Stand with Wisconsin Women, Middle-Class, Elderly, Teachers, LGBT, Children, Poor, Minorities, and More

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been recalled, and now it's time to replace him. In the year since taking office, Walker has fought hard against just about everyone in Wisconsin besides rich white males. The alleged criminal Walker repealed Equal Pay for Equal Work for women and minorities, discriminated against minorities in unconstitutional redistricting, reduced education funding more than any time in Wisconsin history, reduced teacher and public worker pay and benefits, killed any hope of jobs, banned hospital visitation for same-sex couples, raised BadgerCare premiums and reduced other healthcare help, repealed rights of middle-class workers, and a whole lot more. So, for us in the middle-class and the poor, we're getting far less for our tax dollars, while corporations and the rich are paying far less in state taxes.

Everyone agrees that to fix education, we need to pay teachers well. We all know the main reason that many good, intelligent people choose not to become teachers is because they can get significantly more money in other jobs. Why then do people think it's OK to reduce the already low pay for teachers? If you think this won't hurt our children, you need some education yourself.

And Walker's done it all under the banner of job creation, even though Wisconsin has lost more jobs than any other state since Walker took office and continues to bleed jobs with 6,200 more in April. Walker and the Republicans have refused to make any real effort towards job creation.

Instead of real job creation, Walker gave huge tax breaks to his campaign donors, the rich who are funding his 25 million dollar campaign, the billboards you see all over Wisconsin and TV ads. Walker did this even though there's every reason to believe tax breaks for the rich are bad for the economy. Even a Republican policy wonk recently wrote in the New York Times that taxes don't affect the employment rate one way or the other, particularly now with our taxes already as low as they are. The rich can't create jobs if the middle-class doesn't have the money to spend on the products and services the rich provide. We're the real job creators.

The rich clearly don't need more money, with the millions they can donate to Walker and use for billboards and TV ads all over Wisconsin. If they paid even half that much in taxes, we'd probably solve most of our budget problems. But instead they're using it to help Walker, because they know they'll save much more in taxes. And we suffer.

It's time Wisconsin starts sifting and winnowing again to find the best solutions to our problems, not partisan and ideological goals pushed by millionaires. We need a governor who will stand up to the demands of the rich few like Diane Hendricks (who inherited her great wealth from her husband).

If you stand with Walker, you stand with rich white supremacy and nothing more. Not jobs, morals or anything else. Show me otherwise, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

Vote for your economic interests and your neighbors'. Vote Tom Barrett. Early voting has already begun.

Wisconsin Republicans Planning To Strip Collective Bargaining Rights In Budget

According to The CapTimes, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans still haven't learned their lesson, even though at least six Republicans who voted to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers will likely face a recall election for doing so (Republicans will likely do the same to at most three Democrats). They're planning to add the bill to the budget if they don't get their way through the courts. In fact, Tuesday, Republicans voted against another collective bargaining measure that would have restored those rights for some employees. On top of everything, the bill itself may be unconstitutional.

Republicans, why do you insist on stripping these rights away? What is the purpose, because we know and you admitted stripping those rights doesn't save any money?

Republican politicians don't care about you. Recall the Republican 8.

Public Employees Not Paying Their Fair Share?

The National Republican Trust is running a despicable ad that tries to demonize public employees with lies. The ad says public employees work less hours and get paid more. This is a flat-face lie. Many studies have shown this to be false. As an example, the recent study from the Center for Governmental Research found that skilled employees in public sector jobs are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Low-skill jobs in the public sector, such as janitors, have better benefits than their private sector counterparts, but that's because fewer private sector employees are in unions, and the salaries for these jobs average between $10,000-$20,000. This is under the poverty line for most families. Yet, the ad wants you to think that public employees aren't paying their fair share. So they want the poorest public employees to pay more, and they want the rest to make even less than their private sector counterparts.

The ad also wants you to believe the budget crisis is the fault of our public employees, which we know is not true. On top of that, even though the unions have agreed to all financial concessions, the ad wants you to believe the unions are demanding more from taxpayers. If that isn't enough lies for you, the ad says the protesters are using taxpayer money to take off of work so they can protest.



If you make less than public employees with the same job, you and your coworkers can join a union to negotiate better wages, hours, and benefits. That right doesn't need to be taken away from our public employees.

I think someone should make an ad detailing all of the time and money wasted by the stubbornness of Walker and the Republicans.

Wisconsin Assembly Passes Bill Stripping Rights

The Wisconsin State Assembly just passed the budget repair bill, stripping collective bargaining rights from most public employees. The bill passed on a 51-17 vote after Republicans suddenly stopped debate and moved for a vote.

It happened so fast I nearly missed it, and it looks like so did a lot of the Assembly since 28 members weren't able to get their vote in. The only defectors were four Republicans who voted against the bill. Here's the roll call.

The Democrats introduced many amendments to remove the collective bargaining provisions, but all were tabled by the Republicans. The alternative budget repair bill may have been voted on again, but I didn't see it.

The bill now needs to be passed by the State Senate. So, as long as the Wisconsin 14 stay out of Wisconsin, public employees will keep their collective bargaining rights.

Update: Capitol in uproar. Democrats meeting to discuss options.

Collective Bargaining Not Feasible? (Part 2)

I would like to continue the discussion from the post, Collective Bargaining Not Feasible?, because Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is standing by his claim that collective bargaining must be stripped for public employees in order to balance the state budget. Given that the unions have conceded all of the financial provisions needed to balance the state budget, what's the argument for stripping these rights?

The only evidence that Walker provides is his own anecdotal evidence from when he was a county executive. He says that negotiating with unions is "difficult," and that stripping collective bargaining rights would help local governments. Walker has added that some local governments have requested the stripping of collective bargaining rights from public employees. However, many local governments have said that they haven't requested Walker strip public employees' right to collectively bargain and that the local governments don't need such an extreme step.

About 300 local Wisconsin governments have signed a petition opposing Walker's budget, saying they oppose the stripping of collective bargaining rights. "Far from being a problem, collective bargaining is part of the solution. We work cooperatively with our employees to solve problems," Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said. The local governments include large (in Wisconsin terms) constituent regions of the state such as La Crosse, Eau Claire, and Oshkosh.

As I stated in the previous post, Wisconsin has had collective bargaining rights for public employees since 1959. We've faced larger budget deficits in the past in which public employees have taken financial concessions to keep the state moving. We've never had to strip collective bargaining rights to balance the budget, because our government leaders have done the difficult task that many business owners do of negotiating with the unions.

The budget is set by our legislators. Public employees have no direct say in the state or other government budgets. So the issues with the budget cannot be the fault of our public employees. Instead, it must be the fault of those who have the power to set the budget, our legislators. If the legislators have issues they feel they can't solve by negotiating, they need to convince their constituents to put pressure on the employees. That's how democracy works. It may be difficult. It may be messy. That's democracy. That's how government has worked in Wisconsin for over 50 years.

Consider a current example. Texas is a Right-To-Work state that doesn't allow collective bargaining for public employees. Yet, Texas has a much larger deficit than Wisconsin. Wisconsin has about a two-year budget deficit of about $3.6 billion, and Texas is looking at a two-year budget deficit of near $27 billion. These are facts provided by the respective states. So, clearly budgets can get out of control whether public employees collectively bargain or not, and Wisconsin is not in nearly as much trouble as other states.

So, history has shown that collective bargaining doesn't destroy governments, our budget issues aren't the fault of our public employees, the public employees have agreed to pay more, and the local governments want to keep collective bargaining for their employees. Why can't our public employees collectively bargain?

It's a serious question that I'm asking.