CAT Tracks for March 11, 2011
WISCONSIN...IN THE AFTERMATH

As the dust settles...

...or was it a mushroom cloud?

For sure, there are predictions of short-range and long-term political fallout.


One sentence attributed to a Wisconsin Republican legislative leader stands out:

Such arrogance...

If some "rabid" Democrat had gone on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show and leveled that charge against Wisconsin Republicans, the Republican Party would have screamed "FOUL!" from the rooftops.

However, in the heady aftermath of their victory over public employee unions, Republicans just can't resist gloating...


An article and an editorial...

From the NEW YORK TIMES


Link to Original Story

In Wisconsin Battle on Unions, State Democrats See a Gift

By MONICA DAVEY and A. G. SULZBERGER

MADISON, Wis. — After nearly a month of angry demonstrations and procedural maneuvering in the State Capitol here, Gov. Scott Walker won his battle on Thursday to cut bargaining rights for most government workers in Wisconsin.

But his victory, after the State Assembly passed the bill, also carries risks for the state’s Republicans who swept into power last November.

Democratic-leaning voters appeared energized by the battle over collective bargaining on a national stage. The fight has already spurred a list of potential recall elections for state lawmakers this spring. Protesters are planning more large demonstrations this weekend.

“From a policy perspective, this is terrible,” said Mike Tate, the leader of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

“But from a political perspective, he could not have handed us a bigger gift,” Mr. Tate said of the governor.

In the last 24 hours, he added, the state party had received $360,000 in contributions and volunteers have streamed into offices where signatures were being collected for recall bids.

The Republican-dominated Assembly voted mainly along party lines, 53 to 42 in favor of the bill, during a tense and bitter proceeding punctuated by shouts of “No!” from angry lawmakers, cries of “Shame, shame!” from protesters in the gallery, and chants from thousands outside the locked-down chamber.

The vote had been delayed after law enforcement completely closed the Capitol for a time, when protesters filled a section near the Assembly hall and refused to leave. Some demonstrators were carried out.

Some lawmakers were locked out, and the police ignored their pleas to let them in so they could vote. They resorted to climbing in through first-floor windows.

The tenor of the debate took an angrier edge this week because of the legislative brinkmanship that helped get the bill passed.

Republicans complained that Senate Democrats had brought state business to a halt for nearly three weeks by fleeing the state and preventing a quorum.

The Democrats fumed that the Republicans had ended the episode in less than a day, with the Democrats still out of town, by forcing a rewritten bill that needed no quorum through the Senate on Wednesday night and the Assembly on Thursday. Though the outcome of the vote was all but certain, each side made its case one more time in the final hours of debate.

On the floor of the Assembly, Jeff Fitzgerald, the Republican speaker, said the state’s finances were on a “crash course” if collective bargaining remained the status quo. “We ran on this,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “We were going to get the fiscal place in order. This is the first piece of the puzzle. We’re broke.”

Democrats, who noted that public-sector union leaders had already agreed to pay more for their pensions and health care costs, argued that slashing collective bargaining rights was no budget-saving measure, but a way to break unions in a state with deep labor roots.

Peter Barca, the Democrats’ Assembly leader, railed against the Republicans’ tactics. “Our democracy is out of control in Wisconsin,” Mr. Barca said. “And you all know it — you can feel it.”

Political analysts said they would watch for the fallout of the Wisconsin vote, and whether it would affect similar battles now playing out over collective bargaining issues in statehouses elsewhere, including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana.

Republicans here, including Governor Walker, contend that Wisconsin residents were seeking change in the election last fall — when the state made one of the starkest flips in the nation from blue to red — and that this was just the sort of bold move they would ultimately embrace.

Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the state Republican Party, said he felt Democrats had been particularly loud in their protests to send a warning shot to the other states considering such measures.

But Democrats say the collective bargaining fight may lead to a political shakeup in the Capitol, where more than a dozen senators, Republicans and Democrats, are now the subjects of heated recall efforts. That in turn could shift political equations, since Wisconsin has long been a presidential battleground, for the 2012 election.

“The voters absolutely sent a message that they wanted fiscal conservatism,” said Michael B. Wittenwyler, a lawyer who once served as a campaign strategist for Democrats like Russ Feingold, the senator who lost his seat last fall. “Now they learned what that really means and I think they’re saying, ‘Hmmm, maybe that’s not what we really want.’ ”

Others, though, wondered whether the protests might fade.

“If things go back to normal and Wisconsin continues to improve economically, balances its budgets, bring jobs, there probably won’t be a lot of pain for Republicans down the road,” said Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist who used to be a campaign manager for Republicans like Tommy Thompson, the former governor, and is a supporter of Governor Walker. “I think things will get back to normal for the average Wisconsin citizen, but it’s going to take some time, though, before government employees get over this,” he added.

For the moment, the wounds remained raw and personal in a Capitol where politics have long been more polite than intensely partisan.

A number of legislators told law enforcement authorities that they had received death threats, an Assembly spokesman said. And Democrats in the Assembly tried, briefly, to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed as speaker for what they said was his “incredibly impaired” judgment.

Democrats said they planned to seek legal recourse for what they viewed as violations of the state’s open meetings rules. Republicans had announced a meeting to present their rewritten bill (the one that would not require a quorum) less than two hours before the meeting took place on Wednesday evening.

Democrats said 24 hours was required, except in cases of emergencies. But Republicans said that amount of time was not needed during special legislative sessions and that they needed to provide only enough time to, say, post a scheduled meeting on a legislative bulletin board.

At least some of the Senate Democrats — who have been gone from Wisconsin since Feb. 17 and have become known to some here, admiringly, as the “Wisconsin 14” — refused to even return to the state on Thursday.

Senators like Fred Risser, who was first elected to the Legislature in 1956, said he was concerned that the Republicans might have some other legislative trick in mind if the Democrats came back to the Capitol right away. “Why would I trust them now?” Mr. Risser asked.

Outside the Capitol Building itself, though, many teachers, state workers and others were taking stock of what the entire episode would now mean for their lives.

The bill, which Mr. Walker said he would sign soon, significantly alters most public-sector union rules, limiting bargaining to matters of wages and limiting raises to changes in the Consumer Price Index unless the public approves higher raises in a referendum.

It ends the state’s collection of union dues from paychecks, and requires most unions to hold votes annually to determine whether most workers still wish to be members. Firefighters and law enforcement personnel will be exempt from those changes.

As the sun set, a crowd again gathered for yet another rally.

Peggy Coyne, a middle school teacher, predicted more big crowds, more rallies, more protest. “We’ll keep our presence known here,” she said. “I think they felt there would be a little fuss and we’d go away. But this continues to get bigger and bigger.”

Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago, and Steven Greenhouse and Timothy Williams from New York.


Link to Original Story

It’s Not Over in Wisconsin

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have reversed half-a-century’s middle-class progress in the state by erasing collective-bargaining rights for public employees. Union members, caught off guard and infuriated by the Senate vote on Wednesday and the Assembly vote on Thursday, immediately talked of legal challenges and general strikes, but the outcome was probably inevitable given the Republican success in the 2010 elections. Now union members have to make sure they do not stay away from the polls again when their rights are at stake.

The vote, pushed by Gov. Scott Walker, would have happened weeks ago if Democratic state senators had not fled to Illinois to deprive the Senate of the supermajority it needs to pass bills that are considered fiscal matters. Republicans then moved the bargaining rights from a larger budget bill to a separate bill that they could pass by proclaiming that the rights were not a fiscal issue.

And, in doing so, they reluctantly exposed the real truth behind the maneuver: stripping the unions of their rights was never about the budget, especially once the unions had agreed to significant concessions on pensions and health care. It was always about politics. Governor Walker had hoped to hide behind a cooked-up budget crisis, but the fleeing Democrats at least succeeded in pulling away that facade.

Undermining public unions — and the support they give to Democrats — has been a long-sought goal of the Republican Party and many of its corporate backers. Koch Industries, one of the party’s biggest supporters, spent $1.2 million last year to help elect Mr. Walker and other Republican governors who want to On Wednesday, the State Senate’s Republican leader, Scott Fitzgerald, told Fox News that if unions lose the battle for their rights, they would have less money to help President Obama win re-election.eliminate or reduce bargaining rights.

Some union benefits are exorbitant, but no politician was forced to hand them out. Lawmakers are free to end this practice and should, but ending the basic rights of unions is a very different matter. It could have serious consequences for the Wisconsin Republicans who voted to do so. Recall efforts against Mr. Walker and several Republican senators are already under way. Polls in The Times and The Wall Street Journal have consistently shown large national majorities against these kinds of union-busting moves.

More broadly, the overreach by Mr. Walker and Republicans elsewhere has finally revealed their true agenda to blue-collar voters who either voted for them last year or who stayed home. These voters are not going to benefit from a crippled union movement; they live next door to the teachers and nurses and D.M.V. clerks who are about to lose what little clout they had in the state capital. Many have suffered during the recession and have watched in pain as private-sector unions have been battered to the point of ineffectiveness.

They understand the power play that took place this week. The place to exercise some power of their own is at the voting booth.