Political Heat

“He’s not welcome here. He’s in the back-pocket of Koch Industries, he’s in the back-pocket of greed and money.” So says Doug from Madison, a protester I spoke with on the Capitol square earlier this week, who sees Gov. Scott Walker as leading our state in the wrong direction. “I’ve actually been protesting Scott Walker since January 3rd,” Doug adds. “I’d have protested him longer if he had gotten here earlier. I’ve just missed a day or two of protesting [these past two weeks] because I got sick.” We’ve heard from a variety of people -- celebrities, state and local officials, political pundits -- on what these protests mean and the impact of Scott Walker’s budget repair bill on our state’s public employees. But if anything, these protests aren’t about those people. They’re about the common people, individuals who have come in droves of tens of thousands in order to protest a blatantly destructive bill. I wanted to get their perspective, to show the world that these ordinary Wisconsin c...

I recently came across a set of protesters who were downtown. They weren’t like the majority that were there, though I have seen a few like them before. They looked like the other protesters, were middle-aged, and had even carried signs. These protesters, however, were in support of Scott Walker. This is perfectly fine, of course: democracy requires us to be accepting of any individual that chooses to voice out their concerns for their government, chooses to disseminate their views in order to influence the debate in some way. Still, these protesters bothered me a great deal. What was it about them that bothered me so much? It was their sign. It read: “When we miss work, we get fired.” It’s a perfectly fine statement to make. And it’s true for a lot of people, myself included: if I skip work to protest, unless I get permission to take a personal day, I get written up and possibly fired. However, what these conservative protesters failed to recognize was that for much of the 20th centur...

In 2010 Scott Walker took a Harley Davidson bike ride . According to him it was to promote Milwaukee County tourism. It just happened to coincide with his campaign for governor. State Democrats charged Walker with violating ethical standards, campaigning on Milwaukee County taxpayers’ dollars. Walker maintained that his trip was only for what he said it was -- a statewide ride on a Harley motorcycle that, again, just happened to occur after he announced his run for office. It wasn’t the only ethical standard broken by Scott Walker during his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive. But it does paint a picture of just how Walker works: bending the rules just so in order to make them work for him, justifying his lack of integrity through substandard excuses. It’s clear that, within this past week alone, Walker’s ethical standards haven’t changed. Within a phone call with a blogger impersonating a billionaire donor , Walker let his true colors fly. Walker expressed (to who he thought was Da...

Lost in the madness that’s going on in Madison over the past dozen days or so was the Obama’s decision this week to halt all legal defenses of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The act ensured that only straight marriages, not same-sex marriages, would be valid at the federal level. States that conducted same-sex marriages weren’t allowed to bestow federal rights to these couples. Obama’s decision to halt the defense of DOMA signals a drastic change for our nation, which now, according to recent polling, supports giving same-sex couples some form of rights, whether they are marriages or strong civil unions. By ending the enforcement of DOMA, couples in states that allow same-sex marriage can now apply for federal benefits as well. It’s the right move to make, one that hopefully will someday lead to an all-out legalization of same-sex marriage at the federal level. Now, we’ve just got to get Obama to come to Madison to support workers’ rights. He did, after all, make a promise to do s...

It is perhaps the most damning proof yet to surface about the contempt that Gov. Walker has for the people of Wisconsin. The Buffalo Beast , a liberal blog site, recently prank-called the governor’s office claiming to be David Koch , an uber-right wing billionaire donor who helps fund Americans for Prosperity and various other conservative campaigns -- including Scott Walker’s in 2010. The prank-caller talked to Walker about his plans in the coming days regarding getting his budget passed. Walker told the Koch-impersonator about his plans to goad the 14 Democratic senators that are preventing quorum back to Wisconsin. “What [Senate Republicans] are doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a bit,” Walker said. One of those issues is the proposed Voter ID bill . Walker also discussed with the impersonator a plan to withhold direct deposit checks for the 1...

More than two-thirds of Wisconsin citizens agree with the positions that public service employees are taking in regards to the labor protests taking place at the Capitol. A new poll released by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research indicates that the protest movement in downtown Madison (and elsewhere in the state) is vastly supported by the people of Wisconsin . At the same time, Scott Walker’s standing with the average voter has diminished greatly, with a majority of the state disapproving of his job performance as governor. 67 percent of Wisconsin citizens support the goals of public service employees while only 43 percent support Walker’s goals. More than half of respondents (53 percent) disagreed with Walker in general on the matter. As far as specific policy goes, 52 percent agreed with the need to preserve collective bargaining rights, while only 42 percent favored Gov. Walker’s plans to strip public service employees of their rights. What’s more, Wisconsinites across all political ...

I hosted a radio program tonight online...nothing to sneeze at, and as my first radio show, was probably a little...well, who knows. Anyway, if you listened to the show, leave a comment here, let me know what you think. UPDATE : You can listen to the replay of the broadcast here ( http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ckwalker1984/2011/02/23/madison-protests-what-you-need-to-know-whats-going-on ).

If you're still not convinced that Scott Walker is solely after the utter destruction of unions in our state, and through that end the destruction of the middle class, consider his latest refusal to compromise with public service employees as the strongest piece of evidence yet. When union leaders told Gov. Walker that they would agree to paying more towards pension, health and other benefits so long as their bargaining rights remained intact, Walker wouldn't budge , insisting that his proposal was non-negotiable. In reality, collective bargaining costs the state nothing. Public service employees who were agreeing to tighten their belts (even more than they have already) sought to create a compromising situation that would benefit all parties involved. It was a win-win solution for both Walker and the unions. Walker remained obstinate, an adjective I usually reserve for toddlers. The budget being his primary rationale behind this obscene bill, it's a bit puzzling to see Wal...

Writers over at RedState.com , a popular conservative blog, are trying to derail the movement taking place in Madison this past week by making unions seem like bullies. In one specific blog post, writer Ben Howe claims that WEAC published the home addresses of state legislators in order to have supporters go to their homes and harass them. The PDF file on WEAC's page is in spreadsheet form and lists the work phone numbers of state legislators, their email address, and yes their home addresses as well. However, this isn't information that isn't already attainable. Go to the Wisconsin State Senate's home page and you'll find that the information is already there. What RedState.com is essentially saying is that WEAC is a terrible organization...for providing people with already attainable knowledge. What's more, the WEAC page that RedState cites never once encourages anyone to go to legislators' homes. The link that WEAC provides doesn't even mention that...

The movement to recall Scott Walker is a bit premature -- Wisconsin law requires that any officeholder facing a recall threat has to be in office for at least one year before the process can formally begin. But while recall supporters must wait another year before they can go after Walker, eight Republican state senators are eligible for a recall. The question is, do they deserve it? Would an effort to recall these eight senators be justified? Certainly there are some who are, frankly, a danger to our government. Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) comes to mind -- the man is further right than many Tea Party supporters. I had the "honor" of witnessing the senator in action once, during a hearing on requiring Wisconsin public schools to teach comprehensive classes on human sexuality. Grothman's questioning of hearing participants bordered on harassment as he asked each person which organization they represented in an effort to discredit and intimidate everyday Wisconsin ...

A quick review of this week's events on Political Heat. I have never been more proud of my hometown. Fight on, working men and women of the state -- SOLIDARITY. (Dictator) Scott Walker kicks unions out, changes state workers' bargaining rights (February 12, 2011) What Walker is essentially saying is that, rather than come up with a package that will be agreeable, at least to some extent, between both government leaders and the union that represents government workers (from teachers to snow plow drivers to prison guards), he will instead come up with his own package without any input from the very workers he employs as governor of this state. Simply put, it's Dictator Walker's decision, and ONLY his decision, which matters. State workers can only depend upon his benevolence to have a decent wage, pension or health care plan. Walker ignores other options, puts burden on public service employees (February 13, 2011) Walker isn't considering any of these ideas, nor any...

There are some who are going to criticize state Senate Democrats who left the state in order to prevent quorum for Scott Walker’s dictatorial union-busting bill. They will call it obstructionism, anti-democratic, cowardly, and so forth. It’d do them well to reject those sentiments. What the Democrats are doing is noble, just, and a form of civil disobedience. Their actions are preventing the regressive tactics of Gov. Walker and his Republican allies, who are attempting to do away with half a century of collective bargaining rights for public service employees. By staging this escape, they will allow more time for citizen-protesters – now numbering in the tens of thousands daily – to make their point to wavering Republicans. Rather than ramming it down their throats, Gov. Scott Walker will have to wait for his bill to get real consideration in the Senate, granting legislators more time to ponder the bill, in full, rather than the week’s time that Walker wanted to rush it through. For t...

The protests in Madison this week are nothing short of miraculous, a beautiful display of democracy in action. These aren't just union workers in the rotunda of the Capitol building -- they're also the family members, friends and supporters of the nurses, teachers, social workers, prison guards, civil servants and other public service employees of this state. They are both public and private employees, fighting the dictatorial decree of our state's governor, Scott Walker. I'm a prime example of this: I'm not a member of any union, am in fact a private sector worker. But I still support this movement -- I understand that what is being fought for in Madison this week transcends my personal story, affects those that make the state run. They don't work for the income (it's low) or the glamor (it's non-existent), but because they know the work they do is necessary to make Wisconsin a great state to live in. These workers are my neighbors, my friends, my fami...

Thousands of people came to the Capitol building today in Madison, Wisconsin, in protest of the removal of bargaining rights for public service employees across the state. The following are some pictures from today, taken from my phone (not the highest quality). More pics follow the jump.

The proposal by Gov. Scott Walker to remove the rights of public service employees is nothing short of disgraceful. It is, after all, the right of all workers to bargain collectively, even if that right hasn’t been realized yet in all sectors of employment. Workers deserve to have a collective voice equal to that of their employers. When an employer decides that it’s time to lower wages or benefits, the workers have the right to tell them no, to say that we’ll stand together and fight this change in policy. Compromises are made through a series of measures – a general strike among them, if needed – in order to create a situation that is agreeable between the two parties. Within this mess, Gov. Walker has decided to bypass that process altogether, to ignore the employees who work for state and local communities and to tell them that their union membership is obsolete. He is bypassing their rights as a collective body to compromise with the government on concessions that are acceptable,...

The following was originally posted at Dane101.com . The article, in its entirety, is there for your viewing pleasure. When most people think of a public service employee, their thoughts probably turn to a government worker who is in a lavish office somewhere at the Capitol building. The image in their head is indeed a myth: most government workers don’t get paid the huge sums of money that some mistakenly think they receive, work in various offices across the state, and have to pay into their pension just as most other private sector employees do. They too are struggling through the effects of the economic recession and have families to care for as well during these challenging times – the same conditions as most Wisconsinites are facing. But even with the confused depiction of what a public service employee’s lifestyle may be, those that view them in a negative light forget that such employees aren’t just government workers. They’re also the nurses, specialists and other staff that w...

Governor Scott Walker's assault on public service employees is meeting with some friction. The Wisconsin blogosphere is noticeably outraged by the turn of events. At an event in Horicon workers protested in front of a state senator's home , with some witnesses stating they heard chants of "Egypt got it right." And protests are planned all week long in hopes of preventing the passage of the proposed bill. Public employees, and the people of Wisconsin, are not happy. Walker's defense is simple: it's this proposal, or cut more than 200,000 children from BadgerCare. But these aren't the only options available. Making cuts to government alone isn't the answer. Sacrifices have to be made, but not as radical as Walker is trying to make us believe they must be. Raising taxes on income for the wealthy a modest amount could help solve the problem. So might cutting or freezing the salaries of elected officials (including the governor's own, which ranks 19th...

Scott Walker is nothing more than a bully. His move yesterday to bypass the collective bargaining process , to essentially tell state and local employees that there will be no negotiations regarding their contracts, pensions, health plans, and so forth, is nothing more than a direct assault upon unions, both within the public and private sectors. What Walker is essentially saying is that, rather than come up with a package that will be agreeable, at least to some extent, between both government leaders and the union that represents government workers (from teachers to snow plow drivers to prison guards), he will instead come up with his own package without any input from the very workers he employs as governor of this state. Simply put, it's Dictator Walker's decision, and ONLY his decision, which matters. State workers can only depend upon his benevolence to have a decent wage, pension or health care plan. Unfortunately for state and local government employees, benevolence is ...

Football isn't just a sport to me. It's a character-builder. It's understanding that hard work, determination, and dedication allow a team of men to achieve the impossible, to go the distance and win it all, for themselves as well as their fans. The Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl this weekend symbolizes that sentiment. The lowest ranked team in the NFC playoffs, the underdogs throughout each game they played in the postseason, come out and win it all. There is no greater story in sports than this. The impossible is possible. We should never settle, should never give up, should always chase that which is out of reach. They are the lessons that Lombardi taught his team nearly 50 years ago, the lessons that still hold true today: "People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society." "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." "We would a...

Last post before the Super Bowl, and I'd be a terrible Wisconsinite (and terrible owner) if I didn't put out here for all to see my support for Green and Gold. GO, PACK, GO!

I don't claim to be an expert on everything that's going on in Egypt right now, but what I do know is what's happening is nothing short of extraordinary. The people took to the streets in Cairo today , demanding a new government through legitimate democratic elections. Current President Hosni Mubarak has ruled his nation for the past three decades, clamping down on dissent from all angles (ranging from critics that are both religious and secular). His rule is no longer accepted by the people. They demand fair elections where they can choose for themselves their own leaders and representatives. They also demand democratic rights such as free speech and an open press. Today, in response to the protesters, President Mubarak announced he would not seek re-election in September of this year. The people of Egypt remain defiant, continuing to demand his immediate departure from government. With any revolutionary event, it's critical that democracy -- and with it, a preservati...