Please spread this message far and wide. Everyone in the country should watch this, especially people who watch Fox News...

Cute. Somehow I bet the average Republican would reply, “You can have an extra $32 from me when you pry it from my cold dead fingers”.

You know what? For every person who doesn’t want to pay $32, redistribute the list of names and addresses. I’ll pick one and pay on their behalf and then send a bag of dog shit to their home.

u LIBERAL SWINE I AINT PAYIN NO THIN U ALREDDY TAX ME SO MUCH U DON GET ANOVER PENY FRUM ME U HEAR

4 32 DOLERS I GO TO WALLMART N BUY FIVTEEN BAGS OF ORIDAH POTATOS THAT FEED MY FAMULY 4 A MONTH U HEAR

fUCCCCC UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

lONG LIV OWER GUVNER

The problem with this solution is that it assumes this issue is just about the money.  It’s not about the money.  It’s about killing the unions.

@Steve - watch the whole video!  He addresses this specifically.

@E - Yes, I watched the whole video.  My point was, the Governor isn’t interested in solving the fiscal problem.  His only interest is in killing the unions.  The simple solution in this video nicely points out how relatively small Wisconsin’s fiscal problem really is, such that it could easily be solved numerous ways.  But, the political game being played out here isn’t really about that at all.

@Steve - He makes the same point in the video.  And obviously he is not the first to understand that the issue is not about $ (otherwise it would be easily solved) but about power.

An even simpler solution would be to lay the deficit on the shoulders of the ten wealthiest Wisconsinites.

Oh, and @ REPUG?  Instead of eating potatoes, eat the rich.

In addition to wrecking the unions, there’s an addional trojan horse surprise: a section that gives the Governor permission to, with zero oversight, sell off state-owned power plants in no-bid deals. Since the Koch brothers gave him, directly and indirectly, over a million dollars for his last campaign, I guess he’s embracing the opportunity to pay them back. He isn’t just a crazed ideologue: he’s an old-fashioned crook and shit weasel.

The problem I have with this is where he says “I’ll even pay for someone else’s $32 who cant afford it”—if the governor hadn’t pushed through the tax break for the rich, this wouldn’t be necessary.  The rich can easily afford $32 several times over.  Sure, I can afford to pay a one time fee of $32 on top of my other taxes, but it hurts me far more than it hurts the wealthy.  This is kind of like a morality tax: those citizens who actually care about the state put up money to keep it going.  That’s a bad way to balance a budget.

Ironically I just heard an AM radio blowhard saying “the <i>intent</i> of the demonstrators is to wreck the state of Wisconsin.”  Next up: they get called terrorists (or has that already happened?)

This is not a solution. It is a way to quell the symptom but it does not address the root problem.

What do we do next year? Ask for $80? How about $120?

Aside from that I know plenty of people don’t have $32 to waste on government employee bickering, and it still won’t solve the problem anyway!

Spending cuts need to happen. That’s all there is to it.

@Jeremy, or the tax structure could be returned to the way it was when Walker came into office, rather than giving rich folks tax breaks that they don’t need.

BTW, is it freaking anyone else out that this cat is named SCOTT WALKER?

If you think that cutting spending is the only way to solve this problem, We should start weith cutting the salaries of the politicians. We also need to reduce the pensions of the politicians along with reducing their healthcare. Cuts have to start with politicians. We need to give politicians the same healthcareand make them pay the same premiums as the workers. We put these fat cats in office. It is time we started demanding that they work for less. Not until they work for less, will we work for less. They are financially draining the country!!!!!!!!!

Totally agree with Diane.  No cuts of any kind until our Senators and Reps finally give up their free taxpayer-supported healthcare.  They can buy a plan on the open market just like the rest of us.  Then they call a vote to give up their fat cushy pensions and reduce their plush salaries.

Lead first.  Then we’ll talk cuts.  And these cuts won’t be for a few pennies squeezed from middle class teachers.  We’ll be slashing to make real savings from the private corporations and contractors in defense/military/security industries.

Such a simple minded argument.  Really, there are smarter people here than that, aren’t there?

Wisconsin works on 2 year budget cycles. This year, the vid guy’s math works just dandy.  Everyone nod their heads and say “yes, I can afford $32!”

The problem is that next year’s deficit is 3.3 billion dollars.  I’m no scientist but I own a calculator.  By my math, that’s over $750 per Wisconsin adult.

That’s ok though, if you can’t afford it Bryan says he’ll pay your share.  But it’s going to take a lot of dogs to put turds on the porches of everyone who can’t afford that much - so he might not even get around to you.

heh.  and you guys think Fox makes stuff up?

rotflmao!

for those of you who get their news from here… the reliably liberal Salon confounds your cognitive dissonance:

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/02/18/wisconsins_budget_woes_are_real

http://tinyurl.com/4mg7eeb

Seriously guys, debate the efficacy of public service unions because that’s where the argument should lie, but leave the math to the experts.  You only look like your fox news watching brethren.  Ill informed and willing to base your entire belief system on a youtube video.

one more thing - those tax breaks for corporations Walker signed - estimated at $100m+ a year - are for companies relocating to WI.  In other words, it’s money they wouldn’t see otherwise, but will see in income and sales tax via newly gainfully employed Wisconsin citizens.

Walker has created a smoke-screen, using the union issue to mask the scam of selling the power companies to Koch Bros. with NO Bids / No discussion!!! We all use electricity, not just union workers.

This guy is leading people to believe that the shortfall is only $137 million.  That amount is just to get Wisconsin through the next 4 months.  The deficit over the next 2 years is $3.2 BILLION.

What does selling the power companies to the Kochs have to do with public service unions?

If that was his eeeevil plan, why isn’t that in this bill?  Why is he spending every last cent of his political capital on this bill?

Where to start?  First of all, the pensions that the Right are in a lather about were promised to these workers, which is the reason why they’ve worked for shit pay over a lifetime.  States have been pulling money out of these funds to cover other debts, and now that they’re being bitten on the ass, they want to shaft the workers they’ve been stealing from.  Nice, huh?  The Wisconsinites suffering under this bullshit are being hit with a $4000 pay cut, out of the blue…to give tax cuts to corporations.  Walker’s new tax cuts: $67 million on a “tax shift” that gives job creators less than a dollar per job (how many jobs do you expect THAT to create?).  $48 million for private health savings accounts to people who earn an average of $139,000/year ( a tax shelter for the rich).  Then he dumped $25 million more into a job creation fund that already has $76 million unspent, due to the fact that it isn’t creating the jobs it was supposed to.

Keep in mind that that all of the current negotiations concern an IMMEDIATE budget shortfall ($137 million, due to actions taken by Walked as soon as he took office.  Prior to that, the budget was projected to be IN SURLPUS) and that is a separate issue from the PROJECTED mid-2013 shortfall that is falsely repeated to be $3.6 billion. The actual figure is $1.5 billion, the $3.6 billon figure based on a fantasy 6.2% increase in new spending requests by agencies, something that no one would actually expect to pass in this economic climate.  To top it off, the forecast for the next two years projects an *increase* in revenues of (wait for it….) $1.5 billion (which would balance a logical version of the Wisconsin budget), which ought to be proof enough that this ‘crisis’ is completely MANUFACTURED in order to try to ram through an ideologue’s wish list of radical, anti-American legislation. Corporations are funding the far Right in an attempt to bust the unions and make serfs of their work force, but Walker’s heavy hand in this may have tipped off the rest of the country in time to shut this bullshit down.

Eustace,

my goodness.  where to begin?

un-american?  hyperbole much?  Are we to take your word for the numbers and history or do you have some sort of evidence to back it up?

The truth is, there is nothing ginned up about the numbers, and even if we use your numbers we’re not talking about $32 a year per WI adult, which was the point of my responding to this thread.

If you get the rabble huffing and puffing over Walker destroying mom, apple pie, baseball and everything else American stands for over a measly $32 per adult, you are doing _exactly_ what you accuse fox news of doing.

Thanks for playing.

Outgoing WI Gov Jim Doyle projected the deficit at a minimum of $2.2B and no one believed him then.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/109275069.html

moflicky, you sir, are a complete tool. Your idiotic response justify no response. May God have mercy on your tainted soul.

yyaa.  spoken like someone who has run out of arguments.

Here are the true numbers:
Approximately 1,600,000 tax forms filed that paid tax.
Cost over the next two years ( not four months) $3,200.000,000.

The math: $3,200,000,000 / 1,600,000 = $2,000 from each tax filer that paid tax.

Review the video, is this the type of education you wish for your child?

Frank, While we’re reviewing MATH, let’s bear in mind there’s a difference between a CURRENT shortfall (and even this is an accountancy artifact) and a PROJECTED deficit. If you can’t wrap your little brains around that simple distinction, you shouldn’t be posting patronizing drivel about education and whatnot. Walker is running a shell game and his next move will be selling off state assets in no-bid deals, to his pals and paymasters. And the “that paid tax” ruse is cute, but no sale.

Also re. the snarky bit about who pays tax and who doesn’t, look at this:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

And note: payroll taxes have caught up and are passing income taxes, which means your catty little remark is bullshit piled on bullshit.

It’s a funny world we live in….

For two years we’ve been told over and over that massive demonstrations for legislative change weren’t about the grievances of the demonstrators, it was just racist rage about a black man in power. As proof, we were shown pictures of protest signs comparing Obama to Hitler.

We were also told that those demonstrations were illegitimate because they were violent, dangerous and hateful, and they obstructed government from doing what they were elected to do - despite the virtual absence of any laws being broken by the demonstrators and despite the democrat led government passing pretty much everything they set out to pass.

Even today, Senate democrats like Harry Reid go before the cameras every day saying that Republicans are actually planning to shut down the federal government.

Yet, the November elections put another party in charge in many states and they are doing what they said they would do and now there are more demonstrations in protest of fulfilling those promises.

The WI demonstrations have all the same signs we were told proved racism.

The WI demonstrations actually _have_ shut down government.

The WI demonstrations _are_ illegal because it is a defacto strike and public sector strikes are against the law in Wisconsin.

The WI demonstrations cost the taxpayers of WI millions of dollars daily, and because they are getting fake doctors notes, the taxpayer is actually paying them to protest.

Now the funny part.  All the people who were arguing the illegitimacy of the tea party rallies due to these factors are suddenly on the other side of the argument.

It’s a funny, funny world.  heh.

I’m not sure if moflicky actually read the entire Salon article she linked to, but two important points contained therein: they specifically point out that although the situation is more complicated than anyone really says, YES Walker’s tax cuts made the budget situation worse , and secondly whatever savings Walker hopes to gain by strong-arming the union is a mere pittance considering both the long and short term budget shortfalls Wisconsin is projected to have.

The bottom line here is what kind of society do we want to live in?  A world of lower taxes and fewer public services doesn’t sound like such a wonderful paradise to me, but hey—reasonable men can differ.  Is it a coincidence that the states with the worst public education systems also are the ones with no teachers unions?  You get what you pay for, and I would prefer not to skimp on our kids’ futures.

I did read the salon article in it’s entirety.

I think they’re wrong on the tax cuts (see subsequent post above), but that’s just semantics and secondary to the reason I posted.

The point is that a dozen posters here said “hellz yeah! those evil republicans are killing unions for $32 a person!” which is clearly fiction. made up. pulled out of his ass. probably deliberately, because the vid creater appears to be more intelligent than your average Keith Olbermann fan.

Moflicky is making up a straw person to beat up on, rhetorically. Why? I think it’s because he/she needs fake people with which to “argue” in order to win, because winning is, you know, So important.

If you want to see what a MASSIVE demonstration looks like, check out the genuinely massive demonstrations against Bush’s war plans.Those were rallies and marches that numbered in Woodstock multiples. The only teabagger rally that reached as much as half a Woodstock, even when counted by Fox, was Beck’s “Triumph of the Shill” event in Washington.

Also funny that moflicky and other reactionary turds were initially all snarky and triumphant about the numbers and what they meant, and then not so much. And I’m not talking about the numbers of people demonstrating. I’m talking about the shortfall numbers and what they represent.

Public sector strikes illegal in Wisconsin? Really? Prove it, moron.

> Moflicky is making up a straw person to
> beat up on, rhetorically.

You mean like saying that it will only take $32 per WI adult to balance their budget?  That kind of straw man?

> Public sector strikes illegal in Wisconsin?
> Really? Prove it, moron.

http://law.justia.com/wisconsin/codes/2010/111/111.html

SUBCHAPTER V

STATE EMPLOYMENT LABOR RELATIONS

111.89 Strike prohibited.

moron.

Tim, re: the anti-war protests.

Woodstock sized protests: results, Bush won reelection and kept control of both houses of congress in ‘04, lost house and senate in ‘06, Obama in ‘10 - who maintained one war and doubled down on the other.

Lot of good you guys did.

Tea party sized protests: results, 62 house seats, 7 senate seats, 8 governors, and a couple dozen state legislative bodies.

@moflicky, if you knew your American history (and Wisconsin history in particular) you’d know that plutocrats attempting to crush and extinguish unions is about as anti-American as it gets.  I broke down the origins of the current fiscal ‘crisis’ in Wisconsin and showed you exactly how and where it had been manufactured.  While the logic of the root of this thread, that $32 per taxpayer still stands as a viable solution to the IMMEDIATE budget shortfall (rather than busting unions), that $32 per taxpayer would never have been necessary had it not been for Walker’s almost instantaneous class warfare and squandering of revenues upon taking office.  The budget there had been balanced before he started this game playing, so only a moron would be unable to grasp that he intentionally initiated all of this bullshit as part of his tea bagging poli-drama.

I realize that it’s nice to be able to conflate the current issue with the fantasy of a $3.6 billon shortfall (in mid 2013), but as I’ve shown you, that’s an imaginary number cobbled together by Walker’s people, made up of projections of state agency best case scenario requests that they’d be submitting if the state had more money than it knew what to do with.  Since that isn’t the case, those projections aren’t valid and don’t correspond to the truth any more than Walker’s repeated lies about union workers being unwilling to take any cuts….personally, I think they should’ve rejected those cuts and forced Walker to rescind his tax breaks to corporations/rich fucks, in order to re-balance the budget, just like it was when that asshole took office.

Eustace,

finally, at least someone is willing to challenge me on what I say instead of what they hear me say in their heads.  Thank you.

I don’t have time to argue with you over the history of unions, but WI is currently working on fix to the current budget, but they also have to set the table for the next two year budget when those two or three billion come due.  They will have to borrow that money now if not fixed.

Yes, Walker is clearly trying to weaken the public service unions and isn’t pretending otherwise.  I think he’s right to do so, but that’s just my opinion.  You disagree and have your opinions as to why.

Rather than me try to explain why, I’ll just point you to Time Mag’s Joe Klein (he’s solidly left-center-left - no fox news for me).  He says why much better than I could:

http://tinyurl.com/4h9dfjb

http://tinyurl.com/69me2no

Rather than debate me on this, please read these and tell me why he’s wrong.  I’ll respond in kind.

Thanks!

Eustace,

btw, as I pointed out before, the budget was not balanced before Walker started ‘playing games’.

His democratic predecessor projected the best case scenario at $2.2b before leaving office.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/109275069.html

@moflicky, while I find your ‘don’t debate me, debate Joe Klein’ waveoff fairly telling, I’ll give it a cursory swipe.  In the first place, from your perspective, Klein is of the Left??  I hate to pop your bubble here but, no, not by a long shot.  I hardly know which thread to pull first from his tangled ball of anti-unionism.  Perhaps his ruse of portraying the delaying of a vote as undemocratic?  For a political reporter, he doesn’t pay very close attention to what actually happens in the world, or he might’ve noticed that just the vaguest *threat* of a Republican filibuster has stopped hundreds of votes in their tracks.  You can already see just how ‘Left’ his sympathies are.

But let’s address the anti-unionism that lies at the core of his political thought…exemplified by what?  An apocryphal tale of union janitors making lots of money and being unreasonable about work some time in the past?  I hardly think that’s a fair personification of a movement that has taken away absolute worker control from self-imagined corporate aristocrats.  Whilst he rants against those who would chafe against subservience, he turns a blind eye to those who would take us back to the mid-19th Century by abolishing the rights that workers have struggled to establish over the past century and a half.  We even saw a recent proposal for doing away with the child labor laws by one of these monsters, for fuck’s sake!  The horrible thing about this plutocrat-funded bullshit is just how short-sighted and self destructive it all is.  Anyone with a half a brain knows that the only way the U.S. can be competitive in the future is if we have kids with a superior education, so who do these assholes go after?  Teachers.  Teachers who already barely make a living, and these fuckers want them to take a huge financial hit, in order to transfer even more money to the richest of the rich.  And the funniest bullshit of all?  How these pricks whinge about class warfare, as though the teachers union is surrounding the castle walls with torches and pitchforks!  If you can read Klein and imagine that he’s anywhere on the Left of the political spectrum, you have a more than slight problem with reality perception.

Oh, and about your assertion that the Wisconsin budget not being balanced, it was before Walker took office, as required by the Wisconsin state constitution.  What you’re referring to is related to PROJECTIONS to mid-2013, once again, compiling a loss of revenues during the national downturn (which is now an upturn) and a wish list of expenditures by state agencies, which is unlikely to have passed even in the best of times.  This ‘crisis’ is being MANUFACTURED in order to take even more out of the hides of the middle and lower classes in order to shift even more wealth and power to the self-styled ‘elite’.  Unless you happen to be part of that ultra-rich minority, you’re only harming yourself by adhering to a reactionary attitude that will only profit them in the end.

Just curious how those tax increases on the wealthy are doing in New York. Not so well.

The problem with increasing taxes prohibitively is that people (both rich and poor) have the freedom to move elsewhere.

Wealth goes where it’s welcome and stays where it’s appreciated.

The next step is to either prevent the taxpayer from moving or just confiscate their wealth altogether. That’ll teach them! Then we’ll be just like all those other glorious countries like North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe.

Unfortunately, the point of all this is the common but incorrect belief that there is only a fixed amount of wealth in the world and the only way to get it from the wealthy is to confiscate it whether by taxes or outright theft of property.

People need to take basic economic courses in order to understand this issue better. Otherwise we’ll wind up as poor as those glorious communist countries that I mentioned.

MoFo,

You think you got all those electoral victories (as republicans) by dancing around in tricorn hats? And I note ymost of those “victories” you’re claiming are plain old fashioned republican victories, some with TP “approval,” which didn’t mean shit. The big difference was MONEY, most of it coming from corporations and big contributors, like the Koch Brothers, who were able to give whatever they wanted, without oversight, because of Citizens United and previous judgements going back to the Rehnquist Court.Of course you know all this, right?

Amusing how you brag and strut about the ones you win, and sort of gloss over the ones you lose. No matter: you were bragging about your giant demonstrations of popular teabagger will, which weren’t much. When you lost THAT point you changed it to one of demonstrations not mattering. Pft.

And as to the legality of public employee strikes in Wisconsin: there, as elsewhere, local boards and state entities (like Universities) can get injunctive relief and can also fire nonunion employees who honor a strike. When the AFT chapter at UW Madison went on strike in 1980, a number of faculty members who were nonunion and honored the picket like were fired for it. Union members were docked pay and told we were bad kids and this was going on our permanent records, bla bla bla, but that law you’re so proud of knowing about is just there to frighten children.  When a union can’t go out, there’s no motive to bargain in good faith. Moron.

I see you’re still unable to distinguish between the current balance and projected deficits.

When you don’t have teachers’ unions, board and state leggie cretins find it convenient to assign class loads of forty or more. Then everything goes to hell. But it’s clear you have your opinions and don’t want to change them. So move to Mississippi—by your lights, it’s the best-run state in the country. Andsince you don’t believe in climate change, you’ll want to buy a nice place right on the Gulf. Enjoy.

@ Dean, people tend to forget that when the country was thriving financially in the mid 1960’s-80’s, the tax rate for those making over $100,000 per year was about 35%.  Democrats have garnered the reputation of being the ‘tax and spend’ party whilst Republicans are simply the ‘spend’ party.  Which of those is going to turn us into another Zimbabwe?

Eustace,

I’ll stipulate that Klein isn’t a full on lefty. how about centrist?  Certainly not a right wing bomb thrower.

I should have included just the second link because that’s where he gets to the meat of the argument I was trying to make. The first article was just the appetizer.

My problem with public sector unions (henceforth PSUs) is that they are not some oppressed worker class fighting against evil capitalist ogres.  They are professionals who wish to be treated as an oppressed worker class.

There is something very wrong with using taxpayer dollars to get new management elected so that you can sit across the bargaining table from political and ideological allies. 

If you don’t like the deal you get, spend more taxpayer dollars to replace even more of management so you can bypass the bargaining table and get your deal legislatively. 

Spending taxpayer dollars to get more taxpayer dollars.

Tim,

Do you think democrat / anti-war electoral victories were from sitting around in drum circles reading Marxist, communist, socialist pamphlets published by ANSWER, and WWP?

LOL!

@ moflicky, Klein is employed by a corporate entity who pays him to adhere to a corporate worldview.  He is far to the right of ‘Center’.

The professionals of the PSU’s, working professional positions as professional talent, are paid like oppressed workers. Geez, would YOU put up with year in, year out high school smart asses for $42,000 a year?  For christ sake, those people ought to be getting $100,000 a year to start, and it could be done by dumping the tax breaks for the poor, oppressed rich folks.

“Spending taxpayer dollars to get more taxpayer dollars”?  You’ve lost me, I have a clue as to what you’re going on about.

Eustace,

spending taxpayer dollars = union dues paid to the unions by government.

and you completely skipped over my point.

@ moflicky, Wisconsin state employee union dues are paid for out of the employee’s paycheck, not on the government’s tab.

What point did I skip over?

Eustace,

Um, the employee’s salary was provided by their employer, the state.  The dues go into political donations to politicians who negotiate more dues paying employees and higher salaries for the union workers who then pay more dues to the unions that go to political donations…. well you get the idea.

or do you?

the point you skipped over is that the purpose of unions in the first place is to represent labor in an adversarial role against management.  In the case of public sector unions, ‘labor’ and ‘management’ are often on the same team because management was bought and paid for via political donations.

I see.  Because taxpayers provide their salary, none of that salary should be going to what you consider ‘political donations’?  Where is your outrage then with regards to what can be done with Walker’s salary?  Should he be allowed to make political contributions with it?  After all, it was provided by taxpayers!  Should he be able to buy booze with it?  What an outrage that taxpayers should be forced to provide him the gin that is in turn, causing him to behave like a belligerent drunk!!

As you can see, you might want to rethink that line of argument…

“The purpose of unions is to represent labor on an equal footing with management”.  Fixed that for you.  I fail to see the source of your outrage over this.

Really Eustace, you can do better than that.

1) Walker is an individual and can do with his money what he likes once it’s in his pocket.

2) Dues are mandatory, as is union membership. The union member never sees it.

3) The individual union member has no choice over where her money goes.  Union leadership decides.

4) equal footing should not mean collusion.  In this case, it is.

One last comment for the night.

Check out the money being spent on elections since 1989, in order by biggest spenders and who they’re spending it on the most.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A

Please don’t tell me the working class is underrepresented in American politics.  That dog won’t hunt.

@ moflicky, I fail to understand your logic (if there is any) regarding taxpayers and union workers.  They (the taxpayers) pay for the services of skilled people of various professions that happen to work within the organization of unions. Those union dues are automatically deducted (so what?) but they provide protections that no individual could ever muster in the day to day struggle, including pay and benefits that average slightly above average, achieving greater parity and greater security (what’s to knock about that?).  By the way, unions are democratic (notice the small d) and their leaders are elected, so it’s not as though members don’t have any control over where their dues are spent.  Despite your accusation of collusion, you present no evidence.  Your argument is hollow.

Oh, and response to your ‘last comment’:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

If you don’t find that unsettling, then you’re obviously a professional astroturfer.  Good luck with that. (Hey, are you guys by any chance unionized?).

Eustace,

It’s clear to me that you understand my logic, you’re just being deliberately obtuse.

Look at it this way. All things remaining equal, replace “unions” with “General Electric” and let’s go to the bargaining table!

Understand now?

Hey dummy, the Wisconsin teachers didn’t teach you to research your facts?
$137M will only get us through June…There is an estimated $3.6 BILLION hole in the next 2 year budget. So, let’s do the math again, shall we?
3,600,000,000 / 4,342,866 = $829 + $32 = $861.
OK everyone (and I mean EVERY ONE of you 4+ million people in Wisconsin; unemployed, students, etc), let’s all throw in $861 each! 
Oh, and if you can’t afford it, this BOOB will be happy to pay an extra $861 for someone who can’t.

@ moflicky, (yawn).....geez, you’re still here in the basement of DM?  I gather from your response that you’ve run dry,  GE?  GE the corporation is comparable to a union?  Look, I’m a decent chap, I’ll give you a free do-over on that one.

@ Niall, if you can be bothered to backpedal upthread a bit, you’ll see where I show that the entire “$3.6 billion hole” business is a charade, fabricated by Walker and company to create a crisis environment, within which to justify the busting of unions.  I would also remind you that what we’re actually talking about is the immediate budget shortfall, which was created by Walker as soon as he took office.  I would also point out that the unions have conceded to the economic arguments that were part of this equation, despite the fact that they are effectively being asked to pay for tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy.  That said, there can be no further logical points supporting the position of the Walkerites, yet Walker continues to insist that he will never concede and allow collective bargaining.  His union-busting plan has been nakedly exposed and he has no further cover, it’s nothing more than a rapacious scheme to strip away whatever worker’s rights he can.  Allow me to repeat again:  there is no budget crisis in Wisconsin, now or in the mid-2013 budget cycle.

Well, I decided to “backpedal” upthread through your drivel and your argument is weak, unsupported, and I believe to be MANUFACTURED.
I see that you choose ignore any documentation that is contrary to your beliefs.
I see you decided to ignore moflicky’s post showing that the previous lefty governor presented a 3.3 billion dollar shortfall in the budget too…hmmmm…no way a dem would lie, right?
So, you are a conspiracy theorist too? ‘No deficit, all lies!’, ‘Republicans killed Kennedy!’, ‘The landing on the moon was faked!’...whatever. And now, ‘the governor has a hidden agenda to bust the unions!’. Sorry, but it’s not hidden, not a conspiracy, it’s out in the open.
Bust all unions!!!

(heh), What a superb argument!  All kidding aside, I’d be happy to look over any documentation you can provide that shows that Walker’s $3.+billion figure is anything but a cobbling of every worst case scenarios he could lump together. Just today, I heard one of his defenders now say it is $6 billion.  How many hours will pass before it becomes $10 billion?  Where I come from, we call this kind of assholery ‘directed scaremongering’ and it is clear proof that major bullshitting is in process (you know, like how Walker inherited a balanced budget and gave away $137 million to his rich friends, labelling it a “shortfall” and a “crisis” which “required” him to bust the unions!  And you believed him??).

I’ve shown you my ‘work’ on these equations, show me yours.  Unless, of course, you haven’t got any real rationale for your antagonism of the workers in Wisconsin.

Brilliant!  You are Brilliant.

And I would say THANK YOU! and Sing your praises.
thank you for showing these elected idjits how they simple the solution really is.

Nothing wrong with the workers of Wisconsin, just the outdated and no longer needed unions.

And why do you keep saying that Walker lumped together the $3+ billion shortfall, when you keep getting proof that his democrat predecessor was the one who lumped it together?
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/109275069.html

You obviously know a lot more about unions than I do, so could you answer a couple questions?
1. Why do state workers need union protection that every worker in the private sector doesn’t need?
2. Why do state workers deserve to pay markedly less towards medical benefits and pension benefits than every other worker in the private sector?

Niall,

1.) Why do you think Unions are “outdated” but cling to the notion that rapacious free-market capitalism is sexy and up-to-date?

2.) What persuades you reactionary fucktoads that calling it the “demcrat” party is a swell insult that everyone will go along with?

3.) Why are you unable to understand the difference between a current budgetary shortfall and a projected deficit?

4.) Why do you think that workers in the private sector don’t need unions?

5.) Why do you think state workers pay less towards their benefits than do “every other worker in the private sector?”

6.) Where do you go to get this bullshit shoveled into your little brain?

@ Tim, you beat me to it!

@ Niall, that Democratic projection (which wasn’t $3+ billion) was put together during the economic downturn and included calculations based on what appeared to be falling state revenues.  Soon afterwards, we found ourselves in a national economic upturn which now indicates increasing state revenues. These literally nullify the previous projections. As I pointed out earlier, Walker’s $3.7 billion figure includes a 6.2 increase in state agencies spending requests, something that would’ve had a hard time passing even if the state was rolling in dough. Since it isn’t, no one in their right mind imagines such a thing will pass, so it’s simply more fabrication on Walker’s part to claim that this is part of a projected budget shortfall. 

Is any of this making any sense to you?

@ Eustace,

You still hanging out in the basement of DM? 

http://politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/rachel-maddow/rachel-maddow-says-wisconsin-track-have-budget-sur/

@ Tim,

Are you really criticizing someone for name calling?  Really?  Remember when you referred to me as a moron for alleging that public service employees are prohibited from striking by Wisconsin law?

I never did see your apology. I’m sure someone of your moral stature wouldn’t let that slide this long. Perhaps it was just an oversight on your part.

Eustace,
It all makes sense to me, as any decent conspiracy theory should make sense. But, it is still just a theory, as you make statements without any substantiation to support your theory. So, if you have nothing to cite, then as far as I am concerned, you could be fabricating all your so called “facts”.
PLEASE READ the article link in moflicky’s most recent post.

And in my “backpedaling” through the thread, I found your quote: “An even simpler solution would be to lay the deficit on the shoulders of the ten wealthiest Wisconsinites”...wow, this goes beyond socialism to actual communism and totalitarianism.

And of course, you didn’t answer my two questions.

Tim,
You are a broken, scratched and obnoxious record. We all understand the difference between a current shortfall and a projected deficit, so you can just shut up about that one. FYI…Anyone who has to produce a multi-year budget, in government or in the private sector, has to PROJECT revenues and expenses, no way around it.

“Fucktoad”? What the hell is a “fucktoad”? You are overly passionate about your beliefs, and anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs are “morons”, “little brains”, “reactionary turds”, and “reactionary fucktoads”. This angry leftist rhetoric is dangerous at best…(I wonder if Hitler coined the term “fucktoads”?)
Lefties such as you have such anger and disdain for others who disagree with them. History and FACTs show that the 60,000,000 were killed by Stalin and his atheist leftists, 100,000,000 killed by Mao Tse Tung and his leftists, 3,000,000 (lightweight!) killed by Pol Pot and his leftists. All killed because they had the “wrong beliefs.” The fact is that their leftist ideology included such anger that they were easily able to feel justified in murdering those who even appeared to be in their way. If you had just a smidgeon of the charisma that these murders had (which you don’t, thank God!), you could be considered dangerous. Luckily for all of us, you are just an angry democrat that can’t hysterically dance in the streets anymore because you so quickly lost your super-majority.

“Hope and Change”, the best (hollow) MARKETING campaign of all time…and the people now see through it.

Since I am not afraid to answer questions when posed to me (hint, hint Eustace):

1.) Why do you think Unions are “outdated” but cling to the notion that rapacious free-market capitalism is sexy and up-to-date?
Answer: Because it is true. The majority of workers in America are non-union and enjoy a workplace and life that is in no way abused by their employer.

2.) What persuades you reactionary fucktoads that calling it the “demcrat” party is a swell insult that everyone will go along with?
Answer: Your intention was to insult rather than ask a question, therefore an answer is not deserved.

3.) Why are you unable to understand the difference between a current budgetary shortfall and a projected deficit?
Answer: I quote from my previous post: “We all understand the difference between a current shortfall and a projected deficit, so you can just shut up about that one.”

4.) Why do you think that workers in the private sector don’t need unions?
Answer: 30 years of personal experience where I, and most everyone I know, work for “big business” and I have never heard one of them say that they need a union to support them. My friends that are union members are the ones that I hear complain the most…go figure!

5.) Why do you think state workers pay less towards their benefits than do “every other worker in the private sector?”
Answer: Statistics. It’s all over that thing called the internet, look it up. Yet…I may have to concede that there could be maybe <1% out there that may pay more…maybe?

6.) Where do you go to get this bullshit shoveled into your little brain?
Answer: I read a lot. Papers and their websites (mostly lib biased like NY and LA Times, but local as well), web news (CNN, MSNBC, evil Fox, etc).
Also, I normally hate to brag, but not to you…I am in Mensa. I am going to assume that you are not, so in this playground, sing along…“My brain is bigger than yooooours!”.

5.) Why do you think state workers pay less towards their benefits than do “every other worker in the private sector?”
Answer: Statistics. It’s all over that thing called the internet, look it up. Yet…I may have to concede that there could be maybe <1% out there that may pay more…maybe?

6.) Where do you go to get this bullshit shoveled into your little brain?
Answer: I read a lot. Papers and their websites (mostly lib biased like NY and LA Times, but local as well), web news (CNN, MSNBC, evil Fox, etc).
Also, I normally hate to brag, but not to you…I am in Mensa. I am going to assume that you are not, so in this playground, sing along…“My brain is bigger than yooooours!”.

Wow, this site doesn’t like special characters…well unless you consider Tim “special”.
SO…let’s try again!

5.) Why do you think state workers pay less towards their benefits than do “every other worker in the private sector?”
Answer: Statistics. It’s all over that thing called the internet, look it up. Yet…I may have to concede that there could be maybe less than 1 percent out there that may pay more…maybe?

6.) Where do you go to get this bullshit shoveled into your little brain?
Answer: I read a lot. Papers and their websites (mostly lib biased like NY and LA Times, but local as well), web news (CNN, MSNBC, evil Fox, etc).
Also, I normally hate to brag, but not to you…I am in Mensa. I am going to assume that you are not, so in this playground, sing along…“My brain is bigger than yooooours!”.

@ moflicky, is there somewhere on this thread (or any other thread, for that matter) where I claimed that Wisconsin was on track for a budget surplus this year?  No?  (Whew) I thought I was losing my grip there for a second.  What I said was that the state constitution requires a balanced budget, and that was produced for this year by the former governor.  As soon as he took office, Walker put the state into the red with gifts to his rich, corporate friends, and then claimed that not only should the new shortfall come out of the pockets of those in state unions, but also that they were going to have to give up their collective bargaining rights, forever, in order to address the current, just created rich folk shortfall.

As you might grasp by this point, I find his rationale dubious.

Eustace,
You didn’t read it, did you? Amazing! Did you see a couple of lines that you didn’t like, so you closed your eyes, covered your ears and mouth like a good monkey?
AGAIN, here is a FACT: “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.”
You keep saying “As soon as he took office, Walker put the state into the red with gifts to his rich, corporate friends”. Again, you are uninformed and wrong.
I can’t take much more of this ignorance.

@ Niall, wait…..just hold on a sec…..are you serious about being a member of Mensa?  I mean, for real??  No offense but I’m just a little surprised.  You see, I’ve been ignorant enough about Mensa to assume (and one should never assume things) that someone granted membership in that illustrious organization would know that the precepts of communism clearly indicate a uniform sharing of the wealth and of the sharing of burdens.  That’s hardly the case in my proposal to lay Wisconsin’s debt on its ten richest fuckers…now is it?  No, so I’m a little taken aback to see that massive brain of yours falling prey to childish slurs that are so factually misplaced.  It’s like your use of the term ‘totalitarian’...jesus, little fella…you might want to look up the definition of these words before you use them in public.

Oh, and I didn’t answer your special Mensa-brain created questions as Tim had beaten me to them.  You were probably so deep in your high IQ thoughts that you’d missed that.  No worries mate, it happens.

@ Niall, Yeah, it’s funny how the former governor managed to slip out of office without producing that constitutionally mandated budget, isn’t it?  And how that was immediately discovered in the first week of Walker’s term?  It’s funny how those things happen, particularly when when enters the office with a radical agenda. I guess the numbers are just a simple coincidence, eh?

Eustace,

minor quibble:

“...would know that the precepts of communism clearly indicate a uniform sharing of the wealth and of the sharing of burdens.”

Absolutely, that is exactly the way it’s supposed to be, in theory.

We both know how that works out in practice though.

Only it’s a lot more than the top 15 richest that get the knife.

Eustace,

This is from last November 19 - outgoing Gov. Jim Doyle (D) projects 2.2B budget deficit <i>with</> his spending cut proposals.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/109275069.html

Those are the democrat’s numbers, not the ginned up GOP first week coincidental discovery.

trying to close my errant </i> italics tag.

Hey “Little Brains”, Tim did not answer my questions. Ever heard of the expression you can’t answer a question with a question. I asked YOU 2 questions, HE responded with 6 “questions”, YOU have yet to respond. We should probably call you “Little Balls”.
By the way, your sarcasm about my IQ makes you sound jealous. No need for that, mate.
Totalitarianism: absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution.
Communism: a social structure in which, classes are abolished and property is commonly controlled.
Hmmmm, forcing the rich to fund government overspending, which in turn would eliminate the upper class through either taking all their money or their departure from the state / country. Doesn’t sound like the America I know and love, sounds like the one you might like to have. But guess what, our founding fathers knew there would be people like you, and have excluded the possibility of your way of thinking ever taking hold in this country.
I hate saying this, but I think it fits for you: If you don’t like America, why don’t you just get out! I’m sure your utopia is out there somewhere.

moflicky,
Do you seriously think that Eustace is going to listen to you or read any proof that you post? I think not!
Remember, it’s all a vast right wing conspiracy!