Comments | ordinaryfool: On, Wisconsin

ordinaryfool

On, Wisconsin

Feb 17, 2011 18:44

So to follow up on my last post, Wisconsin is seriously an insane place to be right now. Our state Democrats fled to Illinois today in a showing of solidarity with those who are protesting Walker's proposal. This meant that the Republicans couldn't force the vote today, as they needed at least one Democrat present to be able to do so. For what ( Read more... )

politics, wisconsin

Comments 5

tilvictory February 18 2011, 01:29:36 UTC

Your last post and this one make me so happy. Seems like we agree on a lot of things. I'm so proud of our Dems.

summer_mommy February 18 2011, 16:21:03 UTC

I agree. However, my FB feed is full of whining about the dem "cowards" and how they will be so glad when they're all arrested. *eye roll*

whatparanoia February 18 2011, 23:01:26 UTC

yeah, my loudly republican cousin rags on this sort of thing a lot. i want to shake the crazy out of her.

WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON ANYWAY? i'm tryign to learn stuff online, and all I'm getting is there is a union for stateworkers being dropped? Is this correct? I'm in central Illinois so I sorta live in lala land.

ordinaryfool February 19 2011, 06:08:32 UTC

Okay, basically, our Governor is a douchebag.

But to sum up the issues, we have a huge budget deficit, so his plan right now is focused on state workers. He feels that by increasing what they pay for benefits (for my husband, it's going to essentially be a $3000-$5000 pay cut because of what he'll have to start paying), making them pay into pensions, and removing collective bargaining rights from everyone but cops and firefighters (because their unions supported his campaign), that will be a big fix to the budget. Only it's really not, since this plan only will provide a tiny fraction of the money.

Anyway, yeah, what's really the issue is that he wants to take away *all* power from unions, and the teacher's union in particular is pissed.

ordinaryfool February 19 2011, 06:26:15 UTC

Oh, and I should also point out that the Gov was really douche-y in the way he went about proposing this bill. The budget doesn't need to be approved until June 30, but he introduced this bill only a WEEK ago, with plans to have the state senate vote on it on Thursday. The Republicans have a 19-14 majority, and all of the Republicans were expected to vote, so it would have passed. But the Dems discovered a loophole that for the vote to occur, they needed 20 senators present because 3/5 of them have to be there, so they fled to your state in order to allow more time for debate on this. Walker has said he will not back down on his plan to take away collective bargaining rights at ALL, so that's why it's been so crazy.