott-walker-bad-for-wisconsin-business/
Scott Walker did not run primarily on a platform of killing public employee unions and becoming a conservative darling. His slogan during the Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign was “Wisconsin is open for business.” He put a premium on attracting new businesses to the state.
It just so happens that his method of bringing in new business aligns with longstanding conservative projects of deregulation and union-bashing. But how do they perform on their own terms? Simply put, is Wisconsin now “open for business?”
No. Right from the beginning, Walker’s cancellation of a high speed rail link between Madison and Milwaukee sent a rail car business out of Milwaukee, abandoning a large factory. The removal of collective bargaining rights from public employees may lead to a serious catastrophe for the state’s forestry industry, as they are likely to lose their third-party “certified market” status.
Now, his policies have sent other businesses throughout the state scurrying. A wind power project near Green Bay will be shuttered.
“Chicago energy development firm Invenergy on Monday notified state regulators that it’s withdrawing plans to build a large wind power project south of Green Bay.
The company said it was concerned about moving forward because of the state of flux in Wisconsin’s regulatory climate when it comes to wind siting. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a bill that would sharply curtail wind development.”
In fact, since Walker has been sworn in, 19 plants have closed down for a variety of reasons. And as you can see, some of them are directly related to Walker’s policies on regulations, public employee unions, renewable energy and high speed rail. Without including Talgo (the rail car maker) and Invenergy (the wind power company), 2,207 workers in Wisconsin have lost their factory jobs since Walker’s inauguration. Even Walker’s one claim of “job creation” for Wisconsin is nonsense:
“Meanwhile, Walker has taken a victory lap for “creating jobs” by paying an Illinois company $1.25 million to move their address a few miles north to Wisconsin. As discussed earlier, this doesn’t create jobs or tax revenue: All the Illinois employees will just have a slightly longer commute to work and because of Illinois-Wisconsin tax reciprocity agreements, will continue to pay taxes to Illinois.”
Keep in mind that this is going on during a period of relatively decent job growth in the rest of the country.
It’s no wonder that Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald had to pause when asked if the Legislature could pass the anti-union bill again, if necessitated by court cases. Scott Walker is unpopular because of his extremist tendencies, but also because his policies are hurting Wisconsin’s economy.
From Huffington Post (3/23/2011)
Scott Walker is Trying to Sell Wisconsin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-brunsell/scott-walker-sell-wisconsin_b_839807.html
Excerpt:
Over the past 30 years, our political leaders have bemoaned our crumbling education system. From “A Nation at Risk” to recent International comparisons, we hear the constant drum beat that our education system isn’t up to snuff. We need to do better. We need higher standards, more tests, and punishments for failing schools. Our political leaders state that we need to recruit the best teachers and compensate them well. But, of course, we need to do it without money. We can’t afford it.
We can afford tax breaks for the wealthiest, corporate loopholes and incentives and “open for business” signs at the Wisconsin border, but we can’t afford public services, including well-funded schools.
Over most of the past 20 years, public school teacher compensation in Wisconsin has been constrained by the Qualified Economic Offer, a law enacted to lower property taxes. Wisconsin teachers have seen their compensation slip from 15th in the nation to 23rd, the lowest ranking in 50 years. However, state leaders still say, “We can’t afford it.” How low does it have to go?
The controversy in Wisconsin is about money, but it isn’t about fixing the budget deficit. This is about breaking the back of labor unions. This is about vilifying and silencing public workers. This is about selling Wisconsin.
In a recent Fox Business special alert, Follow the Money: Revolt in Madison, the host states, “Madison, Wisconsin has become a living, breathing example of the huge split in this country between the sensible ones who see the need to reign in spending and the entitled mostly unionized ones who won’t sacrifice any of their cushy benefits and high salaries and it’s turning ugly…”
You know, the sensible ones that think tax cuts for the wealthy do not add to the deficit versus the entitled folks that negotiated cushy packages that let them drive around in used minivans.
Fox Business’ guest, Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, states, “I think these teacher unions and others are showing what they are really all about,” as he explains why his organization bused in Tea Party protesters from around the country to Madison two Saturdays ago in support of Walker’s budget fix (NOTE: For those keeping score — Pro-union protesters: 68,000+ Tea Partiers: 2,000).
Ah, yes. The union thugs, led by a middle school teacher from Wisconsin Rapids, are really showing their true colors by singing folk songs and chanting “Thank You” to firefighters and snowplow drivers. At the time this “news” show was broadcast, the ugliness of the protests had led to nine police citations — less than what is given at a University of Wisconsin home football game.
Let there be no question about this. Walker’s power play in Wisconsin is about demonizing public employees for the benefit of a “corporation first” ideology.
Tim Phillips’ Americans for Prosperity was founded and is heavily funded by David and Charles Koch, the owners of Koch Industries. The wealth of the Koch brothers is exceeded in the U.S. only by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Their funding of campaigns, political action committees, and libertarian think tanks have left an insidious mark on U.S. politics that distinctly benefit their personal and corporate interests.
The fingers of the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity can be found throughout the controversy in Wisconsin. In addition to organizing the small Tea Party counter-protest in Madison, Americans for Prosperity has launched a “Stand with Walker” website and, with additional support from the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce business association, is running more than $400,000 in radio and TV ads attacking public workers and their “lavish” benefits. The Koch brothers were the second largest contributors to Governor Walker’s campaign ($43,000) and an additional $1 million contribution to the Republican Governors Association directly benefited Walker. Although Governor Walker has been too busy to speak with Democratic legislators and union leaders, he easily found time to speak with a blogger pretending to be David Koch.
David and Charles Koch finance groups that rail against taxes for the wealthy and corporate regulations. They promote an agenda that calls for the privatization of the public sector. In Walker, they have found an ideological kindred spirit and will spare no expense in the fight for corporate rights.
From Think Progress (3/23/2011)
Kasich So Eager To Cut Spending He’d Leave Prison Guard Towers Empty
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/23/kasich-prison-guards/
In his lust to cut state spending, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) proposed a plan that could leave guard towers unmanned at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison located near two schools and a residential neighborhood in Lucasville. The plan would close six of the prison’s eight towers, resulting in savings of a measly $2.1 million. The proposal was met with resistance from local union officials and state Rep. Terry Johnson (R), who recalled the 1993 riot that left one guard and 10 inmates dead inside the facility:
“The people guarding the prison are my friends and neighbors,” Johnson said. “Their welfare and that of their families are my highest priority. The public owes them an enormous debt of gratitude for the difficult job they do so well. This potential tower closure presents a grave concern for me. If keeping those towers open will help ensure a single time that one guard gets home safely to his or her family when they might otherwise have been harmed then I am for keeping the towers open.” […]
“I was here in 1993 with the (Ohio) National Guard and saw the disastrous consequences of a full-scale riot firsthand,” Johnson said. “That was a terrible time and lives were lost. We need to ensure that never happens again.”
Given his short time in office, Kasich is already remarkably unpopular with Ohio voters. Endangering prison guards, school children and families in the name of saving money probably isn’t the way to bring those poll numbers back up.
Buddha,
at least he isn’t taking it down because it has naked people on it, like Ashcroft.
Stamford,
Senator Johnson just made my list as one of the worlds most disgusting humans. To use your daughter while spreading a filthy lie like that is something I could never forgive. What has happened to the Wisconsin I knew? How could these alien beings have been successful in their bids for public office?
Elaine,
I hope the protests are even bigger this weekend than the last one that had over 100,000 people in the street.
Hey! A double play! Now a Maine idiot of the Repuglcan flavor has found a way to attack both art and unions at the same time . . .
“Governor Paul LePage (R-Maine) has sparked a fresh battle with the state’s union community, ordering a mural at the Department of Labor (DOL) taken down on the grounds that the image is biased against business owners.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/maine-paul-lepage-unions-labor-mural_n_839520.html
Hey, “Governor” LePage! Do you know what a business would be without labor? It would be some putz unable to actually do on his own sitting around staring at the sun wishing he was rich.
Sigh …
Topic:
Healthcare Reform
Wednesday, Mar 23, 2011 15:15 ET
How The World Works Sen. Ron Johnson’s ObamaCare atrocity
Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold replacement claims healthcare reform could have killed his baby
By Andrew Leonard
Oh Wisconsin. That state that gave us both workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance now boasts a rookie senator, Ron Johnson, who can claim the great honor of authoring of the single worst opinion piece commemorating the one-year-anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Johnson kicks of his Wall Street Journal op-ed by calling the ACA “the greatest single assault on our freedom in my lifetime.” He then recounts the tear-jerking story of his baby daughter Carey, who was born with a horrific heart defect, but survived due to fantastic, state-of-the-art medical intervention.
Then comes the heart of his piece: His assertion that his daughter “probably wouldn’t have survived” if “ObamaCare” had been in place when she was born.
I don’t even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents on what would be covered. Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?
Boy, sure would have been awful if that had happened, wouldn’t it? Guess we shold be thankful that the Affordable Care Act would have had absolutely zero effect on Ron Johnson’s daughter’s health prospects.
The Affordable Care Act does not put any limits on what private insurance plans can cover. It does the opposite, it puts into place minimum levels that private insurance plans must cover. The Affordable Care Act is designed to give people who can’t afford the kind of health care insurance that multimillionaires like Ron Johnson enjoy the chance to get coverage that will allow their babies to thrive.
Jonathan Chait:
Johnson implies that procedures like this don’t happen elsewhere. Does he have any data? No. Does he have any reason to believe that the Affordable Care Act would prevent private insurance from covering procedures like this? No. That doesn’t happen in countries like Switzerland that have systems like the Affordable Care Act, and it doesn’t happen in the socialist hell of Massachusetts.
Indeed, one of the reasons for the law is that private health insurance often contains lifetime caps on coverage, or arbitrarily throws people who develop expensive conditions off their plans, and therefore keeps people from getting procedures like the one Johnson’s daughter received.
Rick Ungar:
Today, thanks to Obamacare, someone less fortunate than the senator does not have to fear loss of health insurance as no child can now be denied health insurance.
The senator might want to think about what efforts would have been made by someone else’s health insurance plan to worm out of the expensive coverage that would be involved in not only these complicated surgeries, but a possible life-time of medical complications. No longer — the ACA puts the clamps on the practices of insurers who try to avoid their coverage obligations.
Senator Johnson might wish to think about the child who cannot be fully cured by surgery. Prior to health care reform, it would only be a matter of time until the costs of the medical needs of such a child would hit the ceiling of the policy limits and the insurer would stop paying for needed health care.
There are countless reasons to be critical of the Affordable Care Act. It bends over backwards to accommodate private insurers, it doesn’t leverage government power enough to reduce healthcare costs, it is a cumbersome set of compromises with so many moving parts that no one really knows what longterm fiscal impact it will have. But one thing it does not do is restrict the ability of the richest Americans to get whatever healthcare they please.
And this is where Johnson’s editorial moves beyond being simply wrong into the territory of sheer moral reprehensibility. He dares talk about “scarce tax dollars” and the high quality of American medicine, while representing a political party that simultaneously makes tax cuts for the wealthy one of its highest priorities and pushes for cuts in government spending on the kind of medical research that makes the miracles his daughter benefited from possible. He attacks as an “assault on freedom” a healthcare law that gives millions of Americans access to the insurance coverage he already enjoys. He is one of the most privileged people on the face of the planet, defending with all his might a status quo of gross injustice.
Wisconsin traded in Russ Feingold for this? For shame.
Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More: Andrew Leonard
http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/03/23/ron_johnson_obamacare_baby
rafflaw,
I heard that more protests are planned in Madison this weekend.
Elaine,
Great update on the Walker budget lies. It is nice to see that his stupidity is being further exposed. He is going down in January.
From Think Progress (3/23/2011)
Gov. Walker’s Budget Analysis Fudges Numbers To Hide Deep Education Cuts
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/23/walker-fudges-analysis/
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) justified his high-profile push to eliminate collective bargaining rights for his state’s public employees by saying it was necessary to balance his state’s budget (even though Wisconsin’s union workers agreed to all of his pay and benefit demands). That budget also contains $900 billion in cuts to state education funding, but Walker claimed that the savings from eliminating collective bargaining and having public employees dedicate more of their pay to their health care and pension benefits would offset those reductions.
“If we did this in our life, it would be like saying you’re getting 5 percent less revenue but ignoring the fact that your car payment just went away,” said Walker. Walker even released a budget analysis purporting to show how much school districts would save under his plan. But school administrators looking at Walker’s numbers have found that they don’t add up:
Take the La Crosse school district as an example. Walker’s numbers show it will come out $1.77 million ahead after taking his proposed cut to state aid. The district’s own numbers show it comes up at least $1.2 million short. […]
The governor calculates La Crosse can save $4.99 million by making employees pay more for retirement and health care benefits. Actual savings add up to about $3.7 million a year, according to Janet Rosseter, the district’s finance manager.
The La Crosse Tribune noted that Walker’s budget analysis has some fine print stating that the “actual impact of these reductions and savings on individual school districts in FY 2012 and beyond may differ significantly from these estimates.”
The differences arise in large part because Walker assumed that all school employees were paying below 12.6 percent of their paychecks into their health benefits. But many employees were already paying that much, if not significantly more. In the Holmen school district, for example, “almost all employees already contribute 20 percent of their insurance premiums. “There’s no savings for us in health insurance,” said Jay Clark, Holmen’s associate district administrator. “Us moving to 12.6 percent would actually cost us money.”
So Walker’s education cuts are very real. Of course, instead of papering over them and forcing schools into layoffs and increased class sizes, he could rethink some of the corporate tax breaks that he’s approved during the last few months.
From Business Insider
Wisc. Supreme Court Election Now A Proxy For Collective Bargaining Fight
By Grace Wyler | Mar. 22, 2011
http://www.businessinsider.com/wisc-supreme-court-election-is-now-a-proxy-for-collective-bargaining-fight-2011-3
Excerpt:
The battle over collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin has turned a quiet state Supreme Court election into a referendum on Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Union supporters – vowing to overturn Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining law through whatever political or legal means necessary – have turned their ire toward conservative state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser’s re-election campaign against prosecuter JoAnne Kloppenburg.
Although the race is officially nonpartisan, a Kloppenburg win would shift the bench to the left and could alter the fate of the collective bargaining legislation should it end up before the state Supreme Court.
From Think Progress (3/18/2011)
Gov. Scott’s Version Of ‘Fair Taxes’: Regressive Personal Taxes And No Corporate Tax
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/18/scott-fair-taxe/
Like many Republican governors, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has released a budget that lays off thousands of state workers and slashes education and Medicaid funding, but still cuts Florida’s already low corporate income tax rate by two and a half percentage points. During an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow last night (which didn’t air, but was posted online), Scott defended his budgeting moves, saying that his cut in the corporate income tax — and his desire to eventually phase that tax out entirely — is part of promoting “fair taxes” in the Sunshine state:
We want to make this the place where people say ‘look, its got a fair government, we have fair taxes.’ We don’t have an income tax, I’m getting rid of the business tax…We’re going to reduce it by two and a half percent this year, down to three percent, and then phase it out over the next few years.
Placing the burden of deficit reduction onto public workers and those who depend on public services, while simultaneously doling out new corporate tax cuts, certainly isn’t fair. But it’s even less fair considering that Florida has one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems, with no personal income tax and a high reliance on sales taxes.
Florida’s poorest 20 percent of residents currently pay 13.5 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest one percent of Floridians pay just 2.6 percent. In fact, Washington is the only state in the nation where a poor family can expect to pay higher taxes than in Florida, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The bottom line is that many so-called ‘low-tax’ states are high-tax states for the poor, and most of them do not offer a good deal to middle-income families either. Only the wealthy in such states pay relatively little,” ITEP wrote.
Adding insult to injury, Scott wants to lower a corporate tax that is already riddled with giveaways and loopholes. The Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy has found that “exemptions from the corporate income tax cost more than $1 billion annually, and the state loses several hundred million dollars each year because of ‘tax avoidance behavior’ by companies.” Instead of addressing these problems — or introducing some progressivity into his state’s personal tax code — Scott is proposing a new tax cut for corporations that his state can ill-afford.
*****
Check out the Think Progress post to watch a short video of Gov. Scott talking to Larry Kudlow.
repost:
“The whole purpose of the open meeting law, which implements constitutional mandates, is to provide notice to the public so that they can participate in governmental affairs. The GOP took several measures that not only violated this law but were intended to subvert democracy.”
It has been my experience over the years and through my work on the LWV, that politicians fail to recognize the importance of “Sunshine Laws” (Open Meetings Law) until it smacks them in the face. These “Laws” have been around forever and there is a great deal of “Case Law” decided over decades thanks mainly to News Organizations demanding access to the legislative decision making process.
Otteray,
I found these lines particularly telling:
4.) You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe.
3.) You spend more time at protest marches than at church.
**********
Do those sound like “David Letterman” to you?
LOL!
Stamford,
I think the Republicans are trying to out crazy each other on these radical bills. They are making sure everyone knows exactly where they stand. They stand for big corporations owning government and for the rich getting richer on the backs of the poor and middle class.
Elaine, if Letterman could track down the evil troll who first published that scurrilous POS, he should sue them for defamation.