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[Kashyyk]

...How have you not keeled over?

[Nadaka]

...How have you not keeled over?

Caffeine is a wonder drug. With enough Caffeine, vitamin b & c you can stay physically active for a several days strait. When everything starts to echo, the walls get all wiggly and the shadows start looking at you funny, it is time to accept that you should not be working 60 hours a week during finals crunch, lay down for a couple days and tell your boss that if you are not fired, you quit.

[nenjin]

I've covered a few city meetings before. This reminds me of the school board hearing to close a low income school and redistribute the student population. There were only about 20 people in the overflow room, and probably no more than 100 in the hearing room though.

I'll be interested to hear how this turns out. We so often let legislative things pass us by as voters, it's fascinating to watch democracy actually happen.

[Vactor]

another update, I just woke up, and it sounds like stuff is getting postponed into tonight, and the capitol is still filled with protesters, so I'm taking a shower and heading back in.

[freeformschooler]

Thank you for being the good, honest person that people believe is working against them all, as a tool for the greater evil. Both of my parents have jobs that consist of this every day, and I know how hard it can be.

[Vactor]

I'm back home, I was again at the door to the Joint Finance Committee's hearing.  This was the executive session, which is the time when members of the committee debate each other, and offer and adopt amendments to the bill.  The public is allowed in to watch, but do not participate in the proceedings like they did in the public hearing.  I was at the door again.  A protest was staged outside the doors, with drums and musical instruments.  Lots of chanting and shouting, and one particular guy with a megaphone who was trying to incite the police officers that were assisting me.  At one point he started talking about how he, and everyone else was going to jail tonight, citing his years of activism (he looked to be about 20-25yr).  The rest of the crowd booed him down and took away his megaphone, and followed up declaring that no one was going to jail tonight, which is quite true, during the last 3 days of protests, there have been no arrests, which even in tame protests, there are people who decide to get violent or destructive.

For those of you who might be interested in the process, the bill was just passed out of the Joint Finance Committee, with an omnibus amendment that mostly added corrections to other bills that have already been passed this session.  Only a handful were amending the bill itself, with the primary addition being that limited term employees will not have their access to health and retirement benefits completely revoked.

There was an amendment offered by the minority to remove the language from the bill that will deny collective bargaining (unionizing) rights to state employees.  This amendment was not adopted.

The next step is the Senate, which will be called to order tomorrow.

Once again I'm looking at work tomorrow.

We are in session, which is just off the rotunda, which is currently full of protesters sleeping on the floor.  It is going to be deafeningly loud, and we are going to have a very hard time keeping the public from physically disrupting the session.  Luckily I probably won't be doing the door tomorrow, as I usually run the sound board for the Senator's mics.  I understand we're getting national and international press for what's going on here, so you may be hearing about this if you follow the news.

I also submitted a request to move this to general discussion, as it has become less of a life advice thread.

[Rilder]

My state is full of binge drinkers and cheese eaters, if you need to distract us Wisconsinites just lay out booze and cheese.

[Aqizzar]

I wish you had put this in General Discussion in the first place, I didn't even notice.  But anyway, holy crap, I forgot you worked in the Wisconsin capitol.  It's great to have a front-line perspective.

The debate has made national news, but only in limited circles.  Since Wisconsin basically got to be the first legislature to grab this year's political buzz of hammering government workers to squeeze blood from a stone, this will almost certainly set the tenor of the debate elsewhere.  It's good to hear there's so many people interested, especially public-worker unions of all stripes and the people who deal with them (I understand there was a pretty big mob of students, since all the schools were closed).

[Vactor]

back into the beast, I feel bad i'm omitting a lot of the interesting little parts of the story, but I just don't have the time to sit down and write it up any more than I already am.  I've heard Ed Schultz will be coming to the Capitol today.

[Lord Shonus]

Yeah, Kasich is pushing that crap in Ohio. Hard to be surprise by a guy who lied his way into office so blatantly.

[olemars]

Not enough teargas and rubber coated bullets.

[GlyphGryph]

Interesting hearing things from the front lines. Looking forward to more updates.

[Retro]

Interesting hearing things from the front lines. Looking forward to more updates.

Aye, this.

Concurred.

[Nadaka]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110217/ap_on_re_us/us_wisconsin_budget_unions

this is the first I have seen about this other than this thread.

[Realmfighter]

In exchange for bearing more costs and losing bargaining leverage, public employees were promised no furloughs or layoffs. Walker has threatened to order layoffs of up to 6,000 state workers if the measure does not pass.

There is no way in fuck that what this man is doing is legal.