The Wisconsin Fleebaggers keep saying that all they want is for Governor Scott Walker to come to the table and negotiate on his budget-repair bill, and they’ll end their hostaging of Wisconsin government. However, new e-mails released by Walker’s office show that the governor has negotiated on key aspects of his union reforms, perhaps to an extent that might make his supporter nervous:
This directly refutes the notion pushed by the state Senators who fled the state that Walker has unilaterally refused to bargain with them. In fact, here are the specific proposals offered by Walker as a compromise:
• Public employee union bargaining over wages would no longer be limited to the rate of inflation.
• Unions would be allowed to bargain over certain economic issues, including mandatory overtime, performance bonuses, hazardous duty pay and classroom size. On this set of issues, both labor and management would have to agree to discuss them for bargaining to happen.• Unions could bargain over workplace safety, but that would be limited to workers’ physical health and safety. It would not allow bargaining over hours, overtime, sick leave or family leave, work schedules or vacation.
• Unions would have to vote every three years to remain active, with the first of those votes coming within one year of the bill becoming law. The current version of the bill would require unions to vote to recertify every year – starting this April – and require them to get at least 51% of workers’ votes.
• Employees of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority would not lose all union bargaining rights.
• The Legislature’s budget committee would have to approve changes to state health programs for the poor sought by the Walker administration. The budget-repair bill gives Walker broad powers to reshape those Medicaid health programs, which cover more than 1 million state residents.
let no crisis go to taste
Harcos Laboratories, a maker of novelty products such as a “Zombie Blood” energy drink and a “Nuclear Energy Powder,” began selling an energy drink Tuesday inspired by Charlie Sheen’s proclamations that he has “tiger blood” and “Adonis DNA.”
“Tiger Blood Energy Potion,” the company’s website says, is “made from 100% passion specifically to make your brain fire in a way that’s not from this particular terrestrial realm.” The drink is packaged in a pouch resembling blood bags used by medical facilities and contains 80mg of caffeine…
author!author!
With profound apologies to Rudyard Kipling, circa 1917, I offer a Tea Party poem:
—The Choice—
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS:
TO the Judge of Right and Wrong
with Whom fulfillment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.Let Freedom`s land rejoice!
Our bonds will be riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayers or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the spending and doubting years.But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
Tea Party opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.In We the People rejoice!
We see and hold the good–
Bear witness, nation, we have made our choice
For Tea Party`s brotherhood.Then praise the American Spirit
Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Which bade us choose that we might suffer
But not the living Soul!
Master KisPian Mr. Colonel Jerry, SIR!!!
a big f'in new deal
whereas Mr. Jackson Jr admits there’s no Constitutional right to medical care…
…we need to add to the Constitution the right to medicalcare...
hokay
If you’re having some sort of issue registering or logging in could you e-mail me at my GMail address over there in the sidebar? That way I can communicate directly with you and get it resolved specifically.
We’re trying real hard to keep up with stuff and finding the issues mentioned randomly in comments is making it a little more difficult than it needs to be. I can probably fix it easily if you all work with me here.
The Emir and a few others ( THANK YOU!!! ) have been working diligently on this for over two months. By starting over from scratch we not only know from start to finish how this blog operates, we’ll be able to fix and maintain it without too much trouble. Ourselves. I’ve put my gracious host through far far too much grief for all he has gifted me.
I know it’s a pain in the ass but we had no other option. For the last two or three years we have been frantically keeping the old site chugging along but it finally started falling apart and eating itself and we’ve been at the point where we have to close a post in order to post something new because we maxed out the stupid software.
I’d like to get everyone settled in as soon as possible so we can just shut up and blog. Ultimately this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to this blog besides all of you.
there's a word for this dahling
Huffington Post contributor Visual Arts Source has announced that it will cease to provide the site with content until HuffPost agrees to pay its writers – and it wants other HuffPost writers and contributors to join in.
In a post on the company’s website, Visual Arts Source publisher and co-editor Bill Lasarow writes that he was well aware of the Huffington Post’s payment policy when his company agreed to provide the site with content. However, in light of Aol’s decision to buy the Huffington Post for $315 million, the company has done some reassessing, coming up with two specific demands:
And just like the corporate titans of the American Right, it would come as no surprise if Ms Huffington, whom I am certain has a good heart and only the best intentions, were to assume the obvious position: Who needs these people anyway? They are not even employees.
Nonetheless, we shall remain on strike until these two demands are met. First, a pay schedule must be proposed and steps initiated to implement it for all contributing writers and bloggers. Second, paid promotional material must no longer be posted alongside editorial content; a press release or exhibition catalogue essay is fundamentally different from editorial content and must be either segregated and indicated as such, or not published at all.
One of the goals in organizing this strike, Lasarow explains, is to “professionalize” the relationship among the HuffPost and its contributors. Additionally, he writes, it is “unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing.”…
JustinCredible
tonight's food it's what's for dinner
Oh, those were Calamari steaks last night.
being gay is less gay
A sailor is accusing the Navy of baselessly trying to discharge him for “unprofessional conduct” in an effort to get around the recent “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal, after being found asleep in the same bed with another male sailor.
Navy Petty Officer Stephen Jones, a student at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, South Carolina, told CNN that on the night of February 5, a male sailor stopped by to watch the CW TV show “Vampire Diaries.”“He has come over to watch shows in the past,” Jones said.
The two watched the show on his bed but accidentally fell asleep…
we're gonna need a bigger trashbag
As the Capitol building reopened following two judges’ orders to stop prohibiting public access to the building, another huge, sign- carrying crowd massed in downtown Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday, March 5.
Once again, there was a festive, playful mood. Protesters carried inflatable palm trees in the frigid weather and signs that read: “Fox News Will Lie About This” (a reference to video of union members screaming and shoving at a rally on Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor,” which O’Reilly claimed was from Wisconsin [ no, he did not ], but which clearly showed palm trees and sunshine in the background.)
Capitalism: a love story…….
Capitol Kids, a high-end toy store on the capitol square, was selling bright red t-shirts for kids, with the legend “Teach Me How to Protest,” and the Wisconsin Solidarity sign: a blue fist in the shape of the state of Wisconsin and a white star in the middle.
In addition, the store advertised “a new shipment of noise-makers” “mini-tambourines, train whistles, kazoos and bells which join our very popular vuvuzelas and drums….
Michael Moore took the stage to tell the crowd “I am so proud of you.”
“For three weeks you’ve stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois. Whatever it took, you did it. And one thing is certain, Madison is only the beginning,” Moore said.
He connected the protests in Wisconsin to the struggle against economic and political inequality nationally and around the world. The movement is “a little bit of Egypt and a little bit of Madison,” he said.
Revving up the crowd, he talked about how a tiny minority of billionaires bought our political process, and torpedoed public spending on things that benefit most people like education, suppressed wages and benefits, and concentrated wealth in a few hands. “But that wasn’t enough for them,” he said. “Now they want your soul. . . . They want your dignity.” Now they are arguing that working people can’t even have a place at the table, Moore said. He described a pilot making $19,000 a year who can’t even negotiate for a few more hours of sleep in his car at the O’Hare parking lot.
He begged reporters to write down a statistic: that 400 people in the United States now have more wealth than half of all Americans combined–155 million people.
“The few who have the most money don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes,” Moore said. Furthermore, “They are the very people who don’t pay their taxes crashed our economic system.”
“The nation is not broke, my friends,” Moore said. “Wisconsin is not broke.There is plenty of money to go around.”