"Wisconsin budget surplus projected to grow to $484 million."

One more occasion for us here at Meadhouse to dance to "Stand with Governor Walker."



(Do you have any idea how much this annoys our fellow Madison citizens?)

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7th Circuit upholds Gov. Walker's much-protested collective bargaining legislation.

"The district court invalidated Act 10's recertification and payroll deduction provisions, but upheld the statute's limitation on collective bargaining. We now uphold Act 10 in its entirety."

Voting to uphold the law in its entirety were Judges Joel M. Flaum and William J. Bauer. Flaum wrote the opinion.

Judge David F. Hamilton dissented in part, saying he believed part of the collective bargaining law violated the First Amendment. Hamilton argued the state could not bar some unions from having their dues deducted from paychecks while it allowed police and fire unions to do so.

ADDED: Here's the opinion PDF.

AND: The panel said it's well-settled that "use of the state’s payroll systems to collect union dues is a state subsidy of speech that requires only viewpoint neutrality." The law didn't target any particular viewpoints. It subsidized the speech of public safety unions but not other public employee unions, and the unions had argued that the speech of the groups that were subsidized would be more favorable to the party that supported the legislation and so Act 10 wasn't genuinely viewpoint neutral, but only the dissenting judge agreed.

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A slice of Wisconsin politics.

I framed this screenshot from the lead article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel webpage:



Meade sent me that link and highlighted the quote: "A few dozen protesters gathered in the rotunda, and their shouts were at times barely audible inside the Assembly chamber during the address."

Wistful echoes of 2 years ago, when thousands of protesters jammed the Capitol and banged drums and chanted for weeks on end.

Meanwhile, in the sidebar over there:

Feingold calls for legislation to rid election campaigns of corruption

And I call for peace on earth and goodwill toward men.

That second sidebar link — "Man arrested at Capitol had earlier run-in with police" — refers to something that is also in the Scott Walker article: "In one surprise at the Capitol Tuesday, police arrested a 20-year-old Milwaukee man for entering the building with what he claimed were Molotov cocktails in his backpack.... So far, however, no evidence has turned up that Smith knew about Walker's speech or was targeting it specifically."

Random Molotov-cockery, not necessarily Scott-Walker-related.

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"We're not going to go hog wild."

Says Governor Scott Walker, announcing a plan for a "significant" cut in state income taxes.

ADDED: In the comments, Mary Beth said: "I'm surprised, and a little let down, that this post didn't also have a history of the phrase 'hog wild.'" Thanks for missing the kind of Althouse extras that I really do love to provide. And here they are. The OED has this:

hog-wild adj. U.S. completely wild or unrestrained; crazy (chiefly in to go hog-wild).

1893   Galveston (Texas) Daily News 11 Mar. 4/3   The state of Kansas has gone ‘hog wild’.
1940   C. McCullers Heart is Lonely Hunter i. ii. 26   This here white man had just gone hog wild. He were butting his head against the side of this brick wall.
2005   Time Out N.Y. 3 Feb. 82/1   New York City Ballet went hog-wild with promotions on January 22.

And here's a graph of the history of the use of "hog wild." For some reason, it spiked in 1942 and 1963. WW2 and the Kennedy assassination. Big events in those years. Any number of reasons to turn to "hog wild."

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