Beginning today, you are likely to encounter someone who believes Gov. Scott Walker should be recalled, and will ask you to sign a petition to force a recall election.
My first suggestion is that you ask the petition-taker what Walker has done — what malfeasance, what misconduct in public office — to deserve recall.
If the answer is that he misled voters about what he intended to do with public employee collective bargaining rights, you know that is false; feel free to show the petitionmonger this:
If the petition-drive-passer-outer claims Walker has infringed public employee collective bargaining rights, ask that person where in the U.S. or Wisconsin constitutions can be found a provision guaranteeing public employee collective bargaining rights.
Politiscoop.com passes on other complaints:
“Scott Walker has divided Wisconsin. We are appalled at the cuts Scott Walker has planned for Medicaid and for the elderly, we are in our early sixties and these cuts will soon directly affect us.” — Linda and Douglas Martindale of Elkhorn
Interesting. Gov. James Doyle didn’t divide Wisconsin by passing $2.1 billion in tax increases? The 2009–10 Legislature didn’t divide Wisconsin by creating a $2.9 billion deficit? U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D–Wisconsin) didn’t divide Wisconsin by listening only to liberals during his listening sessions? Apparently, someone “has divided Wisconsin” when he disagrees with the Martindales.
“My husband was a teacher for over 30 years. He worked three jobs to support our family of five children, but he loved his job and often corrected papers long into the night. Scott Walker needs to go and soon.” — Bonita Swan of Stevens Point
Tell a business owner who works more than 60 hours a week and eschews weekends and vacations about your workload.
“My wife is a professional educator with the Denmark School District. When Scott Walker attacked my wife’s integrity our whole family went ballistic. I would love for Scott Walker to see my name first when he is recalled.”— Geoffrey Gialdini of Green Bay
I’d be interested in seeing exactly where Walker personally attacked Mrs. Gialdini’s integrity. Then again, teacher unions have some nerve to attack others’ integrity, since public employee unions have no integrity by definition.
“I’m a teacher. I took a $4000 pay cut because of what Scott Walker did. They did it at night, in secret, and in shame, and they knew it. He is an insult to educators and to honest people with integrity everywhere.” — John Havlicek of La Crosse
Yes, no one else in this state has seen their take-home pay cut over the past few years. Oh wait, many people who pay Havlicek’s salary have in fact seen their take-home pay cut over the past few years. Perhaps Mr. Havlicek would have preferred to have been laid off?
You may have figured out by now that I completely lack sympathy with the Recall Walker movement. (I believe I was de-Friended on Facebook for that reason, but I don’t care. First, Facebook Friends are not necessarily real friends; second, if political views get in the way of a friendship, that is your fault.) I assume the recallers will be able to find enough signatures to force a recall election, which will waste more money than the recalls of earlier this year wasted. Then again, that will be money that cannot be used to donate to the Barack Obama reelection campaign (which, in case you didn’t notice, isn’t going well), or for socialist U.S. Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin, or the campaigns for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, or the campaigns for Democratic candidates for the Legislature.
The only question I have is if this time petitioners will have the nerve to come to my house. No one from the Red Fred Clark campaign against Sen. Luther Olsen (R–Ripon) had the guts to show up at my house to seek my signature. Perhaps the campaign read my blog.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
Yes, Walker campaigned on the platform of making public employees contribute more for their health care and pension plans, this much we knew. Ok, so Walker once said he supported a bill that would not allow public employees to bargain collectively for health care.
Please point me to any utterances Candidate Walker made during the 18 months he ran for Governor in which he said anything about ending collective bargaining for public employees; or even any instance in which he talked about supporting this bill that would have restricted public employees from bargaining collectively over health care.
You can not do so, because he did not do so. On the contrary, he repeatedly talked about making public employees pay more for their pension and health care benefits. And, because he campaigned on these issues, the major state unions and the Democratic Senators quickly agreed to these concessions in February.
Furthermore, your points about this topic continue to ignore the fact that, in addition to stripping from public employees the right to bargain collectively over health care benefits, the bill also: (1) does not allow public employees to bargain collectively over workplace issues; (2) does not allow public employees to bargain collectively over raises greater than the rate of inflation; (3) does not allow public employees to have dues automatically deducted from their paychecks; (4) requires unions to hold re-certification elections every year; (5) requires unions to receive 51% of the votes from the entire bargaining unit – not 50% of voters in the election.
You can not even use the figleaf of an excuse that Walker once supported a bill that would have implemented these issues, because he never did; and he also never talked about these issues on the campaign trail.
It is disappointing that you continue to engage in such subterfuge to justify Gov. Walker’s sleazy bait-and-switch.
He did much more than remove health care benefits from the bargaining table, and you are smart enough to know this. You should do better.
I see that you have no reply to the merits of my argument; and this is because Scott Walker pointedly did not run on a platform of ending collective bargaining for public employees.
But… let’s pretend that the bill you cite, which would have removed health care for public employees from collective bargaining, was explicitly part of Candidate Walker’s campaign (which, of course, it was not, because he explicitly campaigned on making public employees pay more for health care and pension plans).
But, for the sake of argument, using your standard, even if we say that Candidate Walker campaigned on removing health care from collective bargaining for public employees, this means (by your chosen standard), that his campaign platform DID NOT include the following planks: (1) removing pension plans from collective bargaining for public employees; (2) removing any and all workplace issues from collective bargaining; (3) removing the ability of public employees to collectively bargain for wage increases above the rate of inflation; (4) removing the ability of public employee unions to deduct dues from employee paychecks; (5) forcing public employee unions to hold recertification elections every year; (6) requiring public employee unions to receive 51% of the votes from the entire bargaining unit – not 50% of voters in a recertification election.
So, by your chosen standard, Candidate Walker did not campaign on the majority of his intended platform for dealing with public employee unions.
You cannot argue that these are minor issues, because they represent major and radical changes from the last 50 years of labor relations in the state of Wisconsin; and, more importantly, the collective bargaining reforms were the centerpiece of Gov. Walker’s budget. You also cannot argue that Gov. Walker was merely adapting to the changing times, because he implemented these reforms barely a month after taking office during the first few days that the legislature was in session.
Clearly, from the beginning, Gov. Walker intended to radically overhaul collective bargaining for public employee unions; yet, by your chosen standard, he did not run on this platform.
You are a smart guy, and it is disingenuous for you to continue claiming that Candidate Walker ran on the platform that Gov. Walker implemented.
This is patently untrue (using your chosen standard).
I again ask: why do you think that it is ok for candidates to willfully mislead the public and to hide major portions of their intended public policies that form the centerpiece of their prospective budget plans?
Do you really endorse candidates lying to the public?