Gov. Scott Walker said Friday that he wants to end collective bargaining for nearly all public employees because the state is broke and there’s no point negotiating with the unions when there is nothing to offer.<\/p>\n
Union leaders and Democrats, powerless to stop Walker’s plan from passing the Republican-controlled Legislature next week, were reeling. They blasted the proposal as a naked power-grab that will gut Wisconsin’s deep organized labor tradition and result in layoffs that devastate the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If I were a Wisconsin taxpayer – and a place in Hudson is looking better and better every time I look at the Dayton “budget” – I’d say “screw your tradition”.<\/p>\n
As to the layoffs?\u00a0 If the jobs aren’t actually needed <\/em>to run the state’s government, then why are we paying them?\u00a0 Why is a public-sector job more sacrosanct than a private sector one?<\/p>\nWalker, a Republican who took office in January, argued that his proposal is an alternative to ordering furlough days and laying off 12,000 state and local public employees over the next two years to balance a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.<\/p>\n
“The state’s broke,” Walker said. “Local governments are broke. They don’t have anything to offer.”<\/p>\n
Walker wants to remove all collective-bargaining rights, except for salary, for roughly 175,000 public employees starting July 1. Any requests for a salary increase higher than the consumer price index would have to be approved by referendum.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He also wants – gasp – to require\u00a0\u00a0 public employees to pay half the cost of their gold-plated public employee pensions<\/em>, and pay 12.5% of their healthcare costs.<\/p>\nI caught MPR’s coverage of the protests “sweeping” Wisconsin today.\u00a0 Standout note – a Minnesota <\/em>public-employee union leadership stooge whinging that the changes will “cost union employees’ …”<\/p>\nI was ready for the next word to be “jobs”.<\/p>\n
“…money toward their retirement”.<\/p>\n
I wished, fervently, that I could have met that woman face to face, and showed her what I – a self-employed guy – pay for retirement.<\/p>\n
8.000 more freaking votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For want of 8,000 more votes… Scott Walker is doing what governments at every level should do – ending collective bargaining for public union employees : Gov. Scott Walker said Friday that he wants to end collective bargaining for nearly all public employees because the state is broke and there’s no point negotiating with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,51,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-liberal-tyranny","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18213,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18208\/revisions\/18213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}