Wisconsin Legislators Leave State to Prevent Vote

This has nothing to do with balanced budgets or fiscal responsibility. It’s about union busting. And why bust unions? Because they are staunchly democratic and are the strongest proponent if democratic candidates. This is about elections. Union are the only thing that can stand toe to toe with republicans and big business and raise money on the scale of citizens united. Destroy that and you destroy the democratic party.

 

nice to see you admit that w/out unions, the dems got nothin.'

a party of (obsolescent) entitlement?

Spoiler

check.

 

Weren't you a member of a music union at one time?

And do you not employ union members to care for your special needs child?

 

But see, basso is entitled!!

 

Madison Wisconsin may be like Tunisia, the spark that starts the rebellion of ordinary Americas against the corporate agenda. Potentially hundreds of thousands of teachers nationwide are to be laid off just because we have to give tax breaks to billionaires and millionaires.

At last some populist anger directed at those who cause the problems, ot the misguided Tea party folks, who are also hurting.

 

The frequently Republican normally contented teachers and staff at my wife's public school in Houston shocked her by saying they need to take it to the streets like the Egyptians.

Is the class of the forgotten 98% going to start fighting back?

 

Wisconsin Crowds Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators WaverThursday 17 February 2011

by: John Nichols | The Nation | Report



Protesters demonstrate at the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin, on February 16, 2011. (Photo: Narayan Mahon / The New York Times)
"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment," shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

Where Tuesday’s mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, Wednesday's mid-day rally drew 30,000, according to estimates by organizers. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of 27 years on the city’s force, said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol – and he noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was “packed.”
On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of "What's disgusting? Union busting!" shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into the night.

For continuing updates on Wisconsin protests, follow Truthout's blog.
The country was starting to take notice, as broadcast and cable-news satellite trucks rolled into town. The images they captured were stunning, as peaceful crowds filled vast stretches of the square that surrounds the seat of state government.

Republican legislators -- who had been poised to pass the governor’s plan Thursday, and might yet do so – were clearly paying attention. Two GOP senators broke with the governor, at least to some extent. Dale Schultz from rural southeastern Wisconsin and Van Wanggaard from the traditional manufacturing center of Racine, proposed an alternative bill that would allow limit bargaining rights for public employees on wages, pensions and health care for the next two years but allow them to continue to bargain on other issues.

While that’s hardly an attractive prospect to state workers – as it would also require them to make significantly higher pension and health-care contributions – the measure rejects the most draconian component’s of the governor’s plan. Other Republicans resisted the proposal, however, offering only minor amendments to the governor's plan.
If Schultz and Wanggaard actually vote "no" Thursday, when the measure is to be taken up, just one more Republican senator would have to join them in order to block the bill.


That the first real movement by Republicans came after Wednesday’s rally was hardly surprising, as few state capital’s have seen the sort of mobilization that occurred at mid-day, and that is likely to reoccur at nightfall as teachers from across the state are expected to pour into the city for a rally and candlelight vigil.


In some senses, Wednesday’s remarkable rally began Tuesday evening, when Madison Teachers Inc., the local education union, announced that teachers would leave their classrooms to spend the day lobbying legislators to “Kill the Bill” that has been proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.

The teachers showed up en masse in downtown Madison Wednesday morning.
And then something remarkable happened.
Instead of taking the day off, their students gathered at schools on the west and east sides of Madison and marched miles along the city’s main thoroughfares to join the largest mass demonstration the city has seen in decades – perhaps since the great protests of the Vietnam War era.
Thousands of high school students arrived at the Capital Square, coming from opposite directions, chanting: “We support our teachers! We support public education!”
Thousands of University of Wisconsin students joined them, decked out in the school’s red-and-white colors.

...
“I’ve been here since the 1960s, I’ve seen great demonstrations,” said former Mayor Paul Soglin, a proud former student radical who was nominated for a new term in Tuesday’s local primary election. “This is different. This is everyone – everyone turning out.”

Everyone except the governor, who high-tailed it out of town, launching a tour of outlying communities in hopes of drumming up support for his bill. Most of the support Walker was getting was coming from national conservative political groups, such as the Club for Growth, which have long hoped to break public-employee unions.

But the governor held firm, saying after a day of unprecedented protests – in Madison and small towns and cities across the state – that he still wanted to pass his bill. He’s got strong support in the overwhelmingly Republican Assembly. But he cannot afford to lose one more Republican state senator. And the unions and their backers are determined to find that one Republican who is smart enough and honest enough to recognize that the governor's assault of public employees is an assault on Wisconsin itself.

http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsin-crowds-swell-30000-key-gop-legislators-waver67882

 

LOL @ comrade McMark and Glynch! Americans are on to your game, we recognized that while the union members are good Americans who happened to be duped by the real assholes: THE PINKO COMMIE b*stard UNION BOSSES!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA

 

i generally try to refrain from personal attacks here, but you're really an ass mark.

 

i think that's a yes, mc mark.

 

I don't understand what was wrong or offensive with anything that mark said. Nothing about it was a put down in any way.

Back on topic: The budget problems in Wisconsin are because the state gave a bunch of tax cuts.

So Walker cut taxes from businesses and then asked teachers and other hard working Americans to pick up the tab. In the process he's trying to bust their union so they can't put up any resistance.

To ask the worker to pay for the tax cuts of the business owners is BS.

I'm surprised how many people are against the hard working American teachers, police, fire fighters and others who work for the public here.

 

Hilarious. repped.

 

basso my question was merely to have a frame of reference to your response to this thread. It was in no way an attack on you or your family.

 

not surprised at the union's intimidation tactics. What a bunch of goons

 

Not sure how you reconcile that statement, especially using the term "commander-in-chief", with his clarification.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

Let's not get get too excited or overblown-- like those Egyptians in Tahir Square, though I guess to be fair you would say also that they did have some points. Let's be sure to also dwell on how a few of the demonstrators said unkind personal things about Mubarak or his family that may not have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

You can never be too careful when the issue is always being moderate rather than replacing a dictatorship, working conditions, the environment, war and peace or other secondary issues.

I can just imagine judoka saying "let's all be reasonable men" as he is being clubbed to death because he was accidentally caught in a demonstration against a brutal dictatorship.