Walker and Kasich: Union of the Snakes

Judge Maryann Sumi blocked enforcement of the Wisconsin state law barring collective bargaining for public employees. This time she means it!

Governor Scott Walker had tried to implement the law, insisting that publishing it online made it official, but Judge Sumi made it clear that she wanted Walker and one of his top aides, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, to wait for the legal challenges against it to proceed. Walker agreed reluctantly, but he is confident that the legislation - passed in possible violation of the state's open meetings law - will be eventually upheld.

The law allows public workers to negotiate on wages, but it says no to allowing for negotiations over anything else - no bargaining for work hours, no bargaining for vacation time, no bargaining for almost all of their work conditions, etc. They are also being told to contribute more to their pensions and health care costs (negating the wage bargaining right), something they agreed to already despite it being tantamount to an 8 percent pay cut.

At least Walker's bill allows police officers and firefighters to collectively bargain. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich just signed a bill that prohibits even that. Policemen and firemen won't be able to bargain for pay rates, working conditions, or even equipment; police unions usually bargain for bulletproof vests, for example. Police and fire departments in Ohio are worried about the effect this will have on their security, and rightfully so.

Kasich insists that his $55.5 billion, two-year state budget is based on unspecified savings from repealing union protections to close an $8 billion gap. Most Ohioans aren't convinced. From the second Kasich signed the bill, protesters have ninety days to get a referendum on the ballot for Election Day on November 8 to have the bill repealed.

The referendum stands a good chance of being put up for a vote. Chances of passage are less clear. Kasich says that people just have to get used to this change, adding that he understands that such change is difficult . . . just as it was difficult for him to - I'm not making this up - get a new haircut.

So Sumi!

News flash: With all of the news coming out of Japan and Libya, I have to report something very important: Scott Walker is still the governor of Wisconsin. And he's still trying to undermine collective bargaining rights for public employees.

But Walker and his allies in Madison got an unexpected setback when Maryann Sumi, a state judge, blocked implementation of the law rescinding such bargaining rights from state workers after a Democratic district attorney sued to stop it. The case against the law is that it was a approved by a bicameral committee for a vote in the legislature as a separate measure from the budget - thus not needing at least one Democratic member of the state Senate - in a meeting for which there was not adequate notice, in violation of Wisconsin's open meetings law. The conference meeting was called by the Republican-majority committee almost literally at the last minute. Also at issue is whether or not the Republicans had a necessary quorum when they passed the law, which Judge Sumi is also considering.

The Democrats have a case in the former dispute. Everyone saw how Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca protested at and against the meeting that made the anti-union, anti-bargaining provision of the budget bill a separate piece of legislation, complaining that there had not been adequate public notice of it . . . and how the Republican-controlled committee ignored him as they voted to separate the provision and then walked out once it was done. They literally pretended that Barca wasn't there.

Judge Sumi says that there's nothing to stop the GOP-controlled legislature from passing the anti-collective bargaining bill again, so long as adequate, timely notice is given. But, as Democratic state senator Bob Jauch noted, it will only serve as notice for workers and union members to congregate in Madison and begin their protests anew.

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.

Badgered

Wisconsin's fourteen renegade Democratic state senators have had the pressure ratcheted up against them, with Governor Scott Walker not only threatening them with arrest for contempt if and when they return to the state, but also with fines of $100 - per day - if they don't return to Madison and provide a quorum to vote on Walker's legislation rescinding collective bargaining rights for public employees. No one has suggested that Walker be arrested for impersonating an office.

Meanwhile, Walker has announced that he will be forced to send out formal layoff notices to 1,500 state employees, without the bill's passage, in an effort to save the state approximately $30 million. "Forced?" After weeks of protest, Walker is being "forced" to do what he wanted to do legislatively - screw the middle class to save money? A movement has now started to recall eight key Republican state senators who have supported him. Wisconsin law allows for elected officials who have served at least one year of their current term to be removed from office. Supporters have sixty days to collect anywhere from 15,000 to 21,000 signatures, depending on the district, for each targeted senator. If only three of these eight senators can be recalled, the Democrats will gain control of the state Senate.

Also, Michael Moore joined the protesters in Madison yesterday to rally the faithful and fight Walker's agenda, which includes deep cuts in social services. I don't know if this helps or hurts . . ..

We Got a Thing We Call the Madison Blues

I never thought I'd see a class of people long oppressed and taken for granted rise up, take over a public space in their capital city, and declare that they've had enough abuse and that they're not going to take anymore.

Protesters in Egypt? No, public employees in Wisconsin!

Facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, Republican governor Scott Walker needs to cut costs, so in order to facilitate his task, he's decided to run roughshod over the state's public employees - teachers firefighters, you know, people like you and me (well, you, anyway) - by having them pay 50 percent more for their pensions and 12 percent more for health insurance. Oh yeah, and he wants to eliminate the right of public employee unions to engage in collective bargaining, theoretically allowing him to hold all the cards in dealing with the workers.

Walker's heavy-handed tactics have brought public employees from across the state into the capital, Madison, where they have demonstrated outside of and inside the state Capitol building. Tommy Thompson, at his most extreme in his efforts at welfare reform and school choice in his fourteen years has governor, never perpetrated the kind of backlash that Scott Walker has after only a month and change in office.

Reports of the demonstrations - from Fox News, mostly - spoke of civil unrest, but Ed Schultz went to Madison for himself and saw only Middle America types peacefully chanting slogans and carrying homemade signs demanding that Walker allow collective bargaining to resolve a budget issue that some observers believe is less serious than the state's Republicans insist. Although anyone has a right to be skeptical when Wisconsin public employees say it's not about the money (H.L. Mencken famously said that when someone says it's not about money, it's about money), many of them are happy to discuss pension and health insurance issues with Walker - but not in bad faith and with their own rights gutted to the point of irrelevance. Wisconsin Senate Democrats are siding with the people, having fled the state to avoid voting on Walker's proposal and to prevent a quorum in a Republican-controlled chamber.

Domestic policy in the United States has placed a greater economic burden on workers for thirty years, and people are finally beginning to rise against the status quo. I don't know how long Wisconsin public employees plan to hold out in Madison, but they're inspiring others to take action elsewhere; similar protests have sprung up in Ohio against the similar anti-union proposals of the similarly reactionary Republican governor John Kasich. And in Florida, noted Medicare ripoff artist Rick Scott, having sunk Alex Sink in the 2010 gubernatorial election, has indicated a desire to torpedo public employees there.

How insensitive are these guys? Kasich betrayed his attitudes toward public workers by calling a Columbus policeman who gave him a traffic ticket in 2008 an idiot. (He did so in remarks to, believe it or else, public employees - Ohio Environmental Protection Agency workers. Kasich has since apologized.) And Scott compared budget cutting to cleaning out an attic.

A lot of people are surprised, though, that Wisconsin is where the backlash against reactionary Republican labor policy has started. I don't know why. Yes, Wisconsin is where the Republican party was founded. And yes, Wisconsin did go overwhelmingly Republican in last year's elections, and the state has produced right-wingers like Joseph McCarthy as well as Thompson and Walker. But it's also the state where the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union was founded. It's the state of Gaylord Nelson, the U.S. Senator who founded Earth Day; of William Proxmire, who served with Nelson in the U.S. Senate and fought against government waste and for campaign finance reform, and; of Russell Feingold, who helped continue the fight for campaign finance reform in the Senate and continues the fight for liberal causes with his new group Progressives United.

Wisconsin is also the home of Robert LaFollette, the early-twentieth-century governor and U.S. Senator who championed, among other things, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, and progressive taxation . . . and who also signed the first state worker's compensation bill in the country into law. I think LaFollette would have been pleased with what's going on in his home state right now.