In a sign that Republicans are still smarting from the exodus of Democrats during deliberations on the budget, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) told his caucus on Monday that Democrats remain in contempt of the Senate.

That means, he said, that Democrats can't vote on bills or amendments.

Fitzgerald wrote:

"When taking roll call votes on amendments and bills during executive sessions, Senate Democrats votes will not be reflected in the Records of Committee Proceedings or the Senate Journal. They are free to attend hearings, listen to testimony, debate legislation, introduce amendments, and cast votes to signal their support/opposition, but those votes will not count, and will not be recorded."

The Democrats fled to Illinois last month to avoid voting on a bill that would have removed most of the collective bargaining rights of public employees. They returned to the Capitol on Saturday.

Sen. Robert Jauch (D-Polar) said the letter appeared to be a "mean-spirited response from a man who lost the battle of public opinion."

Jauch said the issue of the senators' presence is moot: The budget bill was passed last week and signed by the governor.

"I am not sure what purpose this serves," Jauch said.

I'm obviously biased towards the democratic side on this argument, and I really believe the senators from both sides of the aisle have looked foolish at times during this ordeal, but chalk this one up as a caddy low point for Fitzgerald. He and Walker go on this big rant saying how the 14 were holding up democracy, then when they do return, he says they can't participate! :facepalm:

"musccy" wrote:

Would the $1,000 or so dollars that each senator owes, and the issue of being in contempt have been brought up if the 14 Senators showed up 1 week ago so they could begrudingly vote for the bill they didn't want? Would their 'votes have counted' then?

Again, I think this particular incident looks bad for Fitzgerald, but this whole out-of-state ordeal has looked like a bunch of kids throwing temper tantrums for both sides.

"musccy" wrote:

In early 2010, when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, he fired 26 union security guards who worked at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. They were public employees and were represented by a union, but he fired them anyway, in favor of hiring private security guards. The county board opposed Walkers security-outsourcing move, but he pressed ahead with it anyway, claiming the action was needed due to a budget crisis, to help ameliorate a potential 2010 year-end deficit of around $7 million. After firing the guards, Walker hired private security contractor Wackenhut G4S to provide security services at the Courthouse, as well as two other venues in the county, under a $1.1 million contract.

Walkers strategy of firing the union security guards to cope with a contrived budget emergency went awry. Just last month, on January 10, 2011, an arbitrator ruled that the county did not have a true budget crisis at the time Walker fired the guards, and county officials failed to give the union representing the guards a chance to propose alternative cost-saving measures before laying them off. The arbitrator also said the annual savings Walker claimed the county would realize from privatizing courthouse security was overstated.

The ruling ordered the county to immediately hire back the fired guards, with back pay, and unemployment compensation or wages from any new jobs subtracted. It also guaranteed the fired guards at least 180 days of work the same amount of time that should have been given to the guards union to react to Walkers plan to privatize.

This means that Walkers last rash action toward the publics employees cost the county plenty.

Walkers latest budget emergency justification for attacking unions sounds strikingly similar to the excuse he used to fire the union guards back when he was county executive. The compressed amount of time he gave citizens to react to the bills provision curtailing union workers right to collectively bargain also fits the M.O. he used to back then try to privatize courthouse security. Here is Walkers M.O.: grab the authority, take swift action, and dont allow any time for negotiation or compromise.

Of even more concern than his ill-fated escapade in Milwaukee County is the fact that Walker pushed to outsource decent-paying Wisconsin government jobs to a foreign corporation. Wackenhut (now called G4S) has offices in Jupiter, Florida, but it is owned by a Danish security firm called Group 4 Falck, which bought Wackenhut Corporation in 2002. Another international company that partly owned Wackenhut, Securicor, is based in the United Kingdom. He didnt even outsource the jobs to a Wisconsin based-business.

Meanwhile, instead of paying experienced security officers trained by the state to do the job of securing a government building, such as a county courthouse, the citizens of Wisconsin got stuck with:

* less qualified security guards protecting Wisconsin citizens one of the guards even had a serious criminal record;
* the profits of Walkers no-bid deal going to a global corporation headquartered in Europe;
* lower wages being paid to the contractors hired by that global corporation, meaning less money flowing into the local economy;
* Wisconsin families losing their primary breadwinner due to Scott Walkers rash dictate to fire court security officers who had done nothing wrong; and
* the Wisconsin taxpayer footing the bill for both the global corporations charges (and profit margin) for providing security and also the back wages of the civil servants whose jobs were summarily destroyed by Walker, in violation of Wisconsin law.

Walkers dictates indisputably took decent-paying Wisconsin jobs and handed them to a foreign corporation to profit from, and he did so in the aftermath of global banks crashing the American economy.

What do you guys make of this video?

"djcubez" wrote: