Court ruled, in a 4-3 decision, that Governor Scott Walker's union
law provision in his budget for the state can take effect! Governor
Walker's reaction was succinct: "The Supreme Court's ruling
provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and
focus on getting Wisconsin working again."
Walker has stated that the law was necessary in order to do two
things; to address the Badger State's $3.6 billion budget deficit,
as well as to give local governments some leeway regarding labor
costs to assist them in coping with the coming cutbacks in aid from
Madison. The Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling will likely be
followed by lawsuits aplenty from the public employee unions
and their allies; they were recipients of a knockdown punch and
want to go at least one more round. But Republican legislative
leaders Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly
Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (they're brothers, in case you, my very
observant readers, are wondering), said in a joint statement that
they always believed in the legality of the bill and were confident
of its holding up well under constitutional scrutiny.
The law also requires public employees to pay more for both their
health care and their pensions. For this, thousands of protesters
occupied the state capitol for weeks to pitch a royal one, the
biggest ever witnessed in Wisconsin's history, and the entire
Senate delegation of Democrats played hide 'n' seek to prevent
a vote on the bill. Perish the thought that the people should ever
have a say in how their government operates and how much the
cost should be, think the unions and their comrades! Why, they're
just peasants; they don't matter! They're here to serve the public
workers' unions and the Democrat Party, their handmaiden, not
the other way around! News flash for you left-wing bullies:
You ARE here to serve the people! And of late you've been
doing an appallingly poor job of it! We the citizens of Wisconsin
are not your piggy bank, your ATM, your money tree! It's high
time that your power be curbed and you are reined in! During
this harsh economic climate, which your pal Obama and his
fellow Dems in Washington have made even harsher, we ALL
have to make sacrifices in our personal budgets, our family
budgets, our businesses' budgets, and our government budgets.
What makes you selfish jerks think that you're so special that
not only should you not have to share in the belt-tightening
but that you should receive even MORE money and benefits
with no letup?
Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi was found by the
Wisconsin Supreme Court to have gone above her authority
with her ruling that GOP lawmakers had violated the state's
open meeting statutes in the days before the budget bill's
passage and declared the law void. Dane County District
Attorney Ismael Ozanne, who filed the lawsuit, was also
slapped down along with Judge Sumi. When the Democrat
"fleebaggers" fled to Illinois to try to scuttle a vote on the
legislation, the Republicans countered by convening a
special committee to remove fiscal elements from it and
hold a Senate vote without a quorum. The bill passed and
Walker promptly signed it into law. Ozanne filed his suit
a week later claiming that the GOP lawmakers didn't give
the proper public notice of the meeting, thus violating the
state's law regarding open meetings. But your faithful
Peasant's state's top court rejected that argument, saying
that "the doors of the Senate and Assembly were kept
open to the press and members of the public ... Access
was not denied."
Your diligent Peasant has discovered that a big coalition of
Wisconsin unions has filed a federal lawsuit today challenging
the constitutionality of the state's budget bill. They claim that
the bill violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the
U.S. Constitution by stripping away rights to collectively
bargain, organize, and associate to engage in union as well
as political activity from most of the Badger State's public
sector employees. To this your studious Peasant says that
unions for public employees are a relatively new phenomenon
in our country's history, with President John F. Kennedy having
signed legislation granting these employees the right to organize
into law during the early 1960s. There has neither been a
provision nor an impediment in the Constitution to public
workers forming unions, but past Democrat presidents and
congresses have shied away from enacting such legislation
for concerns over bargaining with them over labor contracts
with money not their own, but that of the public --- the money
from the people's taxes. The reasoning was that the government
would not feel as restrained in offering sizable wages and benefit
packages if it were dealing with public money. But the temptation
to buy the votes and the loyalty of certain interest groups over
time proved to alluring to elected government officials. Now, it
is your favorite Peasant's understanding that the state workers
have more leeway in their ability to bargain for their benefits than
does their federal counterparts. This is something that I shall
research and shall share my findings with you, my beloved
readers, in the days ahead. But as I post this piece, there are
other states doing or contemplating doing what Scott Walker and
the Republicans have done here in Wisconsin. What ultimately
happens in Wisconsin shall have a far-reaching impact on the
rest of the country.
And with our courageous governor and legislators having the
momentum, the prospects for the other 49 states looks very
bright.
MEM
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