Governor Scott Walker Can Eat a Bowl of D!cks

Photo via TPM, (and some witty protester)

Watching the mayhem in Madison, WI makes you wonder if we've been deposited into bizarro land.

Here's the newly minted Governor of Wisconsin speaking on February 16:

"If we don't do this, there will be layoffs. By July 1, when the next budget starts, we'll have to have layoffs of 5,500 state workers plus a similar number of county and city workers...You can't negotiate if you don't have any money -- and we don't have any money. Wer'e not negotiating on the budget."

Now, here's the state's own fiscal bureau report that wasn't two weeks old when Walker said that. It's reporting that Wisconsin was on track to have a surplus at the end of the year.

W. T. F?

For the record, Wisconsin Public Employees are not overpaid or overcompensated.

However, the data indicates that state and local government employees in Wisconsin are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability reveal that employees of both state and local governments in Wisconsin earn less than comparable private sector employees. On an annual basis, full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. This compensation disadvantage is smaller but still significant when hours worked are factored in. Full-time public employees work fewer annual hours, particularly employees with bachelor’s, master’s, and professional degrees (because many are teachers or university professors). When comparisons are made controlling for the difference in annual hours worked, full-time state and local government employees are undercompensated by 4.8%, compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. To summarize, our study shows that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.

(Also, you can say the same thing about public sector employees in California (7% less than comparable private sector jobs), New Jersey (5.88% less than comparable private sector jobs), Michigan (Equivalent on hours for annual full time), Indiana (5.9% less than comparable private sector jobs).

Full time state and local employees are undercompsensated by (on average) 3.7% less than their private sector counterparts. State government employees are undercompensated by an average of 7.6%.

Again, W. T. F?

If you were being charitable to Gov. Walker - you could suggest that he's being proactive. Wisconsin is facing over a $3 billion dollar shortfall in the next two years. You could say he's starting the budget pain early, so that the state's distant budget woes being to lessen sooner rather than later.

Also, if you were being charitable, you would discount all this much ballyhoo'ed claptrap about Walker calling out the national guard. His comments about that dealt with backfilling essential services (like prison guards) with national guardsmen in the event of walkouts. He's not calling for soldier vs. protester.

But it is hard to credit Walker with anything else. Including collective bargaining in his budget "fix" has the quality of your boss calling a meeting and saying "We're going to need to make some cost cutting moves to make our budget. Also, from now on, my least favorite employees will be required to show up to work without pants. That is all."

W.T.F?

You go after a union's right to have collective bargaining, you are putting them out of business. If there was a net dollar savings for a move like that, you could perhaps justify it. But there isn't. The remaining rationale would perhaps go like this "removing collective bargaining will allow us to take more away from public employees in future - because they won't be allowed to stop us."

Which is something no union can agree to. "Oh, yes, Governor, we agree to give up all future negotiation power on non-wage compensation in exchange for....nothing. Our members will continue to pay us dues despite us allowing this to happen and being powerless to stop further cuts on their benefits."

No. The fact that a conservative governor is telling us he's forced FORCED, he says to carve a chunk out of his political opponents is perhaps the biggest tip off you need that this is about power.

"Normally, I would (twitch) love unions (twitch, twitch) but this economy leaves me no choice, but to try to dismantle them..."

Sure, Governor - that sounds really credible. Now where's that bowl of dicks?

Rachel Maddow had a great piece about the larger picture that Wisconsin's drama plays into.



The short version is - politics in this country is about money funding ground games.

In the 2008 election here are the top groups making outside expenditures, (Excluding Party Committees):

1) SEIU - (Union/Liberal)
2) AFSCME - (Union/Liberal)
3) NRA - (Conservative)
4) Freedom Watch (Conservative)
5) US Chamber of Commerce (Conservative)

You remember how 2008 worked out, yes? Libs did pretty good. Got both houses and the white house.

Here's the top groups making outside expenditures in 2010

1) US Chamber of Commerce (Conservative)
2) American Action Network (Conservative)
3) American Crossroads (Conservative)
4) Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategists (Conservative)
5) SEIU - (Union/Liberal)

The SEIU is still in the top five, but the US Chamber of commerce alone, outspent them more than 2 to 1.

So? It's the marketplace of ideas - right. There was this groundswell against Pres. Obama and his policies and this is what is expected. You could argue that. I'd argue that votes should count more than money - but it's very difficult to separate cash from successful political campaigns.

But the larger issue is that successful political campaigns are now being used to craft legislation that guts their political rivals. Having won office, pols like Gov. Walker (and apparently the rest of the GOP governorship pool) now feels it is time to engrave their current situation in stone. We will make this victory outlast the support that granted it.

And that, is the full extent of what is going on in Madison. A political struggle where elected GOP members try to drive a stake into unions, so the next election will find the GOP without a viable opposition.

You can try that - it is legal - but you should never be able to get away with it.

And certainly you should not be able to pretend that this is about anything other than power.