One Number Stands Out

There are many numbers and statistics that stand out from the recent re-call election.   From the unbelievable amount of money that walker raised mostly from out of state or the fact that 2,511,585 people voted in a June recall election.

However, amongst all of the numbers, one has really stood out with me and I have a hard time digesting it.  It is this one:

 But voters in union households who weren't union members themselves split almost evenly. As the Washington Post notes, Barrett won those voters 51 percent to 48 percent. That's a disappointing number for Democrats and labor. If they wanted to recall Walker, unions needed massive support from the rank-and-file and their spouses. That didn't happen Tuesday.

Just to be clear, in households where one spouse is in the union and one is not, the non union spouse voted for Scott Walker half of the time.   No wonder the divorce rate in WI is up!   While it shows that Scott Walker's "divide and conquer" strategy was so successful it applied to individual households.  It also amazes me that in these households, a spouse would be so selfish to think that their life partner would be overpaid and under worked?  If your spouse thinks so little of you, is that really someone you want to spend your life with? 

In full disclosure, my wife is a school social worker in one of the most politically engaged schools in Madison.   Many teachers, who are from overpaid, and are not the "haves of society" no matter what Scott Walker has to say: 




On Wednesday morning, the day after the recall election, while republicans were gloating,  and gloating, and gloating and even  gloating from out of state, while still licking their wounds over all of the hard work they had done for the past 16 months working on the recall, had to deal with a crisis situation.  

The staff(the 'haves" who have had their salary cut significantly with more to come) were forced into a code red situation, along with their fellow persecuted public workers and "haves", the local police department, worked together to thwart a local gang act of serious violence.  

While the right wing who has demonized public workers this past year, were gloating and the local newspaper was whining about recalls and democracy in action, the state workers that they have spent massive amounts of time demonizing were busy making our community a better place.   ALL going above and beyond their job descriptions to do so ( More disclosure, I have a teacher certification and no where in my classes did we ever learn about how to deal with serious gang violence). 

While the community has no idea what the vast majority of public workers that they have spent the time demonizing, they should know how impossible it would be to live without what they do.  

I also still stand by that everyone should go spend a day in your local public school volunteering!  Let's thank our public workers instead of demonizing them!