The Republicans were able to do this by stripping out the budget provisions. The sharp restrictions on collective bargaining were approved because “there were no public funds involved.”
50 years of democracy, and collective bargaining stripped away by this stealthy, sleazy move – only one Wisconsin Republican had the honor and integrity to vote no – Senator Dale Schultz. Only one conscience left in the Republican party in Wisconsin, apparently. Maybe Schultz is the only Republican who is not wrapped in the coils of the Kochtupus.
Walker has proved himself anti-democratic, and tyrannical, with no respect for the democratic process or even the citizens of Wisconsin – at least in my eyes. It will be interesting to follow the recall activity in Wisconsin.
and there’s plenty to look at here which makes me think this could very well be illegal.
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p>Recalls have GOT to happen at this point, and personally I think there should be a general strike until the House votes no to kill it.
One can pass legislation in this state involving millions of dollars in “informal session” as long as “no one objects” with one or two legislators in each house. One can suspend the rules. And the legislature here is subject to neither “open meetings laws” nor local “FOIA” type laws.
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p>The question is, has Walker gone so far, too far, enough to be recalled and to make clear just how much contempt his wing of the Republican party has for democracy and anyone who is not as rich as a Kochtopus?
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p>We will, collectively, get what we put up with.
The minority leader of the Assembly DID object on the grounds that they did violate WI’s open meeting law which does apply to its legislature. The GOP AG of WI drafted a memo last year saying that 24 hour notice had to be given with 2 hours allowed in emergency situations. It seems they even missed the 2 hour mark by nine minutes. There is talk of taking this to court and breaking the law is one thing that might make me support a recall.
How could you not support a recall? These people are THUGS and don’t give a shit about the people.
My view of representation is rather Burkean and I believe a legislator should use his judgement and not fear that a single unpopular vote will get him kicked out. There is certainly the argument that the GOP was elected to majorites in both chambers and the Governorship and are thus entitled to at least try things their way. Don’t we wish Democrats at the federal level were this bold during the last Congress? Worst case scenario is two years of the wrong people which can be remedied at the next regular election. Breaking the law is different from an unpopular vote and I can justify early removal (think of it as impeachment by popular vote) on those grounds.
Keeping your real objectives secret is perhaps the greatest reason why recalls exist.
How is the Republican governor and the Republican majority not doing that? They are acting on what they ran on and what the people elected them to do, and they are following your advice and screwing the minority and using a narrow electoral mandate to pass sweeping changes through bold legislation. How is that not following your playbook vis a vis Obama and healthcare? Shall I lend you a toga to cover your naked hypocrisy?
Walker made no mention of eliminating collective bargaining during his campaign. Please give us any evidence you have that he did. If any new legislators made such statements, it hasn’t been reported. No one could have voted for them on the basis that they were going to do that.
…by violating open meeting laws regarding notice. I’m OK with the idea that the majority gets to try its way, but frankly your constant attempts to frame things as “both sides do it” on any number of things is tiresome.
Is that Rye, for all his ‘principled’ opposition to the filibuster and defense of majority rule at all cost is abandoning all of those principles when it comes to a majority he disagrees with and a minority he agrees with. He said that he would support eliminating the filibuster even if it screwed over a future Democratic minority, clearly that is untrue.
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p>Also I am not saying “both sides do it”, simply saying that its logically incoherent to attack one sides tactic as wrong headed when its the exact same tactic you support when your side uses it. At that point the broader debate about what is and isn’t illegal and what is and isn’t democratic or right from a government process standpoint becomes meaningless and you’re essentially a supporter of anything goes so long as my side is in charge. That to me is not a good foundation of evaluation for government action. Obviously I am not defending the justness or legality of this action. Also I think I have been fairly vocally on the progressive and lefts side on this one and I am not saying ‘both sides do it’. I am saying, and you usually agree, that its incoherent to attack a process or demonize people for ‘evil’ tactics but then make an exception when your side does this. I am sure Rye would be up in arms if the Republicans in MA prevented a quorum on an abortion funding amendment or on gay marriage and start chirping about majority rule being trampled upon. And thats why his statements about broad government principles and the rule of law are not to be taken seriously. If a left wing Democrat does it its okay, anyone else basically shouldn’t exercise political power. And the reason I am harder on our side is because we are supposed to be the side of rationality and good governance.
Ryepower did not advocate or even mention filibusters. Until this comment (the one you’re reading), the only place the word showed up in this thread is in your comments. It’s a great example of a straw man, but that’s not much of a contribution.
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p>Incidentally, are you still claiming you’re a Democrat? “Our side,” and all? If you are, why do you always side with the Republicans’ view?
I challenge you to show where I have throughout my commentary on the WI crisis, I oppose Walker and have since day one. My moms an SEIU member and I support labor. I support gay marriage. I oppose all the wars we are fighting at the moment and oppose Obama from the left on Gitmo, on civil liberties, and especially on Afghanistan. That hardly I supported a public option and would prefer single payer health care. I vigorously oppose Scott Brown and want a left wing populist to defeat him. I oppose patronage and hackery from any party. I oppose the Bush tax cuts and want them all repealed. I despise the Tea Party and want to throw a brick at my television whenever Sarah Palin comes on. None of those positions make me a Republican. What I am tired of is seeing the same tea party mentality about purity and demonizing the other side being used by our side. I am tired of politics being a battle and a zero sum game when it should be about compromise and getting things done. Nowhere have I been right wing. I voted for Stein since Deval was too moderate and incompetent for my tastes.
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p>I tend to criticize dumb liberals more on this blog because a) there are more dumb liberals than dumb conservatives on this blog and b) dumb conservatives are so dumb they can’t be argued with but dumb liberals can be brought to their senses. When our side resorts to blind ideology, elitism, closed mindedness, and unreasonableness thats when I get worried. I dont want a liberal Palin or a liberal Bush. What angers me about those figures is not their conservatism but their willful ignorance and closed mindedness. Obama is one of the most open minded figures I’ve had the privilege of meeting, working for, and listening to. Its his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. But I hate liberals that think the US can be turned into a socialist utopia over night, it can’t, and recognizing the limitations of government and even the best laid public policies is the hallmark of smart politics. I hate it when my own side practices dumb politics. And Ryepower had maybe eight separate posts calling for the elimination of the filibuster and saying he would support majority rule even if right wingers used it. Obviously looking at his comments on this issue, he does not, since a slim majority is acting like a dictatorship in WI. And thats why the filibuster is important, thats why the WI legislators stopping a quorum is important. And I am tired of both sides complaining about the other side using illegal or undemocratic processes when they lose and then supporting those processes when they win, its illogical and hypocritical. If we were Facebook friends you’d see my right wing buddies calling me a socialist, calling Obama a communist,and saying the WI legislators should be arrested even though they supported a minority stopping the will of the majority when it came to health care reform. Thats what I am tired of. Walker pisses me off far more than Rye, but Walker doesn’t listen to me, but maybe I can point Ryes hypocrisy and make him recognize the point I was defending was worth fighting for and was not a liberal or conservative point, but this action would have terrible consequences point. And we are seeing them played out in WI for sure.
Im pro-gay marriage, pro-union, pro-Obama, anti-Brown, anti-Walker, and anti-war. You’re just an idiot.
We’ve been over this. The legislators who can be recalled will have over a year of record; their entire body of work will be considered by every potential recall signer and every voter. How those voters weigh each legislative action is up to each voter.
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p>The recall standards in WI are enormously high. Sigs totaling 25% of the number of votes for governor in that district. Legislators must have been in office for a year, and can only be recalled once per term. Sigs must be gathered in 60 day window. End result: you’ll only see recall votes happen when a legislator has done something(s) which motivate a broad enough group of people to be willing to sign, and a deeply enough that some people are willing to invest enormous resources of time and money to gather those sigs.
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p>My principles include throwing out a bum if enough people know he’s a bum. The WI recall process ensures that enough people know he’s a bum before he’s thrown out.
But then again we usually do when it comes to the integrity of the process. Rye on the other hand will subvert democracy in the name of saving it. The filibuster is an evil tool that enables an undemocratically empowered minority to stop sweeping changes that the people voted for…except when those democratic changes are conservative than anything goes from skipping town, to invalidating an election through another recall process, to a general strike. Sorry Rye you can’t have it both ways. And to be fair neither can the Fox News crowd who opposed the filibuster when it stopped Bush and First privatize social security, supported it to kill Obamacare, and oppose Wisconsin’s version of it to save unions. You know the country is in trouble when both sides can’t even agree to consistently apply the rules of the game.
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p>An aside Christopher, if you were a true Burkean you’d be against recall in all its forms, even if the Governor broke the law, why else have a republican impeachment mechanism in place?
If government business requires a quorum to be conducted, and it’s illegitimate to work to break the quorum, what then would you say is the purpose of that law?
…but the Governor can be impeached by the legislature as an inherent aspect of checks and balances. Legislators might be expelable (I don’t know if WI provides for this.), but if they are all in on the illegality they aren’t likely to start expelling each other.
Wisconsin has an open-meeting law which forces at least 24 hours advance notice. There was only 2 here.
Like an ‘informal’ session here.
what the composition of the Wisconsin supreme court is, as it would certainly seem that the voiding of worker contracts in place is budget related, and the prospect of a lengthly court review to break a contract already in place would likely at least force the governor and legislature back to the bargaining table.
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p>In the old days, the GOP was reluctant to risk too much internal division over labor because of the Soviet threat. At the current juncture, it seems the GOP would like to see how far it can get this year on several fronts, ranging from teacher’s compensation to avoiding paying back the bonds in the Social Security trust fund. Perhaps it is just a reaction to the fact that Democrats fulfilled a 50 year quest for some form of universal health care (never mind that the bill passed isn’t exactly the cat’s meow).
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p>I was in the middle of drafting a “Massachusetts compared with Wisconsin” posting asking to compare and contrast the current effort underway in Massachusetts to contain local municipal health care costs with Wisconsin and other states’s efforts to take on union’s right to organize directly.
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p>As a finance committee member, I know that health care costs can’t keep rising as they have, or as Menino says, localities budgets will be consumed by health care costs. And while I think this is an issue that should be addressed nationally for both public and private sector, I think it is necessary to limit the growth of health insurance costs borne by municipal employers in MA, with the governor’s proposal to apply the existing GIC insurance standards to municipalties as well as the state a good starting point.
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p>So, compare and contrast.
The numbers and tactics were in favor of the Republicans, especially when they were determined to do it at any cost.
I don’t see how the substance of this bill can be legal, in any context. But I am not a lawyer.
This was a clever move by the WI GOP.
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p>1. What took them so long to figure it out?
2. When they decided to implement it, why couldn’t they even wait the 2 hours properly?
Ezra Klein’s column on this contains some links you would find of interest.
…is they had to figure out how to justify to themselves and their constituents that the union-busting provisions, which just a few days ago were essential to “budget repair” and thus part of a package requiring a higher quorum, are now all of a sudden no longer budget-related and can thus be passed with the lesser quorum.
http://voices.washingtonpost.c…
He’s not necessarily Far Right, but he’s definitely hard Right. Whatever happens eventually in Wisconsin, he’s made his bones with the GOP, and he’s in the national spotlight.
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p>He said he wasn’t going to negotiate and he didn’t. The GOP wants that kind of inflexibility these days. And he’s taken the hardest shot that’s hit unions since Reagan broke PATCO.
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p>The future is turbulence. Walker and the GOP don’t have a mandate. Their dominance is not secure.
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p>Maybe we’ll fall farther, but sooner or later, the American people are going to wake up to the fact that big business and its ideology are screwing over the American worker.
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p>And how stupid does Rachel Maddow look this week for saying that Walker was losing, giving in? I like Rachel, but her staff doesn’t know what its doing. She also got in a spat with Politifact.