The Price of Extremism: Wisconsin’s Economy Under the Walker Administration

Under Walker, Wisconsin is 53,700 jobs short of matching the national pace of job creation

As IWF noted in The Price of Extremism: Wisconsin’s economy under the Walker administration, Gov. Walker’s policies are directly responsible for Wisconsin’s pathetic jobs performance during his budget.
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The chart shows the percent change in the number of jobs in Wisconsin and the U.S. since June 2011, the time period when Gov. Scott Walker’s budget has been in effect. If only we’d matched the U.S. trend, we’d have 53,700 more jobs.

http://www.wisconsinsfuture.org/

 

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/wisconsin/

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/states/

 

Ever since he unveiled his plan to effectively kill collective bargaining in the public sector last year, Gov. Scott Walker has consistently argued that the controversial policy should not have taken voters by surprise.

"The simple matter is I campaigned on this all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years," he said at a press conference a week into the massive protests that erupted in response to Walker's plan.

Politifact rated the governor's assertion as “false,” since Walker clearly never made public any desire to do away with collective bargaining completely. Republicans shrugged in response, contending that while the then-Milwaukee county executive may not have specifically mentioned collective bargaining, his promises to make public workers pay more for their benefits made his intentions clear.

However, video footage that has recently surfaced on the Uppity Wisconsin blog shows Walker making statements that suggest the exact opposite; that he in fact promised to sit down with unions and bargain for reforms to their pension and health care plans.


In a meeting with the editorial board of the Oshkosh Northwestern days before the election in 2010, Walker pointed to successes he had dealing with unions in Milwaukee County as examples of how he would extract concessions from state workers.

“You still have to negotiate it,” he said. “I did it at the county as well where I've had some of my employee unions agree to it, others have not ... we set (furloughs) as a fallback for those employees who were in (unions) that did not settle for what we're asking for.”

Ironically, one of the ways Walker has defended his elimination of collective bargaining is by pointing out that it prevented furloughs and layoffs.

 

Moral of the story: Republicans (in politics) suck.

 

I would go with that assertion without the parenthesized qualifier.

 

What has continued to amaze me is how these RW'ers lie, and lie, and lie and even when the the tape is rolled out that proves that they lied, they say, "Well, what I really meant was...." Ah BS! You said what you meant in the first place and now you are covering one lie with another. Geeesh!

 

Just tryin' to be fair Tak... to say all Republicans suck would be about as true as saying all liberals are socialists, or whatever the righties say these days.

Republicans were absolutely foaming at the mouth over the claims that the tape had something juicy on Obama. "This tape will show" just about anything apparently ...until it's viewed of course... and the disappointment the righties are feeling after the tapes release is palpable.

 

Where would a democracy be without a free and public education system taught by qualified people.
Walker is one of those who go after teachers in a witch hunt mindset ignoring the facts and playing on emotion drawn from the preaching of lies.

 

I can agree with that. It's one thing to try to make the system better because of a proven fact of it being in desperate need of improvement, but it's another when it's done for the implicit purpose to weaken the opposing political party.

In another thread "photo ID laws", specifically Minnesota's, are being discussed, and this type of political manuvering is why I can't support the legislation as written. While the photo ID laws are certainly understandable on the surface, they are publicly represented as a tool to provide greater integrity to our voting system, while the actual result of these types of laws is the opposite... our voting system loses integrity.

That's only my opinion of course, but I researched Minnesota's current and past photo ID legislation, and the consequences of them becoming law, and find the legislation to be unwarranted given that the law would not prevent the fraud it was created to defend against (felons voting) and would put too much burden on the young, minorities, and the elderly... some of whom cannot provide the necessary documents to receive their photo IDs, but are citizens of the State.

The legislation is too amateurish to account for these people... or to even have a budget to impliment it should it become law. But to the politicians promoting these "laws", that doesn't matter. What matters to them is that, if passed, the legislation would weaken the opposing party... and that is the implicit purpose.

 

Well that's the difference between us. You're fair.

As for the tape, you're right. No less a RW freak than Michael Savage says that it "fell flat". I think the problem is obvious. Breitbart died before he had a chance to edit it.

 

I really do not see much of a difference between the Dems and the Republican party anymore whereas perhaps only thirty years ago there were deep divisions within each party with strong platforms and agendas.

 

There are still differences, but they lie not in the product they are selling but in the way it's being marketed and in the way it's being fine-tuned for the consumer.

 

I know what you mean by that but there are still basic differences on certain specific issues like guns, abortion, taxes and, of course, pizza. Canadian bacon is just thick slices of ham, and ruins a pizza....if you're gonna put a pig product on a pizza make damn sure it's real american bacon!

 

I disagree with that!
A Hawaiian pizza (A very American state) is comprised of pineapple and Canadian bacon. I've always wondered though, do they feed the pig pineapple before they....grrrch!

 

On a related issue....

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin state elections board has voted to allow a recall election against Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald to proceed.
The Government Accountability Board on Monday agreed with staff analysis that more than enough valid signatures were submitted to schedule a recall election.
Election officials want any necessary primary election to be May 15 with a general election June 12. A Dane County judge was expected to consider that request Wednesday.
The elections board on Monday determined that at least 18,282 valid signatures were submitted to recall Fitzgerald. Recall organizers needed 16,742 signatures. They turned in 20,735.
The elections board plans to vote later Monday on allowing recalls against three other Republican senators to proceed.
The board rejected broad arguments made by all four senators challenging thousands of signatures.

 

I never thought I'd like pineapple on pizza... but it works...

...I absolutely thought pickle-slices would ruin a pizza... I was wrong again...

...I credit pizza for proving me wrong so often lol

But shredded American bacon beats them both. Canadian bacon is fine, when you want a piece of leathery ham. It just doesn't work for me on a pizza.

 

I have mixed feelings about recalls, I feel they are used too often. Yeah, I want bad people (Republicans ) out... but I'm concerned that the process is being abused by both parties. Abuses of power are certainly a reason to want someone recalled... but I'd rather the bad person never got there in the first place.

 

Not so much. I think Walker would be only the 3rd Governor to ever be recalled in the history of this country.

 

I've seen spikes of recalls locally. Ten/fifteen years ago there were very few (if any) recalls, then a few years later every small city or village in the area went nuts and began recall efforts for just about any reason.

People seem to be drifting further apart... or maybe they are becomng less tolerant of differences... or maybe they are more organized now... or all of the above...in any case, the parties are much more polarized than they were and I have mixed feelings about whether that is good or bad.

On the one hand, ridding the State of people you don't want in power is a good thing, but on the other it really comes down to perspective. I may view the person as bad, but others will not. That said, some of the things these people have been doing are truly awful, and recalls are the only real tool to combat that awfulness.

BTW, I did sign the recall effort (it failed) against Michigan's governor. Some of the things he's done are abuses of power IMO. In Michigan, the Republicans have control of just about everything... and to me that's a dictatorship. We need a balance of power.

 

I think when you have a governor that is nullifying local elections because of fiscal problems that he helped to create, you definitely have a petty dictator that needs to be recalled or run out of town on a rail.