It is interesting because of two factors: 1) It's Wisconsin. 2) It's really expensive with not favorable results. I don't think the issue is the amount of money at all, it's a no-win proposition. A winning proposition is "here's excellence, more money is even greater excellence." I'm quite sure there's enough money to produce excellence.
I think that they are failing to show up for work. They are not performing their job. They are, literally, fleeing from the state that they are representing. It's embarrassing and wrong and pathetic, to boot. Ed O.
Your last line is merely an opinion, and the first two lines are not against the rules as far as I can see. There are no mandatory attendance rules in legislatures, so far as I know. barfo
I do not believe that anything that is not against the rules is acceptable... it's definitely not the same as doing something that is within the rules. But if you don't think that showing up for work is part of the job, then there's really not going to be any reasoning with you. Ed O.
Something is either against the rules, or it is within the rules. There isn't any gray area, unless the rules are not clearly defined. I think they are clearly defined in this case. Whether it is acceptable (to you?) isn't terribly relevant to the question of whether it is against the rules or not. I think what I said was that it was within the rules, and there are no mandatory attendance rules for legislators. Your disapproval of those facts don't make them non-facts. barfo
I'm not going to read 254 posts, so I'll summarize where this thread should be. There is a period before every election called the "campaign." This is when candidates disclose the issues important to them, and their agendas if elected. Voters use this information to make informed choices. Without this information, it's a sham democracy, and why waste time with elections. The Radical Right (basically rich conservatives trying to increase their own profits, a few loudmouths they pay to speak for them, and the suckers who fall for their rhetoric) has always wanted to destroy Unions, because Unions transfer wealth from the Top 2% to the rest of us. But the Radical Right can't win elections over the vast majority of voters, if they honestly disclose their Radical thoughts during election campaigns. (The same secret agenda is in place to destroy Social Security.) So they lie during campaigns that they don't dream of destroying our standard of living and the American Way of Life. Some coward in Minnesota has now run for Governor. During his deceptive campaign, he covertly withheld any mention of his fantasy, Union destruction. Keeping his Radical agenda secret from the suckers voting for him, of course, is the only way he could have won. Like a rat in a dark basement, he fearfully waited until the first month after his inauguration. Only then did the coward shock his State with a Nazi-like Blitzkrieg attack on everyone's moderate sensibilities. Apparently he had secretly planned this with other cowards, the Republican legislators, who like him, hid their agendas long in advance, in order to fool suckers into voting for them. So it is not debatable that this was a conspiracy to get elected. Lying to fools is the only way the Radical Right can win elections. This Governor will shortly be recalled from office by the voters, so he knows he has to work fast to please his biggest contributor, a Koch. Contributor Koch financed his election in order to increase Koch's own profits by decreasing Koch's own taxes. Koch pays people to cloak his selfish motives in a fake ideology which makes no sense if the goal is to improve the lives of the Bottom 98%. The meaningless Radical Right ideological babble makes a lot of sense if the goal is to improve the lives of the Top 2%.
This will never happen in Oregon. Might as well move, honestly. I fully expect to move once I'm done with school. This state is slowly dying.
A banana republic is my definition of "slowly dying," waiting for revolution. Its wealth is focused in its Top 2%. The other 98% are basically slaves in the fields. The opposite is a country that is alive to the maximum, with its wealth spread around. This assumes we're discussing what's best for a country as a whole, not what will maximize your own selfish profits over everyone else. If that's the goal, then you should move to that Deep South banana republic. Plan to spend a lot for security, though. Anyway, the point of my post was to say that the time to argue over any issue, especially one as radical as getting rid of unions, was what the campaign was supposed to be.
Get this: I'm not diehard Union. I think many government employees are overpaid! Including most Federal ones. I also think most of the richest Americans are overpaid, especially in comparison to the richest in, say, Japan. As China and other competitors expand (Russia won't stay down for long), it will take real dialogue in the U.S. between economic classes, not surprise tricks, to apportion our declining wealth, which was a temporary gift after WW2 from the defeated Europe and Orient, meant to last less than a century.
This is very true. I'm native Oregon born and the decay in this state has been shocking. Very sad. I have no ax to grind with unions, but I think I can say with full certainty that the Public Employees Union (of which I was a member for over 3 years) has more say in this state than any other special interest group. And when special interest groups on either side basically run the show it leads to one screwed up state. As to Wisconsin, the gov has every right to call for cuts of various sorts to state employees and initiate those changes, but to take away collective bargaining rights is flat out wrong.
When I first heard the news, I was impressed. I thought, I never thought I'd see a Republican governor take down all unions equally, including the conservative police unions. All Republicans I've seen have wanted to cut only liberal programs, not all government across the board, including police, military, and spies. After about 10 minutes I heard that he was exempting police and firefighter unions. I stopped being impressed. Just another attempt to cut only the other side's stuff. Instead of cutting only the poor (social security) or only those fighting for their lives (medicare) or only the middle class (unions), a consensus will be reached on government downscaling only if the rich are included (Bush tax cuts end). I don't know that an agreement would be reached, but I know that it sure won't be if the deal is one-sided.
