Wis. union vote on hold after Democrats leave state

[Auburn85 436]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41644074/ns/us_news-life/

By SCOTT BAUER

AP

MADISON, Wis. — Faced with a near-certain Republican victory that would end a half-century of collective bargaining for public workers, Wisconsin Democrats retaliated with the only weapon they had left: They fled.

Fourteen Democratic lawmakers disappeared from the Capitol on Thursday, just as the Senate was about to begin debating the measure aimed at easing the state's budget crunch.

By refusing to show up for a vote, the group brought the debate to a swift halt and hoped to pressure Republicans to the negotiating table.

"The plan is to try and slow this down because it's an extreme piece of legislation that's tearing this state apart," Sen. Jon Erpenbach said.

The move drew cheers from tens of thousands of protesters — teachers, prison guards and others targeted by the proposal — who filled the Statehouse during the past three days.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who took office just last month, has made the bill a top priority. He urged the group to return and called the boycott a "stunt."

"It's more about theatrics than anything else," Walker said, predicting that the group would come back in a day or two, after realizing "they're elected to do a job."

Walker said Democrats could still offer amendments to change the bill, but he vowed not to concede on his plan to end most collective bargaining rights.

With 19 seats, Republicans hold a majority in the 33-member Senate, but they are one vote short of the number necessary to conduct business. So the GOP needs at least one Democrat to be present before any voting can take place. Once the measure is brought to the floor, it needs 17 votes to pass.

Other lawmakers who fled sent messages over Twitter and issued written statements but did not disclose their location until hours later.

Erpenbach said the group had been in Rockford, Ill., but they dispersed by late afternoon.

In response to a question of where she was, Sen. Lena Taylor sent a tweet saying she was "doing the people's business. Power to the PEOPLE."

Sen. Tim Cullen of Janesville said he was back in Wisconsin by Thursday night, but he did not expect Democrats to return to take up the bill until Saturday.

As Republicans tried to begin Senate business around midday, observers in the gallery screamed "Freedom! Democracy! Unions!" Opponents cheered when a legislative leader announced there were not enough senators present to proceed.

The sergeant-at-arms immediately began looking for the missing lawmakers. If authorized, he can seek help from police.

Senate rules and the state constitution say absent members can be compelled to appear, but it does not say how.

"Today they checked out, and I'm not sure where they're at," Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said. "This is the ultimate shutdown, what we're seeing today."

The Senate planned to try again to convene Friday. The Assembly took no action Thursday but could take up the bill on Friday whether the Senate does or not, said John Jagler, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald.

Elsewhere, some Democrats applauded the developments in Wisconsin as a long-awaited sign that their party was fighting back against the Republican wave created by November's midterm election.

"I am glad to see some Democrats, for a change, with a backbone. I'm really proud to hear that they did that," said Democratic state Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre of Oklahoma, another state where Republicans won the governorship in November and also control both legislative chambers.

Across the Wisconsin Statehouse, Democrats showed up in the Assembly chamber wearing orange T-shirts that proclaimed their support for working families.

After a routine roll call, they exchanged high-fives with protesters, who cried "thank you" as the Democrats walked by. Protesters unleashed venomous boos and screams at Republicans.

Thursday's events were reminiscent of a 2003 dispute in Texas, where Democrats twice fled the state to prevent adoption of a redistricting bill designed to give Republicans more seats in Congress. The bill passed a few months later.

[jj3jordan 2,161]

It really makes a statement that a liberal state like Wisconsin elected so many republican statehouse members and the governor. Sounds like the ones who left the state are not listening to the people of Wisconsin. The populace nationwide is starting to realize that the debt has to be dealt with, and I believe they will support governors who make the tough calls.

[AURaptor 1,137]

Technically speaking they don't even need the Dems to vote on the Union collective bargining issue. The GOP "CAN" simply move forward and vote on the matter now, but they're trying to work w/ the Dems.

This is what you get when you try to work w/ socialists.

[Auburn85 436]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-gave-6696-million-wisconsin-public#

Feds Gave $669.6 Million to Wisconsin Public Schools—More Than 20 Times What Proposed State Cuts Would Save

By Terence P. Jeffrey

CNSNews.com) - The federal government gave $669.6 million to the public schools in Wisconsin in fiscal 2008, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is trying to save in the current fiscal year by asking state employees, including teachers, to pay for a fraction of the cost of their own pension packages and health-insurance premium.

Because of this federal subsidy, taxpayers in the 49 other states make a handsome contribution to the salary and benefits packages of Wisconsin school teachers.

Fiscal 2008 is the last year for which the NCES has published the state-by-state dollar amount of federal subsidies for public schools.

Wisconsin faces a $137 million shortfall for the state's current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and a $3.6 billion shortfall for the next two fiscal years.

To help close this budget gap, Gov. Walker, a Republican, has proposed legislation that would make state employees, including teachers, pay 5.8 percent of their salary in contributions to their pension plan and 12.6 percent of what the state pays for their insurance premiums.

The governor’s proposal would also prevent state employees’unions from engaging in collective bargaining over state workers’ benefit packages, allowing them only to bargain over wages. Also, state employees’ wages would not be allowed to increase faster than the rate of inflation (the Consumer Price Index) unless voters approved the increase in a referendum.

Teachers and other state employees and the unions that represent them have been protesting the governor's proposals for the past week.

Gov. Walker’s proposed budget changes would save the state an estimated $30 million this year and $300 million during the next two fiscal years. But that is a pittance compared to the federal subsidies that flow annually into Wisconsin public school system.

In fiscal 2008, according to the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, the federal government provided Wisconsin public schools with $669,634,777.

The $669.6 million in federal tax dollars that was directed to Wisconsin public schools in fiscal 2008 is more than 22 times as much as the $30 million that Wisconsin would save in this fiscal year from the changes proposed by Gov. Walker and more than twice as much as the $300 million the governor’s plan would save the state over the next two fiscal years.

Wisconsin spent $10,791 per pupil in its public elementary and secondary schools in fiscal year 2008, according to the NCES. That amount includes salaries and benefits for teachers, school administrators and support staff as well as other school expenses.

Wisconsin’s $10,791 per-pupil spending in its public schools was more than the $10,353 that neighboring Illinois spent; or the $10,048 that neighboring Minnesota spent; or the $9,520 that neighbor Iowa spent.

In fact, the $10,791 Wisconsin spent per pupil in its public schools in fiscal 2008 was more than was spent on public schooling by any other Midwest state, according to the NCES.

Wisconsin’s closest Midwest competitor was Nebraska, which spent $10,565 per public in its public elementary and secondary schools in fiscal 2008.

[arnaldoabru 11]

If you think this has anything to do with asking teachers to help "foot the bill" you really do think FOX is a news network.

[autigeremt 7,147]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

[arnaldoabru 11]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

So why did the Governor exempt the police and fireman's union?

[Aufan59 168]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

So why did the Governor exempt the police and fireman's union?

He probably respects police and firemen.

[arnaldoabru 11]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

So why did the Governor exempt the police and fireman's union?

He probably respects police and firemen.

Follow the money

[autigeremt 7,147]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

So why did the Governor exempt the police and fireman's union?

He probably respects police and firemen.

Follow the money

BINGO! This is why I am all for Right To Work and the end to all unions! They drain jobs and promote dirty political connections. I don't like corporate connections either. The government should be in the buisness to help cultivate capitalism, but should never be a part of capitalism. Same for unions.....mafia mindset with little care for the overall wellfare of it's members.

[arnaldoabru 11]

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/article_9a0c8e82-4f80-57d6-8025-e456d29b04a4.html

[arnaldoabru 11]

It's about Union Busting....and it's about time!!!!! You don't need a union to A: get a good paying job with RESPONSIBLE benefits and B: You don't need a union to speak for your interests. So many northern states are getting railroaded by union contracts, and it's time to take out the trash.

So why did the Governor exempt the police and fireman's union?

He probably respects police and firemen.

Follow the money

BINGO! This is why I am all for Right To Work and the end to all unions! They drain jobs and promote dirty political connections. I don't like corporate connections either. The government should be in the buisness to help cultivate capitalism, but should never be a part of capitalism. Same for unions.....mafia mindset with little care for the overall wellfare of it's members.

"rigth to work"- means you earn less

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/legislativealert/stateissues/work/

[bigsixfive 341]

Follow the money

That's right, follow the money. Donations by corporations and special interest groups:

[Ranger12 53]

I don't care who your party affiliation is...if you are elected, then do your job! Don't run away because you don't like a bill and it looks like the majority is against you. If you don't like the bill, then stay and fight to get it changed, don't run from your responsibilities. If you lose, then you lose. That is a part of the process, but don't act like a you are on the playground refusing to play because you don't like the rules.

I vote conservative and if my conservative representatives in Alabama was to pull something like this, everyone of those AWOL members would be getting a nasty e-mail from me telling them to untuck their tails and get back in the game to fight for my ideals, not run away like cry babies. If they didn't, then they would not have my vote in the next primary they run in.

[arnaldoabru 11]

Follow the money

That's right, follow the money. Donations by corporations and special interest groups:

Where do you think the Koch brothers money goes?

[AFTiger 282]

Certainly not the same groups as George Soros.

[bigsixfive 341]

Where do you think the Koch brothers money goes?

89% goes to Republicans. They're 83rd on the list. I guess its irrelevant that 13 of the top 21 donors give over 90% to Dems, and 14 give over 89%.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?type=A

[arnaldoabru 11]

and the Billionaires continue to piss on the American worker

[Ranger12 53]

and the Billionaires continue to piss on the American worker

By being the ones that sign the checks of the American worker?

Unions had their place and did a lot of good things to make sure the corporations did not take advantage of the laborer. However, most unions have turned into a political machine or money making organization that is more about making the union bosses fatter by putting so much financial stress on companies that they either have to move the labor to Mexico or India, or go out of business. The Delphi plant in Decatur was the place to work for many years because they paid an hourly wage 4-5 times more than the rest of the factories in the area because of the UAW contracts. However, it is now closed and I know several that used to work there and were union members that now look back and realize that the union played a part in costing them their jobs just as poor corporate management did.

My father-in-law moved here from Michigan and was a part of the start up crew that opened that plant and was one of the last to leave as they closed the doors because he was a maintenance supervisor. He will even admit that their union contract they had for the Decatur plant, which the contract was the same for all the plants, was ridiculous because the cost of living in Decatur was much less than Michigan, so union wages here were outrageous compared to the average factory wages for the rest of the area. They even got a paid week of work here for when deer season opened in Michigan, because that is what was in the union contract. That deer season demand is just one of many examples on how unions have went past looking out for the laborer to trying to stick it the company as much as they can. There are way too many demands by unions these days that go beyond just wanting decent pay and benefits. There are too many demands for what is considered "luxury" benefits that wind up costing companies way too much money because these items costs millions upon millions with no return in productivity to show for it. Yet unions keep wondering why so many companies are packing their bags and heading to other countries for their labor.

[AFTiger 282]

and the Billionaires continue to piss on the American worker

Well since the billionaires like Buffett, Gates, and Soros support democrats, I suppose I will have to agree with you.

[arnaldoabru 11]

Wisconsin's problems are all the unions fault

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/2/22/matt_taibbi_why_isnt_wall_street_in_jail

[AFTiger 282]

Wisconsin's problems are all the unions fault

http://www.democracy..._street_in_jail

No, but the public employee unions are the only ones that the state government can address,

[AFTiger 282]

The obligatory cartoon on the Wisconsin teachers strike

[Tigermike 3,667]

In "Public Unions and the Socialist Utopia", Robert Tracinski has captured the reality of the situation that is going on in Wisconsin and which is bubbling up in all the other states of the Union:

February 27, 2011

Public Unions & the Socialist Utopia

By Robert Tracinski

The Democratic lawmakers who have gone on the lam in Wisconsin and Indiana-and who knows where else next-are exhibiting a literal fight-or-flight response, the reaction of an animal facing a threat to its very existence.

Why? Because it is a threat to their existence. The battle of Wisconsin is about the viability of the Democratic Party, and more: it is about the viability of the basic social ideal of the left.

It is a matter of survival for Democrats in an immediate, practical sense. As Michael Barone explains, the government employees' unions are a mechanism for siphoning taxpayer dollars into the campaigns of Democratic politicians.

But there is something deeper here than just favor-selling and vote-buying. There is something that almost amounts to a twisted idealism in the Democrats' crusade. They are fighting, not just to preserve their special privileges, but to preserve a social ideal. Or rather, they are fighting to maintain the illusion that their ideal system is benevolent and sustainable.

Unionized public-sector employment is the distilled essence of the left's moral ideal. No one has to worry about making a profit. Generous health-care and retirement benefits are provided to everyone by the government. Comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat. The work rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are almost totally independent of actual job performance. And because everyone works for the government, they never have to worry that their employer will go out of business.

In short, public employment is an idealized socialist economy in miniature, including its political aspect: the grateful recipients of government largesse provide money and organizational support to re-elect the politicians who shower them with all of these benefits.

Put it all together, and you have the Democrats' version of utopia. In the larger American culture of Tea Parties, bond vigilantes, and rugged individualists, Democrats feel they are constantly on the defensive. But within the little subculture of unionized government employees, all is right with the world, and everything seems to work the way it is supposed to.

This cozy little world has been described as a system that grants special privileges to a few, which is particularly rankling in the current stagnant economy, when private sector workers acutely feel the difference. But I think this misses the point. The point is that this is how the left thinks everyone should live and work. It is their version of a model society.

Every political movement needs models. It needs a real-world example to demonstrate how its ideal works and that it works.

And there's the rub. The left is running low on utopias.

The failure of Communism-and the spectacular success of capitalism, particularly in bringing wealth to what used to be called the "Third World"-deprived the left of one utopia. So they fell back on the European welfare state, smugly assuring Americans that we would be so much better off if we were more like our cousins across the Atlantic. But the Great Recession has triggered a sovereign debt crisis across Europe. It turned out that the continent's welfare states were borrowing money to paper over the fact that they have committed themselves to benefits more generous than they can ever hope to pay for.

In America, the ideological crisis of the left is taking a slightly different form. Here, the left has set up its utopias by carving out, within a wider capitalist culture, little islands where its ideals hold sway. Old age is one of those islands, where everyone has been promised the socialist dreams of a guaranteed income and unlimited free health care. Public employment is another.

Now the left is panicking as these experiments in American socialism implode.

On the national level, it has become clear that the old-age welfare state of Social Security and Medicare is driving the federal government into permanent trillion-dollar deficits and a ruinous debt load. Even President Obama acknowledged, in his State of the Union address, that these programs are the real drivers of runaway debt-just before he refused to consider any changes to them. You see how hard it is for the Democrats to give up on their utopias.

On the state level, public employment promises the full socialist ideal to a small minority-paid for with tax money looted from a larger, productive private economy. But the socialist utopia of public employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people's money.

The current crisis exposes more than just the financial unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few.

This is why the left is treating any attempt to fundamentally reform the public workers' paradise as an existential crisis. This is why they are reacting with the most extreme measures short of outright insurrection. When Democratic lawmakers flee the state in order to deprive their legislatures of the quorum necessary to vote, they are declaring that they would rather have no legislature than allow voting on any bill that would break the power of the unions.

National Review's Jim Geraghty describes these legislative walk-outs as "small-scale, temporary secessions." The analogy is exact. One hundred and fifty years ago, Southern slaveholders realized that the political balance of the nation had tipped against them, that they could no longer hope to win the political argument for their system. Faced with a federal government in which they were out-voted, they decided that they would rather have no federal government at all. The Democrats' current cause may not be as repugnant-holding human beings as chattel is a unique evil-but it has something of the same character of irrational, belligerent denial. More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left is still trying to pretend that socialism is plausible as an economic system.

The Democrats are fleeing from a lot more than their jobs as state legislators. They are fleeing from the cold, hard reality of the financial and moral unsustainability of their ideal.

link

[bigsixfive 341]

Follow the money

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_87f6ba78-46c6-11e0-a5fc-001cc4c002e0.html

Of the nearly $7 million labor unions have contributed to state candidates in Wisconsin over the last six election cycles, 93 cents of every dollar has gone to a Democrat.

Among educators, it’s 75 cents of every buck. For public employees, 73 cents.

The data compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign for the State Journal starkly illustrate why the high-stakes battle between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and labor unions over the last three weeks is about more than budget shortfalls and bargaining.

“I consider organized labor to be the backbone of the Democratic Party,” said Mike Tate, state party chairman. “Part of Scott Walker’s strategy is to weaken the infrastructure of the Democratic Party.”