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Yes jumping dogs the most dividing governor I have seen in my 47 years.. On unions, some are too strong others too weak. Yes I am a Socialist in reality and Utopian Libertarian.. So I do not have much faith in the corporate all mighty dollar having more rule than they do.. Walker hurt people I know. He impacted our lives in a not positive way. I saw nothing he did good for the masses of min wage or just above class of working poor. Fxxx wall street.! It is main street that matters.
Just how much more consolidation of wealth to the upper 10% do we need? Our nation is dying, from multinational corporations sucking the common worker dry.
Not claiming Burke is better here, but certainly not worse for those living pay check to paycheck
Liberals will claim a politician or office holder is divisive or causes division only if he's conservative. But all politicians take political stands to appeal to one group over another. If a candidate is more liberal, you'll rarely, like Obama, find them complaining that he is divisive. Its just more name calling. They don't like his policies.
The thing about "divide and conquer" is that is exactly what many Republican voters love about Scott Walker. They love the divisiveness and hostility that Gov. Walker has generated. It makes them happy.
Liberals will claim a politician or office holder is divisive or causes division only if he's conservative. But all politicians take political stands to appeal to one group over another.
Often this is true, but not so much with Walker. Policies aside, his divisiveness lies in his style. He waited until elected to talk about Act 10 and quickly push it through; his attempts were few and weak to reconcile with teachers/other public workers and assure the public that they as people were not problems. Instead he exploited the ill-will to his advantage. Beyond the policies themselves, that's unusually divisive behavior for an executive politician.
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If a candidate is more liberal, you'll rarely, like Obama, find them complaining that he is divisive. Its just more name calling. They don't like his policies.
Some liberals do find Obama to be divisive, but in a different way. Many feel he ought to have given more time to debate the Health Care Act. But the difference is that the Republican legislators were divisive right back, and they actually have some power. Walker's divisiveness was targeted at groups of people who were largely powerless within the political system. And to add to it, Walker's ACT 10 was, as a policy, meant to disempower many of those people even more.
So, with Walker, the divisiveness primarily lay between himself and his political allies on the one hand, and certain public groups with less power on the other (the Dems in legislature famously tried to exercise power, but don't have the numbers to be effective). With Obama, the divisiveness primarily lay between himself and his political allies on the one hand, and on the other hand, a body of powerful representatives (the House of Reps) and others (Senators) at a similar power level (which has reached down into the less powerful electorate).
Neither scenario is good, but as in Obama's case we've seen it before with most other presidents and legislators--Bush and the Pelosi people; Clinton and the Gingrich people; Reagan versus the dems; FDR versus the conservatives.
As in Walker's case, we haven't so frequently seen executive politicians dividing the state (or other units) quite so directly. What he did is the sort of thing you see in other countries, where the president or a strongman caudillo-governor galvanizes the masses on his side and pits them against other people at the same level in the country. In contrast, Obama has done nothing to that degree--business owners as a group have not been vilified, religious people as a group have not been vilified. But in Wisconsin, under Walker, public sector workers as a group have been.
Last edited by Empidonax; 11-01-2014 at 10:40 AM..
Why are people so dull? Politics is always divisive. Some people want more freebies, and some want lower taxes. Some people want more illegal immigration and some want a lot less. There is just no compromise between a whole lot of issues, and so you have two sides, or more, fighting to get their way in the govt. because they think their way is best.
Why are people so dull? Politics is always divisive. Some people want more freebies, and some want lower taxes. Some people want more illegal immigration and some want a lot less. There is just no compromise between a whole lot of issues, and so you have two sides, or more, fighting to get their way in the govt. because they think their way is best.
Not all political divisiveness is the same. You don't grasp that?
Bill Clinton gave us the highest tax rate in the history of our country! Why? For more programs. This is what democrats do. They costs us jobs because of this too. Our country needs to go forward not be suppressed. This country was not built on hand-outs! If it was we would be a third-world country. Democrats love to keep you needy and under their thumb. THAT is not my way of living.
Bill Clinton gave us the highest tax rate in the history of our country! Why? For more programs. This is what democrats do. They costs us jobs because of this too. Our country needs to go forward not be suppressed. This country was not built on hand-outs!
Taxpayer money and government handouts financed much of the westward expansion and a great deal of homesteading during the 1800s! Who do you think paid for the Louisiana Purchase (for example) and provided financial incentives for people to settle the midwest and Great Plains?
Walker made a promise to cut out state tax on retirement income... but he failed at this.
I feel this is absolutely huge for the state because you will continue to see retirees flee the state to places like Florida, Arizona and Nevada where they won't be penalized.
Thanks. I read this. And I disagree with this statement: "Walker has used similarly cartoonish rhetoric to attack ... public schoolteachers."
I don't recall any language from Walker that attacked public schoolteachers. Mark Belling...yes. <sigh> Scott Walker...no. Walker did substantially reduce the power of the public unions and IMO they were way too powerful. One can logically assert that he attacked the power of the public unions and their leaders. But he did not attack public schoolteachers.
I do agree with this from the article: "During the Act 10 firestorm, he railed against the "thuggery" of "union bosses" who were, in his view, trying to rob the public blind."
From Politifact Wisconsin:
"In substance, Walker’s move dramatically limited, but did not completely end, collective bargaining by most public employees. His Act 10 allowed the state to cut benefits and try to limit pay increases. He argued that unions had become too powerful and that elected representatives of the people should have more control over taxpayer-funded compensation.
Roosevelt said in the 1937 press conference that compensation levels for federal employees should be set by Congress and the president, not through bargaining with unions.
So both men -- decades apart -- envisioned a limited role for unions in the public sector.
But the differences in context make the two men’s views hard to compare.
Walker acted after 50 years of collective bargaining between the state and its employees -- in the birthplace of public collective bargaining -- while FDR expressed his views before labor won that toehold into that arena."
Walker dismantled aspects of the public unions that should never have escalated to the point they did and that needed to be addressed in order to save WI from the financially draining and inherently unfair policies of those public unions. From Earthlyfather's post, Act 10:
"1. Ended collective bargaining, and the unholy alliance of voting into office, those who then negotiate the union contract. An unholy alliance. CHECK!
2. Ended the stranglehold the WEA Trust had on school district health insurance. Gave more options for school districts and their employees. Lowered cost for both the district and employees in many cases. CHECK!
3. Improved the ratio between school districts and school district employees cost sharing of health insurance and health costs. Lowered cost of operation, gave employees more of an ownership of their health decisions. CHECK!
4. Lower property taxes as a result of Nos. 2 and 3 above for all tax paying citizens. CHECK!"
Similar extravagant public union policies have caused serious fiscal problems for states such as IL and CA and similar extravagant private union policies furthered the demise of the big Detroit auto companies. It's a hard lesson that we shouldn't have to experience ourselves in order to learn. Our state budgets...and our federal budgets IMO...can no longer afford gold standard benefits for public employees. Act 10 fixed that.
No one likes it when they find themselves in financial trouble and are forced to tighten the purse strings. No one likes it when their benefits are cut. I didn't when my benefits were cut every single year for 17 years by a company trying to keep it's head above water. But I understood. It's obviously nearly impossible for many public teachers to realize they had the best bennies by far, that we taxpayers were footing the bill for their superior bennies and that our state was gonna be in deep doodoo unless we did something to reconcile that. Heck, they had 50 years of living large bennies behind them so of course it hurt. Teachers lost a lot with Act 10. But they had a lot of excess to lose. It's very difficult to understand that from the teacher perspective although I do have teacher friends who easily understand this and support Act 10. And some who don't...they rant and rave and feel entitled. I try to refrain from emotion in my posts but I will admit that their entitlement attitude really grates on my nerves. I have as much schooling as they do (and more scholastically rigorous with an emphasis on chemistry, physiology and disease process) and an arguably equally difficult job...high stress, mandatory overtime, mandatory on call and the daily danger of contracting blood borne life threatening disease. And I help save lives. Teaching our kids is very important but I think it's safe to say that saving lives is very important too. But my salary and benefits pale in comparison to what public teachers are *now* getting after Act 10. And compared to pre-Act 10?...a cruel joke.
I value both public and private schoolteachers. I have public teachers in my family. I have friends who are public teachers. One of my immediate family members is the benefits coordinator in a local public school district HR department. As such I've been privy to many personal stories on all sides of this issue. I work in a union shop myself. But I do not put public teachers on such a high pedestal that I feel they deserve benefits vastly superior to comparable private sector employees. Especially when payment of those benefits drags the rest of us into financial trouble.
All that said, it sure seems that the union thing is what most consider Walker's primary divisive action. And that's what I figured. His failure to present his Act 10 plans pre-election is no more covert than what many politicians do once in office. It's Act 10 itself that is the issue. The impact of Act 10 and it's related actions has earned Walker both faithful fans and committed enemies. Some feel he pushed Act 10 when he should've gentled. But when you consider that unions have pushed for so many years, Walker's push doesn't seem so outlandish and actually looks to me like he was playing by the unions' own well established rules.
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