Scott Walker Survives Recall -- Public Service Unions Epic Fail

Don't know what this world is coming to but I am agreeing with Andrew Sullivan again.  He is correct that when someone is elected that should be allowed to serve out their term.  If there is no criminal act then there is absolutely no reason to recall.  The very idea that someone is elected in a general election and because one group or another doesn't like the way the person governs, they are subject recall is ludicrous.  That is short sighted and expensive to the taxpayers in this age of austerity.  This was epic fail on the part of the Public Service Unions which couldn't happen to a better bunch of people.

Never have figured out why there are unions for public employees.  If they are like the unions for federal employees I saw in action, it is run by a bunch of people who don't want to do their job and every little hiccup they take off from their main job to help someone who has a complaint.  Took our office nearly three years to get a rid of a totally incompetent employee who had ever reason in the world not to show up for work -- never had a doctor's excuse but was always sick.  Even the union steward agreed she should be fired but union rules didn't permit him to help so he was an adversary.  That is just wrong and why so many public service employees are there for a free ride.  They make legitimate public service employees look really bad.  Try firing an incompetent teacher -- not going to happen in most cases yet they are doing our students a disservice.  So many teacher's unions put their teachers ahead of the students which is flat out wrong.

Something has to give but having a recall election for a Governor because you don't like his policies is dumb, stupid, and a waste of money.  You can tell from exit polls that some Democrats felt the same way and only 38% of union households even voted.  Most voters really do understand.

This sign from The Dish says it all!

Wisconsin - And The Rest Of Us 

 

Andrew Sullivan
June 6, 2012 

Readers know the Dish hasn't exactly been fixated on the epic partisan struggle in Wisconsin over public sector union rights. The reason? I'm not that interested in raw purely partisan mudfights, and while I don't see the harm in allowing public sector unions to retain some collective bargaining rights, especially in an era when unions can be seen as institutions putting a break on soaring economic inequality, I also believe there's a difference between public sector and private sector unions, and that curtailing the massive collective costs that public union benefits place on the public is a perfectly legitimate way to cut spending. It may be vital if we are to regain some fiscal balance. But when all is said and done, my bottom line is that I believe in democratic elections, and granting legitimacy to your opponents when they win. 

Leaving aside the issues being fought over, Scott Walker won an election, and absent some grotesque abuse of power, he deserved to serve his term out. I don't think turning out to be even more radical than the platform you ran on is a grotesque abuse of power. It is precisely the kind of over-reach that is best left to the voters at the next election, rather than creating a massive, disruptive, premature political storm that can only deepen partisan deadlock and mistrust. What Wisconsin means in microcosm is not so much a portent of the future November election (though it may be that), or a decisive turn toward fiscal retrenchment (thought it certainly seems that way), but a case study in the complete breakdown of our political system, and of public trust. 

The Democrats refused to allow Walker to serve his full term and then seek the judgment of the voters. They acted throughout as if he were somehow illegitimate. They refused the give-and-take of democratic politics, using emergency measures for non-emergency reasons. And in this, they are, it seems to me, a state-based mirror-image of the GOP in Washington. Just as Walker was quite clearly a far right candidate and implemented an agenda that was predictable from the spirit if not the letter of his campaign, so Obama ran precisely on what he has done in office, despite the crushing emergency he was handed on becoming president. His healthcare reform was not suddenly revealed in a bait-and-switch operation. It was exhaustively debated in the primaries and the fall campaign; ditto the stimulus, a no-brainer for any president looking into a deflationary abyss; ditto ending the war in Iraq; and focusing on al Qaeda in counter-terrorism, rather than social engineering of quixotic proportions in counter-insurgency. 

He has done what he said he'd do. And yet he has been treated as illegitimate and utterly unworthy of any cooperation or compromise by the congressional and media GOP. I worry that Ross's prediction of zero-sum scorched earth politics in an era of spiraling austerity is accurate. I worry that the polarization that Obama tried to overcome has now been innoculated by the virus of victory. 

(Photo: A sign supporting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stands outside a home June 4, 2012 in Clinton, Wisconsin. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.)  Source:  The Dish