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Wisconsin vs Total Recall

Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

Data analyzed by 24/7 Wall St indicates that in 2012 Wisconsin's GDP growth rate percentage was less than half of the national average and that the state had one of the highest rates of residential foreclosures in the country. I cannot vouch for 24/7 Wall St., but that information is generally consistent with what is often discussed. The state's business and job growth and performance has been miserable so far under Walker. Obviously, the causes are complex, and the foreclosure rate cannot be hung on his administration. Whether these results mean Walker's economic policies are and will be ineffective requires a much more sophisticated understanding of economics than I have. If you wanted to play the simplistic, sound-bite game, you could say he has been an utter failure economically. I don't think that would be fair or accurate, but it's the kind of mindless sloganeering that seems to have seized the day in most political campaigns and discussions.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

burd said:
Data analyzed by 24/7 Wall St indicates that in 2012 Wisconsin's GDP growth rate percentage was less than half of the national average and that the state had one of the highest rates of residential foreclosures in the country. I cannot vouch for 24/7 Wall St., but that information is generally consistent with what is often discussed. The state's business and job growth and performance has been miserable so far under Walker. Obviously, the causes are complex, and the foreclosure rate cannot be hung on his administration. Whether these results mean Walker's economic policies are and will be ineffective requires a much more sophisticated understanding of economics than I have. If you wanted to play the simplistic, sound-bite game, you could say he has been an utter failure economically. I don't think that would be fair or accurate, but it's the kind of mindless sloganeering that seems to have seized the day in most political campaigns and discussions.
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So is it Walker's fault or not? we want to know RIGHT NOW!!
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

We live in "interesting" times, eh?

It is actually better for Progressives in the long run to have Walker win this election rather than Burke. They will be in much better shape down the road for it (the pendulum always swings....)

In order for government to do the good works that the Progressives extol, there has to be room in the budget. Public sector pension costs are inexorably consuming a larger and larger share of state government budgets every year. If you want to do good works, you have to corral pension costs.





Many folks are totally unaware of the "triple whammy" that pensions create. The typical benefit formula is years of service times multiple of final average salary. So what happens every year?
-- everyone has another year of service, pushing up the pension formula
-- most of the time there is a contractual raise, pushing up the pension formula some more
-- everyone gets another year closer to retirement, so that you have fewer years over which to spread out the accrued liability, pushing up the pension liability faster and faster every year.

You see this dynamic over and over in articles that lay out what pension costs have been in the past, are now, and are projected to be in the future. Progressives need to get pension costs under control more than anyone else, because it is their budgetary ambitions that will get squeezed the most otherwise.






What's more important: feeding a hungry child, or paying a larger pension to a lifer? What's more important, sheltering a battered woman, or paying a larger pension to a lifer? and on and on.






If Walker wins today, that helps everyone across the country realize that pensions can be brought under control after all. After another term, his reforms will be harder to roll back, because in the meantime everyone will be saying, "wow, we've got a lot more room in our budget than we used to. this is nice. let's use it for something constructive."

If Burke wins, then lots of people will be saying "Walker, the one-term governor. it's too dangerous to tackle pension reform." and that would be a shame for all of us across the entire political spectrum.



(Now, if "Walker" were Chuck Norris......)
 
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Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

No one asks why we need pension reform in the first place. That's the real tragedy, but no one cares.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

What was already a lose-lose situation is even worse, somehow.

Sure we had to choose between the sort of elitist scum that openly believes in trickledown economics and a nimrod who couldn't balance a checkbook... But imagine the extra disappointments for that nimrod to get more than 50% of the vote and barely 1% go to third party voices that (regardless of anything else about them) this diametrically Dem/Rep state desperately needs to shake us out of this horrible 2-party rut that were in.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

In other words:

Wisconsin has a polarizing political landscape of hardliners battling hardliners. It brings out the worst of the Dems and the worst of the Reps, and voters here somehow eat that **** up. Every election is a depressing reminder of how ****ed this state is in the long run.

It'd be hard for me to not celebrate the concept of this state finally waking up and voting that scumbag out of office, but knowing that they'd replace him with an idiot like Burke or Barrett is just depressing.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

WI is interesting because we tend to have a mix of Dems and Reps in the Governor's mansion and in the US senate, like we do now. It's also very interesting that we can elect a flaming liberal career politician and conservative businessman to the senate, and a Dem gov candidate businesswoman can't beat a career Rep politician. There is just no pattern. I think it tells me WI has a lot of swing moderate voters. I've voted both ways in the past.
 
Timothy A said:
WI is interesting because we tend to have a mix of Dems and Reps in the Governor's mansion and in the US senate, like we do now. It's also very interesting that we can elect a flaming liberal career politician and conservative businessman to the senate, and a Dem gov candidate businesswoman can't beat a career Rep politician. There is just no pattern. I think it tells me WI has a lot of swing moderate voters. I've voted both ways in the past.
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I'm telling you, I'm this close to being flat out done with both. I'll happily be part of the (somehow only) 1% of this state that's sick of it.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

ExileOnDaytonStreet said:
In other words:

Wisconsin has a polarizing political landscape of hardliners battling hardliners. It brings out the worst of the Dems and the worst of the Reps, and voters here somehow eat that **** up. Every election is a depressing reminder of how ****ed this state is in the long run.

It'd be hard for me to not celebrate the concept of this state finally waking up and voting that scumbag out of office, but knowing that they'd replace him with an idiot like Burke or Barrett is just depressing.
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welcome to politics everywhere...I mean, Stuart Smalley is representing me in Washington.

The biggest problem I see with politics is that the people who should be leading us want nothing to do with politics because of the microscope and the amount of money you need to get and the bedfellows it requires to get it.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

ExileOnDaytonStreet said:
I'm telling you, I'm this close to being flat out done with both. I'll happily be part of the (somehow only) 1% of this state that's sick of it.
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I am with you as far as the politics go. No one wants to compromise. No one wants to be seen as the "loser" in deal making. That leads to paralysis. The only way you get anything done is if the cong, senate and pres are all the same party, then they just ram crap down the other's throat and don't care to compromise and don't care about alienating the other side (same at the state level). Yuck either way. That's why I basically ignore all political discussion until maybe about a month before a primary or general election. All the political analysts do is talk in terms of winning and losing. The art of the compromise is dead.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

Timothy A said:
I am with you as far as the politics go. No one wants to compromise. No one wants to be seen as the "loser" in deal making. That leads to paralysis. The only way you get anything done is if the cong, senate and pres are all the same party, then they just ram crap down the other's throat and don't care to compromise and don't care about alienating the other side (same at the state level). Yuck either way. That's why I basically ignore all political discussion until maybe about a month before a primary or general election. All the political analysts do is talk in terms of winning and losing. The art of the compromise is dead.
Click to expand...

It's been a major shift in politics to worry about election results instead of actually worrying about policy and coming up with ideas that will help things.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

Timothy A said:
I am with you as far as the politics go. No one wants to compromise. No one wants to be seen as the "loser" in deal making. That leads to paralysis. The only way you get anything done is if the cong, senate and pres are all the same party, then they just ram crap down the other's throat and don't care to compromise and don't care about alienating the other side (same at the state level). Yuck either way. That's why I basically ignore all political discussion until maybe about a month before a primary or general election. All the political analysts do is talk in terms of winning and losing. The art of the compromise is dead.
Click to expand...

In addition to special interest (and relatedly putting other priorities in front of citizen voters), a key problem is that the parties just do not offer middle of the road solutions.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

Shirtless Guy said:
It's been a major shift in politics to worry about election results instead of actually worrying about policy and coming up with ideas that will help things.
Click to expand...

There was a movie from around 1972 called The Candidate with Robert Redford. He starts as a huge underdog and the whole movie is about how he's going to run his campaign. Due to a variety of events, he winds up winning the election.

The movie ends with him in the restroom immediately after his victory, speaking with (IIRC) his campaign manager: "we won?? Oh my God, what do we do now?" he asks as a terror-stricken look crosses his face.
 
Re: Wisconsin vs Total Recall

5mn_Major said:
In addition to special interest (and relatedly putting other priorities in front of citizen voters), a key problem is that the parties just do not offer middle of the road solutions.
Click to expand...

It used to be that each party would start with a more "extreme" position merely to have room to negotiate toward the middle. Ever since "we won, so deal with it" the concept of negotiation and compromise seems to have been tossed aside. Perhaps even sooner.

Some of our greatest achievements came with a President from one party and a Congress with both Houses held by the other. Reagan and Clinton both navigated those situations adroitly. Reagan in particular seems under-rated to me because one of his most important mantras was "it is amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." He'd let the other side take credit for enacting ideas that started with him. Clinton as well from 1994 - 1998 did very well in getting what he wanted while giving Congress what it wanted.

To me the biggest difference seems to be that people once entered politics to accomplish great things. Lately, it seems, people enter politics because they like the idea of being a big shot. It's not "politics" that has changed as much as the quality of politicians.
 
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FreshFish said:
It used to be that each party would start with a more "extreme" position merely to have room to negotiate toward the middle. Ever since "we won, so deal with it" the concept of negotiation and compromise seems to have been tossed aside. Perhaps even sooner.

Some of our greatest achievements came with a President from one party and a Congress with both Houses held by the other. Reagan and Clinton both navigated those situations adroitly. Reagan in particular seems under-rated to me because one of his most important mantras was "it is amazing how much you can accomplish when you don't care who gets the credit." He'd let the other side take credit for enacting ideas that started with him. Clinton as well from 1994 - 1998 did very well in getting what he wanted while giving Congress what it wanted.

To me the biggest difference seems to be that people once entered politics to accomplish great things. Lately, it seems, people enter politics because they like the idea of being a big shot. It's not "politics" that has changed as much as the quality of politicians.
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Different generations?
 
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