I belong to a union. I’m required to pay union dues for my job so if I’m going to pay for the union I figure it is best to have a say in the union. I’m reading all the news articles and listening to the blurbs that our governor elect has been spewing out.
This man seems to consider his employees the enemy. How are we the enemy? Union members go to work daily and provide needed, in some cases critical services to the public. State employees put up with a lot of criticism on all levels. Yet without us, how would the driver’s and car licenses get out to the public? How would criminals be guarded? How would funds go out to the unemployed? These are just a few of the services that are performed by the state workers.
I read today that there are 39,000 union workers employed by the state of Wisconsin. Can Scott Walker really afford to piss off 39,000 workers? The unions have worked with management with the short falls in budget. But here is the thing – the legislators got a 5% raise when we had this short fall. What did they do about it? Did they give it back? This is as bad as the stimulus money being given to banks who then paid huge bonuses with it.
If my income is X, I can’t spend more than that. It is time that our legislators realize that. Raising taxes should not be an option. Wisconsin is already in the second highest level of taxes paid as a percentage of income. (http://www.newgeography.com/content/00754-local-and-state-tax-burden-maps) Unemployment is down slightly from a high of 9.7% to about 7% but that doesn’t mean people have gotten back on their feet yet. (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=state:ST550000&dl=en&hl=en&q=wisconsin+unemployment+rate) It means that some people are back to work. The question becomes are they in a level of position that pays them enough to cover their bills or are they under employed? Plus I just saw where the unemployment rate was back up to 8.3% (http://dwd.wisconsin.gov/dwd/newsreleases/2010/unemployment/100121_state_unemployment_rate_dec.pdf) for December. This increase has been since the election. I guess that says what sort of confidence businesses have in the new leadership.
Our government needs to live in the now. Gas prices are at $3 a gallon. There is very little affordable public transportation outside the major cities. Prices are up, unemployment is up. It is time for the politicians to come out of their ivory towers and see how the real people they represent live and struggle daily.
Unemployment has been further affected by Scott Walker and his tantrum over the high speed rail. He threw such a fit that we will no longer be getting the funds for this project. A project which would have brought in 800 million dollars into our economy is now going elsewhere. There were contracts already awarded and ground already broken on a couple of them. Scott Walker just pissed that away. An international company that makes trains will be leaving as soon as their contract here is up. This means the people who are employed by them will be joining the unemployment ranks. The contractors who were going to hire people to build the rail, won’t be hiring them and may even suffer severe economic failure because the contracts are no more.
Scott Walker may think he knows what is best for Wisconsin but has he bothered to ask the Wisconsinites what they want? Sadly this man is supposed to represent and lead us for the next four years and I am fearful that he will put my family and my finances at risk. He needs to apologize to Obama and suck it up to attempt to get that money back into our state for the rail. He needs to listen to the people who he is supposed to be representing . He represents everyone not just the people who agree with his rhetoric.