The new Pew Research Center survey shows that more people “back Wisconsin’s public employee unions rather than the state’s governor in their continuing dispute over collective bargaining rights.” The polling reports that roughly “four-in-ten (42%) say they side more with the public employee unions, while 31% say they side more with the governor, Scott Walker.”
Ezra Klein writes in the Washington Post, “A new PPP [Public Policy Polling] poll of Wisconsin shows that if the state's voters could do it over again, they'd elect Walker's opponent as governor.” The reason for that is “self-identified Republicans who are also union members.” So the numbers are changing.
Be that as it may, the public relations implications are also becoming less favorable for Governor Walker. I asked a question of former military public affairs professionals, who are used to dealing with tough situations and who are not political public relations people. “If you were the public affairs officer for the governor’s office in Wisconsin, what would be your top concerns?" Here is a sampling.
“Groupthink trumping sound PA [Public Affairs] advice,” responded Jamie Robertson, communication director of a Canadian government commission involved in public safety. “Telling the governor what he needs to hear, not what he wants to hear,” Robertson added.
"My main concern is not that [Governor Walker’s] efforts to control costs will be misunderstood or that all [Walker’s] actions will be cast in an unfavorable light by interested parties. That's part of politics today,” responded J. David Knepper, principal of a Florida media firm. "My main concern . . . is that [he will not do] what is right.”
David Cagle, president of a California public relations and communications company answered, “With the newly released audiotape of the governor admitting to a prankster that his office had considered using agitators amongst the demonstrators, and admitting in a press release that the voice we hear is indeed his, I just don't know how he could be doing it worse.” He continued, “The only . . . thing he can do now is start telling the truth.”
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Steve
I appreciate your article, Tommy. I believe that it is time for public union workers to have the taste of the recession that I've had for the last two plus years in the private sector. God knows I've made sacrifices just like many other Americans. The taxpayers of WI have been living day by day throughout this economic drought paying too much for their services through taxation.
I think that with public union employees, collective bargaining should cease. In my opinion, it is acceptable for private sector union employees to collectively bargain because as a potential customer, I can decide whether or not to do business with a unionized company.
It is a farce that these union members are portrayed as a "less fortunate" class of citizenry. In reality, these Wisconsinites are in a class of their own. Their quality of life, salaries, and benefits are much better and do not parallel that of the arch-typical American middle class.
I can only hope that someday my home state of Connecticut can be saved by daring leadership such as that of Scott Walker. He isn't trying to re-invent the wheel. He is returning to the "back to basics" conservative mentality that he was elected for. I wish Governor Walker and the State of Wisconsin the best.
2 - Ruvy
My wife used to work for the US Dept. of the Treasury when we lived in the States. She had an excellent health insurance plan, paid sick leave, paid vacation time and ten federal holidays off, all paid, and on top of all this, she had a pension plan that she contributed about half to. She made reasonable money for the work she did, and I was as grateful as all hell for it. When she complained about the union dues she had taken out every two weeks, I kept reminding her that it was the union that had gotten her all the benefits she had and that we both benefited from - particularly the health insurance, and eventually, when we left the States, the pension plans we cashed out. My father was a union organizer when he wasn't driving a truck.
So, it is not like I don't comprehend the value and importance of unions.
Nevertheless, the State of Wisconsin has made some very bad choices in the way it negotiated contracts in the past, and now it is not in the position to give money out from a bare cupboard. Those days have finally come to an end.
This is not a matter of a governor looking good or bad. It is a matter of governments in the States going flat broke. That is the over-arching issue that dwarfs the issue that Tommy Mack raises here - that of public relations.
3 - Rich Falli s
Actually, the number of potential lay-offs is much much more than 12-13 thousand.
School Districts and municipalities choked of transfers from the State will be required to do Mr. Walker's job for him by laying perhaps as many as 25-30 thousand workers, with another 6 thousand retiring to keep their pensions intact.
As well, by raping the public school system of almost a billion dollars, the Governor intends to offer every school child the opportunity for an education 'voucher'. The state will essentially pay 70% of the cost of a private school education. Only wealthy people will be able to take advantage of this socialism for the rich, while kids who are disadvantaged or who live in homes of limited income will remain trapped in cash-strapped second rate skewls. Currently, Wisconsin ranks second in SAT scores.
4 - Doug Hunter
"The state will essentially pay 70% of the cost of a private school education."
Shouldn't that be offset by the state saving 100% of the cost of instructing that child at a public school?
5 - Clavos
Shouldn't that be offset by the state saving 100% of the cost of instructing that child at a public school?
Which often costs more than what a private school spends, and the private school gets better results.
6 - Glenn Contrarian
Never mind that private schools' students normally come largely from the more affluent sector and from the same cultural sector, are often strongly affiliated with a local church, and usually do NOT have to deal with disabled children...
...whereas public schools deal with children of ALL races, of ALL cultures, of ALL religions, of ALL levels of ability, no matter how severe the disability...
For instance, for the two medically-fragile children I have who I send to school every day (on the wheelchair-accessible school bus), the state forks over funding to pay for the LPN or RN assigned specifically to one child (and NOT as the 'school nurse), and a caregiver for the other child (who at 18 y.o. has a mental age of about 12-18 months).
Private schools will normally NOT take these children because they simply do not have the capability to deal with them.
And let's not forget that most private schools do NOT provide school buses to bring kids back and forth to school. Many do, but most don't.
So in other words, public schools do far, far more than do most private schools. I'd love to see how the costs-per-student would compare if a private school were to provide every one of the services that a public school normally does.
7 - Tommy Mack
Folks, the show is on. Layoffs begin Friday. But wait there's more!
File this under Dept of Redundancy Dept: WI Senate Republicans have passed a measure holding their absent Democrat colleagues in contempt for not filing for a leave of absence.
The show is on means exactly what I write.
As to Governor Walker, he is
“a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.â€
Tommy
8 - Clavos
I see the good governor in a different light -- as Henry V:
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more/Or close the wall up with our English dead/In peace there's nothing so becomes a man/As modest stillness and humility/But when the blast of war blows in our ears/Then imitate the action of the tiger/Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood/Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage"
9 - roger nowosielski
You can't really, Clavos, if only for lack of gravity. Yours is but a literary repartee.
10 - Irvin F Cohen
As to # 8
As a true warrior once upon a time, Henry V's quoted passage was the lifeblood of my soul. Unfortunately "the blast of war in (the good governor's) ears" has come - but instead of "the tiger" he has imitated the character of a rather tame pussy cat.
11 - Baronius
Maybe Walker will be Ophelia!
We have no idea how this situation will play out, or what character Walker will most resemble.
They're sending out layoff notifications today, but they layoffs won't begin for 31 days.
12 - Cindy
Nevertheless, the State of Wisconsin has made some very bad choices in the way it negotiated contracts in the past,
Yes, the very recent past...like once Walker got into office. (chuckle) Walker began with a budget surplus and gave his capitalist cronies cuts until he had a budget deficit.
This is not a matter of a governor looking good or bad. It is a matter of governments in the States going flat broke.
So, Walker created the problem by giving to the wealthy. Now he wants to steal from the worker to make up for it.
After rewarding his corporate supporters with a $117 million tax break, Wisconsin's newly-elected Tea Party Governor, Scott Walker, manufactured a $137 million budget shortfall in order to go after public employees, including their basic civil right to form a union and bargain collectively. As Stanley Kutler reports on Truthdig.org, prior to Walker's huge tax giveaway to corporations, Wisconsin's non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau predicted a budget surplus of $67 million for 2011. (source)
13 - Cindy
Tea party proponents are pathological liars. They claim to be for The People. What they actually want to do is enforce their ideology on The People, regardless of what the actual people want.
They will lie to you and claim they believe that the free market is the fairest system. Really they just fucking blatantly support wealth over human value--all the time, every time. They have no problem with outrageous military spending and waste and I can't remember seeing one of them criticizing military spending.
How do they justify that a human life is worth so much less than something that has been conjured up--such as is money. They talk about fairness and freedom. They consider money more important than people. In the free marketplace human life is cheap.
They are always about trying to cut social programs. Many of them appear to me to be irredeemably far along on the scale of psychopathy.
14 - Cindy
I am all for giving them land and allowing them to rape and pillage each other to their grinchy little hearts' content.
15 - Cindy
Whilst leaving the rest of us alone.
16 - Tommy Mack
You may remember that Walker rejected already-approved federal funding to build a high-speed train between Milwaukee and Madison, when he first became governor, that his predecessor said would stimulate Wisconsin's economy and create 5,500 jobs. Of course former Governor Jim Doyle is a Democrat.
With respect to his alleged emulation of Ronald Reagan, a Tea Party favor, Walker seems ignorant of the fact that his hero served as president of the Screen Actors Guild â€" a labor union.
Tommy
17 - Baronius
Cindy is factually wrong. The budget shortfall was reported in January, before the tax cuts (which became law in early February). The shortfall is due largely to lower-than-expected tax revenues over the past year. Walker's tax cuts are projected to raise the total tax revenues of Wisconsin, but they don't show up in the numbers under discussion today. Cindy's source for the false information is the Communist Party USA's website.
18 - handyguy
Baronius, Walker's 'budget repair bill' [rolling my eyes here] is much more a case of political muscle-flexing than a genuine attempt to 'repair' the budget. The inclusion of shocking irrelevancies like allowing the governor to sell government power plants to private companies without bids, and to reduce at his discretion health care assistance for the poor, is telling.
Conservatives may possibly win this battle, since they obviously have the votes. But they are losing the war, as public opinion turns against the ugly take-no-prisoners Walker style of governance.
19 - roger nowosielski
Anything Baronius disagrees with is either a Communist plot or the devil's design. The Cold War is over, Baronius, get over it.
And how do the tax cuts help remedy the sitution - the budget shortfall, that is, whether real or manufactured? The fact that the unions conceded to Walker's financial stipulations and the jackass is still pressing on is all one needs to know that the fight is ideological in basis, beyond the bean-counter mentality. It's the new Republican strategy, encouraged by the successes in midterm elections, to win the White House and the Senate come 2012, budget shortfall serving as a pretext. Nothing but human hubris gloating as a result of victory and masquerading under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
20 - Cindy
The budget shortfall was reported in January, before the tax cuts...
Oh, I guess that makes everything okay then. Presuming you are correct, I will reiterate.
How's this:
Walker, knowing there was a budget shortfall then gave cuts to his political corporate cronies and then decided the shortfall should be paid for by workers.
The shortfall is due largely to lower-than-expected tax revenues over the past year.
Makes perfect sense then to give the rich some more tax breaks.
Walker's tax cuts are projected to raise the total tax revenues of Wisconsin...
You mean like EVERY CORPORATE TAX CUT TO DATE HAS BEEN PROJECTED TO DO???????
YOU MEAN LIKE THE BUSH TAX CUTS????
THE ONES STILL IN EFFECT DURING THE CURRENT CRISIS?????
IS ANYONE SWALLOWING THIS BULLSHIT ANYMORE????
21 - roger nowosielski
Only the recipients of the tax cuts!
22 - Cindy
That's right, Roger.
Because Bush's tax cuts brought us the prosperity we enjoy today.
23 - Baronius
Roger, I'm not exaggerating. The site that Cindy linked to is politicalaffairs.net. According to their About page, "Political Affairs is affiliated with the Communist Party, USA". The tipoff for me was the site's slogan, "Marxism. Fresh. Daily.". As I pointed out, and Cindy does not dispute, the information in the article was false. Cindy is literally spreading commie lies. :)
24 - roger nowosielski
I've yet to know a rich man to put others' interests ahead of his own. It must be "in the blood." Yet they all think they're anything less than transparent, high-minded and objective.
25 - Dr Dreadful
I see the good governor in a different light -- as Henry V
At the siege of Harfleur. Hmm...
But is Gov. Walker the besieger or the besieged?