I think the unions help everyone's salary go up. Big corporations want to minimize employees salaries and benefits to get higher profits. Public outcry can only affect big pitfalls that are highly mediatized. For all the other cases, there is only unions to help curb corporate greed.

The unions agreed on the budget cuts gov Walker imposed. They were willing to pay their fair share. The main point of contention was the elimination of collective bargaining rights. I think that the maintaining of collective bargaining rights ensures a fairer workplace.

The attack on labor from gov Walker should also be seen in the light of his many corporations tax breaks. Giving tax breaks to the rich and asking the rest to foot the bill.

Gunfighter: Funny you mention that. The right wing campaigned heavily a few years back to recall several of the Iowa Supreme Court justices because they didn't like their unanimous verdict that gay people were covered by the iowa equal opportunity clause.

But I suppose one is different from the other. :P

@Bob - Labor can organize, but when organized at the national level it becomes an abuse of power. As far as Governor Walker's staff goes, his current staff hasn't been charged with anything. You are full of shit. They are former aides from before his time in the Governor's office and it is only three of them, hardly his entire staff. You should really fact check before you make an ass of yourself.

@Draug Then are you ok with unions at the Local level versus the national level?

Sure. I believe organizing within a company is perfectly acxceptable. And except when it becomes a danger to the public, I would support collective bargaining. I don't believe police, emergency personnel, or trash removal (health risk if trash lies around) should be allowed to strike and I think it should be illegal for unrelated unions to joint strike as I believe everyone has the right to work so no one should ever be forced to join a union to get a job.

I know at UPS you can opt out of the union. But, almost no one does because the benefits out weigh the negatives.

And yes I can agree that sometimes bargaining at the National level is bad. But it can be bad for both the union and the company.

Draug, I'm a lawyer in Wisconsin. The indictments aren't done. Walker personally hired and promoted Rindfleisch. Tim Russell has been his henchman for basically ever. We're talking about around a thousand emails and a secret email system to bypass the ones available to the public through simple request, as opposed to discovery in a criminal action or lawsuit. The chances that they went totally rogue are next to nil.

I have a friend who's rather high up in a teacher's union and shares stories about his job with some consistency. I can assure you that unions don't defend teachers accused of criminal acts such as child abuse, they're hardly the Catholic Church. And, as he's fond of saying, it's not like the union hired and gave tenure to the bad teachers in the first place. I like Draugnar's hyperbolic "our children" too since he's stated he neither has nor plans to have any. I have kids, one in school presently. I've had complaints about various teachers and administrators, and in every case except for one involving a teacher's aide (which falls in some completely different balliwick that no one wants to handle) the situation was dealt with to my satisfaction.

As a lawyer, Bob, you should know making unfounded statements about his current administration like you did is libelous. It is a past administration being looked at, not the Governor's office. And libel is a civil form.of defamation. His present administration could take you to court and bankrupt you even if they lost the case (hard to prove irreparable injiry over this forum).

So again I must insist you retract your statement implying, nay *stating*, nearly his entire administration is facing charges. His present administration faces no such charges nor any indictment and he hasn't been charged.

@SacredDigits - It takes a village. Nuff said but I will continie anyhow. My wife is 57 and I am 46. We tried for the better part of 20 ywlears to have kids until my wife got cancer of the uterus and had a radical hysterectomy. We would adopt but Ohio doesn't let couples over 50 adopt. So thanks for being an assholeband assuming I don't have kids because I don't want them. That was very sensitive and mature of you.

@SD Also, that doesn't mean Draug couldn't have nieces or nephews in the school system. Just because he isn't a parent doesn't mean there aren't children that he cares about.

Thanks Celtic. Actually my niece and nephew are grown and the nephew married and working.on his first. But we have plenty of neighborhood kids and theyvare all pretty good kids. And regardless, in Ohio schools make their money from property taxes. I pay my taxes so I pay my share of every child.in Fairfield's school system.

@Draug Well I get where you're coming from on that. I'll probably never have children but I have a nephew and care about his schooling.

Could have sworn you said you didn't want them at one point, I apologize for misremembering that. But the fact stands: unions are NOT enabling teachers to molest children "with impunity". I see how sensitivity works. You expect it, but don't give it. You're upset that I said you didn't want kids, but you're willing to baselessly accuse an entire group of people of enabling rampant child molesting.

In fact, at my friend's union, he had a recent situation where several teachers broke into an administrator's office in order to find their reviews because they didn't feel he was giving them to a timely fashion. Their first contact with the union was after they got charged with breaking and entering, at which point the union said there was nothing they could do to help them and they should have, you know, called them instead of taking matters into their own hands. Because the union could have helped when it was "not receiving reviews in a timely fashion" but not when it was "charged with breaking and entering."

Unions help things between employer and employee. Not between employee and the police.

Also, I didn't assume that you didn't want kids. I said that you neither had them nor planned to have them. There was no statement of desire or motivation within that.

Polls show walker is up ~3 .

I'm going out in 10 minutes to subtract .0001 of them.

@ Jack_Klein

Yes, and I opposed that Iowa Supreme Court recall as well, because it was politically charged and not based on any misconduct by the Supreme Court justices.

Well, Draug, if you had any understanding of the law of libel in America and more specifically Wisconsin, you'd probably have cottoned to the fact that the only named or identified person in any of my posts who has yet to be indicted is el Caudillo Walker himself. I figure that in the extraordinarily unlikely scenario that el Caudillo or one of his loathsome minions actually bothered to sue me or some halfwit DA attempted to prosecute me under 942.01, it would take about two phone calls to get the ACLU involved. It'd take me about 20 minutes to type in the facts into the motion for dismissal due to unconstitutional application of the statute template that I've got saved on my hard drive because I file about 5 of them a year and succeed with them about half the time. I think I could probably raise up a defense fund pretty easily. So I don't really fear bankruptcy as a result of el Caudillo Walker or the scumbags he uses as henchpersons, current or former, trying to sue me civilly or proceed with criminal action. Plus there's that whole First Amendment thing, and the defense of truth, you know.

"because I file about 5 of them a year and succeed with them about half the time..."

Bragging about his 50% success ratio. In my business, that would get you fired...It also implies that you are more full of bluster than you are knowledge, since you are tying up the courts, apparently, with either 1. bullshit arguments or 2. you don't know the law and are filing improper motions because there is the law, and then there is your lack of understanding of the law...

But you keep thinking 50% is a good ration. Thank god the engineers designing your brakes shoot for a litttttle bit higher rate of success...

"Plus there's that whole First Amendment thing, and the defense of truth, you know..."

Uh....if the accusation is "libel"...then...uh...it isn't truth...maybe you skipped that class in law school...

50% is still better than baseball players or meteorologists. Meteorology in particular amuses me. You go to school for four years and when you emerge, you really aren't significantly better at predicting the weather than random chance.

This has nothing to do with any argument in this thread and is not an endorsement of any view or attack on anyone's view, it's just a random thing I like to bring up.

No Bob, you collectively named "his staff". It isn't his staff being indicted. It's his *former* staff. I don't honestly give a fuck about the details of "libel" law in Wisconsin. I give a fuck about you being accurate in your sweeping statement that his "staff" was "all" being charged when not a single member of his current staff is even being investigated. You made a patently false statement and I want you to back it up with facts. Of course, we both no you can't because his "staff" is under no such fucking investigation. You lose.

@Sacred- and I also assume that you believe baseball players are grossly overpaid for batting .243...lol

@Draug -- Since when do raving loon liberals need to be accurate when making sweeping, generalized attacks when they are in a panic??? lol Interestingly enough, there has been more than article recently posted on this site talking about how liberals tend to not be as worried about facts and truth...

Seriously. Hit the ball successfully less than one in four tries...and even then, you get multiple pitches in each at bat...and...make millions of dollars. I've worked extensively in proofreading and translation, and while you have a small margin of error in both of them (since everywhere I worked had multiple passes on proofreading and translation) there's no fucking way I could get away with 50%, much less 25%, much less the actual number of "connecting with ball" per "time swinging bat".

OK...agreed. We shall fire all the ball players...AND Bob.

"Batting average" is a terribly outdated and not-very-useful statistic for offensive productivity. BABIP, VORP, and WAR are more useful, but still don't account for why A-Rod will always suck.

king daniel the best: "rottenacorn.com" Seriously?
And your other site discredits the SDS as a "radical 1960s group". And the hyperlink it sends you to claims the SDS "aspired to overthrow America's democratic institutions" and was later transformmed into a "a terrorist cult". Is this really where you get your news? The SDS was a moderate socialist group for college students whose members to day are most likely part of the DSA. I took a look at the dozens of hyperlinks on your second website that are provided as 'evidence' of voter fraud and only one looks both legitimate and presents cause for concern (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/acorn.fraud.claims/?iref=hpmostpop), yet even there there is still no evidence of voter fraud. Let's see if I can find something about ACORN myself.
Draugnar: No, I didn't. And I don't know what's wrong with the webpage you gave me, but it's just come up as a blank page.

Try reading some of these articles: http://www.salon.com/topic/acorn/

@Draug, usually when you use quotation marks to describe someone's position, it's considered good form to actually, you know, quote them. I said, "Basically his entire staff...", not "all". But I will acknowledge, just to spare your sensibilities, that Walker's current spokesman, Cullen Werwie, is indeed not under investigation, thanks to the immunity deal he cut.

@krellin, it's a lawyer's obligation to try any legal argument he believes is consonant with the facts and has a chance of success without prejudicing the client's interests. The court has no obligation to agree with every motion filed, however. 50% on a misapplication motion is actually pretty damn good.