On Today Only: A Fundraising Drive for Wisconsin Protestors
If you need help with this or anything else, 300NE is the room to go to.
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On The Selling of Wisconsin: Enter Koch Brothers' Bag Man Jeffrey Schoepke
I'm sure other people could give better and more complete responses, I just spent 10 hours at the Capitol building and I'm exhausted, but there are a few things I need to say. First, here is a link that explains that the Wisconsin state employee pension is one of the healthiest in the country--http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/wisconsin-pension-fund-among-healthiest-us_n_826709.html. So, while I can't speak to West Virginia, our pension fund is actually in good shape.
Second, what's going on in Wisconsin is not about pension contributions or benefits, it's only about union busting. Every single public employee union is willing to take benefit cuts (or at least willing to use the collective bargaining process to work out some cuts or concessions). Our problem, speaking as one public employee union member among thousands, is that Scott Walker is trying to take away our collective bargaining rights wholesale. I can't imagine any union member would say unions are perfect and there are definitely things we need to work on, but that is done through collective bargaining. If Walker takes away our right to collectively bargain, how can we work out any future issues with benefits or pension contributions? Every union is willing to negotiate (because, hey, we're all Wisconsinites and we're all taxpayers), but Scott Walker has refused to negotiate since taking office. He refused to negotiate with my union and then canceled our contract completely as of March 13. And beyond the issue of collective bargaining, Abe has done an awesome job of explaining that there are other very real and dangerous problems in the "budget repair" bill, including selling off our state assets without a bidding process, removing discrimination protection for LGBT employees, and oh yeah, gutting Badgercare and taking away health care from thousands and thousands of my fellow Wisconsinites.
Basically, I don't think the issues you're bringing up have very much to do with what's going on in Wisconsin. I mean, the budget crisis in Wisconsin is manufactured, but even with the numbers Walker claims (something like a $3.5 billion shortfall over two years), cutting our benefits will only save $330 million dollars total. You want a solution? Minnesota has a $6.7 billion shortfall, and Governor Mark Dayton raised about $3 billion dollars towards that by raising taxes slightly on the top 5% of Minnesotans. So, there you go. Done. Stop blaming public sector workers and start blaming the people that are trying to destroy the American middle class.
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On Your Donations Are Off to Madison
This is amazing. I started reading Gawker when I was an undergrad at NYU, and I've been reading The Awl since it started, and that supply list is the same one I've been looking at on the office wall for the past week. I'm a TA and union member at UW-Milwaukee, and I've been in Madison working with my union & my sister union at UW-Madison as much as possible since all of this started. To come home from a long day at the Capitol and see this post, to know that list probably came from either the info table on the rotunda or our office, I can't even believe it. The amount of support that we've gotten, our unions and every public union and everyone that's been out in Madison since last week, is completely unreal and makes everything that we're doing possible. This started out as this local thing, and to see how much support we've gotten and how much it's grown every day, I can't even believe it. I'm sorry, I'm not usually this sincere (I'm a little drunk on all this solidarity and also wine & Jim Beam), but damn. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. This is just so so so awesome and makes me love The Awl more than I already did.
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On Today Only: A Fundraising Drive for Wisconsin Protestors
I already posted this on the update, but seriously, thank you to all of you. I'm just one person among thousands and thousands who have done so much more than me, but the amount of support we've gotten is just overwhelming and absolutely helps us keep going. Thank you.