Wisconsin
If you're surprised by this, you haven't been paying attention.
Walker exempted police and firefighters in 2011 from his infamous Act 10 in 2011 -- the one that caused massive, month-long protests in the state Capitol. Act 10 was Walker's attempt to crush his political opponents -- unions representing teachers, snow plow drivers, solid waste workers and nurses -- by eviscerating their right to bargain collectively.
Wisconsin's police and firefighters are not stupid. They stood with their public-sector brothers and sisters during the protests.
Walker's plan was clear from the beginning. He was even caught on camera divulging his "divide and conquer" strategy to a billionaire, tax-avoiding donor in January 2011. Now he's putting it into play.
FOX News in Milwaukee reported the story:
Police and fire unions were exempted from the reforms, but now, Gov. Scott Walker has suggested expanding Act 10 to include those unions.
“I think now, for those areas, having seen that the world didn’t come to an end for other municipal employees, there might be a greater opening going forward because they’d say, ‘hey, you know, things worked out,’” Gov. Walker said Monday, July 29th...
Gov. Walker says the reason for that was public safety.
“If I had one jurisdiction where somebody walked off, or didn’t come to work or slowed down on things, and someone was injured or killed because of that — I said I can’t deal with that,” Gov. Walker said.The obvious question is why he didn't do it earlier if safety was such a concern?
Maybe he was too busy killing jobs. The fact is things haven't "worked out" for other municipal employees, as Wisconsin's economy has been in the toilet since -- oh, just about the time Walker took office.
