Overreach!
By Mitch Berg
The latest Rasmussen Poll shows likely voters are backing Walker:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree more with the Republican governor in his dispute with union workers. Thirty-eight percent (38%) agree more with the unionized public employees, while 14% are undecided…
…Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters think teachers, firemen and policemen should be allowed to go on strike, but 49% disagree and believe they should not have that right. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.
Naturally there’s stark partisan divide.
Thirty-six percent (36%) of all voters say that in their state the average public employee earns more than the average private sector worker. Twenty-one percent (21%) say the government employee earns less, while 20% think their pay is about the same. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure.
With states across the country finding that benefits for public workers are becoming difficult to fund in the current economic climate, support for public employee unions has fallen. Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans favor them, and 45% don’t. These findings include 21% who Strongly Favor such unions and 30% who are Strongly Opposed to them.
This can’t be good news to all the droogs in Madison.
February 22nd, 2011 at 8:25 am
The optics have been terrible for the lefties on this one. Walker speaks reasonably and doesn’t come off like some sort of Snidely Whiplash type, while the folks in the Capitol look like they’re having a party with all the street theater and the anachronistic chanting.
I grew up in Wisconsin. While there’s a strong progressive history in Wisconsin dating back to Fighting Bob La Follette, Wisconsin is a culturally conservative place. Most ‘Sconnies will tolerate the nonsense in Madison up to the point it starts to affect their lives in a negative way. That’s what happened under Jim Doyle and it’s why Scott Walker is the governor today. The self-indulgence on display doesn’t sit well with people there. This will be over soon.
February 22nd, 2011 at 8:46 am
14% are undecided. I would say it’s hard to believe that many Americans can be so stupid, but then I look at the White House and American Idol. God help us.
February 22nd, 2011 at 9:29 am
Put your Chanting Points Memo banner on alert status – there is a new poll of Wisconsin residents with the majority of the respondents supporting the govt unionists. Of course as your radio partner ‘Captain’ Ed notes – the poll was done on behalf of the unions and they are not sharing their sampling data…
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/22/first-wi-poll-shows-walker-losing-ground-but/
February 22nd, 2011 at 9:59 am
It’s a fine line to walk… Unions can be beneficial for ensuring workers rights, but are all to often used for vehicles of greed and political corruption.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:08 am
The union droogs in Madison know the score. They’ve had their little party, and the writing is on the wall….*now* watch and see how civilly they behave!
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:13 am
MSM is still reporting this wrong. They are saying “Walker is trying to eliminate collective bargining rights for public employees”.
First, collective barginging isn’t a right. Second, he is only removing the right to bargin on benifits. They still get to do that for wages and other things.
The real issue, and this isn’t being reported (for good or bad), direct payroll deductions to the unions is going away. So now, you have to join the union. Which in Wisc, you don’t have a choice anyway (schools are closed shops), but at least this way, the teachers will see their money go away.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:13 am
Public employee unions are nothing but legitimized extortion. None of us have an option to chose an alternate government. The UAW has more integrity. We can choose not to buy a Ford or a Toyota or any other car. Government is by nature forced on the population. Having it’s employees dictate to us it’s compensation is pure villainy.
Shut up and pay your taxes.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:14 am
Rob, I agree. But if you know much about Wisc gov’t employees, they have crossed the line long ago.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:24 am
Rob, I would support unions, but not as they are done here in the US. Unions need to have their anti-trust exemption removed and THEN I’ll support their right to exist.
Japan has successful unions, but they’re limited to being organized per company and that actually works well there. You don’t get the UAW’s tactics of picking one company to threaten with bankruptcy and then get that company’s contract enforced everywhere. In Japan you get unions that have to make sure that their company succeeds for them to survive.
And as for government unions, since the government is a monopoly there should be no unionization there OR you need to strip off Civil Service. One or the other must go.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:40 am
Nerdbert, you can’t remove the anti-trust exemption and still have a trade union.
If any person could walk up to a union job site and say “I’m hungry, so I’ll do that guy’s job for half of his wages” unions would collapse. The only way that unions can get their members higher than market wages is by restraint of trade.
February 22nd, 2011 at 10:52 am
So unions were a necessary cure for a bad situation, but the cure has become a kind of poison. All medicine must be taken as prescribed. It seems like we are self-medicating ourselves to death as a nation.
February 22nd, 2011 at 11:18 am
Can’t remember if you allow links, but this is some kind of weird computer generated cartoon that explains what is going on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RURE8pdIL00&feature=player_embedded
If the link doesn’t work, go to YouTube, to 1badger1000, and to his/her video “Madison Protest”.
February 22nd, 2011 at 11:46 am
And now the same thing is happening in Indiana. When Republicans win…the Democrats use every illegal and immoral tactic to stop them. It only goes to show the Republicans should remind them, as The Great Leader did, that ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!!
February 22nd, 2011 at 11:54 am
I would suspect that number is going to decline as more Wisconsin voters learn what an absolute disaster Walker was in Milwauke– especially his utter failure attempting to bust unions:
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/governor-walkers-failures-in-20092010.html
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:02 pm
I would suspect that number is going to decline as more Wisconsin voters learn what an absolute disaster Walker was in Milwauke
Um, you did catch the bit where your beloved “Politificact” shredded your premise that Walker created the deficit with his tax cuts, right?
Tell us you caught that.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:03 pm
The AWOL Dems in WI should think about getting back to work soon it they hope to have ANY voice in coming legislation. Several bill are due to come up any time now that don’t require the quorum that the collective bargaining changes do.
– MAYBE a bill to make govt union membership voluntary (what a lovely kick in the balls that would be for the WI Dim Senators).
– A “shall issue” gun carry law.
– A voter ID Bill (SUPER!!).
I’m really going to enjoy watching all this unfold.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:24 pm
And as THIS becomes better known to Wisconsin voters, I bet the support for Walker goes down substantially – voters don’t like looting and pillaging for special interests – when they find out about it:
“.. Dave Johnson reported yesterday for PRWatch. Tucked into Walker’s bill is a provision which allows the sale of “any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant … with or without solicitation of bids.”
And just who is the likely recipient of no-bid state sales of publicly-owned heating, cooling and power facilities? That would most likely be companies controlled by the brothersDavid and Charles Koch, owners of Koch Industries, and big financial supporters of Governor Scott Walker. The Koch brothers have also funded groups that are attempting to create a crisis atmosphere over the state’s budget, leading up to the attempt to pass this bill that could result in the low-cost transfer of state assets to their company.
In addition to the Koch brothers being backers and big financial supporters of Governor Walker, they are also primary funders of the Tea Party via their general financial support for Americans for Prosperity, which David Koch Chairs.
So, largely un-reported is this stealthy provision that allows no-bid privatization of state-owned energy infrastructure. And Walker has a history –not a good one — privatizing state agencies. As Mother Jones reported, “as Milwaukee County executive, Walker fought to fire the county’s unionized prison guards and replace them with private contractors.”
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:24 pm
“Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters think teachers, firemen and policemen should be allowed to go on strike”
Let’s ask them again as striking fire fighters watch their houses burn to the ground or while some thug pistol whips them while a striking police officer looks on. Obviously, I have more faith in those people than that, but after the incident in TN(?) a couple of months ago when fire fighters watched someone’s house burn down because they didn’t pay the required tax, we never know.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:25 pm
– A voter ID Bill (SUPER!!).
Except that these don’t seem to hold up well under court challenges – like the Indiana attempt in front of the SCOTUS….
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Kermit wrote:
So unions were a necessary cure for a bad situation
This gives unions too much credit, Kermit. If you listen to the pro-labor folks, unions got rid of child labor, gave all workers the 40 hour work and workmans comp, etc.
I won’t cede them these points.
Correlation is not causation.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Except that these don’t seem to hold up well under court challenges
Until they do.
All it takes is one bill to thread the needle of case law to change all that.
Hopefully, this will be the one.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:33 pm
And Walker has a history –not a good one — privatizing state agencies
Beg to differ. He was an inspirational history of privatizing state agencies.
To cite St. Cloud mayor Dave Kleis, every state function that has three or more private-sector duplicates in the Yellow Pages (as a broad rule) should be privatized.
(And no, to jump ahead of the inevitable strawman, that doesn’t mean replace the cops or fire department with private security and fire companies. It DOES mean everything that doesn’t pertain directly to public safety of the criminal justice process and a VERY few other areas should be privatized, barring a very compelling case not to).
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:35 pm
DG, think of it this way:
WI Assembly = R at the very least about 2 more years
WI Senate = R at the very least about 2 more years
WI Gov = R at very least about 4 more years
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Unions, if you take them at their word, exist to protect their workers from exploitation, to give them a “fair shake”, in the words of one pro-union SITD commenter.
Regarding the WI public employees unions, who is attempting to exploit them? And why do they deserve a “fair shake” more than the non-union workers in Wisconsin who have seen their wages and benefits flatlined (or worse) over the last few decades?
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Dog’s been sniffing Koch again.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Really DG, Mother Jones????? Spend less time with the bong!
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Next on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, marvel with Jim and I as we witness a true anomaly of nature, as a dog jumps the shark.
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Winning the war in the PR arena is crucial for the union. Watch the media do handstands as the union pushes their buttons. There is an old legal axiom which applies here:
If you have the truth, use it.
If you have the facts, use them.
If you have neither, pound on the table.
Does the actions of the union resemble anything other than a good, old-fashioned table thumping?
February 22nd, 2011 at 12:53 pm
voters don’t like looting and pillaging for special interests
Ain’t it the truth. Obama and Nancy Pelosi found that one out the hard way last November.
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Dog and Stink…..I probably have said this 5 times, but the teachers could have won here (at very least could have been thought of as victims, which would have lead to big Dem wins in Nov 2012). It’s the nice elementry teacher who worked hard to help your kids out, vs some cocky guy from Milwaukee who only won because he ran against some other guy from Milwaukee who was worse.
But the teachers blew it. They come across as smug jerks. Skipping school for 4 days. The fake docter notes. The Hitler signs. screaming and banging on the bottom of plastic pails. The Democrats hiding out Rockford Illinois (until they found out what a hell-hole that town is, so hightailed for Chicago). Instead of innocent teachers wanting to keep their income and benifits, they come across as gov’t employees with an entitlement mentality.
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:00 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_locations_by_per_capita_income
this ranking of per capita WI income lists 630 cities – fewer than 30 have a per capita income > $30k
Yet teachers in WI get paid anywhere from $48k-$59k in addition to benefits that range from $23k – $39k a year and because the benefits are not reported as income these Union Teachers are not paying taxes on a large share of their “remuneration” thus callously ripping off the government and forcing other taxpayers to carry the burden they refuse to. If there was ever anyone who should be “paying their fair share” and isn’t – its public employees.
Oh DG I’ll wait until Moveon or Mother Jones posts the applicable talking points for your answer
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
“And Walker has a history –not a good one — privatizing state agencies”
How does someone privatize *state* industries as a *county* commissioner?
Unless he’s had an exceptionally busy 2 months as governor.
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
How much VG in the Kool Aid this morning DeeGee?
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
How does someone privatize *state* industries as a *county* commissioner?
Unless he’s had an exceptionally busy 2 months as governor.
Excellent question.
DG? It seems you’ve been FACT-CHECKED.
BTW, still waiting for your response on Politifact gutting your premise re Walker and the deficit (about which Foot’s question also applies).
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Don’t hold your breath, Berg.
February 22nd, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Mitch, Dog Gone hauls out liberal-dominated posses like factcheck and politifact only to refute conservatives. When either of those outfits disagrees with her, then they are wrong.
Dog Gone doesn’t rely on reason or facts to form an opinion. The opinion comes first, then facts and reason are mangled to support the opinion.
This is a common defect among liberals, and it is one reason that they are a small and shrinking part of the American electorate. They learn to despise and hate everyone that, for example, does not believe that abortion is a fundamental right, but they can’t describe what it means to say that something is a fundamental right.
February 22nd, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Fresh news; new rule enacted in WI today in an attempt to flush the demonrat legislators out of their hideouts. These miscreants will not get any pay by direct deposit anymore! They will have to pick up their pay checks, per diem/expense checks from the Majority Leader, while the legislature is in session! In other words: if ya’ ain’t here when you supposed to be, ya’ ain’t gettin’ paid! Seems fair enough to me!
February 22nd, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Say dog? Seems that despite your very best asshat dancing, your moonbat castle in the clouds is crumbling around your pointy little ears.
Unions busted; infanticide defunded; Democrat legislators on the lam; Governor JimBeam a laughingstock.
Suck it honey. Bwwwaaahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaa!
February 22nd, 2011 at 4:22 pm
AAAAaaaaaahahahahahahaahaaaa..FACTCHECK that..hahahaha!
February 22nd, 2011 at 4:29 pm
like the Indiana attempt in front of the SCOTUS….
You mean the one that is 5 to 4 conservatives? Ooooh, AAAAahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahaSuck it! AHAHAHAHAHahahahaaa!
February 22nd, 2011 at 5:41 pm
“Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen.”
February 22nd, 2011 at 8:13 pm
And that pretty much sums up the evil that is public employee unions.
February 22nd, 2011 at 8:26 pm
I think that the Union/Employer relationship doesn’t apply in the public sector. When a Public Service Union collectively bargains with government officials, they are not bargaining with their employer, they are dealing with another government employee. The Public employer is “We the People,” and we never get invited to the negotiation table.
I found out today that none other than FDR himself posthumously agrees with me…
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445
Now I feel a little dirty.
February 22nd, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Nerdbert, you can’t remove the anti-trust exemption and still have a trade union.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I can see organizing a union to bust up a company town or to reign in particularly bad management in a large company, but other than that I don’t think trade unions are particularly desirable from an economic point of view.
February 23rd, 2011 at 9:20 am
Nerd, government is NOT a trade. Public employee unions = government extortion.
February 24th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
Other than Rasmussen, pretty much all of the polls are coming out against Walker and for the unions; definitely against the Wisconsin union busting legislation.
There is nothing in the current MN legislation that looks to get around the objections of the previous SCOTUS decisions (yes, I read them) which among other things requires proof of voter fraud before it recognizes more restrictive or onerous voter processes like proof of ID – MN doesn’t have that, so don’t get your hopes up.
Of course I know about what Walker did – he privatized (using Wackenhut, a UK firm with a bad reputation) to replace the unionized guards for the county courthouse in Milwaukee, and it is now costing them somewhere between a quarter million to a half-million (depending on what costs you include) in back pay, penalties, legal fees, and rehiring those unionized guards – oh, and lets not forget that the binding arbitration determined that Walker created a fake budget crisis to do that privatization as well.
He also intends apparently to try to privatize the U of WI Madison with Wackenhut (not likely to work out well).
If you read Penigma more often you would know these things – including all the pertinent fact checking. In fact, I just had a private email from Wisconsin poitifact.com this morning about some of their fact checking from something I sent to them.
A great deal of the confusion about what Walker is doing has to do with overlapping legislation dealing with two different budgets. I also have addressed his possible illegal failure to negotiate with the unions contrary to law and some other key issues in my most recent post.
Enjoy – and don’t worry too much about a mother jones reference; I try to fact check any source, right left or center for accuracy. I don’t just take their words for it. If I quote Mother Jones, I checked out their assertion the same way I would the Wall Street Journal.
February 24th, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Don’t miss the posts about ‘Hosni’ Walker trying to obstruct the dissenters.
Here are most of the pertinent links:
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/did-ian-murphy-commit-identity-theft-in.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/maybe-they-were-right-to-call-governor.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/republicans-hate-unions-are-they-right.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/governor-walker-caught-telling-pants-on.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/corruption-and-hosni-walker-governor-of.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/governor-walkers-failures-in-20092010.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/so-are-unions-really-budget-bad-guys.html
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-on-wisconsin-right-wing-crisis.html
there is more – but you might want to give special attention to the politifact pants-on-fire (just like Bachmann’s!) rating for his recent statements.
Hope I’ve answered your questions – if I missed any, just ask — on penigma.
February 24th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Um, yeah, DG, I’ll try to get over and read your parade of links from “ThinkProgress”, “HuffPo” and “Daily Kos”, and follow up with the usual casual debunks. Then I’ll grab a snack and watch “the Office”, provided the debunking doesn’t interfere with watching “The Office”.
Oh, btw – have you noticed:
1. The Real Avalanche of Violence?: – There’ve been more actual, documented incidents of violence and non-false-flag racism and other awfulness in the past week from Union goons that there’ve been in almost two years of the Tea Party.
2. You Have Unfinished Business – Learned Foot has been asking you a question; your little blurb about Scott Walker creating the deficit was shot in the face by none other than your beloved Politifact.
Care to respond?
February 24th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Other than Rasmussen, pretty much all of the polls are coming out against Walker and for the unions
Wait! You missed a poll – a poll that came out for Walker, and wasn’t even close.
Remember it?
The November Election! The only poll that matters! The one that came out six points in Walker’s favor – while running heavily on a “curb the unions” platform.
And as we saw in this past election cycle, Rasmussen is by far the most accurate. The other polls have had the same problems with crosstabs that the big Minnesota polls – the Strib, HHH, and StCloud polls – had; woefully bad crosstabs. Ed went over the various anti-Walker polls last week – and found that, yep, their samples were likely heavily weighted toward Madison and Milwaukee audiences.
Just saying – putting your faith in opinion polling is a losing game.
February 25th, 2011 at 6:06 am
Seems like those who supported Walker in the last election are leaving him now in droves – like the unions who supported him, so that isn’t an approval poll of his present activities.
The polls include a variety of sampling, nationally, not just Wisconsin. The longer this goes on, the more that Walker’s approvals go down, and his negatives are going up. And the more that the right is having to back away from what they are trying to do.
Care to document with actual factual reports that claim about the avalanche of violence on the left?
2. You Have Unfinished Business – Learned Foot has been asking you a question; your little blurb about Scott Walker creating the deficit was shot in the face by none other than your beloved Politifact.
I’m not ducking anything – sorry Foote, when skimming through the previous comments quickly, I missed it. If I miss responding to something addressed to me, I appreciate having it called to my attention, so that I can respond to it. Please keep in mind I don’t stop back to look at SitD as often as I would like.
It depends on what you mean by the debt problem in Wisconsin; there is a short fall for the current budget period. The public discussion has blurred the current budget period and the next budget period for the second half of 2011 through the first part of 2013, because the budget repair bill addresses parts of both.
There was not a crisis of the magnitude that Walker claimed; there was a relatively small budget short fall – and he has cried wolf about budgets before (see the recent determination regarding the Milwaukee power grab). The unions have agreed to wage reductions, and to increased participation in their pension funding; there is not now and there never has been a problem with the budget that necessitated stripping the unions of collective bargaining rights. During the previous budget problems in Wisconsin, the unions cooperated in resolving those budget problems with things like furloughs/ unpaid days off. The budget in WI was a pretext to go after unions, not a justified reason.
Where Walker created the problem of a greatly expanded debt (with Republicans) was unfunded tax cuts to corporations, much the way the Republicans did so on the national level with unfunded tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% in continuing the disastrous Bush era tax cuts.
The Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau determined that the tax cuts to corporations would NOT have the stated intended benefits of job growth – and they are not the only analysis that came to that conclusion.
You need to read further on politifact than you appear to have done.
http://politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/22/scott-walker/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-says-he-campaigned-his-/
You can complain about my sources if you like, but that doesn’t make the facts I present inaccurate. Show me where the FACTS I present are inaccurate. As Terry can attest, if I am wrong on any facts, I will not only make a correction, I will THANK the person who corrected me.
Nor do I EVER see you similarly fact check right wing media (and blogging) sources in an equivalent manner.
Or are you planning on writing something soon about the results of the four investigations that have not found ANY validity to the claims that unions conducted a deliberate snow plowing slowdown last December?
You know – the ones where the sources cited by O’Halloran contradict what he said? The ones where when pressed even O’Halloran admitted that no one had actually said to him what he claimed they said?