Walker exempted the cops and firefighters from the collective bargaining stripping.

Because they vote Republican.

While I agree that you make many valid points, Minte; you must also agree that your governor is fighting an ideological fight, not just doing what's best for the state's bottom line.

It's not so much drama as passion. You can blame part of that on being at the UW-Madison campus from 1972-1979.

Wisconsin has always had a really high rate of income and real estate taxation, quite significantly higher than, say Illinois. It worked well for many decades while industry needed the kind of skilled machinists, tool and die makers, etc. with a strong work ethic who could be found only in places like Milwaukee, well-educated, smart technical workers who could do the set-ups on their machines from blueprints and manufacture the parts with a high degree of accuracy and precision. Industry paid what it cost because there was no alternative for decades. Eventually the industrial processes became automated starting with "tape machines" in the late sixties and manual production of parts by skilled workers became gradually unnecessary. That's when Wisconsin's current troubles began. To that point in time its unemployment rates were among the lowest in the nation.

Industry built factories much cheaper to heat in the South and West and used the semi-unskilled labor force there to decrease costs and keep the difference as suddenly huge profits - at the same time, they paid lower property taxes mainly because schools in these regions were not nearly so well funded as schools in the densely populated North and East, serving the children of educated European immigrants and the demands of their parents for high-quality education. It was a whole different tradition of public education in the South and West. Long-time Milwaukee businesses like Allis-Chalmers, AO Smith, Allen Bradley, Master Lock and others either disappeared or became a shadow of their former presence in Milwaukee.

The special trouble is that Wisconsin has a small population - more cows than people in most censuses - but runs one of the largest and best state university systems in the country, consistently runs some of the best primary and secondary schools in the country (its student results on standardized testing have always consistently been significantly above national averages as a result), operates no toll roads, but maintains its highways much better than most other states, and provides a huge number of well manged recreation areas. How can you pay for all of this with such a small population when industry flees south or out of the country in search of cheap labor and new industrial plants, cheaper to heat and easier to run?

To this point in time, Wisconsin has been proud of its excellent educational programs - proud enough to sacrifice much to keep them. The result of paying Arkansas or Mississippi or Louisiana or Alabama taxes must eventually lead to Wisconsin schools becoming far more like those in Arkansas or Mississippi, and to this point, that's been something Wisconsinites have been unwilling to accept. If property taxes decrease, nevertheless the heating costs will still always be higher in Wisconsin, the transportation costs to the big cities on the coasts will always be higher, and for other reasons, Wisconsin will always be at a comparative disadvantage in industries using unskilled labor. The ultimate result of yesterday's election is that Wisconsin will begin, far more, to resemble Mississippi and Arkansas in ways that have been unimaginable until now, and its parents will begin to accept the idea that their children will come home with standardized testing results comparable to those which Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama parents have been content with for decades. The only way out of the hole Wisconsin finds itself in, I think, is to find a way to monetize the good education its graduates receive and the good work ethic its workers have demonstrated historically - in a direction inspired by Switzerland or Austria. It simply can't compete with industries calling for unskilled labor in cheaper, warmer, and more centrally located states. By decreasing the quality of education, I think Wisconsin ultimately eliminates its only path out of its hole with any reasonable chance of success.

Too dramatic for you?

Yeah, except Jimmy Hoffa was murdered by gangsters, not the so called "job creators" of today - some feeble MIT graduate, Aspergian number-crunching nerd who pores over 12,000 page excel spreadsheets looking for some curvilinear regression formula that will add .0002 cents 8 times out of ten to the result of an equation with 47 variables. Or coming up with some piece of code that will robotically act on some stock price information transmitted from the Nikkei to make 4,000 fake transactions per second that it stops short of actually executing so it can artificially drive up the price of Singapore rice commodities by one one thousandth of a penny a million times per day.

Those are the multi-millionares and billionares of today. All the guys who had the balls to dump a national labor union leader in a vat of boiling zinc in some fender factory outside of Detroit are either dead or doing life in prison. To rip a line from George carlin "these are the people (Republicans) who are against street crime, they want to put street criminals in jail to make life safer for the business criminals."

You know who Mitt Romney reminds me of? Fucking Beldar Conehead. The other day they showed a clip of him talking about the hecklers in his camp showing up at an Obama speech. Hecklers in Obama's camp had shown up at one of his speeches before and he says "sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." Who the fuck, in the twenty first century, says that? It's like he's a fucking alien sent down from the planet Kolob (Mormon heaven planet) by Joseph Smith himself, only the other aliens fucked up when they gave him his earthling briefing and he got stuck with all kinds of archaic idioms, right wing talking points, and outdated pop culture references. I'm waiting for the guy to quote Dick Van Dyke, or someone, when he's trying to appear hip to all the the young daddy-o's.

Factual. I still reside and run a manufacturing business here. I agree with everything you typed.

However, the solution to fiscal insolvency? That is the real question. There are not many solutions. In fact there is only one solution. When your income drops,no matter what the reason. Your spending has to drop with it.

The previous governor failed to stop the bleeding. The citizens of the state clearly realized that something needed to change. Scott Walker, campaigned on those changes and he did precisely what needed to be done. There were no options beyond getting control of expenses. And to Walkers credit. In the last year our economy has added nearly 35,000 jobs. It's been suggested had this recall election had not happened there would've been many more.

Keep an eye on what happens here in the next six months. The state has gone from a $3.5b deficit to a surplus of several hundred million dollars. If the jobless rate in WI. does not improve dramatically in the next six months I will be the first one to come back here and admit I was wrong.

Nice one !

He already got them down to 6.7 percent unemployment in just the half year he's been in. He also took a 3.5 BILLION dollar deficit and turned it into a surplus.

The guy is doing the right thing. The unions don't care about anything but their money. And as a taxpayer...people's tax dollars shouldn't be used to pay high salaries and great benefit packages for govt. employees.

It should be used as SPARINGLY as possible to keep govt. running and efficient. And hell no there shouldn't be any union salary negotiations for govt. jobs.

When you think about what govt. is SUPPOSED to do....it's just ridiculous. That is people's TAX dollars going to pay for that shit. And since they were in a HUGE deficit, it was being done on the backs of their children in the future.

It's just wrong. Govt. not only needs to be reigned in, but unions do not need to be involved in it in any way.

EXACTLY. How can any business owner be a democrat? I'll answer that for you : One that knows his business is about to fail and gets ready for a unemployment check, that's who.

Keep an eye on standard of living along with employment numbers. 100% employment is meaningless if 95% of those people are unable to afford a home and educate their children. Gutting the institutions that provide financial security for hard working people makes it a lot easier to hire, no doubt. Shifting the profit margin from employee to employer will always makes it easier to hire. Policy would be simple if 'any employment' were the only criteria.

I don't favor the Dems recall idea any more than I favor constant filibusters by the GOP. The real problem is that the GOAL isn't to employ a thriving middle class of hard workers. The Dems want to coddle slackers and the GOP wants to shift as much income as possible to .5% of the population. Until that gets fixed, the rest is all theater...

Except cops and firefighters, they can have anything they want because they vote Republican.

April 19th, 2012
The up-and-down pattern of the state's monthly jobs report continued in March 2012. This time, the numbers took a dip, showing Wisconsin lost an estimated 4,300 private sector jobs.

Additionally, the state Department of Workforce Development revised up by 2,100 the number of jobs added in February. The new report says that there were 6,100 jobs added in that month.

We are using the monthly numbers to measure progress by Gov. Scott Walker on achieving his top campaign promise: The state adding 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his four-year term.

The monthly jobs numbers are preliminary estimates and are compiled by survey data.

The new report puts state private-sector employment at 2,329,500, compared with 2,323,600 when Walker took office -- an increase of 5,900 jobs. That leaves the governor with 244,100 jobs left to reach 250,000.

Walker has taken a love-hate approach to the monthly jobs numbers. He has celebrated increases with news conferences and television ads. And when they"ve declined, members of his administration have criticized the figures as being sloppy.

This month, the administration put an entirely new spin on the numbers.

For the first time, they discussed an indicator called Help Wanted OnLine, compiled by the Conference Board, a national business organization. That indicator, state economists said, suggests that the job numbers will increase for the month of April.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/...0000-new-jobs/

Of course you conveniently leave out the fact that Wisconsin is almost dead last in the nation in job growth in 2011. The only state with less job growth than Wisconsin is fucking Wyoming

They do?

I have a brother and two cousins who are cops. They are Democrats. My mom was a deputy sheriff, She is a Democrat.

One of my best friends is a firefighter. Yep, he's a Dem.

And in my opinion...they ALL need their budgets cut to the bone. Give them the money they need to do their jobs and not ONE penny more.

Here is something I wondered about...I keep seeing the Dems say that Romney was 47th in the nation in "job growth" in Massachusetts.

BUT the part they leave out is there was only 4.7% unemployment rate!

So if I have a state that has 100% employment...then I could be 50th in job GROWTH because everybody is already working and doing great.

On the flip side...I could have a state with 25% unemployment and raise it to "only" 15% unemployment and be NUMBER ONE at job growth!

I think you have to look at the real numbers and how the economy is doing.

What I see in Wisconsin is that they are just over 6% unemployment (we would LOVE to have that number here in Nevada) and he took a 3.5 billion dollar deficit and turned it around to a surplus.

I don't care how people spin it...that's called doing exactly what you promised to do even though the unions tried to take you out.

Funny everyone is all about the MONEY, and then Obama is going to raise the Most Ever or some crap like that. One Billion he is shooting for? If I heard wrong I heard wrong, but I don't think so.

It'll make a huge difference in his favor too. Do you think he'll win it on merit alone?

If he sends me a cashiers check for $100m of it , I will vote for him.:winkwink: