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[Blargityblarg]

Yeah, this kind of shit is why I'm glad Australia has a Governor-General.

[scriver]

It's usually 'x sees eye-to-eye with y', but yeah. It means they agree.

I see. It has a very nice ring to it, even if it seems a bit cryptic.

Why haven't you lot formed lynch mobs yet!?

They totally had a great one going in Wisconsij, with fiery speeches, communists, and what have you. Then they got all meek ane civilised on us.

Yeah, this kind of shit is why I'm glad Australia has a Governor-General.

I'm on m

[Lord Shonus]

I know somebody said they had some text prepared for a situation in Ohio, but here we go anyway.

<Words>

Fascinating. Thats almost exactly what I wasn't planning on focusing much on, so that works well. I was planning on focussing on Kasich's attempts to outdo Wisconsin's legislature in the cheating department. (Mainly, I've been waiting for the situation to crystallize.)

As you undoubtedly know, Ohio's insane governor is part of the war the Tea Party has declared on unions, and is trying similar shenanigans to destroy public unions' power. To this end, he pushed Senate bill 5, which proved unpopular. Faced with massive public opposition (depending on the polls used, between 60% and 75% of Ohio voters outright disapproved of the bill,) the Senate "softened" the blow by restoring a few of the banned rights and generously allowing public unions to bargain for wages. This was not enough to ensure that the bill would even pass committee, so a vaccilating Republican senator was fired from the committee to allow a rubber-stamper to replace him. The bill passed committee (and later the Senate) by a single vote. Similar tactics were used in the House, which also passed the bill. That's not the interesting part.

Before the bill was even signed, a movement to put a voter veto on the next available ballot was underway. This, in fact, was a massive pressure on the timing of the passage, as the GOP did NOT want that veto on the 2012 ballot, as it was feared that it would get too many Democrats to vote. Kasich is trying to render that veto (which is extremely popular) meaningless by integrating most of Senate bill 5 into the budget proposal and other pending legislation,  meaning that multiple vetos would be needed OR that the budget would be veto-immune.


Sources to follow later

[Blargityblarg]

Yeah, this kind of shit is why I'm glad Australia has a Governor-General.

I'm on m

Post get cut off?

[scriver]

Yeah, this kind of shit is why I'm glad Australia has a Governor-General.

I'm on m

Post get cut off?

No, actually I was just going to ask what a G-G did, since I was on my phone and it's a hassle. Then I changed my mind because of how... Well, I can't remember a good english word for it now, but you know, it was unneccesary and dumb, so I checked it out myself instead anyway. I thought I erased it, but apparently I didn't.

[Blargityblarg]

Yeach, basically acts as the Queen; mostly just rubber-stamping to pass laws unless they're bat fuck insane, and telling governments who weren't elected to GTFO.

[Lear]

http://www.wndu.com/hometop/headlines/Benton_Harbors_EFM_suspends_city_officials_power_119969374.html

Well, it certainly seems they wasted no time. .

What bothers me almost just as much, is that there has been virtually zero coverage anywhere.

[Aqizzar]

I can't be certain that it's the same town, but I believe I've been through Benton Harbor before.  I remember it for being a town so broke that the street signs were sandbagged in place, because the government couldn't afford to hire people to plant them in holes.  And that would have been at least a decade ago.

Clearly, suspending the town council from doing anything but holding meetings is the right way to solve Benton Harbor's generations of systemic poverty and decay.  States are supposed to be the laboratory of democracy - I suppose now we'll finally get to test thirty years of conservative rhetoric that government is itself the problem.  Let's see how long it takes a bombed out industrial waystation to recover its economy with no local government.

[knaveofstaves]

States are supposed to be the laboratory of democracy - I suppose now we'll finally get to test thirty years of conservative rhetoric that government is itself the problem.  Let's see how long it takes a bombed out industrial waystation to recover its economy with no local government.

This is well underway already, isn't it? There was lots of press exposure about Colorado Springs last year.
http://citydesk.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/11/colorado-springs-becoming-the-poster-child-of-urban-misery/1715/

And how are things looking now? The candidates for mayor are discussing why all the young professionals are leaving town.
http://citydesk.freedomblogging.com/2011/04/14/quote-of-the-day-160/7853/

Correlation doesn't imply causality, of course. It just points and shouts real loud.

[mainiac]

Meanwhile in Maryland we took the  radical socialist approach.  In the good years leading up to the crises, we actually funded our state government and saved up money for future projects.  So now we delayed some of those projects a few years and used those funds to avoid disruption to essential services like education, health, police, etc.  Absolutely crazy idea, but that's the sort of thing you'd expect when crazy pinko democrats control state politics for three decades.

[Criptfeind]

You may have running water, but at least we have a economic waste land.

Oh no wait.

[Nadaka]

Meanwhile in Maryland we took the  radical socialist approach.  In the good years leading up to the crises, we actually funded our state government and saved up money for future projects.  So now we delayed some of those projects a few years and used those funds to avoid disruption to essential services like education, health, police, etc.  Absolutely crazy idea, but that's the sort of thing you'd expect when crazy pinko democrats control state politics for three decades.

<neocon-mindset>Yes, those damn communists paying for what they get. Don't they know that the capitalist way is to get stuff without paying for it and expect a higher power to bail you out? That is why I am not worried about the economy, the rapture will save us.</neocon-mindset>

[Aqizzar]

Or better yet, the Federal Reserve.

Anyway, I need some more stuff.  State governments doing insane things has been ironically slow in the news lately, aside from 25 or so states that all at the same time are passing abortion laws that pretty easily violate statutory federal rulings.  But of course, can't handle that here, so I need something better.

[Criptfeind]

<neocon-mindset>Yes, those damn communists paying for what they get. Don't they know that the capitalist way is to get stuff without paying for it and expect a higher power to bail you out? That is why I am not worried about the economy, the rapture will save us.</neocon-mindset>

That reminds me of when a family on my street went door to door to ask people to pray for the end of the world because the bible said that good things would happened before the end of the world.

[mainiac]

Well, it's before the end of the world and good things happen every day so I for one can't find flaw in their logic.