Walker Wins!

Just a short time ago, as I type this, Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate, using the sort of procedural move that is becoming increasingly common in GOP-controlled state legislatures to ram through bills favored by the far right, passed a bill stripping public employees of their right to collective bargaining by separating that provision from the budget bill, this allowing them to vote on a non-budget related piece of legislation without a quorum. Only one of the nineteen senators voted against the legislation. It's expected to pass in the Assembly tomorrow.

The Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate might as well go back to Madison, because all that's left is to vote on a budget with concessions that public employees already agreed to anyway. And now that Scott Walker and his supporters have achieved their primary goal without having to negotiate, and it would be foolish to think that this act of union busting can be reversed in Wisconsin or that union busting can be slowed down elsewhere, even if Republicans do pay a political price in next year's elections, pay a price in this year's midterm elections in New Jersey, or get recalled early in Wisconsin.

Not that any of that is actually likely to happen.

I'm getting angry now. First a parliamentary procedure is used to further restrict abortions in Virginia by adding a rider to a bill already passed in one house, then a removal of two members from a state Senate committee in Ohio clears the path for anti-union legislation there, now this . . .. I'm ready to give up.