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  • Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

    Apparently not. It's called capitalism. The Koch Brothers AND the state workers can't both win, so the governor is choosing the Koch brothers.
    The evil, scary Koch brothers gave Scott Walker $43,000. Or, a whopping .5% of his campaign contributions.
    Contrast that with the 13 of the fleeing Democrats (one took no money) that got anywhere from 24-73% of their campaign contributions from labor unions.
    As an aside, how come no one ever mentions the $20million the Koch brothers gave to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. Next bogeyman please.

    Actually, if Walker repeals the tax cuts he enacted days before this whole mess started the state would magically have the money.

    Strange how that happens.
    Nope. This delightful Rachel Maddow reporting has been declared false by the non-partisan Politifact organization.
    Last edited by WeWantMore; 02-28-2011, 07:20 PM.

  • #2
    Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

    Originally posted by Priceless
    Education is the single most important controllable factor in American citizens ability to be productive...and worker productivity happens to pay directly or indirectly for most of the rest of our public services. Therefore government intervention is needed to ensure that everyone in the lower half of society gets a good education. And yes, ensuring quality delivery via teachers is among the most critical components of this strategy. So we need to ensure we install quality via evalution and performance requirements...but no, we should absolutely not leave the talent of our teaching pool up to market forces.
    What does that last bit mean? Pick a salary - any salary - and people who can make more money elsewhere will do so. The talent of the teaching pool will always be subject to market forces.
    If you don't change the world today, how can it be any better tomorrow?

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    • #3
      Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

      Originally posted by LynahFan View Post
      What does that last bit mean? Pick a salary - any salary - and people who can make more money elsewhere will do so. The talent of the teaching pool will always be subject to market forces.
      I have no idea because I didn't write it. You'll have to ask the person who did.

      Originally posted by WeWantMore View Post
      The evil, scary Koch brothers gave Scott Walker $43,000. Or, a whopping .5% of his campaign contributions.
      And just how much did the Koch brothers funnel to Walker's campaign through the RGA?

      Walker was elected just over three months ago on the heels of an exceptionally expensive gubernatorial race in the Badger State, fueled by groups funded by the Koch brothers, David and Charles. David Koch, the son of a radical founding member of the John Birch Society, which has long been obsessed with claims about socialism and advocated the repeal of civil rights laws, personally donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June of last year. This was the most he had ever personally given to that group. (Fellow billionaire Rupert Murdoch matched Koch's donation to the RGA with a $1 million donation from his company News Corporation, parent company of FOX "News" Channel.)

      The RGA in turn spent $5 million in the race, mostly on TV ads attacking Walker's political opponent, Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett. As this photo shows, the RGA described itself as a "key investor" in Walker's victory. In its congratulations, the RGA notes that it "ran a comprehensive campaign including TV and internet ads and direct mail. The series of ads were devastating to Tom Barrett ... All told, RGA ran 8 TV ads and sent 8 pieces of mail for absentee, early voting, and GOTV, totaling 2.9 million pieces."

      The Center for Media and Democracy reported on some of the RGA's spin-filled ads last November, including the ads against Barrett, and filed a snapshot report this week. As the RGA takes credit, its multi-million dollar negative ad campaign probably did help make the difference between the 1.1 million votes cast for Walker against Barrett's 1 million votes. According to Open Secrets, Koch Industries was one of the top ten donors to the RGA in 2010, giving $1,050,450 to help with governors' races, like Walker's.

      As Mother Jones has noted, the Koch Industries' political action committee, KochPAC, gave Walker's campaign $43,000 directly (according to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board). It may seem like a small amount compared with the millions the Kochs are spending funding the RGA and other groups, but that donation was one of the larger individual donations to Walker not from an expressly-named partisan PAC. It is, however, a drop in the bucket compared with the impact of a million-dollar negative ad campaign, especially because the candidate promoted by the mud-slingers does not have to get his hands dirty.
      Or other shadow groups?

      The laundering of Koch dollars through the RGA dwarfs the Kochs' direct donations to Walker, and it also does not tell the whole story. As the Center for Media and Democracy has been documenting on its SourceWatch site for several years, David Koch was the founder and chairman of a front group called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which received at least $12 million from the Koch Family Foundations and which is the predecessor of the group Americans for Prosperity.

      Notably, Americans for Prosperity bragged that it was going to spend nearly $50 million across the country in the November elections. As one of the groups exploiting the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to allow unlimited spending by corporations to influence election outcomes, it does not disclose its donors and it does not report its expenditures on so-called "issue ads." It did run such ads in Wisconsin last fall.

      Americans for Prosperity has actively supported and promoted Scott Walker in a variety of ways. It featured him at its tea party rally in Wisconsin in September 2009, when he was running for the Republican nomination for governor. Americans for Prosperity also ran millions of dollars in ads on a "spending crisis" (a crisis it did not run ads against when Republicans were spending the multi-billion dollar budget surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit), and it selected Wisconsin as one of the states for those ads in the months before the election. It also funded a "spending revolt" tour in Wisconsin last fall through its state "chapter."

      Just how much money has Americans for Prosperity and its Wisconsin counterpart spent on issue ads or promoting Walker over the past two years is one of the questions for this weekend's orchestrated "Stand with Walker" event.
      Link

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      • #4
        Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

        Originally posted by Priceless View Post
        I have no idea because I didn't write it. You'll have to ask the person who did.
        And just how much did the Koch brothers funnel to Walker's campaign through the RGA?
        Or other shadow groups?
        Link
        Right, but $1 million to the RGA (to be spread over a whole host of competitive governors races) is still a pittance. Especially because there's an equal organization, the DGA, also receiving and spending money. Even assuming the whole $1million went to Walker (and that would be silly, because it didn't) it's still a lesser % of money than unions gave to Democrats.

        Since the second block quote doesn't give numbers, it's tough to really address. Yes, they ran ads for a spending crisis that ran in Wisconsin, but those ads also benefited Ron Johnson, the Republicans in contested House races, local races, and so on.

        I'm not exactly sure about what the point of any of this is. There's money spent in politics- are you surprised?
        Last edited by WeWantMore; 02-28-2011, 07:49 PM.

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        • #5
          Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

          Originally posted by WeWantMore View Post
          The evil, scary Koch brothers gave Scott Walker $43,000. Or, a whopping .5% of his campaign contributions.
          Contrast that with the 13 of the fleeing Democrats (one took no money) that got anywhere from 24-73% of their campaign contributions from labor unions.
          As an aside, how come no one ever mentions the $20million the Koch brothers gave to the ACLU to fight the Patriot Act. Next bogeyman please.



          Nope. This delightful Rachel Maddow reporting has been declared false by the non-partisan Politifact organization.
          Yes, it's difficult to establish a causal relatonship between the current problems in Wisconsin and taxes that won't take effect until July.

          Besides, tax policy can be useful in economic development. . .

          http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/te...ANSNE_BRF.html
          2011 Poser of the Year & Pulitzer Prize winning machine gunner.

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          • #6
            Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

            Originally posted by Old Pio View Post
            Yes, it's difficult to establish a causal relatonship between the current problems in Wisconsin and taxes that won't take effect until July.
            Someone should tell the critics of HCR about this insight.
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            • #7
              Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

              Can't we all just agree that Wisconsin sucks?
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              May your paint thinner run dry and the fleas of a thousand camels infest your dead deer.
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              When the giraffes start building radio telescopes they can join too.
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              • #8
                Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                Originally posted by dxmnkd316 View Post
                Can't we all just agree that Wisconsin sucks?
                Can't we all just agree that **** YOU!!! rabblerabblerabblerabble

                On another note, tomorrow the state will probably go about $160 million further into the hole because our entire state governing body- from the governor to every last ****ing state congressman- is run by children.
                If you want to be a BADGER, just come along with me

                BRING BACK PAT RICHTER!!!


                At his graduation ceremony from the U of Minnesota, my cousin got a keychain. When asked what UW gave her for graduation, my sister said, "A degree from a University that matters."

                Canned music is a pathetic waste of your time.

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                • #9
                  Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                  Originally posted by LynahFan View Post
                  What does that last bit mean? Pick a salary - any salary - and people who can make more money elsewhere will do so. The talent of the teaching pool will always be subject to market forces.
                  So you're agreeing that Walker's basic position is that Wisconsin can no longer afford to have an above-average education system? Given the above, you seem to admit that it's axiomatic that the pool of talented employment candidates will shrink with lower compensation, irrespective of any efforts to measure merit.

                  There's nothing wrong with that, per se, as long as everyone is honest about it. I don't think I've heard Walker come right out and say "We're so broke, we'd actually be better off with poorer education."
                  1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2012(!)

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                  • #10
                    Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                    Originally posted by amherstblackbear View Post
                    There's nothing wrong with that, per se, as long as everyone is honest about it. I don't think I've heard Walker come right out and say "We're so broke, we'd actually be better off with poorer education."
                    Walker exists for partisan rhetoric. This is a guy whose first act as governor was to throw away a billion dollars of federal stimulus money because he thought it was a waste of taxpayer money- despite the fact that he knew and was explicitly told that that money would just go somewhere else anyway. Wisconsin lost (at a minimum) several hundred jobs, if not potentially thousands because of it. He may have some merit if he had claimed that the money (which was to be used for light rail in Wisconsin) would end up being a liability for the state if Wisconsin took over the rail lines and they didn't make money. He would have had a point if he did that. But he didn't. He rejected that money because he said it should go to the taxpayers... even though it would have never done so.

                    Walker campaigned on bringing more jobs to Wisconsin by making the state more business friendly. The conservative part of me is cool with it, because lowering business taxes would be good for everyone. But does he do that? No. He gives individualized corporate handouts in the form of targeted tax breaks. He's as crooked as Jim Doyle before him, but he's doing so while pretending to be this pro-business libertarian tea partier's wet dream.

                    Between all that, and his repeated insistence that the collective bargaining business is about balancing the budget, all you will ever need to know about Walker is that you shouldn't believe a ****ing word he says.

                    He could say tomorrow that Wisconsin is better off with cash-strapped public education systems, and not only would I not believe him, I wouldn't even think that he agrees with what he's saying.

                    But, I suppose, at least he's still in Wisconsin right now...

                    (My state needs a legit third party)
                    If you want to be a BADGER, just come along with me

                    BRING BACK PAT RICHTER!!!


                    At his graduation ceremony from the U of Minnesota, my cousin got a keychain. When asked what UW gave her for graduation, my sister said, "A degree from a University that matters."

                    Canned music is a pathetic waste of your time.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                      Originally posted by Priceless View Post
                      I have no idea because I didn't write it. You'll have to ask the person who did.
                      Ooopsie - sorry, that was at the end of a very long day, so getting a quote correct from another thread was too tall of an order for me. My apologies!
                      If you don't change the world today, how can it be any better tomorrow?

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                      • #12
                        Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                        Originally posted by exileondaytonstreet View Post
                        (my country needs a legit third party)
                        fyp
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                        • #13
                          Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                          Originally posted by ExileOnDaytonStreet View Post
                          Walker exists for partisan rhetoric. This is a guy whose first act as governor was to throw away a billion dollars of federal stimulus money because he thought it was a waste of taxpayer money- despite the fact that he knew and was explicitly told that that money would just go somewhere else anyway. Wisconsin lost (at a minimum) several hundred jobs, if not potentially thousands because of it. He may have some merit if he had claimed that the money (which was to be used for light rail in Wisconsin) would end up being a liability for the state if Wisconsin took over the rail lines and they didn't make money. He would have had a point if he did that. But he didn't. He rejected that money because he said it should go to the taxpayers... even though it would have never done so.
                          I don't think that's the full story. He certainly made the liability argument about the train. He made the point many times that the train would have been a waste of money, with Wisconsin on the hook for overruns and anything needed to make the train profitable down the line. Considering 2 high speed trains in the entire world are profitable, I think it's a pretty darn good possibility we would have been on the hook.

                          He also said he would be happy to spend the money on roads (you know, things people actually use) but the DOT said no. I don't think that's the same thing as demanding it goes to the taxpayers.

                          Edit: Here's a JS Online story from as long ago as last February where he talks about why he doesn't want the train. I think he makes some of the same arguments you say he would have had a point with.
                          Last edited by WeWantMore; 03-01-2011, 07:37 AM.

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                          • #14
                            Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                            Originally posted by amherstblackbear View Post
                            So you're agreeing that Walker's basic position is that Wisconsin can no longer afford to have an above-average education system? Given the above, you seem to admit that it's axiomatic that the pool of talented employment candidates will shrink with lower compensation, irrespective of any efforts to measure merit.

                            There's nothing wrong with that, per se, as long as everyone is honest about it. I don't think I've heard Walker come right out and say "We're so broke, we'd actually be better off with poorer education."
                            Why will this make the education poorer? Because it will drive teachers spending all week protesting from the profession? More money and benefits is not always the answer to a problem. There has to be a line drawn at some point where enough is enough and start looking for more realistic soluti9ons.

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                            • #15
                              Re: Obama XX: Maybe We'll Even Talk About Obama

                              Originally posted by Tiggsy View Post
                              Why will this make the education poorer? Because it will drive teachers spending all week protesting from the profession? More money and benefits is not always the answer to a problem. There has to be a line drawn at some point where enough is enough and start looking for more realistic soluti9ons.
                              If you think that Lynah is right, and I think he is, then this is axiomatic. you can't reduce labor market demand for your positions without also reducing the supply of labor. And that reduction is not random. It's composed of people who believe they will do better elsewhere.

                              This is a clear and obvious way to reduce the quality of your education system. Mass layoffs are another, but Walker's got that contingency covered, too.

                              Now, you can try to counteract that by enacting other reforms. But the odds are not in your favor. That's if you even have a plan. By all accounts, Walker does not. And what are the odds of him developing one, now that he's poisoned any hope for a decent working relationship? Walker may be a good Republican -- heck, he may be a great one. But that doesn't make him a great leader. If you were on the board of a major corporation, and you had a choice between Walker and, say, Christie for your next CEO, who would you support?
                              1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2012(!)

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