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New poll shows majority support Walker recall

buck said:
Well, since i've already provided links to two sites that confirm exactly what I have heard a while ago, I would say not at all. The state and local spending on PS unions is 44% of their budgets. All along I said 40%. I also claimed 50.0% of local budget is spendon PS unions. That turned out to be nearly spot on too.
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You provided links to two worthless sites and did not even comprehend what the articles said.
 
Sig said:
You provided links to two worthless sites and did not even comprehend what the articles said.
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Seems that your whole method of political debate is to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend the data doesn't exist or meet your oh so stringent standards so that you can continue to believe utter nonsense.

Anyone with the least bit of an open mind wil see that both links clearly indicate that 44% of local/state budgets go to PS unions. You are free to provide any data that you have to disprove this. I'll wait.
 
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danarhea said:
It's not unions that bankrupted the state. It was Governor Walker, who cut the revenue Wisconsin was bringing in to the bone. That might have made the Koch brothers happy, but it created the financial crisis. The public sector unions, by the way, agreed to every single concession that was asked of it, yet Walker still busted the unions.

In addition, to show how unethical and smarmy your little attacks on me are (because I happen to support unions), 40% of union members voted Republican in 2008, but to you they are just dirty liberal hippies. You would rather just put people into boxes and label them, rather than try to figure out that things are a lot more complicated than cubbyholes and labels. To you, unions = dirty hippes, even though 40% of union members voted Republican. And your tactic of attacking the messenger, rather than replying in an intelligent manner to a post, explaining why you disagree, is not worthy of being called debate in the first place. It is just a personal attack, based on your distorted view of people, and really hearkens back to a time, during the Red Scare, when Joe McCarthy accused people of being Communists, even when they weren't. It's not debate, Nancy. It's disgusting.
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How was Walker able to do that in such a short time being in office?

Further unions have no place in government employ. Period. Why because of a conflict of interest that goes on everyday in this country. Unions sell their vote for higher compensation and that is a fact that is wide spread across this country. And that fact is being more and more dealt with as states and counties and cities realize the agreements that were brokered in the past by liberal legislators to buy the union vote are unsustainable. You can try and eye wash this fact all you want but no one is listening anymore.

I have no problem with unions in the private sector as they are forced to compete with the non-union work force. But there is no competition under government employ.
 
buck said:
I can't decide if you are doing this on purpose just to be difficult, or you really don't understand.
The state has their own PS employees, and pay 20% of their spending in PS employee comp.
The local governments have their own PS employees and pay 55% of their budget in PS employee comp
Combined, 44% of the state's and local's spending is on PS employees.

If you are looking at how much PS unions are costing the state, you need to look at expenses from both a state and local level. You can't just take the state's spending on their PS employees and completely ignore the local's spending on their employees.
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This had nothing to do with debt reduction with scott walker, the unions agreed to cuts in pay and benefits...he was purely union busting by ending collective bargaining...and thats what this is all about
 
buck said:
Seems that your whole method of political debate is to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend the data doesn't exist or meet your oh so stringent standards so that you can continue to believe utter nonsense.

Anyone with the least bit of an open mind wil see that both links clearly indicate that 44% of local/state budgets go to PS unions. You are free to provide any data that you have to disprove this. I'll wait.
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THEY DO NOT!!!! THIS IS THE POINT!!!!

The very gist of the your first article (your first article, your own source of information!!!) was that the total spending on public employee wages and salaries is more accurately assessed at 17.7%, as opposed to the 8.5% assessment of Pocan.

Do you think if you keep repeating the same misread erroneous crap, over and over and over again, that it will somehow become true? It won't. Now, be a man and recant.
 
lpast said:
This had nothing to do with debt reduction with scott walker, the unions agreed to cuts in pay and benefits...he was purely union busting by ending collective bargaining...and thats what this is all about
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There is simply a difference of opinion here. I believe that the unions were just playing politics with their supposed agreement to contribute more to pensions/health care (as evidenced by the number of unions that refused to reopen their contract to provide more contributions) leading to teacher layoffs in the districts that rushed through new contracts prior to Act 10. Higher contributions would have just been a short term fix as the union's supposed bargaining oponent gives out more salary and other concessions to unions putting them right back in tough spot.
 
Sig said:
THEY DO NOT!!!! THIS IS THE POINT!!!!

The very gist of the your first article (your first article, your own source of information!!!) was that the total spending on public employee wages and salaries is more accurately assessed at 17.7%, as opposed to the 8.5% assessment of Pocan.

Do you think if you keep repeating the same misread erroneous crap, over and over and over again, that it will somehow become true? It won't. Now, be a man and recant.
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That was just state's spending. It does not include the local government's spending. the 40% figure is the local and state spending on PS union employees combined. You just want to ignore the 50% of the local's budget that goes to PS employees.
 
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buck said:
There is simply a difference of opinion here. I believe that the unions were just playing politics with their supposed agreement to contribute more to pensions/health care (as evidenced by the number of unions that refused to reopen their contract to provide more contributions) leading to teacher layoffs in the districts that rushed through new contracts prior to Act 10. Higher contributions would have just been a short term fix as the union's supposed bargaining oponent gives out more salary and other concessions to unions putting them right back in tough spot.
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I cant speak on that buck...because I dont know enough about it to be honest...Im not from wisc and im going by what I saw on the news and read at various places...that the unions agreed to concessions and walker at first agreed and then it got ugly when he took collective bargaining....you have to admit that taking collective bargaining was just a move to bust the unions to benefit the GOP
 
lpast said:
I cant speak on that buck...because I dont know enough about it to be honest...Im not from wisc and im going by what I saw on the news and read at various places...that the unions agreed to concessions and walker at first agreed and then it got ugly when he took collective bargaining....you have to admit that taking collective bargaining was just a move to bust the unions to benefit the GOP
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I think that it was more then that, but we simply disagree. We both looked at the same facts and came to a different conclusion. No problem with that.

Edit: BTW, here is a link on the MPS refusing to reopen their contract to provide contributions, instead taking layoffs. It's obviously a biased link, but the main thing I wanted to show was that they did refuse despite the claims of union leadership tat they would.

http://www.publicschoolspending.com...the-state-–-to-blame-for-354-teacher-layoffs/
 
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buck said:
I think that it was more then that, but we simply disagree. We both looked at the same facts and came to a different conclusion. No problem with that.

Edit: BTW, here is a link on the MPS refusing to reopen their contract to provide contributions, instead taking layoffs. It's obviously a biased link, but the main thing I wanted to show was that they did refuse despite the claims of union leadership tat they would.


Milwaukee school board and teachers union
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That certainly is a biased site lol.....well its in a recall type situation now...have to see how it all turns out
 
buck said:
As I am sure you are aware, there can be a lot of reasons a state is in bad shape beyond just collective barganing. However, the state that has made the change most recently, Indiana, is doing just great with their budget.

But, if you would like to post a link showing which states do not have PS union collective barganing and what their deficits look like compared to state's that do, i'm more then happy to take a look.
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The most notable states with bad budget problems and little or no collective bargaining are North Carolina and Texas. There's a good graph on this page showing the lack of correlation between collective bargaining and budget deficits: The Relationship between Union Membership and State Budget Deficits ? The Monkey Cage

Admittedly the graph uses total union membership -- not just state and local -- so it's not that meaningful.

More on point: http://craigcrawford.com/2011/02/23/bargaining-bans-dont-end-defic/

In the case of Wisconsin, Walker signed tax cuts into law that take effect over the next three years. Those tax cuts will cost the state almost exactly the amount of this year's projected deficit.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/unions_arent_to_blame_for_wisc.html
 
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AdamT said:
The most notable states with bad budget problems and little or no collective bargaining are North Carolina and Texas. There's a good graph on this page showing the lack of correlation between collective bargaining and budget deficits: The Relationship between Union Membership and State Budget Deficits ? The Monkey Cage
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Common sense would seem to tell me that the likely problem is that some of the states that don't allow collective bargaining in their states saved a lot of money on that decision. However, politicans being what they are (from both parties) they contnued spending far more then they were actually saving, which caused them to be in deficit. I don't think anyone has claimed that a state that makes the decision to save money by elimintating CB for PS unions will never go into deficit. The politicans in those states still have to control spending on other items - otherwise whatever savings they had will be gone.

In the case of Wisconsin, Walker signed tax cuts into law that take effect over the next three years. Those tax cuts will cost the state almost exactly the amount of this year's projected deficit.
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The couple of hundred million in tax cuts were not effect during the fiscal period Ezra is discussing. The couple of hundred in tax breaks were not responsible for the 3.x billion dollar deficit that existed in WI and was estimated by the prior democrat governor prior to the tax cuts even being signed into law. Here is an article from Politifact on the topic.

There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it.
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PolitiFact Wisconsin | Rachel Maddow says Wisconsin is on track to have a budget surplus this year

EDIT:Ah. Yes, I remember now. After politifact ran the story, Ezra finally came out and begrudingly admitted he was wrong. I remember reading that back when he first wrote it, but forgot. This rather proves what the problem is. People that don't really understand the issue, keep making all kinds of demonstrably false claims. The people on their side run with the false info and repeat until it becomes "fact" in the mind of their sycophants even after the originator has backed away from the claim.

Here is the update Ezra provided at the very bottom of the link you provided.
Update: I've been persuaded that the surplus-to-deficit picture is more complicated that I initially understood. The budget report is working with two time periods simultaneously: 2010-2011, and then 2011-13. The $130 million deficit now projected for 2011 isn't the fault of the tax breaks passed during Walker's special session, though his special session created about $120 million in deficit spending between 2011 and 2013 -- and perhaps more than that, if his policies are extended. That is to say, the deficit spending he created in his special session is about equal to the deficit Wisconsin faces this year, but it's not technically correct to say that Walker created 2011's deficit. Rather, he added $120 million to the 2011-2013 deficits, and perhaps more in the years after that.
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The survey was of residents, not registered voters, so we'll see how this plays out.
 
buck said:
Here is the update Ezra provided at the very bottom of the link you provided.
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Yeah, I actually read it through before I posted it. :lol:

That's why I pointed out that Walker's tax cuts over the next three years equal roughly the entire deficit for this year. Obviously his only choice isn't to ratf*ck the unions. He could have solved a good deal of the problem simply by not cutting revenue when he knew he was facing a revenue shortfall. But you know how irresponsible those uinions are....
 
danarhea said:
It's not unions that bankrupted the state. It was Governor Walker, who cut the revenue Wisconsin was bringing in to the bone. That might have made the Koch brothers happy, but it created the financial crisis. The public sector unions, by the way, agreed to every single concession that was asked of it, yet Walker still busted the unions.
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Also, quit watching RACHEL MADDOW:

There is, indeed, a projected deficit that required attention, and Walker and GOP lawmakers did not create it. [...]

The confusion, it appears, stems from a section in [Director of the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau Robert] Lang’s memo that -- read on its own -- does project a $121 million surplus in the state’s general fund as of June 30, 2011.

But the remainder of the routine memo -- consider it the fine print -- outlines $258 million in unpaid bills or expected shortfalls in programs such as Medicaid services for the needy ($174 million alone), the public defender’s office and corrections. Additionally, the state owes Minnesota $58.7 million under a discontinued tax reciprocity deal.

The result, by our math and Lang’s, is the $137 million shortfall.

It would be closer to the $340 million figure if the figure included the $200 million owed to the state’s patient compensation fund, a debt courts have declared resulted from an illegal raid on the fund under former Gov. Jim Doyle.

A court ruling is pending in that matter, so the money might not have to be transferred until next budget year.

So, contrary to what Maddow and many in the media including on MSNBC have been claiming, Wisconsin does indeed have a budget deficit.

And what about that tax cut Maddow and others in the press have been focusing so much attention on? Well, they've been misrepresenting that as well:

The tax cuts will cost the state a projected $140 million in tax revenue -- but not until the next two-year budget, from July 2011 to June 2013. The cuts are not even in effect yet, so they cannot be part of the current problem.

Amazing. Politifact concluded:

There is fierce debate over the approach Walker took to address the short-term budget deficit. But there should be no debate on whether or not there is a shortfall. While not historically large, the shortfall in the current budget needed to be addressed in some fashion. Walker’s tax cuts will boost the size of the projected deficit in the next budget, but they’re not part of this problem and did not create it.

We rate Maddow’s take False.



Read more: Rachel Maddow Exposed for Lying About Wisconsin Having Budget Surplus | NewsBusters.org
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LIES. Wisconsin was in the hole WHEN HE WAS ELECTED. The Unions, did not, as you keep LYING, agree to every single concession:
Although union leaders and Wisconsin Democratic Senators are offering to accept the wage and benefit concessions Gov. Scott Walker is demanding, Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said today a bill taking away collective bargaining rights from public employees is not negotiable.
Democrats and union leaders said they're willing to agree to the parts of Walker's budget repair bill that would double their health insurance contributions and require them to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary to their pensions.
However, the union leaders want to keep their collective bargaining rights.
"I have been informed that all state and local public employees – including teachers - have agreed to the financial aspects of Governor
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WISCONSIN: Governor rejects union offer to take his wage & benefit cuts in order to save collective bargaining rights via reddit.com

Had they taken this Union "agreement", all that would have happened is the Unions would have "collectively bargained" back the cuts emplaced. You have been dishonest in this debate from the word GO.
danarhea said:
In addition, to show how unethical and smarmy your little attacks on me are (because I happen to support unions), 40% of union members voted Republican in 2008, but to you they are just dirty liberal hippies. You would rather just put people into boxes and label them, rather than try to figure out that things are a lot more complicated than cubbyholes and labels. To you, unions = dirty hippes, even though 40% of union members voted Republican. And your tactic of attacking the messenger, rather than replying in an intelligent manner to a post, explaining why you disagree, is not worthy of being called debate in the first place. It is just a personal attack, based on your distorted view of people, and really hearkens back to a time, during the Red Scare, when Joe McCarthy accused people of being Communists, even when they weren't. It's not debate, Nancy. It's disgusting.
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Supporting Unions is not the same as supporting PUBLIC SECTOR Unions. I hold no bones on Unions, 90% of the time, they are bad for the employees, and bad for the businesses. But when it come to PUBLIC SECTOR, they are a scourge that muse be destroyed.

You, are the one dishonest, now you're playing victim, and woes me. The debate, is all but over. Facts are not on your side, hyperbole, rhetoric and emotion, that's all you've got left in your tank.
 
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I read earlier they have over 25% of the petitions they need and its only been 4 days and they have till mid january to get the rest...514,000 petitions will be relatively easy to get...they're probably almost double that in public workers and their families...alone
 
lpast said:
I read earlier they have over 25% of the petitions they need and its only been 4 days and they have till mid january to get the rest...514,000 petitions will be relatively easy to get...they're probably almost double that in public workers and their families...alone
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They had better get twice as many as they need because the party of Koch will be flooding the state with money in an effort to defeat the will of the people of the badger.:thumbs:
 
treedancer said:
They had better get twice as many as they need because the party of Koch will be flooding the state with money in an effort to defeat the will of the people of the badger.:thumbs:
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Like the Unions won't be flooding the state with out of state funds to try and regain political power. Spare us the rhetoric.
 
treedancer said:
Look at them dead looking eyes on walker...i haven't seen eyes like that since nixon.:shock:
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I think Koch gives him a run for his money.
 
Erod said:
Statues of gold should be built in his honor.

The unions are a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the United States of Socialism we've become.
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Yes, because child labor and company towns were so-ooo American, red, white and blue. Let's get back to those days.:roll::roll:

And employees of a private company banning together and asking for better wages and working conditions = 'socialism'.?? Your comment is beyond stupid...


BTW - Ronald Reagan was the president of a huge LABOR UNION.... SAG.
 
MrVicchio said:
Supporting Unions is not the same as supporting PUBLIC SECTOR Unions. I hold no bones on Unions, 90% of the time, they are bad for the employees, and bad for the businesses. But when it come to PUBLIC SECTOR, they are a scourge that must be destroyed.
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I couldn't agree more.
 
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