He’s not giving in. He’s defiant towards the protesters outside. He isn’t bringing up the collective bargaining issue. He keep using the word “reasonable.” His actions aren’t. Key phrase: “We can’t make a good-faith effort to negotiate when we don’t have any money.”
Fleeing Wisconsin Democrat posts amusing update on Facebook: You know how a bunch of Wisconsin Democrats just fled the state in order to thwart the Governor’s anti-union bill? Well, one of them just posted this on her Facebook. We like your style, Lena. source
Is this whole Wisconsin budget mess ginned-up? That’s one of the threads flowing around the left end of the media spectrum, which suggests that Wisconsin’s budgetary problems have nothing to do with unions – and everything to do with stuff Scott Walker pushed through. They’ve been pointing to this report from the state’s fiscal bureau with this particular sentence: “More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).” To make it clear, these are all things that Walker pushed through. These have nothing to do with unions. They’re intended as stimulus through tax cuts and incentives, however, not special interest-focused spending as a few have suggested. The overall result still leads one to question Walker’s motives, however – because, based on this evidence, that the union collective bargaining cuts could be at the benefit of his own initiatives, not strictly “balancing the budget.” (thanks mgolladwine) source
mgolladwyne says: well, it’s not really a deficit crisis is it? TPM reports that WI gov. walker “ginned up the books” on this one: tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo…
» We say: Interesting to note (and we suggest you all read the link), but one point worth pointing out – and this is something The Capital Times, which TPM quoted, has wrong.The issue here is not $140 million in new spending for special-interest groups, but rather lower revenues from three credit-and-deduction-based initiatives. So yes, these do mean the state has lower revenues, but it’s not because of special-interest spending. (Oh, and read the document directly – it’s informative.)
While we’re on the Scott Walker tip, now’s a good time to remind you there’s this other Scott Walker who’s completely awesome. He may not be the Wisconsin governor, but Walker, an artist we ironically first discovered when we lived in Milwaukee, was a member of a late-’60s boy band popular in Britain before he decided that he really had no interest in making radio-ready pop music, and started a solo career that followed an extremely eclectic muse, especially on this track from “Scott 4,” a lost classic for many years. (The album’s a huge inspiration on Beck’s “Sea Change” period, by the way.) From here, he got even weirder and more avant-garde, to the point where he’s a critical darling that nobody can touch musically. Cool dude, too.
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» Our take: Why is it that the first thing GOP leaders look to cut are public-works projects with potential long-term implications? The two projects in question here – a high-speed link between Milwaukee and Chicago and another between four of Ohio’s largest cities – would have a long-term positive effect on the state economies. Yet canceling them halfway through is a great idea. Have these guys even looked at the rising popularity of the Acela trains in the Northeast Corridor? Or how much these would help commuters? Milwaukee to Chicago, for example, is a very common Amtrak trip, and faster trains would make it easier for people who want to skip the traffic to make the trek. It’s not always about slimming down now, but planning for tomorrow.
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