Wednesday, March 09, 2011

What? What'd I miss? - That was sudden: "Wisconsin Senate GOP votes to strip state workers of collective bargaining rights."

Extra - Good review from Legal Insurrection.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's sit back and wait for the savage criticism from the conservative blogs and commentators who - out of principle, of course - were angry about "Obamacare being crammed down our throats," and Democratic "procedural tricks," and lame duck Congresses passing legislation, and so on. Yes, let's wait...

Roger Bournival said...

Eric - you have another troll! It's like an extended family or something!

Anonymous said...

Your right troll! I remember when the conservatives ignored how the Republicans in Washington fled to avoid votes on Obamacare! And how the Tea Party folks threatened bodily harm to the Dem leaders even when they provocatively walked through them on the way to the Obamacare vote. Oh, wait....

Viaduct to Nowhere said...

Troll*ing, noun.
1. Inconvenient reminders of "see what we do, not what we say."
2. Stop messing up our echo... echo... echo...

As Groucho said, "Those are my principles. And if you don't like them, I have others."

Eric said...

Obamacare was a mystery such that Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass it to know what's in it. It's so flawed that the Administration has granted more than 1,000 waivers (14th Amendment anyone?) and now - after strenuously insisting the individual mandate was NOT a tax, Obama has to argue it's legal under the government's right to tax.

But I NEVER said Democrats didn't have the right to pass the legislation.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker's plan was above-the-board. Then he waited three weeks into the Democrats' temper-tantrum to legally pass the bill.

Hilariously, the Democrats returned to Madison to complain about the subversion of the democratic process. You can't make this up.

Anonymous said...

Ha! You really can't! But you can make up a deficit by giving away the budget surplus in corporate tax breaks. And you can make up a fiscal excuse for the collective bargaining demand, and then strip it out as a separate piece of legislation. And you can make up a purported mandate for doing so by winning a campaign in which you never told the voters that you intended to do these things. But it's much more fun to chuckle at the things you just can't make up.

DBrooks17 said...

Ha! And you can make up a "little guy" revolution by bringing in union and socialist thugs from all over the country. And you can disguise that a funding/deficit battle is about Democratic and Union power/funding issues. And you can pretend that corporations pay taxes, when any nitwit knows that it is their customers who ultimately pay those taxes. And you can pretend that we can tax our way out of catastrophic deficits by taxing the rich even though the total of the combined net worth of every single one of America’s billionaires is roughly $1.3 trillion, and the 2011 deficit is $1.6 trillion. So, if the government were to confiscate the entire net worth of all of America’s billionaires, we’d still be $300 billion short of making up this year’s deficit. And, so on, and so forth.

Ha! said...

Addressing those important issues must be why the "non-fiscal" split-off bill picked up two amendments in between its abrupt Senate vote on March 9th and its Assembly passage on the 10th. The bill now includes a change in eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and a provision allowing the Governor's DOA to sell any power plant to a private company. Thank goodness those aren't fiscal matters.

Oddly, Koch Industries had already started soliciting for power plant manager jobs in Wisconsin last month. Such cockeyed optimists!

http://www.thinkenergygroup.com/think.nsf/J/84239?Opendocument

Ho! said...

Incidentally, those would be no-bid sales. With no approval sought or required, before or after.

I wonder whether Groucho ever talked about the abiding conservative principle of the free market?

Eric said...

The Wisconsin pension fund has $5.5 million invested in Georgia Pacific railroad, owned by the Koch brothers.

We hate those guys (unless they're making us money)!

Hoo-hee-ho! said...

Well, then, in that case the Koches do deserve a lovely gift. Even one they picked out for themselves.

And holy snot, $5.5 million? Unthinkable! That's a whole 0.000029% of the pension system's money! A pension system that also covers non-unionized workers! The teachers' credibility is in shambles! You can't make this stuff up!

In the meantime, here's what the unions, including the still-collectivized police and firemen, are doing with their slightly larger accumulations of cash:
http://www.thenation.com/article/159190/walker’s-big-bank-donors-take-hit

Eric said...

Ha! "And you can make up a purported mandate for doing so by winning a campaign in which you never told the voters that you intended to do."

Like candidate Obama saying the individual mandate was the wrong approach? Or that raising the debt limit was a failure of leadership? Closing Gitmo?

Stop the bullying!

Anonymous said...

"What about Obama? He did stuff he wasn't supposed to do, too!"

More of those unwavering bedrock principles...

Peccable said...

Anonymouse screeches like a subway going around tight curves. More frothing convinces me of a rabid condition.

Take the ONE'S post election lecture to heart; We won, You lost, Shutup!

The pendulum swings back, attempting to stop it with your head, merely gives a headache.

TDS said...

What a shame "The 1/2 News Hour" got cancelled... brilliant, ingenious comedy like that shouldn't be squandered in a comments section.