DPW Blog

As Braun's victory displays in dramatic fashion, collective bargaining is not merely about wages and benefits, it is the foundation for basic dignity in a workplace, and it radiates outward to all workplaces, whether it be a major league dugout or a welding shop, whether it's a police precinct or a classroom.

Walker and his anti-union defenders who scorn collective bargaining must think that a millionaire ballplayer is not a sympathetic figure to people who work for a living. But that's just not the case. Wisconsin understands that that standing together makes us stronger.

The grassroots effort that successfully gathered a million signatures to recall Scott Walker was a resounding victory for working, middle-class families. More than 25,000 volunteers worked tirelessly over the last two months to collect, verify and prepare 1.9 million signatures  – a historic achievement. 

Tammy Baldwin started a thank you card for all of our recall volunteers. Maggie, Mitch and I signed our names to the card today. Will you join us by signing your name too and by passing along the thank you card to your friends and family? 

I'm at our undisclosed location in Madison right now where thousands of volunteers have been working around-the-clock to verify and prepare all of the signatures you have collected to recall Scott Walker.

We're still counting and verifying all of the signatures, but I do have some amazing news to share with you.

The weight of all the petitions you have circulated totals more than 3,000 lbs.

You started our grassroots campaign to save our state from Scott Walker, who attacked not just the rights of Wisconsin workers, but also our shared values and proud Wisconsin institutions.

In just 12 days, you could represent your county by being the one who delivers the petitions to recall Scott Walker from your community.

Keeping track of Scott Walker's failures as a leader and his attacks on working families is no easy task. He has let down Wisconsin in myriad ways and does everything he can to hide his missteps in a veil of spin and deception. But we've developed a tool that can help make it easier to keep track of the governor and his failures over the last year.

Today, we are marking Wisconsin's Lost Year under Scott Walker, when Wisconsin lost jobs at a historic rate, endured historic cuts to education and health care and went through a historic year of political division unlike anything our beloved state has seen since Joseph McCarthy.

Putting a punctuation mark on the dishonesty of Scott Walker's Lost Year is a new television ad that just debuted today.

Wisconsin suffered through one of the worst years in her history in 2011 as a direct result of Scott Walker, the most divisive political figure here since Joseph McCarthy.

The radical Republican agenda, which is salting the earth for jobs-creation and blowing a hole in our budget, included never-before-seen cuts to education and health care. They attacked those supporting institutions that had over decades and in bipartisan fashion been built up to create to high standards of living for everyone in Wisconsin, as well as world-class universities and trade schools that led to job growth.

By cutting $2.6 billion from public education, Scott Walker and his Republicans signaled that they want to turn Wisconsin away from a path of high-tech sustainable job creation to a low-wage, low-benefit plantation of the large corporations that, incidentally, poured unprecedented mountains of sleazy cash into Walker's defense.

On Wednesday, Scott Walker held a press conference touting that he was going to lift a cap he imposed on Wisconsin's Family Care program, which offers services to the elderly and the disabled. Advocates for the disabled and the poor and the elderly were overjoyed and Scott Walker was eager to take credit for his about-face.

But it turns out that Scott Walker was actually ordered to lift the cap on Family Care because the Obama Administration called out his plan as reckless, dangerous and possibly in violation of federal statues.

Wisconsin's next governor will be quite different than Scott Walker.

We are in the final stages of collecting the signatures necessary to recall Walker, in a vast, people-powered movement fueled by an historic rejection of his radical agenda.

Walker's strategy will be to prolong the period before the recall is certified, with wasteful lawsuits and other shabby game-playing, but it will not hold off the inevitable.

The question will then turn to the candidate who will replace him. I have no doubt Walker's successor will be able and qualified. And I know, whoever emerges, he or she will be much more than that -- because that is what Wisconsin is now demanding.

Thinking back over this past year, it is easy to get disheartened, discouraged ... even upset. Wisconsin has changed dramatically, and there is much I no longer recognize about our state.

Wisconsin used to be among the leading states in the nation in education, in health care quality and access, and we had a reputation for clean and open government, civil dialogue and reasonable political solutions.

As 2011 comes to a close, unfortunately we now lead the nation in job loss. We are second in the nation in cuts to public education. And, we lead the nation in political polarization. Wisconsin is, sadly, a state divided.