I have been chronicling Scott Walker’s (governor of Wisconsin) bold first moves. He has been in office for a very short time and has really been pressing his advantage. The advantage is the wave of people that voted him in, along with giant Republican majorities in the state House and Senate. Honestly, I don’t know what the unions and other Democratic allies can do to stop Walker.
But they are trying.
Yesterday, angry UW students went into the capitol building here in Madison and marched all the way to the Governor’s offices. Students at a local high school walked out of class. Other high school classes are planning on doing the same today. Why these students are allowed to walk out of class for something like this is beyond me, besides the obvious reasons – the teachers and principals are allowing it. I hope they all get zeros for their work that day.
Also, much bigger rallies are planned today at the capitol and elsewhere. I have instructed my personnel to keep my delivery trucks away from that area of town. I don’t think it will get violent, but traffic will certainly be snarled and I would rather be safe than sorry.
I heard on the news last night that the trade unions said they would “stand up” with their brothers and sisters in the government service unions. I think this is a bluff, plain and simple. Commercial contruction as well as residential (and work in general) is scarce and I think that if a union contractor walked off of a job to support a different union (or for any other reason) that they would be canned in a millisecond. I heard from one of my customers a few weeks ago that he was considering eliminating the union tradesmen from his company. This is a big deal. They are a large contractor here in the southern Wisconsin area.
I originally wanted to go the capitol myself today and cover some of the protest/marches/speeches, but I am a working stiff, and I need to get my work done. Unlike everyone else down there today. Hey hey, ho ho, not getting my work done has got to go. As they say.
Interesting times to be sure. We will soon see what sort of stones Walker has. I believe in him.
March, schmarch. Will the public support them? Walker needs to go all Chris Christie on them, get in their faces, not back down, tell the voters what is going on. If he does that it should work.
“allowing it”??? More like encouraging or even requiring it, I wager.
Better yet Marty, city of Madison schools are closed today due to a teacher “sick out”. Its for the children?
Walker can take it. He showed his stuff as Milwaukee County Exec – starting by wining a recall election.
You would rather cut the pay, and take away the right to do anything about it of average hard working people making about 50k and less than raise taxes on the 2% of people who are the only ones to see their pay increase over the decade? That just don’t make no walking around sense. You must have manure for brains.