public employee unions

The ultimate example of conservative heads exploding:

A public employee union representing faculty, counselors and professional staff at the Milwaukee Area Technical College negotiated a one-year agreement with the school, which the MATC board approved. Officials say the deal will save the school $122 million over the next 25 years, due to long-term reductions in early health benefits that will go forward. A one-year deal that saves a nine-figures amount of tax dollars ... Now THAT is good government. Unless, of course, you're a Republican.

Conservative reaction (summarized): This deal is an outrage! Schools can't negotiate with defrocked public employee unions, even if a judge rules they can! The Wisconsin Republican Party made it so!

Conservative action: Sue MATC! That'll make things better, oh yeah.

Aside from the ruling itself, which is an important if partial win for Wisconsin public employee unions, one of the most interesting aspects of Federal Judge William Conley's order overturning two key aspects of Act 10, Gov. Walker's anti-union law, is a key precedent he cited in favor of the unions.

One of the most damning aspects of the current Wisconsin Republican majority under Gov. Scott Walker is has been its impatience. The state's GOP leaders have displayed an extreme bias toward moving the law-making progress along at maximum speed. In part they appear to do this in order to neutralize the opposition. In part, too, it may be the GOP's own repressed uncertainty over the effiicacy of its policies. Better to act before you think things all the way through, than admit or just realize that your ideological stance is at best questionable.

From George Lightbourn, former Tommy Thompson functionary and now maximum leader of the wingnut (albeit officially nonpartisan) Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), comes the flaming revelation that Scott Walker has established a "new normal" for Wisconsin:

For starters there will be no more deferring to the status quo. No longer will politicians automatically assume that more school spending will enhance student performance, that more regulation by itself makes our air and water cleaner... .

No, now state politicians are supposed to automatically assume that less school spending will enhance student performance -- but only in public schools. In private schools already receiving huge public tax dollars swiped from those public schools, the old normal will still apply, only more so thanks to Walkerism.

KutlerStanley Kutler, the emeritus UW professor who worked so hard to give America a penetrating look into Watergate, has now weighed in on Scott Walker's budget-despair bill and as usual makes some trenchant comments from the trenches. You can read his entire piece at the URL below but here's the part I liked most, near the end, where he's talking about public teachers and how they are affected:

Remember, when Scott Walker was running for governor, how he and other Republicans were lamenting that the proposed two-year labor contracts the Doyle administration had bargained with a number of bargaining units should not be "rushed" to the floor of the Legislature for a vote? Because it would take at least -- at least! -- ten days or longer to properly review them? And that this went against the idea of transparency and openness in government?

Well, consistency apparently is the hobgoblin of Walker-esque minds. Because now, after last Friday when he suddenly announced a permanent measure to change more than 50 years of state-labor laws, the Walk-man insists that we got ourselves a budget emergency and that the new Republican majorities in both houses need to rush through public hearings and enact his union-busting plan within FOUR working days.