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the bill, protesters have ninety days to get a referendum on the ballot for Election Day on November 8 to have the bill repealed.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.

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I don't know what to make of the Supreme Court ruling overturning the decision by the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to throw out tests given to firefighters because not enough blacks scored high enough. Several blacks did rather well among the 56 firemen who passed, but only nineteen promotions were available, and most of the firemen who scored well enough for promotions were white. So the test was thrown out. But the test was impartial, and it was designed by an outside firm that probably had no idea of the new Haven fire department's demographics, so the conservative majority's reinstatement of the tests was the correct decision, right?

Well, not if you listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sympathized with the white firemen but said they had "no vested rights" to be promoted, or Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, who called the ruling in this case "cramped and wrong."

So why was it wrong? That's what I want to know. The test might have been flawed, the pool of applicants might have titled too much in favor of one racial group. . . . I can't get a handle on it because much of the attention on this case focuses on the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who has been selected by President Obama to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. She was one of the judges who let the original decision by the city of New Haven stand in a lower court - based on procedure and, again, without explanation of the merits of the case. Sotomayor was doing exactly what a judge should do - she based her decision on restraint and precedence. Instead, right-wing critics have carped on her decision because she discriminated against white firefighters and therefore has racist attitudes towards Anglos. Never mind that one of the plaintiffs was Hispanic, like Sotomayor, and one of her colleagues, Judge Jose Cabranes - a Hispanic who almost got the Supreme Court seat that went to Stephen Breyer - criticized her decision on the merits of the case.

Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee that will decide Sotomayor's appointment have expressed concern over work she did for a Puerto Rican rights group. Because it's a liberal activist organization? No, probably because it's Puerto Rican. Sotomayor has been under fire for saying that she has an advantage of being a "wise Latina" with better experience in some cases. But white male Republicans are ticked off with her not because she's wise. It's because she's a Latina. (Rush Limbaugh dismissed her for belonging to an all-female legal group, accusing her of sexism as well as racism. Then he said something about her cleaning up the trash after the meanings.)

Expect Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions to play up the Puerto Rican card and derail the Sotomayor nomination. Their respective states of Kentucky and Alabama are not known for having large Puerto Rican populations, so they have nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, we go from a thriller to a shiller - right after Michael Jackson's death, television pitchman Billy Mays, also fifty years old, died of a heart attack. Well, he was an overexcited type . . ..