Wisconsin's Walker Recount

[Annie]

Spin unions, spin:

Althouse: If he wins the recall election, Scott Walker "would be a debilitated governor for the next two years in office, and he would be finished the next time he runs."

May 5, 2012
If he wins the recall election, Scott Walker "would be a debilitated governor for the next two years in office, and he would be finished the next time he runs."
That's what AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka asserts... presumably because it would hurt like hell to admit that after all the protests, all the work petitioning for the recall and promoting new candidates, that it's all going to end up giving Scott Walker a vote of approval, a new mandate.

Walker “is still very, very unpopular,” Trumka said. “He is permanently unpopular because he took on and he attacked workers rather than creating jobs.”...

... Walker’s bruised image... would not likely embolden other GOP lawmakers around the country to take on bargaining rights, Trumka argued. “Not if you’re sane and rational, it wouldn’t,” he said.​

There's your advance spin.

He may lose, but it's certainly not certain.

 

[Lakhota]

Walker is bad for America - and especially Wisconsin.

 

[Annie]

Walker is bad for America - and especially Wisconsin.

Walker Gains in Wisconsin: NYT Shields Readers From Distressing News | Via Meadia

April 29, 2012
Walker Gains in Wisconsin: NYT Shields Readers From Distressing News

The New York Times has a long piece on the political situation in Wisconsin this morning, and in some ways it is reasonably balanced. The reporters note, for example, that the Koch brothers own a factory in Wisconsin that is unionized and that the union and management at the factory seem to have a reasonably productive relationship. It also gives controversial Governor Scott Walker some space to contest the arguments of his detractors.

Even so, it is a journalistic disaster: it tells you everything you need to know except the one thing you really need to know, and it reveals the soft pale underbelly of establishment journalism in America today.

The headline captures the focus of the piece: “Recall Election Tests Strategies For November.” The reporters look at how private and public sector unions on the one side and various conservative organizations on the other are organizing for the election over the petition to recall Governor Scott Walker and at how both sides think the issues and strategies shaping the recall will influence the outcome in November.

The piece does a reasonable job at getting the views of both sides, but no reader of the Times will be surprised to see that it wears its heart on its sleeve. The piece closes with a paean to the hope that labor will beat back the Republican challenge, calculated to warm the hearts of the NYT faithful:

However, labor leaders say the moves have reinvigorated members, prompting a beefing up of political operations. This contributed to the repeal, in a referendum last year, of an Ohio law limiting bargaining rights, has fueled the recall effort in Wisconsin, and, unions hope, will lead to Democratic success in November.

Nearly all of the larger confrontations have taken place in presidential battlegrounds, not only Wisconsin and Ohio, but also states like Florida, Michigan and New Hampshire.

“These state fights are a jump-start to get people engaged,” said Brandon Davis, political director for the Service Employees International Union. “We’re confident that if we get turnout to vote in municipal elections, they will also vote our way in national elections.”

Bob Kelley, a retired union carpenter, agreed as he hammered together a partition for a new call center in Madison. “If you’re where somebody throws down a gauntlet and attacks, what are you going to do?” he said, referring to Mr. Walker. “Maybe he did us a favor.”
​

Perhaps Bob Kelley is right, and Governor Walker did the unions a favor; Via Meadia has suggested that in both Wisconsin and Ohio a more narrowly focused, better thought through, less confrontational approach could have made the necessary reforms with a lot less trouble and polarization.

But somehow the reporters and editors who put together this long story on the implications of the Wisconsin recall for American politics now and in November failed to take note of one tiny little fact: Governor Walker is increasingly favored to win the June recalll.

Intrade, a site where people can in effect bet on political races, shows Walker with a 68.5 percent chance of re-election as of Sunday morning. (By contrast, President Obama has only a 59.7 percent shot at a second term.) Recent polls on the race show Walker ahead, though the race is close and volatile — and the dynamics may change once the Democrats pick a nominee. None of this appears in this article.

Forget accusations of media bias and ideological agendas: this is a collapse of basic news judgment. On this issue at least, readers who rely on the New York Times to tell them what’s happening in the country — don’t know what’s happening in the country. They genuinely don’t know that in Wisconsin this all out mobilization by both sides on a polarizing question is, tentatively and certainly not irreversibly, but noticeably and to a certain degree increasingly… breaking Walker’s way.

Sometimes I wonder if the Times hasn’t been infiltrated by a group of stealth conservatives, a sleeper cell dedicated to making the left stupid and ineffectual. For liberals to be basking in a dream world in which OWS is effective and unions are fighting back and winning in Wisconsin is exactly what conservatives want. Look how it worked on Obamacare: not a serious liberal in the country thought the individual mandate could possibly be thought unconstitutional until, quite horribly, the Supreme Court justices started asking all those questions that the press had done its best to ignore.

Perhaps the individual mandate will survive Supreme Court review; perhaps Scott Walker will go down in June. Via Meadia doesn’t know; but we do know that on these and some other matters, readers of the New York Times rather routinely miss out on the real stories shaping American life.

 

[bripat9643]

Walker is bad for America - and especially Wisconsin.

Wrong. Trumpka and turds like you are bad for America. You're both nothing more than a couple of cheap thugs.

 

[Conservative]

Walker is bad for America - and especially Wisconsin.

and you're a moron, Shitting Bull...

Review & Outlook: Wisconsin Recall Amnesia - WSJ.com

Since Mr. Walker's reforms went into effect, the doom and gloom scenarios have failed to materialize. Property taxes in the state were down 0.4% in 2011, the first decline since 1998. According to Chief Executive magazine, Wisconsin moved up four more places this year to number 20 in an annual CEO survey of the best states to do business, after jumping 17 spots last year.

The Governor's office has estimated that altogether the reforms have saved Badger State taxpayers more than $1 billion, including $65 million in changes in health-care plans, and some $543 million in local savings documented by media reports. According to the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute, Mayor Barrett's city of Milwaukee saved $19 million on health-care costs as a direct result of Mr. Walker's reforms.

Some of the good news has been in the schools, because districts have been able to avoid teacher layoffs and make ends meet because of flexibility created by the changes. In the Brown Deer school district, savings created by pension and health-care contributions from employees allowed the school to prevent layoffs and save some $800,000 for taxpayers.

In Fond du Lac, school board president Eric Everson says the district saved $4 million as a result of last year's reforms, including $2 million from the changes in employee contributions to their pensions.

Another 52 schools across the state saved an average of $220 per student thanks to the ability to introduce competitive bidding for health insurance, rather than automatically going through WEA Trust, the favored provider of the Wisconsin Education Association Council. If the savings are even half as large as the Governor's surveys indicate, they are still enormous.

Democrats and unions will still do all they can to recall Mr. Walker to prove to would-be reformers nationwide that unions can't be crossed. But it speaks volumes that Democrats are running on everything except their real goal—which is to restore the political dominance of government unions.

Yup. Shitting Bull is a moron.