StrangeSox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 06:26 AM) Except in this case, this very directly hurts the lowest classes way more than it hurts corporations. Elasticity of gasoline is very low anyway, let alone for the poor. This is essentially a new tax on the poor if subsidies go away. It is the same thing with farm subsidies. Must...give...the billionaires...more...money! Alternatively, instead of subsidizing record corporate profits, we could simply subsidize the cost of gasoline with needs-testing!

That was the problem. They didn't run from debate. Walker came out right away and said no negotiations. This whole thing came out of nowhere. It wasn't like Obama campaigning on HCR for two years and then having Congress debate it for another year.

Oil prices are rocketing due to reasonable fears of widespread unrest across the mideast in countries like Saudi Arabia. You're not really making a good case for corporations here, though. Give them tax breaks or they'll f*** you over, hard!

QUOTE (iamshack @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:39 PM) I respect your opinion, but this is about as blasphemous as it gets for me...March Madness is widely opined to be the greatest event in all of sports...I have never had a favorite college team (other than when I was at SIU), and yet I am still absolutely glued to the tv for the entire tournament. I took off school and/or work for the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament since I was about 8 years old until the last few years, when I took a job where I can't really miss a shift. You honestly don't care for it at all? I don't dislike March Madness, I just don't really care the much about it and certainly don't love it. Because I don't care about college sports in general. I don't think there's anything wrong with people getting excited about it, though, and I do think the concept of the whole thing is great, even if I don't consume the product. My post should have been directed more at men's basketball/football in general, I just brought up March Madness due to timing. The BCS, though, s***can that whole thing.

If we don't continue to redistribute the wealth to our corporate masters, we'll be punished.

He's removing collective bargaining from all of the unions, except the couple that supported his campaign. This is so transparently ideological.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:57 PM) They should be forced to pay for protections that aren't working? I need to know when you stopped beating your wife before I can answer that one.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:46 PM) But I thought public employees got paid less than their private sector counterparts? Yes, they do. Why should we pay them less than they get now?

QUOTE (hitlesswonder @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:41 PM) Most workers in Wisconsin are not public employees but are taxpayers. Public employees do not have a monopoly on the term "worker" -- far from it. Well, most workers in Wisconsin are educated by public employees, for one. Really, though, why should public workers have their rights gutted? So we can pay them less, give them poorer benefits and drive away good public workers?

crabs in a bucket

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:27 PM) Unless the state's education system or infrastructure deteriorate because those positions pay worse going rates and thus attract progressively lower quality employees. But if we keep cutting workers' pay, we can also cut corporate taxes! Then corporations can come and offer low-wage jobs to maximize profits!

QUOTE (hitlesswonder @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:24 PM) Is "anti-worker" meant to be sarcastic? Public workers will no longer be forced to contribute dues to a union via automatic payroll deduction. And in the bigger picture, you get lower taxes and more private sector jobs across the state...I think this bill is pro-worker. QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:27 PM) Unless the state's education system or infrastructure deteriorate because those positions pay worse going rates and thus attract progressively lower quality employees. Pretty much what Balta said. Removing collective bargaining rights isn't pro-worker. Lower corporate taxes that funnel wealth from public sector employees to a small number of wealthy corporate owners isn't pro-worker. Gutting public education in favor of vouchers for overwhelmingly religious private schools that show no better results is not pro-worker.

The dems did do a pretty good job of being able to highlight how these union-busting, anti-worker measures have no financial impact by legal definition.

A majority of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban. Also in Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6022/1256.full

Climate science really kicked off in the 90's, right? Mann's famous hockey stick, which has been largely confirmed I believe, was from 98 or 99. I know it sounds weird, but five years ago was 2006. That's several years after Inconvenient Truth and the follow-up blockbuster documentary, The Day After Tomorrow.

I will run a smear campaign using selectively edited SoxTalk posts to bring you down.

Seriously, who makes death threats?

I'm going to go the conventional route and say Illinois under-performs as always.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:34 AM) Yeah, I was trying to infer that. I meant poor & middle class & lower upper class vs. wealthy elite. Glad you agree!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:27 AM) The most interesting thing about pulling up the bills in the State of Indiana was how many lies the unions were telling the teachers here. I caught many things that were just out-right false in the information they were spreading around our school system. I had to show my wife, who is a teacher, the bills themselves to disprove a lot of what the union officials were telling them. Sure, it's not a one-way street. Both parties are irreparably corrupted, imo.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:06 AM) Honestly, this sounds exactly like a Republican post during the Heath Care Bill debate. Except you'd have to invert who's negatively impacted and who's positively impacted.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:12 AM) Sure, and the not-really-filibusters (virtual filibusters, whatever you want to call them) are something I find really stupid policy, I don't think that rule should exist, and I hope it dies as soon as possible. But, the GOP and the Dems are NOT abusing the system by using it - what they are doing is letting down the American people, and I think the single best way to fix that is for the American people to get more involved, more knowledgeable, and hold their delegates to government more responsible for their actions. I've said repeatedly, there are three big reasons why Congress keeps getting more dysfunctional. One is corporate interests having too much power, another is the current reality that big money wins elections, but the final and by far biggest reason is that the voters are failing miserably at their jobs. Its stunning what a small percentage of people vote, and just as stunning to me what a small percentage of those people actually bother to invest even a little time finding out who they are really voting for. It's hard to find out what you're really voting for when reasons 1 and 2 spend hundreds of millions of dollars to deliberately misinform you.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:08 AM) It's law thats being voted on and passed by representatives elected by the people of the state. The way he went about it may be wrong, but at some point the Democrats were gonna have to show up and the law was gonna pass legally. That's my point. I'm not saying anything the Republicans did here was illegal. We have a system that allows transparently terrible legislation that negatively impacts a large number of citizens for the gain of a small handful like this to pass and stand legally.

Our system allows Walker's smash-and-grab bills to become the law of the land. It allows him to legally f*** over the majority of the state in favor of a select few. Having to wait 4 years to *hopefully* elect someone to fix his disastrous policy isn't exactly a comforting thought for those he's trampling over right now. The system allows for these abuses. That, to me, says there's something wrong with the system. I'm not going to pretend I have the remedy, though.