Sing it, recallers! The thrill is gone

[Rheo]

Wisconsin In Business:

 

Sing it with Mr. B.B. King!

 

Tuesday’s recall election was a giant repudiation of Big Labor. It was a huge smackdown of the union bosses by a Wisconsin that is 86.5% non-union and tired of all the whining. Gov. Scott Walker was the real winner last night.

 

The air is out of the recall balloon. The government employee unions’ anointed one, Kathleen Falk, was routed big-time. Their cause? In tatters. Their followers, dazed and dispirited.

 

Tom Barrett routed The Kathleen 58% to 34% in the Democrats’ gubernatorial primary precisely because he did not sell his soul to the government labor unions. (In Dane County, where people know Falk best, he won 62% to 31%!)

 

That was expected. Here is the shocker: With no reason for Republicans to vote, Gov. Scott Walker darn near got more votes than the four Democrats combined – 626,538 to 665,436. And how many of his supporters went for Falk in a mischief vote is an open question. What’s more, the Democrats managed to attract only two-thirds as many votes as the 900,000 who signed the recall petitions. Why did almost 300,000 people stay home?

 

Wisconsin isn’t drinking the unions’ Kool Aid

 

The TV news may not have carried the entirety of his victory speech from Milwaukee, but I did not hear Barrett harmonizing with the Solidarity Singers. The collective bargaining privileges (they are not rights) of government employees is, in the scheme of things, an exceedingly small issue – certainly not worth holding the state of Wisconsin hostage over.

 

Repeat after me: Government workers in Wisconsin continue to be paid well and have fabulous benefits and civil service-protected job security.

Good read.

[Rheo]

Tom Barrett used Act 10 but he really didn’t want to

 

 

That Walker kid made him do it.

 

Little Tom Barrett, caught carrying a slingshot in front of the broken window, issues the culprit’s lame defense. “He made me do it.”

It is well documented that the Milwaukee mayor used Scott Walker’s very own Act 10 reforms on collective bargaining to force concessions from his city’s public employees to balance his budget. He actually said they didn’t go far enough. Wanted them to apply to his police and firefighters, too.

 

Doesn’t that totally undercut the Milwaukee mayor’s rationale in the recall election?

[Geee]