During a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Wisconsin over the weekend a few in the crowd gave Governor Scott Walker a Hitler style salute after he was introduced.
I assume these Hitler saluters are upset with Walker for signing legislation limiting collective bargaining "rights" of public employees in Wisconsin in order to save the state's economy, after it was passed in the State Assembly. The protestors must be forgetting that the economic climate in Wisconsin has already improved, school districts actually have more money to hire more teachers now, teachers who were fired have come back to work, in other words, Walker'a budget bill is working.
Despite early criticism from city officials, new figures show Milwaukee will gain more than it will lose next year from the state's controversial budget and budget-repair legislation.
The city projects it will save at least $25 million a year - and potentially as much as $36 million in 2012 - from health care benefit changes it didn't have to negotiate with unions, as a result of provisions in the 2009-'11 budget-repair measure that ended most collective bargaining for most public employees.
That saving would be partly offset by about $14 million in cuts in state aid to the city in the 2011-'13 state budget. The figure is down from earlier estimates of more than $17 million, after the Legislature scaled back Gov. Scott Walker's proposed cuts in aid for local streets and recycling.
As a result, the city would come out with a net gain of at least $11 million for its 2012 budget, slicing into the "structural deficit" created by costs rising faster than revenue and reducing the spending cuts that Mayor Tom Barrett and the Common Council must impose.
And they did this at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Really?
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