Unions try to buy Wisconsin back…
…but fail. For now.
It was a squeaker, but this time the Republicans held on.
And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comes out with an editorial admitting that Governor Walker’s policies seem to have helped local Wisconsin governments financially, rather than hurt them. Fancy that:
So it turns out that the sky isn’t going to fall on all local governments in Wisconsin. The numbers now starting to come in show that Gov. Scott Walker’s “tools” for local governments apparently will help at least some of them deal with cuts in state aid imposed by the state budget.
That’s contrary to the expectation and the rhetoric of critics in the spring, and it’s to Walker’s credit. It bears out the governor’s assessment of his budget-repair bill, although we still maintain he could have reached his goals without dealing a body blow to public employee unions.
If the newspaper prints more of this kind of thing, Wisconsin Democrats’ bid to recall Walker might even fail too, just like this recall did.
What does it mean nationally? Maybe nothing. But it’s an indication that the swing in 2010 to the more conservative/Republican side in states such as Wisconsin may be holding, at least for now. And that although money can buy a lot in the voting arena, it can’t buy everything.
Its very frequently that way as empiricism wins over ideological ideas based in 1850s prophecy proved wrong 100% of the time WHEN TESTED…
so obviously the game is never to let it be tested, to constantly come up with new ideas and changes which confound the ability to see the empirically valid one.
in this way, feminism and black race politics, and so on constructs all manner of false points that confound the common person from realizing not only what they are about and direct the fruits of their labor towards, but realizing that by their own actions or inaction, are creating that end too…
it puts fixing all these things off limits, and putting the stuff that works back as that would be a return to the old way, the oppressive way, etc..
progress is not measured by improvement any more, as that does not leave room for people who cant compete to compete and be at the table. this anti idea methodology allows the incompetent to take up the alternatives no one wants and has abandoned, unto themselves wholly…. and so, gain a place…
and so long as they can sow pain, exclusion, mind games, confusion, chaos, and apply rules that abuse the general niceness of people until there is no more nicenes… they can aquire power…
ie… incompetence under pretence of help is how you hurt people sociopathically
Grey’s Law states:
“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”
Atfldgrs corollary to grey
As long as we are unwilling to punish incompetence, we are defenseless to malice, and we have accepted that the acme of living is one step below minimum competency…
Neoneocon,
IMO Wisconsin by itself only indicates what’s happening in Wisconsin. However, when taken into account with other evidence (Chris Christie in New Jersey, Cuomo in New York, the healthy economy in Texas and the continuing morass in California, Ilinois and Michigan) it think it speaks to a national trend.
Walter Russell Mead has suggested that this evinces the beginning of the destruction of the “Blue Social Model.” and while I tend to agree with that, I’d never go so far as James Carville and suggest that we are on the doorstep of 40 years of fiscally conservative policy. Would that such were true.
Artfldgr,
You are correct, and to carry your observation further, it is anti-Darwinian (socially speaking). it is one thing to provide a safety net for those who CAN not compete on an equal footing (say Down’s Syndrome children). It wholly another to subsidize those who WON’T contribute even though they can. As a result, as you note above, society subsidizes sub-par performance.
You speak of “one step below minimum competency,” and while that it true, the nefarious aspect of this is that it keeps redefining minimum competency lower and lower; not a regression TO the mean, but a regression OF the mean. Not a “survival of the fittest,” but a “survival of the least fit,” or Darwin’s theory of Devolution.
it is anti-Darwinian (socially speaking). it is one thing to provide a safety net for those who CAN not compete on an equal footing (say Down’s Syndrome children). It wholly another to subsidize those who WON’T contribute even though they can.
As in the old saying, “Nobody’s useless. They can always serve as an example to others.”
The harsh reality is that some people for whatever reason are doomed to fail. Not just the stupid, or the lazy, or the unlucky, even. Some people just put themselves on a trajectory that leads to disaster, and cannot be moved off that trajectory.
(I suspect everyone in academia has encountered such people. Heroic efforts on the academic’s part to help such people merely postpone, but do not change, their fate.)
The only way to “help” such people is to abrogate any sorting at all, and that hurts everyone. So … some people gotta lose, and at some level are determined to do so. I don’t know why, but I accept it.
Occam’s Beard,
I don’t know if some people “gotta” lose; that implies some level of pre-determination. I do believe, however, that there will always be some people who WILL lose (and some people who will ALWAYS lose); that’s just the nature of the Monopoly-like game that life is.
We have run out of other people’s money entirely. We can’t even pretend to have other people’s money available anymore. That makes us inherently a right-of-center nation right now.
I think we only have a limited window in which to make these changes, and people like Christie and Walker are the right people at the right time.
Our present state of economic malaise will not (hopefully) last forever. Hopefully not long after 2012. Once the economy picks up, state and local governments will become flush with cash and the deficit (though not the debt) will become smaller and less menacing to the eye. Once that happens, we can see public attitudes change and moderates become more comfortable with the status quo.
So we have to have leaders willing to make these changes now, so that we can put these reforms in place over the vociferous opposition of the unions.
I think Wisconsin just had the right leaders at the right time. For other states, they need to get started now if they haven’t done so already.
The elections were not as close as one might think. The Left spent all their capital (irony right there) on one race: Darling/Pasche. Darling was the “crown jewel” for the Left. If they could unseat her, they thought they could get them all. Of the four won by the GOP, this was the only one close and it ended 54%-46%. The losses were quite close and considering Dan Kapanke was lucky to win in the first place, it was no surprise. Randy Hopper did not lose because he was associated with Walker. Polls indicate he lost because he cheated on his wife with a (then) 25 y/o staffer. And that one came in at 51%-49%.
I also think there is a reasonable chance to pick up 2 of the three Democrat recalls next week. Kim Simac is running a strong race in northern WI against Holperin and Wirch may be in trouble against his opponent (who’s name escapes me at this moment). We will see next Tuesday.
Deeka: it would be ironic (and in some ways fitting) if all that money were expended on the recall elections and the result was no change in the Rep/Dem balance of the legislature.