Friday News Roundup - Hour 1
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-02-25/friday-news-roundup-hour-1
Neporsha Hamlin, center, of Madison, Wis, protests the governor's budget bill at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011. The Wisconsin governor, elected in November's GOP wave that also gave control of the state Assembly and Senate to Republicans, set off the protests earlier this week by pushing ahead with a measure that would require government workers to contribute more to their health care and pension costs and largely eliminate their collective bargaining rights.
AP Photo/Andy Manis
The Obama administration says it will no longer defend the federal law that bans same-sex marriage. House Republicans propose a plan to avoid a government shutdown. And Wisconsin’s fight over collective bargaining expands to other states. A panel of journalists joins Diane for analysis of the week's top national news stories.
Guests
Major Garrett
congressional correspondent, National Journal.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
White House correspondent, The New York Times.
Chris Cillizza
author of The Fix, a Washington Post politics blog, and managing editor of PostPolitics.com.
Friday News Roundup Video
The panelists discuss the ongoing tensions between public employees in Wisconsin and Gov. Scott Walker (R) over the governor's proposal to cut pay and benefits and strip unions of their collective bargaining rights in the state. The "budget math" clearly shows that the issue of collective bargaining is "unrelated" to the state's deficit, said Major Garrett. The panelists also agreed that the governor's statements during a prank phone call this week were damaging, but not likely to be career-ending:
Comments
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@monte
You're listening. Why if you hate this "liberal drivel" so much? I'm sure you can listen to a replay of "Glenn Beck" on-line somewhere or "Rush Limbaugh" is probably replaying on your local paranoia station.
I say we start a petition in Congress that breaks up the cable channels into a-la carte choices so I don't have to pay Fox News to be on my television. Same concept, I don't have a choice but to pay these kooks, because I cannot let market forces determine which channels I pay for.
North Carolina is one of two States (the other I understand is Virginia) which are ‘right to work’ States. It is against the law for state employees to unionize and we do not have collective bargaining rights. Still NC has ~ 2 billion dollar deficit which needs to be resolved before July 1st. State Employees have not created this deficit yet the General Assembly and the Governor will balance the budget on our backs. The current budget purposed recommends ~ 10,000 state job cuts. NC State employees have already been furloughed, had wages frozen, and benefits like health care cut. If these hard times require EVERYONE to make sacrifices, who are they and what have they done? What is being done on the revenue side to close the budget gap? What is being done to have corporations sacrifice? Why are State Employees being blamed when they don’t govern and determine legislation? This attack on State Employees will drive people away from public sector service where most salaries are not comparable to private sector positions. Is this the direction American really wants to go? Public sector jobs are usually service oriented. What do we as a nation want to outsource? Look at the Defense Department. They outsource to companies like Halliburton and Black Water. Private contractor spending within the Military is out of control, not transparent, and not accountable. Is that what as a country we want for our States?
DianeFan: "why on earth aren't those angry people demanding benefits equal to what the union employees have."
Such a profound question. In my experience, this realization that we are all in this together, and that we actually make one another stronger when we work together rather than against one another, is a realization not exactly natural to the working class who have always had to compete for jobs. It is precisely because they are more inclined to an "us versus them" mentality -- whether it be on jobs, or immigration, or civil rights, or war -- that they can be so effectively weakened if prevented from coming together or unionizing. Once you keep them apart, they are soon at each others' throats.
Even though Democrats care more about the working class than do Republicans, Republicans speak the divisive language that more easily rings true to the ears of the average working class American. Democrats may be looking out for the little man, but Republicans speak the language of the little man, and it is this that creates the illusion that they are actually on his side.
@Mike Sergeant,
The solution is for the public school system to lose their monopoly over public school education. Of course this would require wrestling the public educational system away from the useless AFT & NEA.
You can start off replacing the incompetent teachers that are protected by the unions with competent ones.
BTW: Would you care to explain how teachers using phony doctor excuses to miss work helps students get the education they deserve?
@ozkar,
You said that Republicans are hiring illegal alien teachers. Are you telling me that the Dallas Independent School board is comprised of Republicans or that ex-Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa is a Republican? Please.
"Officials with one of the state's largest districts said Tuesday that they want to work with other urban school systems to pursue legal changes permitting them to hire illegal immigrants to address a growing shortage of bilingual teachers.
"We are going to follow the law, but if there is the possibility to modify the law, we should," Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa told board members in a policy meeting.
Board member Joe May, who proposed the idea, said the Dallas district should be able to recruit college-educated illegal immigrants who are already in the country and qualify for the emergency teaching certification program."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3643665.html
The question why Gov. Walker doesn't accept the economic concessions and declare victory is right on point. The answer is: the issue is much bigger than collective bargaining. The Gov's actions are just the most recent step in a widespread effort to reduce the economic and political power of ordinary citizens. There has been a huge increase in economic inequality in the last couple of decades. The Citizens United decision gives corporations even greater political influence than they have had.
We don't have a spending problem. We have a wealth inequality problem. Private sector unions have been whittled down. Public sector unions are one of the few organized voices ordinary American workers have. The wealthy element in the country isn't yet satisfied and hence this latest power grab. My hope is Walker made a mistake by doing too much too quickly.
@cicero
According to you, the fact that they were not in the classroom gave them the education they deserved. I would argue that participating in the democratic process, and not just talking about it is the greatest lesson they could teach.
BTW: How do you suppose the people opposing the "useless AFT & NEA" protests came to be there? Are they all unemployed? Or maybe..... they took sick days to counter protest. This is acceptable to you? Who's doing their job?
You really cannot be this naive about sick days anyways. How many sick days at the place you work are really used for sickness. I would be willing to bet a substantial amount of capital that it is pretty low. How many sick days are used because somebody wants to go shopping or just doesn't feel like coming in because they stayed up too late or need a "mental health" day. There is a reason that most places have changed the name from sick days to personal days.
As far as the teacher unions are concerned, I would point out that North Carolina doesn't have teacher unions, so under your hypothesis they should have among the highest test scores in the country. They do not. North Carolina ranks 25th in the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Try again, the data does not support your hypothesis.
Wow! So much to respond to, and so little time (right now) with which to do it. I'm going to limit myself to this (for now):
The caller who (falsely) accused Democrats of hypocrisy was the one guilty of hypocrisy.
When Republi-Cons last controlled Congress (during the reign of Bush the Second) they objected that Democrats dared to filibuster a few, just a few, of his judicial nominees (conveniently forgetting that Republi-Cons had blocked large numbers of Clinton's). The Republi-Cons threatened to "go nuclear" and do away with the filibuster by fiat, all in the name of a "sacred" up or down vote.
But, when they lost control of Congress (in 2006, and even more so in 2008) suddenly it was all filibusters, all the time (and secret senatorial "holds" too), forcing the Democrats to scramble for that "magic" 60 vote super-majority threshold. No talk about "up or down" votes, or abiding by the previous election, then.
Well, the shoe's back on their foot and, predictably, they're back to screaming that parliamentary maneuvers (like the filibuster, the "holds", or in this case quorum requirements) are foul play. It's back to "up or down vote", and "obey the election results". Sorry, my Republi-Con friends, but as Perry Mason said: you opened the door, we just walked through it!
@Mike Sergeant,
"According to you, the fact that they were not in the classroom gave them the education they deserved."
Please quote accuratley. I said these healthy "teachers" were finally contributing to their students education by not showing up to class.
In the private sector, the employer can fire employees for abusing the paid leave sick days. In case you haven't noticed the frequency of substitute teachers standing in for full time public school teachers is staggering. There are days when public school students have a sub for every class. if these teachers don't have the ability or the inclination to show up for work why don't they find employment elswhere? Is is that the pubic sector would not put up with their poor work ethic?
BTW: Calling sick days "personal days" (or the even more inane "mental health days") are really just anti-personnel days. Does the PC crowd object to the phrase ditching work?
@Etaoin Shrdlu ,
You must have graduated with distinction from the Keith Olbermann School of nit-witticisms. Your reliance on such gems as "faux news," "Republi-Cons ," " Fox Noise," etc only diminish your attempt at a lucid argument. You really need to stop relying on MediaMatters as your go to source for anti-conservative material. . You can justify Democrat bad behavior by pointing to Republican bad behavior.
You are correct "in the private sector, the employer CAN fire employees for abusing paid sick days" (did I quote this correctly or is the use of capitals invalidate the attempt). The reality is that they rarely do. I have sat across form people so sick that they couldn't see the paper they were "reading", in order to "save sick days" to go skiing in Utah. This event occurred in a private sector with no union, not a union shop or pubic sector job. They were not fired nor was any disciplinary action taken against these private sector employees. This was a clear violation of the sick day policy as outlined in the handbook. Please save the theories for your book of fiction and join the rest of us in the real world.
In addition how do suppose that the private sector even offers sick days? How did this magical thing occur? Doesn't make any sense to pay someone to stay home sick or not. Did a bunch of private sector market force employers get together one day and say "Our employees are doing such a good job we should reward them with a few sick days so they can stay home and rest up while they are sick." No, it wasn't the beneficent all powerful marketplace that gave you this privilege, it was the collective bargaining of the unions that acquired this benefit and then market forces took over and moved it out into the general workforce.
Another quote ( and you really should use the spell check it weakens your already weak point when accurately is misspelled) "There are days when public schools students have a sub for every class" Really? Can you document this claim. If not then let's leave hyperbole out of the discussion.
I also find it interesting that you chose to focus on only one point in my rebuttal. You have completely ignored my North Carolina example. Is it because you have no answer to it? Please explain why a state with no teacher unions only ranks barely in the top 50% in academic achievement?
Hands down, still the best 2 hours on radio.
I'm not sure why no one mentioned how "competent" Gov Walker was the last time he tried this:
http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-10646-issue-of-the-week-scott-wa...
This isn't about saving money, it's about stopping the institutions that give to Democratic causes. Since the Supreme Court ruling on corporation donations, Republicans no longer need individual donors, so why do they need to listen to voters. With the huge amounts of money they can now raise, they know who their daddy is.
Republicans can't govern, they can only dictate.
@TedPax,
"Republicans can't govern, they can only dictate."
And Democrats can only run and hide.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/indiana-democrats-budget-protes...
@Mike Sergeant,
Just because you work with fools who would rather infect their fellow employees than burn a sick day (to be used for a ski vacation), and you work for an employer who doesn't send these contagious fools home, or fire them for abusing the system, doesn't mean that these dopes are demonstrating the hubris of the Wisconsin teachers, who get a phony doctor's note that excuses them from their job, but encourages them to slither down to a protest where their faces are seen on TV.
You ask me to document a routine occurrence where a public school student can go the entire day seeing subs in their classrooms instead of their full time teachers? Why don't you check with your local DOE and ask for a listing of the number of subs that are sent out every day.
Because North Carolina no longer has Helen Crump teaching in Mayberry, they are not top ten? It can't be because there are no teacher unions in NC. You seem to confuse the fact that Georgia, , North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia don't require or permit school districts to bargain a contract with the local teachers' union with teachers in NC not being in teacher unions.
Democrats are anti-democratic.
I certainly hope the Democratic politicians and absent union workers aren't being paid.
I thought today's panel had no balance to it at all. More and more I find Diane to be interjecting her biases and less and less accuracy to be reflected generally. Diane's producers seem very selective in the comments and questions they choose.
Fact misrepresented: Collective bargaining will still occur for wages. Unions will still have a purpose. They will still collect their dues and will still be able to fund Democrats.
Fact misrepresented: County officials, of which Walker was one for 8 years, have been clamoring for more flexibility when it comes to staffing and costs. With states having a hard time meeting their budgets, less money will be flowing down to county and municipal governments. It is the height of ignorance, or bias at worst, to suggest that terminating collective bargaining for benefits will have no future budget impact.
cicero on February 25, 2011 @ 1:56 pm wrote: "You must have graduated with distinction from the Keith Olbermann School of nit-witticisms. . . . You can justify Democrat bad behavior by pointing to Republican bad behavior."
Talk about the pot and the kettle, sir. You have offered us nothing but a series of tirades that are long on opinion, but devoid of fact. In like fashion I can respond that you are attempting to condemn Democratic behavior by ignoring Republi-Con behavior.
Tell me, sir, did you protest when Republi-Cons blocked as many of Clinton's judges as they could, but threatened to "go nuclear" because the Democrats blocked just 17? Did you complain when, after losing two elections in a row (2006 and 2008) by increasingly wider margins, the Republi-Cons responded not by "honoring the elections", but by using the parliamentary maneuvers of secret "holds" and the filibuster on everything the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress tried to do? Unless the answer is YES to all of these questions, you are just a hypocrite!
Oh, and another little fact you ignore: I did not use terms like "faux news" or "Fox Noise" in my prior Comment. I did use the term "Republi-Con", but that's simply short for Republican-Conservative. If you think it means something else, that's your problem, not mine.
As for the source of my "material"? Simply an accurate memory of history, and a willingness to say that what's sauce for the Republi-Con goose, is also sauce for the Democratic gander. No double standards allowed, sir.
cicero on February 25, 2011 @ 5:01 pm wrote: "And Democrats can only run and hide."
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Preventing a quorum is a legitimate, time honored, and well established parliamentary maneuver - just like the filibuster and secret "holds" the GOP use.
Oh, I get it: it's okay to do this if you're a Republi-Con.
Hypocrisy indeed.
hainc on February 25, 2011 @ 7:13 pm wrote: "Democrats are anti-democratic."
Joining cicero in the hypocrisy brigade are we?
Explain to me how secret "holds" and filibusters (requiring a super-majority of 60 to get anything done) are "democratic".
GuestNPR on February 25, 2011 @ 10:33 pm wrote: "Fact misrepresented: Collective bargaining will still occur for wages."
Another case of the pot calling the kettle black. Collective bargaining is only fully preserved for Walker's favored unions (Police, Fire, and State Troopers) who are exempted from his power grab. (It couldn't be due to the fact they supported his elections, could it?)
Some unions will lose all collective bargaining rights, and even those who may retain some rights as to wages will have those rights severely restricted, and other aspects of collective bargaining and union operations will also be severely restricted. Walker's failure to be honest about this in his speeches earned him a "Pants on fire" from PolitiFact:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/scott-walker/...
I guess you better check your own pants as well!
cicero on February 25, 2011 @ 9:56 am wrote: "Republicans are going to replace the incompetent striking socialist Wisconsin teachers with illegal aliens? Do you write for The Onion?"
Do you?
A standard Republi-Con trick is to misuse the term "socialist", employing it as a catch-all epithet for anything and anyone they don't like. Look up the definition in a dictionary sometime. Socialists believe all property and means of production (farms, factories, etc.) should be held in common, and not be privately owned. Since when do the unions, or the people protesting Walker's actions, advocate that?
Answer: they don't!
tom jones on February 25, 2011 @ 10:14 am wrote: "My gosh, Harry Reid using such harsh language for a bill as "Dead on Arrival", unions in Wicsonsin saying "Kill the Bill", lots of threatening language after the shooting a few weeks ago of rep. Giffords."
Two little problems with that comparison:
1) The language in question only "threatened" the legislation. Hardly a call for violence against people. Furthermore, such language has long been a part of politics. I can't count the number of times I've heard that a budget (whether Democratic or Republican) was "dead on arrival".
The language complained of as leading to violence was such things as "lock and load", "bullets instead of ballots", Tea Bagger rants about using "our Second Amendment rights" if they lost the election, and (of course) Palins' bulls-eyes (sorry, I mean surveyor's marks of course). That is rhetoric advocating violence instead of the normal electoral process.
2) Republi-Cons, and their allies, pointedly rejected calls to "turn down the volume" and avoid such rhetoric after the Gifford's shooting (Palin's whining about "blood libel" anyone?).
So, you've just joined the hypocrite squad. It's okay for Republi-Cons to talk about violence against people, but no one else can use strong rhetoric about pieces of paper (which is all legislation is)!
hainc on February 25, 2011 @ 10:40 am wrote: "Middle class taxpayers are paying the price so that unions can elect Democrats to provide them with uneconomic contracts that will bankrupt our children."
No, they're paying the price in cuts to programs that help them (such as regulations that keep our water, air, and land clean, etc.) so that corporations and the wealthiest can pay even less in taxes, and then use that money to elect even more Republi-Cons to further their goals.
Whatever flaws unions have remember this: in their elections it's still "one person, one vote" - the essence of democracy. In corporations it's "one share, one vote". The difference: those who have the most shares control the company, and every other person's views don't matter.
One of the things Republi-Cons want to do is limit union spending on elections by requiring specific approval from the members first. Well, why not do the same for corporations? Require that every campaign contribution, or politically related expenditure, must be specifically approved by the shareholders, and (like the union voting) do it on the basis of one person, one vote. Corporations are the most anti-democratic force in our nation, and they are trying to subvert the democratic process every way they can!
P.S. - Please excuse the sweeping generalization in that last sentence. I'm sure there are some corporations where that is not true.
But let's look at one example where it is true: Koch Industries, owned by those nice folks Walker had time to speak to on the phone (as he thought) when he didn't have the time to meet or talk with those who oppose his depotism. According to Wikipedia (a source I invoke with caution), that company is privately traded, meaning its stock is not available to the general public. The Koch brothers together own 84% of the stock, and can do with its assets as they wish - including giving millions to Republi-Cons.
Hey, all you opponents of union political activity, explain to me why it's a bad idea for unions to participate in politics for the benefit of their members, but it's okay for people like the Koch brothers to spend millions just to benefit themselves! I have no problem with either both being allowed to participate, or neither, but restricting unions while allowing corporations free reign is just hypocrisy!
early retiree on February 25, 2011 @ 10:45 am wrote: ". . . why are the people in Wisconsin up in arms. Didn't the people in Wisconsin listen to the platform promises that the Governor ran on."
Why? Perhaps that's not what happened (or precisely what happened if you care for "spin" instead of straight talk). There's a PoltiFact article pointing out this claim is untrue, but here's a choice part of it:
"As the campaign rolled near a close, in late October 2010, Walker told the Oshkosh Northwestern that he would 'ask all state workers' for wage and benefit concessions in the collective bargaining process.
After the election, he proposed imposing concessions without negotiating and eliminating benefits as a topic of collective bargaining". [Emphasis added]
In short, as PoltiFact summed it up:
"Before the election Walker talked about seeking concessions in the context of face-to-face negotiations . . . . He is moving to impose health and pension cost-sharing through legislation, without having taken his proposal to the unions."
(Which, by the way, the unions have already agreed to!)
You can read the rest of the article here: http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/22/scott-walker/...
The good news for Walker? This time he was only rated "False".
There's hardly any mention of the military in the media, and its drain on the US's, and in the big picture, the planet's finite resources. The old notion of guns or butter is more relevant now than ever, I submit.
A more general problem concerns the difficulty of people, overall, to resist the pull of greed, be it for money or influence. As the civil turmoil in the Middle East indicates, large disparities in money and influence tend to build to a breaking point.
An important point from Governor Walker's phone call was missed. The Governor bragged that he would trick the Democratic Senators. He said he would agree to negotiate with them if they came back. As long as their session started with the Dems there, the Republican Senators would have a quorum to move forward. This is reprehensible.
Hey Ozkar
What do you do if they travel through another countries that is not on the terrorist watchlist? Perhaps they get into Mexico and swim across the Rio Grande. Then what?
Hey Ozkar
What do you do if they travel through another countries that is not on the terrorist watchlist? Perhaps they get into Mexico and swim across the Rio Grande. Then what?