See, the whole reason that Walker says he stripped the rights of our public workers last year was to give local governments and districts the "tools" needed to deal with his massive budget cuts without firing any teachers. Walker said that this would save thousands of teachers jobs. However, we know that this has been far from the case. So, how many teachers has Scott Walker fired?
According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Scott Walker has fired* at least 1,446 teachers!
That's 2.4% of Wisconsin's teachers! All fired by Scott Walker in one year, so that corporations and super rich people like Diane Hendricks can pay little or no state taxes. In the end, we suffer with lower-quality education. The children of the super rich go to the best private schools money can buy.
So much for saving thousands of teachers' jobs, but we all know that wasn't the reason Walker stripped their collective bargaining rights. It was to push his far-right ideological and corporate goal of stripping rights from a specific group of people he figured he could get away with, public employees. "Divide-and-conquer," as he told Diane Hendricks just before she gave Walker the biggest donation in Wisconsin history and less than a month before he "dropped the bomb."
Walker's "tools" don't work.
But we all know Walker is a big fat liar.
*Yes, I know he didn't directly fire them, but they lost their jobs due to his massive budget cuts to give tax breaks to corporations. So the buck stops at Walker.
your right, lets increase funding for ALL gov. agencies since we have so much money to throw around. I'd like to see where you got your statistic for this, due to his collective bargaining rights reform, school districts have more power over where they spend our money. This is a huge chance to save money
ReplyDeleteThe statistics are simple, take back the tax breaks that Walker gave to corporations and the rich and make them pay their fair share and we could make up most if not all of the difference.
DeleteIt's clear from the graphs above that giving tax breaks to "job creators" does not create jobs.
Had Walker not given out these tax breaks, local governments would have had more money to spend. There's clearly a balance between enough government and too much government. Making corporations and the rich pay at least as much percent in taxes as we do in order to help provide basic services like infrastructure and public schools is not too much to ask. These corporations haven't paid so little in taxes since before the Great Depression.
We continue to pay more while the rich continue to amass more. You want statistics, check out the many posts I've written on jobs, the middle class and taxes.
Also, collective bargaining is just that, bargaining. Unions cannot force governments to do anything.
DeleteIf Walker or local governments wanted to save money, they could have negotiated with the unions. In fact, the unions gave in to the financial concessions before their collective bargaining rights were stripped. So, stripping the rights did nothing to save money, and Walker admitted that last year under oath in front of the U.S. Congress.