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Wisconsin’s state Joint Finance Committee passed a highly controversial budget bill last night, voting along party lines 12-4 in favor of the bill which includes an amendment revoking workers’ right to collective bargaining for state employees. Although the committee’s Republicans had voted in favor of the bill, they had reversed some of Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to kill health insurance and retirement benefits for some state employees.
A number of the state’s school districts were canceling classes for today. Wisconsin Education Association Council president Mary Bell asked school employees to join in another day of protests in Madison — the third day in a row at the state capital.
The budget bill heads to the state senate today where it is expected to pass.
In the mean time, pressure mounts to recall Gov. Walker; at least one Facebook page and a watch-blog have launched efforts to discuss the recall process. The wrinkle, though, is that Wisconsin state law does not allow recall of the governor until after the first year in office (pdf):
No petition for recall of an officer may be offered for filing before the expiration of one year after commencement of the term of office for which the officer is elected. A petition may be circulated 60 days before the expiration of one year, but may not be offered for filing until after the officer has completed one year in office.
Will Wisconsin’s residents be too numb ten months from now to finish the recall process? Perhaps the Green Bay Packers can help by encouraging petition signings at tailgate events this fall, now that they’ve come out against the anti-union budget bill.
UPDATE — 10:45 a.m. EST — If you’re a Twitter user, you might want to watch these:
http://twitter.com/bluecheddar1 — Progressive blogger who lives near the capitol, live tweeting events.
http://twitter.com/WisconsinEye — Wisconsin’s state equivalent to C-SPAN, will be covering the vote in state senate today (website URL: http://www.wiseye.org)
Search these hashtags for latest: #notmywi #wiunion #solidarityWI
blue cheddar posted that a UW Madison student and teacher assistant walk out was to begin at 9:15 a.m. local time (10:15 a.m. EST).
18 Comments
Unbelievable. I hope they continue to pursue the recall. Madison is standing up to this tip-of-the-iceberg GOP shit. Walker ran as a moderate, and he never mentioned how he planned to screw the workers. So he lied to the voters, and he should be recalled for fraudulent misrepresentation.
Thanks Rayne,
Commented earlier at the Swim about with a couple of links to further info on Walker’s manufactured deficit, “crisis,” is just the $187M in unfunded state spending to the wealthy and corporations passed by the new Republican legislature in Walker’s Special Session in January.
http://firedoglake.com/2011/02/17/early-morning-swim-326/#comment-2312883
You can see realtime tweets from the protests! Go to Twitter.com and write #solidarityWI in the search box at the top; there are others but this one looks good to follow.
Go Wisconsin!
Thanks for the background, Rayne.
Good digging on the recall laws, Rayne.
My husband was listening to NPR on his way home from work last night and heard Melissa Block say something to the effect that ‘after all, the voters have spoken’, defending Walker’s actions by implying that was what a plurality of voters chose.
Brilliant, NPR.
It will blow your mind.
Walk like an Egyptian!
Thanks reader! And Rayne, recommended, tweeted.
“Brilliant, NPR.”
Until the GOP wipes it out, too.
I think some of this Walker-generated crap is not necessarily aimed at Wisconsin alone. Ohio’s Gov. Kasich is going to try to do the same things, but he’ll try doing what works for Walker and avoiding what doesn’t.
Keep an eye on Ohio.
reader, I tweetd this tip to my (teeming throng- not) followers, and then credited you with the tip in a second tweet, so thank you again.
Don’t worry, Peter G Peterson Foundation and Koch Bros Foundations will happily pick up the slack to weed out any actual scrap of real news reporting that might still exist.
In an interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on Tuesday, John Nichols of The Nation disputed Governor Scott “Dickhead” Walker’s claim that the State of Wisconsin is broke and must end collective bargaining for state employees to balance the budget. He said,
“The fact is, Wisconsin is not broke. The Fiscal Bureau of Wisconsin just said in January that it will end this year with a $123 million surplus. So the fact of the matter is that this is not being done because of a lack of money. This is being done because political forces, conservative political forces, would like to disempower public employee unions and remove that voice for a strong public sector. That’s what austerity really translates as.”
According to the Cap Times (h/t Fatster), Governor “Dickhead” created the deficit by passing legislation rewarding his cronies. Then he complained that the state was broke and insisted on killing collective bargaining for state employees in order to save the state’s budget. From the Cap Times,
“To the extent that there is an imbalance — Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit — it is not because of a drop in revenues or increases in the cost of state employee contracts, benefits or pensions. It is because Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups in January. If the Legislature were simply to rescind Walker’s new spending schemes — or delay their implementation until they are offset by fresh revenues — the “crisis” would not exist.
The Fiscal Bureau memo — which readers can access at http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf — makes it clear that Walker did not inherit a budget that required a repair bill.”
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/editorial/article_61064e9a-27b0-5f28-b6d1-a57c8b2aaaf6.html
What an asshole!
Mason, apart from the excerpts, is that your original writing? If so that’s a post and I’d promote it after the current slot.
Thanks for repeating the links and the John Nichols reference. Hope you are doing well. Everyone should be aware that the rest of the Scooter Walker’s January, special session legislation like the new voter ID implementation costs, are the cause of the crisis.
Electioneering on limiting big government and reducing spending is what these lying asshats used to get fairly slim majorities in WI. The emergency, “jobs,” Special Session created all of two jobs, extra body guards for Walker.
The fully Republican legislature also gave away local control (legislative control of) of administrative rule making by handing it to the governor. So now rule making can be delayed or modified by the governor before the legislature gets to see the final version for their inevitable rubber stamping.
The figure being reported by WPR has been $187 million in unfunded new spending that will be coming ut of the pockets of WI citizens who can ill afford passing that up to Scooter’s handlers.
From a quick google, it looks like at max federal dollars only account for 15% of funding any more.
The states may receive money for broadcast support that NPR doesn’t receive. I’ve gotten an email from the local station in my area about this which I must admit I’ve not read, but they never send them out like this — suspect there must be more to the funding in question.
As I understand it, the Wisconsin state budget which is up for a vote today does have some line item regarding cuts to state funding for public broadcasting in that state.
HOLY SHIT! I’m famous. Smoochies! I see you are tweeting like mad ~ joining the call to make Wisconsin protests ‘trending.’ That would be great. [And I might have to join twitter myself ...!]
CNN is talking about the protests! Terrible framing: ‘is it just about politics or about the children?’ Gah.
Go Wisconsin!
Thanks, Rayne. Googling turned up lots of different interpretaions of NPR’s own info on funding. Looks like it would take some work sussing out all the pieces.
Meanwhile, to the qustions asked, Russ Feingold did an hour-long radio program on WTDY yesterday in support of the protestors, and against more corporatism smacking down collective bargaining rights, and was on Rachel Maddow this morning.
http://www.truth-out.org/rachel-maddow-russ-feingold-union-breaking-efforts-gop-wisconsin67831
Of course he was busy touting his new PU PAC, too. ;o)