Protests in Wisconsin - Scott Walker

More unsupported claims.

Care to back any of this up or are you just echoing the talking points?

A few places to start:

Link.

Link.

Link.

If you are actually interested in learning about the corruption that is so common in Illinois, including but not limited to unions, both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times have done plenty of work exposing it. You should have little trouble finding stories about it on their websites.
 
I think most are not.

I meant the term bribe in the most general sense. Politicians who favor the special interest over the general interest are routinely persuaded to do so with incentives that might be unethical but rarely are illegal. Politicians make the rules about what is legal and illegal. So petty theft might be illegal but transferring billions of dollars in public funds to a special interest because somebody donated some money and other services to your campaign or financed your fact finding expedition to Hawaii is not illegal but it is bribery as I meant the word.

Many states are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and nobody knows quite what to do about it. If they were private corporations worker contracts and unfunded pensions might be undone in a chapter 11 bankruptcy to try to keep the company afloat. But undoing these massive unfunded public pensions given away by legislators bribed to do so presents a thorny problem. The states can't pay them without raising taxes but that may reduce even further their ability to pay giveaways as the higher taxes discourage employment and businesses. But the states can't declare bankruptcy in the normal sense because the pensions were guaranteed by the power of the state to collect future taxes.

I think there are a few legal strategies that will be pursued. The best in my mind is to look at situations where the increases in pensions were given away without any compensation to the citizens in return. This has happened in California where people who were expecting one pension woke up one day to find that the legislature had just given them more money. This seems arguably exactly equivalent to theft to me since the citizens got nothing in return for the transfer of their money to a third party.

There is also a significant ethical issue here. Just how much right do legislators of one generation have to commit the resources of a new generation? This sounds a lot like taxation without representation to me and it might be another legal strategy to move away from the looming financial disaster.

Agreed, I was pointing out that prosecution is not always an option.
 
If they are not illegal, then they are part of the negotiation. QED.

Seriously, the details of negotiations that impact the public should be publicized.
If I was in a union, I would certainly want to know the details of any wheeling and dealing being done on my behalf.

We'll donate money to your campaign and get out the vote, you will help get rules in that allow us to spike our pensions to obscene levels right at the end of our careers.

That is how the negotiations really go. Unions and politicians are extremely intertwined in Chicago and the rest of Illinois. They negotiate with themselves.
 
Well, it passed. That was some incredibly brazen politics to pull it off, too.

It only passed in the Assembly; it's still stalled in the Senate until they can convene a quorum.

Btw, it seems kind of shady how it passed in the Assembly - without calling a formal vote & essentially doing it by roll call (in about 30 seconds). I think there's going to be a court challenge on that one.

Interesting times :)
 
No, just in the "Assembly". But I'm curious why that hadn't already occurred.
Did anyone notice, however, the other crap in the bill? It gives the governor the full power to accept no bid contracts for the state. Are these guys kidding? The power vested in one man to give contracts to cronies and the rest of the Repubs think that's peachy?

Think I'll buy some pizza.

Read this for more info on that. The bill would have essentially given Gov. Walker some powers which would have allowed him to completely bypass the legislature on some key things - like breaking up the state's utilities and basically giving them over to whichever private company he wanted (*cough* Koch! *cough*)
 
Selling the utilitiesshows that he is not about fixing the deficit. Once he has nothing else to steal and pawn, he is left with no way of fixing the budget leak.

The utilities cannot be costing the state money, and must be able to produce a profit, or the Koch maggots wouldn't want them.

Will selling the assets help the state?

Ask a working person in California how selling formerly public utilities to ENRON worked out.

Walker should be in jail already awaiting indictment for theft by conversion and the Kochs should be there for interstate conspiracy to commit fraud.
 

If that's all those that despise him and his politics can come up with, he's clean as a whistle. Workers for this company contributed 15k to his campaign over eight years? That's nothing and perfectly within the rights of the individuals who worked there. It also looks like workers there contributed three times that to Jim Doyle and Tom Barrett over the years as well, and as that's probably over a longer time it's still absolutely irrelevant as the money we're talking about from all these people on both sides combined wouldn't pay for pizza for all the protesters at the capitol yesterday. Oh, and it's also no surprise that the ones in the higher echelon of business tended to vote Republican and send their support to those candidates.


But I need to clarify the no-bid power vested in Walker in the supposed emergency budget bill. It's a tad different than I first thought I heard. It's worse.

The Less Discussed Part of Walker’s Wisconsin Plan: No-Bid Energy Assets Firesales.

The reason you have 'no-bid' contracts for the sale of public utilities as you have to make damn sure you don't sell it to someone whose just going to turn around and double the price of that utility as soon as they get the chance. You also have to make sure whoever it's being sold to has the wherewithal to run something that everyone notices if they fail to deliver.

The reason you have 'no bid contracts' with the military is that sometimes you have to ensure there are organizations around capable of producing highly specialized goods and services at a moments notice. There's just no market for much of what the military buys--and that's how it should be!

Those who can't stand a little mild 'hazing' probably shouldn't be working in a war zone. Those soldiers over there with them had the living hell 'hazed' out of them for months in boot camp and AIT, one of the purposes of which is to weed out the sort who have no business possibly being deployed to somewhere they might get killed at any time, and if not be required to put up with conditions on a regular basis that very few would willingly endure.
 
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This story has been blown way out of proportion.

There are the big investor-owned utilities, like WE Energies in my area.
Then, many cities across the state own their own electric generation plants.
None of these are affected.

ht tp://w ww.nbc15.com/state/headlines/Walkers_Budget_Allows_Power_Plant_Sale_116223309.html

The bill refers to state owned plants that provide power directly to such places as the Capitol Building, UW-Madison campus, etc.
The desire is to strike a deal where the buyer agrees to sell power to the state at a reduced price. The state gets cash from the sale, and does not have to budget for future maintenance costs.

So, if Koch Industries master plan is to control Wisconsin's electricity supply and rape us all for billions in profits, this bill won't get it done.
 
http://www.postcrescent.com/article...essure?odyssey=tab|mostpopular|text|FRONTPAGE

Wisconsin teacher salaries.

Interesting how Walker is tea party republican, a supposedly grass roots movement. Yet a businessman campaign contributor pulls all the strings. There are youtube videos on it, put in Walker, Koch and Wisconsin.

If you have actual evidence (not Youtube) of this string pulling , please post it.

You deride the tea party movement, but you don't cast that critical eye on the Madison protests?
No doubt, the first protesters were probably spontaneous, but then the state unions started organizing and bringing people in.
Then out of state groups did the same http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...support_to_union_protestors_in_wisconsin.html
And the White House and DNC got involved.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0211/DNC_playing_role_in_Wisconsin_protests.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021705494_pf.html

Any grass roots that may have started the protests have been ground down under bus tires.
 
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That is not CNN, that is a montage made by some far left group.
when tea party takes money from big business, they lose credibility
not a grass roots movement
Yes, and MoveOn.org, Center for American Progress and other leftist organizations lose credibility for accepting Soros money. :rolleyes:

David Koch was Libertarian vice-presidential candidate in 1980, he has every right to donate to people with whom he mostly agrees, as has George Soros.
 
There is no pretense of the protesters. They are pro union people, they can ship them in from far and wide.

Yes, I understand those out of state protesters are exercising their constitutional rights of assembly and free speech. Good for them.

However, I do have a few issues with them:
They don't live here.
They don't work here.
They don't vote here.
They don't pay taxes here.

When they leave, we will have to clean up the mess.
Both literally, in the case of the Capitol Building, and fiscally, if they get their way.
 
Sorry, not CNN, MSNBC, she is from this show

Maddow is a baldfaced liar when it comes to this issue ... and economic issues in general. She went on the Leno show and claimed that in the last election cycle, seven of the top ten people donating money in that election were "right-wing". That is completely false. And it turns out the #1 contributor gave seven times as much money to democrats as the largest contribution to republicans in the entire list. Here: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...leno-about-republican-political-contributions . Maddow is a tool of the democratic party and unions.
 
Glad to see the democrats learning, finally, to use Foxnews type of disinformation.

That way the voters will know, for sure, that it is all false or twisted. So they can just look at the faces. Then they will vote for the next "nice old man", another Reagan.
 
The reason you have 'no-bid' contracts for the sale of public utilities as you have to make damn sure you don't sell it to someone whose just going to turn around and double the price of that utility as soon as they get the chance. You also have to make sure whoever it's being sold to has the wherewithal to run something that everyone notices if they fail to deliver.
Perhaps I can interest you in a bridge in Brooklyn, you can have first dibs at making an offer.

You reasoning is you don't have competitive bids is because someone might get it cheap? Do you have no concept of setting a minimum in an auction?

The reason you have 'no bid contracts' with the military is that sometimes you have to ensure there are organizations around capable of producing highly specialized goods and services at a moments notice. There's just no market for much of what the military buys--and that's how it should be!
Are you a shill for a military industrial corporation or something? There were flu vaccine shortages for multiple years. The government stepped in and guaranteed the purchase so vaccine companies were not disincentivized by an unpredictable demand. No-bid contracts were not needed to assure a vaccine supply.

With that in mind, I find your reasoning again to be unconvincing.


Those who can't stand a little mild 'hazing' probably shouldn't be working in a war zone. Those soldiers over there with them had the living hell 'hazed' out of them for months in boot camp and AIT, one of the purposes of which is to weed out the sort who have no business possibly being deployed to somewhere they might get killed at any time, and if not be required to put up with conditions on a regular basis that very few would willingly endure.
Drinking vodka squirting out of someone's ass is what you call mild hazing? So making someone eat feces then would prove one was tough enough for the job?

Then there's the bigger issue. Having an alcohol orgy in a Muslim country where we are walking on a tightrope with public opinion suggests an inability to adapt your 'macho' security force to different settings. A one size fits all, brute force is all that matters, mentality is one reason we aren't winning enough hearts and minds where winning hearts and minds will make the difference between winning and losing. In case you didn't notice, the failure of the US military to figure that out in Vietnam was 90% of the reason we did not prevail there.

It also suggests such a security force would be a very bad fit for a domestic assignment. And Walker clearly didn't consider the lessons learned (or maybe not learned) with hiring private security to do public policing like when Bush hired Blackwater to police New Orleans after Katrina.


If that's all those that despise him and his politics can come up with, he's clean as a whistle. Workers for this company contributed 15k to his campaign over eight years? That's nothing and perfectly within the rights of the individuals who worked there. It also looks like workers there contributed three times that to Jim Doyle and Tom Barrett over the years as well, and as that's probably over a longer time it's still absolutely irrelevant as the money we're talking about from all these people on both sides combined wouldn't pay for pizza for all the protesters at the capitol yesterday. Oh, and it's also no surprise that the ones in the higher echelon of business tended to vote Republican and send their support to those candidates.
The campaign was for mayor, not Congress or President. :rolleyes:

But the main issue was not 100% straight quid pro quo corruption. The issue was a Libertarian fantasy philosophy. No doubt Walker believes in his fantasy just as many people do. But here's an example of the failure of such a belief that one can just ignore the worker and favor the rich and powerful. My guess is Walker is a rich and powerful wannabe and kisses up to that group accordingly. He was bragging to the Koch impostor about being "one of them". That reveals a lot.
 
The reason you have 'no-bid' contracts for the sale of public utilities as you have to make damn sure you don't sell it to someone whose just going to turn around and double the price of that utility as soon as they get the chance. You also have to make sure whoever it's being sold to has the wherewithal to run something that everyone notices if they fail to deliver.

The reason you have 'no bid contracts' with the military is that sometimes you have to ensure there are organizations around capable of producing highly specialized goods and services at a moments notice. There's just no market for much of what the military buys--and that's how it should be!

Bid contracts can have scoring systems that take into account price as well as other less quantitative considerations. They can definitely have minimum requirements that the contractor must prove.

The only time that the government should ever provide no bid contracts is when the there's only one possible bidder or when time is vastly more important than money.
 

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