Wisconsin GOP gets it done on collective bargaining bill
By Ron Watrous | Thursday, March 10th, 2011 | PolicyNow Jesse James and the rest of the minority party is crying ‘foul,’ claiming the GOP majority violated procedures to get the measure passed. It doesn’t seem that any rules were actually violated, though, and appropriate notifications happened in accordance with the rules.
Undeterred, Dems from sea to shining sea along with their Union Alliance are streaming to the Cheddar State to force recall elections. Residents of Wisconsin, don’t despair. The rest of the country wouldn’t mind someone with Walker’s stones at the national level…”Walker 2012!”
Virginia stands in sharp contrast. Dems in the Virginia State Senate stymied GOP bills at every turn. Bills were killed in sub-committee routinely and not given a “fair hearing” at the committee-level – in clear violation of Senate traditions.
So, in Wisconsin, Senate Dems call the GOP majority unreasonable, and violating Democracy when they follow the rules and traditions. The Dem majority in the Virginia Senate consider the rules whatever they say they are. At least “some animals being more equal than others” is consistent within Dem-landia.
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Ron is a native of Texas and has been an editor, writer and communication consultant for 19 years. He currently resides in Virginia.
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14 Responses to "Wisconsin GOP gets it done on collective bargaining bill"
Speaking of gangs..
http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/117732923.html
“Walker in 2012?” No way Democrats get that lucky.
Some on the right seem to be as in denial as Mubarik was. You think you won something here. Don’t you realize that Scott Walker has done what a generation of American labor leaders hadn’t been able to figure out how to do, he’s breathed new life into the union movement?
You know those union workers in Southwest Virginia and Tennessee and Ohio and Michigan whose votes Republicans have been able to get for the last few years on god and gun issues?
Think you’ll still get them now that the party has an outfront agenda to bust unions and take bread off their family tables? You’ve pretty much made it explicit that your the party of the bosses. There are more workers than bosses.
Obama’s campaign committee should have to list the huge in-kind contribution for union get-out-the-vote efforts that it just received from Gov. Walker.
I have to agree with Steve on this one. Gov Walker and these Repubs probably gave up the 2012 election with this stunt. These union members will be blindly voting Democrat like blacks do.
Walker should’ve done this three weeks ago when the Dems played their stunt. Instead he prolonged it as the Dems and the unions used it as a recruiting campaign.
While the Dems were on vacation, he could’ve been making his case in the media but he didn’t. It’s over now but the political capital he lost cannot be regained.
When they lose their jobs in the Dems paradise of bankrupt blue states and move to the growing red states will they wake up then?
@ Turbo: Chilling link and way over the top.
I’ll disagree with Steve and John on this one. Public reaction can sway either way and I hope it swings for Walker. On the fed level, there IS no significant deficit reduction without radical cuts to entitlements and defense. Same for non-sustainable pension plans at the state level.
Trumpka spins the loss as a win … but it doesn’t make it so. Neither Walker or the party want to defang ALL unions – just the teachers and state employee public unions!
Amazes me … everyone wants fiscal houses put in order, but no one is willing to accept responsibility or suffer any consequences wrought by 20+ years of government’s fast living and irresponsible law-making.
I have to disagree with Steve here.
The numbers don’t agree with you at all. For all the protesting and leaving the state, the poll numbers still aren’t good for the unions, and even as unions continue to turn the volume up they can’t seem to get people on their side. Even with very vague kind of “do you support public union” type questions their only getting 60%, it gets much worse for them as the questions get specific. The problem for the public unions is that what would have worked like a charm for them 5 or 10 years ago is slamming face first into the reality of a very serious recession, and there’s just not that much sympathy out there for them. Through the non-sense being generated by parties on all sides of this debate, people do, in the end, actually understand that there is a budget crisis and that there are only two ways to deal with it – cutting expenses or raising revenues, because there is no way the House is going to agree to bail the states out.
During the good times organized people can gimmick and B.S. their way through just about anything if they have the right angle, but these aren’t good times. There are times in history when the wind is simply blowing too hard against you, there are things in this world you just can’t spin no matter what you do.
Welcome to the recession.
Temporary,
The GOP missed a great opportunity to expose the true issues that the unions cause. Instead, Governor Walker sat on it for three weeks as the left built up an emotional charge toward the Governor and the other Republicans.
Of course this has spread to other states, it has nothing to do with collective bargaining rights or we would’ve seen these riots where governors played the same tactics.
The Repubs missed a great opportunity to gain some political capital but that appears to be a trend. That’s why the Repubs play second fiddle to the Dems and 2012 is owned by the left right now.
John Jackson, according to National Review Online’s Michael Franc – recent Rasmussen and Pew poll results say you (and Trumka) are incorrect.
“Polls show that the vast majority of people think that [Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin] has overreached. . . . His popularity has gone down. So he’s losing.” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said it on Meet the Press, so it must be true, right?
Not necessarily. More than one poll suggests that public-sector unions have picked a bad time to stage massive temper tantrums to defend the status quo. Most Americans are in no mood to preserve government workers’ inflated salaries and benefits. Indeed, ordinary Americans are not sold on the proposition that public-sector employees should even be allowed to form unions and go out on strike.
…48 percent of voters take Gov. Scott Walker’s side in the budget dispute while 38 percent support the public-sector unions. And by a similar margin (49 percent to 38 percent), voters question whether public-sector employees should enjoy the legal right to strike.
… when it comes to the budget and labor disputes at issue in Wisconsin, Obama’s majority coalition splinters. Specifically, voters in households with incomes over $100,000 are with Walker 50 percent to 38 percent. Even those with post-graduate degrees are with him by a margin of 48 percent to 43 percent.
Two other significant findings: The “other” category of race … breaks for the governor by a lopsided 65 percent–to–30 percent margin. And the bellwether group of political independents supports him by 56 percent to 31 percent. It’s never good news for liberals when these voters look a whole lot like conservative Republicans.
The most surprising (Rasmuessen) finding? Voters in union households are split right down the middle. A plurality of 46 percent favor their union brothers and sisters, but 44 percent take Walker’s side. My theory is that union voters who work in the private sector see themselves primarily as stressed-out taxpayers, and therefore see things differently than their brethren in the public-sector unions (the Manhattan Institute’s Steve Malanga calls them “tax eaters”). Again, this is a dynamic that, if it were to spread to other states, could threaten the heretofore successful and unbreakable political formula of the modern union movement.
… The most surprising finding in the Pew poll? Former union members expressed the most skepticism on these matters, even more than those who never worked in a union. Little wonder Trumka and other union bigwigs fear the structural reforms proposed by Governor Walker that would give rank-and-file workers the option of holding on to their union dues. A little taste of freedom, it seems, goes a long way. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/260905/organized-labor-vs-public-opinion-michael-g-franc
Gov. Chris Christie meets with NJ labor union leaders tomorrow; it will be interesting to see how he plays it.
Re:Steve Vaughan, “You’ve pretty much made it explicit that your the party of the bosses. There are more workers than bosses.”
This is outdated thinking. Try instead: “It’s becoming clear, even to union members, that we’re the party of the taxpayers. There are more taxpayers than (government) workers.”
I think that the fiscal conservatives have come through this Wisconsin thing looking very good. I don’t know how everyone else felt while they were watching what happened in Wisconsin over the past few weeks, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching spoiled children who are so used to getting their way that they felt they had to throw a giant tantrum the first time their parents tried to discipline them. I think that the 14 Democrats who left spent a lot of political capital for nothing, they ended the day looking like they have been bought and paid for and I think they’ve lost a huge amount of credibility. Put another way, if there was ever a doubt in anyone’s mind about who butters the bread for these 14 people it isn’t a mystery any longer, no reasonable politician would ever leave the state for three weeks just to please a special interest unless that special interest meant everything to them. What about all of the 14′s other constituents; housewives, truck drivers, entrepreneurs, landscapers, roofers, hair stylists, and all the rest, were the 14 thinking about the rest of the people they work for when they decided to run off and protect public unions ? The GOP has been saying that unions have had the Democratic party in their pockets for years, was it wise to run off and prove it ? The only group that has perjured itself more is the media, nobody could watch the union coverage and compare that to the tea party coverage and not be left with the conclusion that the media is extremely biased. Since when did taxpayers become the designated a%%#oles ? The tea party could only dream of stories in the press that portray them as the downtrodden masses fighting for justice. At this point I find myself waiting for Anderson Cooper to create a Wisconsin month-in-review union montage with flight of the valkyrie playing in the background.
@Jay D,
Let me state that I support what Governor Walker and the other Republicans are doing.
What I did see was thirty to forty thousand passionate “Useful Idiots” in those videos. They actually believe they are fighting Hitler and Mussolini. I’m just saying that polls only capture the moment and not the passion that was created from those three weeks. That passion will resonate long after any poll.
Just look at Brian Schoeneman’s article. You would’ve thought Governor Walker took away his first born and he lives in Virginia. To these people, it’s the end of the world.
Come 2012, expect to hear “Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm, Barrack Hussein Obama” sung in classrooms all across Wisconsin.
Temporary
Yeah, I consider myself a Tea Party supporter and we can’t even gather without being labeled whatever the agenda of the day. (whether its bombing Times Square or killing the judge in Arizona)
Hell, this union breaks into the capital building, threaten the lives of politicians and squats on the property and they are crusaders. I only wish we got that type of coverage and I’m not holding my breath.
John,
Good points, I agree that we should never underestimate the power of passionate “useful idiots” under the power of a well-spoken leader.
That being said, we shouldn’t kid ourselves: come 2012, public school classrooms across Wisconsin will be resonating with “Barak Hussein Obama, Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmmm”, no matter what Governor Walker and the legislature accomplish.
BB, Can’t argue with that, just saying that passion pushes people to do stupid stuff, no matter how smart or important you think you are.
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