Wis. law taking away collective bargaining rights published; disagreement over taking effect
posted by Bob at Friday, March 25, 2011
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Friday, March 25, 2011
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25 Comments:
Here is what the unions have done for Detroit.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370199/Detroit-Haunting-photos-crumbling-remains-highlight-decline-Motor-City.html
The unions did this to Detroit.....and this is what will happen to the rest of the country if the unions are allowed to continue strong-arming America. My cousin was laid off from one of the big car companies in Detroit about 15 years ago and he had a choice: take a lump-sum of $50,000 or HALF-PAY for the rest of his life...... Naturallly, he took the half-pay....he was 40 years old.......they called him back a few years later but then retired him anyway. He gets over $60,000 per year in retirement and he is only 50 years old. There is NO way that America or any country can continue to pay out like this indefinitely. We must stop it now or our countries have no future. STOP THE INSANITY.... Tell the "useful idiots" to go home.......and beware you British people, I fear for what is coming you way at the end of April....CHAOS...and that's what they want. You need to arm your police officers before it's too late and they end up dead. I fear for all of us.
This is the America Chuck and Eric envision for us in St. Paul. Detroit here we come.
Detroit! A dying testimonial to what the cancer of liberalism will do "for" (to) a city and a nation.
That is Hope and Change for you.
What's ironic in all of this is that offshore auto companies might have located in the Detroit area in the 80's were it not for the unjustifiably high wages for semi skilled work and the stifling power of the unions. Although this has now changed with the US builders as they have downsized and re-negotiated union contracts, it's too late to attract the offshore builders to the area.
Chicago, San Francisco and New York City are all union towns. Last I checked, they're world leaders and destinations in business. The world runs on New York and its one of the most unionized and high taxed states there is. Detroit was a badly managed, one industry town.
Alabama is one of the foreign car capitols. They've collected billions in tax breaks to set up, pay a low wage, and have been exempted from certain regulations. Today, they can't stop the recalls. Alabama still is one of the worst states to live in. Poverty is high, education is one of the worst in the nation, and it has one of the highest percentages of welfare recipients. But, the foreign car industry is booming.
That's the world the republicans and every anonymous poster wants for Minnesota (I'd be anonymous too). Give corporations everything they want, make the working class pay for those breaks, then blame other working class people for the economy.
The bankers are laughing all the way to the...all the way to work.
Idiots.
Eric
Those auto companies went to Alabama and South Carolina because of cheap labor and billions of dollars in tax breaks, land breaks and regulatory fees.
Ironically some of the very same politicians who found it ok to do that, found no time for AMERICAN companies when they needed help. Thank goodness Democrats re-worked the Bush bailout and now the taxpayers are making a profit on the loan to the American auto industry while the foreign companies take our dollars and send them offshore.
Brilliant plan republicans.
Eric
Eric it so good to see the progress President has made over the last two years. He has done very little for the working man. NOT!
Detroit died because of the excessive union contracts. The auto industry wasn't competitive so the auto industry bailed. They went to other states where they could be more competitive in the market place. The market drove them out of Detroit and St. Paul.
Remember that unions were never intended to be welfare, but to safeguard the workers from hazardous conditions. The unions lost their way and as a result towns like Detroit and St. Paul are dead because of the unions and the Democrat leadership. Unions hooked up with organized crime. Do you remember Jimmy Hoffa? The unions in St. Paul are no different, just look at the Bobby Kasper situation. Bobby is dirty, you know that and I know that. The Democrats have associated themselves to that. The unions need to retool before America falls any deeper into toilet.
One point you fail to understand Eric, both Detroit and St. Paul have been run by Democrats and the unions and this mess happened on their watch. Don't blame Bush father or son for this, this is all on the unions and Democrat's back and is a prime example of failed socialism at it's finest.
8:47 What planet do you live on?
The percentage of union jobs in this country has gone down from its high point in the 1950's of about 45% of the work force now down to around 7%. For the last 40 years the unions have accepted cuts in pay and benefits in order to keep their jobs and what have we gotten?
More tax brakes for the corporations to move jobs out of the country. And, where do these jobs go? To countries that have NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE, so that the businesses don't have to pay health insurance costs as a part of salaries. All of those cars that once were made here are now made where?
SOCIALIST COUNTRIES like Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany or better still COMMUNIST COUNTRIES like China! (Who as you may note is doing so well they are buying most of our debt.)
So, you have to be living on Mars if you think that unions have hurt Detroit or the auto industry in this country. One of the things Henry Ford knew (who was no fan of the unions) was that to make money he had to be able to make a car that his employees could afford to buy. That was the point of the Model T. They came off of the line and were bought by the union workers.
Today's business person has no clue that it was having a middle class that made this country so damned profitable. You need consumers to make money. The Unions made the American middle class.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Wisconsin judge clarifies ruling blocking union bargaining law
REad the Briefs http://jurist.org/paperchase/2011/03/wisconsin-judge-clarifies-ruling-blocking-union-bargaining-law.php
Chuck Repke, the better question is, "What planet do you live on?"
10:51 - I give you the facts. All you guys can do is quote the BS you mushrooms are fed on Fake News.
The facts are that our failure to develop national health insurance has been working against our ability to compete.
The facts are that over the past 40 years the unions have been almost total wiped out and they are the problem... yah right. Then and the Easter Bunny.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Chuck you provide facts as seen only through the eyes of a progressive Democrat. That is the planet you live on and that is not reality.
7:09 - you tell me what facts I have posted aren't facts.
This guy claims that the unions have hurt Detroit and the country when the facts are that Unions have been declining in influence for better than 40 years. When unions were at their peek our country was at its peek.
As the fat cats and their GOP servants have stripped away workers rights and benefits around the country and made the upper 1% richer and richer, we have watched the national debt rise, the infrastructure of the country fall apart, cities crumble and now, now after 40 years of the GOP and fat cats destroying the unions, now somehow, the few small unions that are left are at fault for the nations problems.
That is insane.
It can not be a fact that those without any power are the fault for the nations problems.
At some point you tea baggers are going to have to look at who is the man behind the curtain... who is it that benefits from the tax breaks, who has become wealthier even during the most recent financial crisis.
I have no doubt that at some point this crowd will turn on its masters. I have faith that someday the tea party types will figure out that as a citizen of this country this land belongs to them as much as the wealthiest person... that they do not have to bow down to the wealthy capitalist that promise that if they give up their health, their home and their children's future that then maybe if they ask very nice they may be able to be to have the privilege to work at slave wages for them.
It is our country, yours and mine and everyone of us. And, every square inch of it belongs to you and me... from the red wood forest to the gulf stream waters... every inch of it belongs to the citizens of the United States.
Someday the tea baggers will figure that out and they will not be happy with a government for the 1% with the 45% of wealth in the country. They will demand that for the privilege of making that kind of profit that they pay for the privilege.
We once had high upper tax limits to control the extreme greed of the wealthiest among us, and because of that hired more workers and we had a real middle class. It can happen again.
All it takes is for the tea bagger types to understand that it isn't the poor and the powerless that drags the country down. It is the wealthy elite that have stolen their futures.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Chuck show me one poor guy that provides jobs. NONE.
Before ther Soviet Union fell, I traveled throughout the USSR, now Russia. I worked with the farmers. I noticed a very interesting thing on their collective farms. Each Farmer was given a small plot of land to grow food for their families. Many times these small plots were out producing the collective farm. Why? Because there was an incentive to be productive. Our farmers when the sun goes down just turn on their headlights and keep going because there is money to be made. The Soviet formers simply went home and let the crops rot in the fields because there was nothing in it for them except their small garden plot.
So too is your mentality of taxing the rich when they already pay the majority of taxes collected. The bottom 40% does not pull their weight. Why should they the government is giving them a handout. If this was taken away, you would see some real hustling on their part. Competition is a very good thing, as it spurs a better mousetrap.
In the market place, competition is a very good thing. Unions prevent competition and only revert to the old Soviet model of collective farms, only now we call it redistribution of wealth.
I want a society where you are rewarded for your hard work, not penalized by your hard work being taken away and given to a poor slob who can't get off his butt and work.
I have several family members who pounded nails. They were not in the union and they did very well. They both have very nice houses and they provided for their families. They didn't need the government to give it to them.
As a businessman I am in favor of a “Fair Tax” like a national sales tax where everyone pays his or her fair share. This allows the individual who wants to make something of himself be rewarded for his hard work. It also ensures that everyone is paying their fair share and not relying on the government for a handout. I am not saying stop all welfare programs, but to limit them to at least one generation instead of five generations on welfare.
Chuck this is just plain good businesses practices. Competition is good, taking away competition is bad. The unions took away the ability of businesses to be competitive in the market place. That my friend is how the unions are killing our country. The Democrats are spending us into the biggest hole. Look at what Governor Dayton and President Obama are doing. They are trying to spend us into prosperity and that will never happen.
Chuck I don’t care much for tea, I like a good beer. St. Paul used to have two of the largest breweries. Schmidt’s on West 7th is DOA. That leaves only Summit as the last major brewery in St. Paul and that is small. Again, the Democrats are fault there as well. Nice property tax structure in St. Paul isn’t it, thanks to the Democrats, as they have created the most anti-business climate I have ever seen. You can’t blame this on the Republicans or as you call them the tea-baggers, as the Democrats were in control both on the local level and the state level.
The public also agreed, as they threw out the Democrats record numbers last election. The public is tired of pulling their weight and the having to pull the weight of some slob who sits on the couch and eats chips all day.
3:09 do you really drink beer? Because you sure don't know a thing about what happened to the American brewing industry. Or as it appears from the rest of your post, you're drunk.
Because what happened to the brewery industry is a pretty good example of why the free market doesn't work.
Schmidt beer was bought by Heileman Brewing 40-50 years before the plant closed. It was a part one of the large national chains that took over the industry. At one time it controlled 40% of the market in Minnesota. But, when the market shifted in the early seventies from regional brands to national chains... it all started with "taste great, less filling.." Heileman bought up the bulk of the local breweries to try to play off of brand loyalty, they owned a dozen breweries that they kept the flags on around the country.
Then in 1989 they were bought by an Australian company that decided they too would be like Coors, Budweiser and Miller and market only three labels... Old Style, Special Ex and Blatz... they cut the ad budget on the rest of their labels and closed the local plants.
It didn't have a damn thing to do about the tax structure in Minnesota or in Saint Paul.
It all was about profit for a multi-national corporation. Because neither the workers nor the customers matter. Because things like loyalty, and honor and tradition don't mean a damn when you are looking at short term profits. There is no reason to think about long term investment or in customer relationships only short term advantages. If you can pitch a good commercial and some fool will buy the swill, who cares. I mean if there is only one brand standing you have to buy the shit if you want a beer...
And what happened to Schmidt and Heilleman has happened to Olympia and Pabst and Ranier and Fallstaff and on and on and on... the big boys bought them all up and now the entire industry is owned by multi-nationals that know nothing of beer or their customers.
...and you are seeing little guys starting like Summit to actually attract a local market (in a Saint Paul Port Authority project).
See, I like competition but in your "free market" no holds barred market place it kills the worker and the customer too.
Its like the airline industry that once was profitable... we had an airline, Northwest that owned all of its airplanes, had a well paid union crews, ran on time and made money. It was bought in an investment scheme by someone who had no money, sold all of the planes and leased them back to the company to pay for the purchase. He then had so much debt he had to cut the pay to the workers and lay off a bunch of them and of course service had be cut back and flights cut. Ultimately, the entire thing is sold off to another airline that is balls deep in debt, has no unions and they couldn't find your bag on a bet.
But, that in your world is a good thing... because someones stock goes up every time another one of my flights are delayed or bags are lost... because they don't have enough workers... lets not even mention that it is the same planes they have been flying since 1970 that are starting to fall apart in the air...
Yup its them damn unions that are screwing things up...
Bullshit.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
So just for my tea party friends from Thom Harttman:
The First Pro-corporate Tax Laws
The East India Company set a precedent that multinational corporations follow to this day: it lobbied for laws that would enable it to easily put its small- business competitors out of business. By 1681 most of the members of the British government and royalty were stockholders in the East India Company, so it was easy that year to pass “An Act for the restraining and punishing Privateers and Pirates.” This law required a license to import anything into the Americas (among other British-controlled parts of the world), and the licenses were only rarely granted except to the East India Company and other large British corporations.*
*The law was explicit about its purpose and the death penalty for operating without a license. It read, in part:
It shall be felony for any Person, which now doth, or within four Years last past heretofore hath or here after shall Inhabit or belong to this Island, to serve in America in an hostile manner, under any Foreign Prince, state or Potentate in Amity with his Majesty of Great Britain, without special License for so doing, under the hand and seal of the Governour or Commander in chief of this Island for the time being, and that all and every such offender or offenders contrary to the true intent of this Act being thereof duly convicted in his Majesties supreme Court of Judicature within this Island to which court authority is hereby given to hear and to determine the same as other cases of Felony, shall suffer pains of Death without the benefit of Clergy.
Be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, that all and every Person or Persons that shall any way knowingly Entertain, Harbour, Conceal, Trade or hold any correspondence by Letter or otherwise with any Person or Persons, that shall be deemed or adjudged to be Privateers, Pirates or other offenders within the construction of this Act, and that shall not readily endeavour to the best of his or their Power to apprehend or cause to be apprehended, such Offender or Offenders, shall be liable to be prosecuted as accessories and Confederates, and to suffer such pains and penalties as in such case by law is Provided.
Source: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/ABL/etext/hinman-web/p149.html
As trade to the American colonies grew, and under pressure from the East India Company, the British government passed a series of laws that increased the company’s power and influence and reduced its competition and barriers to international trade, including the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773.
The Tea Act was the most essential for the East India Company because the American colonies had become a huge market for tea—millions of pounds per month—which was largely being supplied at cheap prices by Dutch trading companies and American smugglers, also known as privateers because they operated privately instead of working for the company. (The company also often encouraged the British government to prosecute these entrepreneurial traders and smugglers as “pirates” under the 1681 law.)
Many people today think that the Tea Act—which led to the Boston Tea Party—was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory.
-snip-
I know that someday the current tea party will understand it too...
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Chuck, YES it is the unions and the Democrats who have screwed up in St. Paul. Both have been in charge and this mess rests on their shoulders.
...as to what is a "fair tax" sales taxes are by their nature not "fair taxes" but regressive taxes and taxes that are bad for business and the economy.
First they aren't fair because they tax those who have the least at a higher proportion of their income. People with little consume everything they earn, so every dollar they earn is taxed. Wealthy people consume only a small portion of their income, they get to keep the rest in a regressive sales tax system.
As to bad for the economy...
You said, "Chuck show me one poor guy that provides jobs. NONE."
Actually, you are wrong again, because poor people are consumers, and though maybe one poor guy on his own doesn't provide an immediate job, a bunch of poor people buying food provides a farmer with a job, and a poor guy renting a house provide a landlord with revenue.
What the current brand of free market crazies have totally forgot is that there are three parts to the economy: capital, production and consumption. So, in your little world all you need is the fat cat with capital to open the store and walla, you have profit! Wrong...
You actually need someone to produce the goods to sell and someone to stand in the store and sell them. And then you still have nothing. Why? Because you have to have consumers, someone to buy stuff.
So, if what makes the economy work is people buying stuff, so that the business has more capital, so that it uses the capital to hire people, who in turn use their money to buy stuff (become consumers).... why would anyone be stupid enough to raise the costs of the goods by putting a sales tax on it? Or, why would business be foolish enough to keep cutting the salaries of the workers so that they couldn't afford to be consumers?
Those two things would sound the most counterproductive to profit.
So, where is the best place to Tax the system to pay for, the roads to get the goods to market and the schools to educate the workers, and the army/police to protect the business?
Wouldn't the best place to tax that system, to keep it most productive and being the most profitable is by taxing any effort to STRIP capital out of the system?
Because if stripping capital out of the system is what makes it fail. So, the natural, fairest, smartest place to tax the system to pay for the services that the system needs is to put a large tax on anyone who takes a giant salary/profit out of the business. High income tax rates on millionaires forces them to keep their money in the business, forces them to expand the business and hire more people with the company's profits to make sure they don't have to pay taxes on the profit. Because no business gets taxed on what it takes in, it gets taxed on the money it doesn't spend/reinvest in the business.
So, that is your "fair tax" a tax on the upper wage earners that keeps business productive.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Chuck,
The "Fair Tax" would be a tax that everyone has to pay, equally. You buy a shirt and everyone has to pay the same tax on it.
If a guy is at the lower end of the pay scale and he doesn't like the amount he has receives or has to pay in taxes, then is this is an incentive for him to better himself, get a better job.
Your redistribution of wealth mentality is really crazy, as it provides no incentive for an individual to invest his hard-earned money into a business venture and maybe get a profit only to have the government take it away at an unfair rate and give it to some guy who is lazy and not willing to work.
Chuck you need to take off your rose colored glasses and look out your window at nature. There you see the free market system in action. You need to work hard to survive and if you don't you are someone's lunch. There is no welfare system out there except for the people who feed the birds. The cats look for these fattened birds and they make a tasty lunch.
6:35 what you need to do is to take off your rose collored glasses, because what you forget is that the regulated free market system exists because the people/government allows it to exist.
It is a creature of the government.
You have cash in the bank because the government prints dollar bills. They have value because the government says it has value. If tomorrow the government said that dollar bills had no value and it was no longer insuring bank accounts, you would have no money.
You own land because the government gives you "title" or a deed to the land. You own the land and you are able to sell the land because the government says you can sell the land. If the government was to repeal the 5th amendment to the constitution or void the provision that requires "just compensation" the government could take all of its land back. Because it isn't your land it is a part of the United States and you have rights to it because the constitution requires the government to pay you if it takes its land back.
A mear eighty years ago after the last crash there was a reasonable chance that revalution could have broken out in this country. There was an ever growing part of the public who were willing to revolt against the wealthy elite that were starving the public.
If you and your kind keep gutting the social safety net that keeps the poor alive to increase the wealth of the upper 1% of the country I have faith that the people will rise up against you. The history of this country has been that it does do that at the ballot box.
At some point the public realizes that it is their country. Every square inch of it. It does not belong to the rich and powerful any more than it belongs to them.
It is not fair to tax the poor at a higher rate of their wealth than we tax the rich.
The economy of the country's is the country's. We as a people can set the rules of the game.
For the last 40 years we have pushed towards a hate the poor, hate the young, hate the old, take care of your own and subsidize the wealthy government.
High tax rates on individuals does not stop them from investing, THAT IS THE REPUBLICAN BIG LIE NUMBER 1. High personal income tax rates forces you to invest your money to avoid taxes. You are not taxed on your wealth you are taxed on the capital you take out of your investments, or the monies you pay yourself from your investments.
Its the money that you hold in your hand or turn into gold coins and trinkets that you are taxed on.
If I take monies I earn out of one property and use it to invest in another, so that on a balance sheet I am not making profit, I pay no taxes. If I expand my business by buying a new building and hiring more workers, so my business shows no profit, I pay no taxes.
The Republican lies are based on the fact that the 80+% of the people who have never done taxes based on anything other than a W2 form don't understand how taxes work.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Interesting article:
When GlobeScan began tracking views in 2002, four in five Americans (80%) saw the free market as the best economic system for the future—the highest level of support among tracking countries. Support started to fall away in the following years and recovered slightly after the financial crisis in 2007/8, but has plummeted since 2009, falling 15 points in a year so that fewer than three in five (59%) now see free market capitalism as the best system for the future.
GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller commented: “America is the last place we would have expected to see such a sharp drop in trust in the free enterprise system. This is not good news for business.”
The results mean that a number of the world’s major emerging economies have now matched or overtaken the USA in their enthusiasm for the free market. The Chinese and Brazilians, 67 per cent of whom regard the free market system as the best on offer, are now more positive about capitalism than Americans, while enthusiasm in India now equals that in the USA, with 59 per cent rating the free market as the best system for the future.
Among the 20 countries polled in both 2009 and 2010, an average of 54 per cent today rate the free market economy as the best economic system, unchanged from 2009.
Americans with incomes below $20,000 were particularly likely to have lost faith in the free market over the past year, with their support dropping from 76 per cent to 44 per cent between 2009 and 2010. American women have also become much less positive, with 52 per cent backing the free market in 2010, down from 73 per cent in 2009.
-snip-
Sooner or later people catch on that the "free market" becomes the rigged market.
JMONTMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
Another piece of propaganda from Communist Chuck Repke.
I don't have time to counter, as I have to go to a real job that is not government supported, but I will reply.
7:18 - do you buy health insurance?
Because if you do, your involved in a pretty "socialistic" activity.
You do know that health insurance isn't like life insurance. You aren't paying into an account that is used exclusively for your benefit. Your money goes in and it is used to pay for the hospital costs of somebody else and when you get sick my monies pay for your visit to the doctor. You do see that it is basic socialistic behavior all of us pooling our monies together to pay for everyone in the pool.
You do understand that the only... I repeat only difference between that and national health insurance is that there are private companies that collect our monies and take 23% off of the top for salaries and profits before they pay the doctors with our money. Whereas in the rest of the planet that money is collected by the government and paid directly to the doctors with radically less overhead.
So, unless you are one of those blood suckers that don't have health insurance that I will have to ultimately pay for when you end up on your death bed and the government has to pay for you.... you are already involved in a socialistic scheme.
JMONTOMEPPOF
Chuck Repke
It sounds like the company Jay Benanav was president of, you know the workers compensation insurance company he ran. All Minnesota companies had to buy their workers compensation insurance through Mr. Bananav’s company, as he was the only one allowed to sell this insurance by state law. Mr. Benanav made a ton of money off it. Mr. Jay Benanav was a DFL city council member in St. Paul, I think ward 4. I like how he also had an affair with his campaign manager and she attacked him in his city hall council office. She threw a potted plant at his head and he ducked and it smashed the picture and put a hole in the wall. Tim Nelson wrote all about it.
Mr. Jay Benanav also restricted parking for the 1950s Auto show at the Minnesota State Fair and around Porkys. These parking restrictions killed Porkys. It wasn’t their business model like you have stated in other posts, but council members like Benanav who meddle in private businesses.
Saint Paul Pioneer Press
February 27, 2004
Section: LOCAL
Edition: City
Page: B1
Memo:St. Paul City Hall
WOMAN IN RUCKUS IDENTIFIED
EX-CAMPAIGN AIDE CONFRONTS BENANAV OVER RELATIONSHIP
ROBERT INGRASSIA, Pioneer Press
A woman who caused a ruckus in Jay Benanav's City Hall office Wednesday night was a former campaign worker with whom the St. Paul City Council member had been having a romantic affair, Benanav and the woman said Thursday.
Rachel Goligoski, 39, said she was upset about the prospect of seeing Benanav at a precinct caucus next week when she smashed a picture frame and threw a potted plant at him during a confrontation in his third-floor office.
"I'm not a disgruntled citizen," Goligoski said, discounting a phrase that a city official used Wednesday to describe the incident. "I'm a disgruntled ex-lover."
Benanav on Thursday acknowledged having had an affair with Goligoski but declined to discuss the matter in detail. He and his wife, Lucy Kanson, issued a statement to the Pioneer Press.
"This is a very personal matter that we are dealing with together, including getting help for the last two months," they said. "A mistake has been made, and now we are working jointly to put it behind us for the sake of our family."
Benanav, 52, represents the 4th Ward, which includes several neighborhoods in the western part of St. Paul. He fell 403 votes short in the 2001 mayoral race with Randy Kelly.
Goligoski, who is unmarried, is a landscape designer and a founder of the Merriam Park Neighbors for Peace.
Wednesday evening's scene was the buzz of City Hall on Thursday. Staffers and Benanav's fellow council members wondered about the identity of the woman who damaged the office and what her motivations were.
The incident disrupted a series of public hearings in the council chambers, which are across a hallway from a suite of council offices. Police are investigating the matter as a case of "criminal damage to property," a misdemeanor when the damage amounts to less than $200.
Officer Paul Schnell, a police spokesman, said officers would typically issue a citation in such cases. The crime carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail. No citation had been issued by Thursday night.
"This case is not going to the top of the pile," Schnell said. "This is not a huge case."
Goligoski said she met Benanav a year ago while organizing an antiwar event. She said Benanav later asked her to become his campaign manager. She said the two began a romantic relationship during the campaign.
"All throughout the campaign, the things we did so often seemed social and I felt guilty, like, 'How come we're just having lunch and not discussing the campaign at all?' And looking back, we were dating."
Goligoski said the affair ended in early January after a messy scene at her home with Benanav and his wife.
"He said he wanted us to get married," she said. "He wanted to spend the rest of his life with me."
Goligoski said she went to City Hall on Wednesday to ask Benanav not to attend the caucus in the precinct where they both live. She said she became angry and pushed and kicked Benanav. She said Benanav lunged at her during the confrontation but did not strike her. She said, however, she suffered bruises during a brief scuffle and is considering filing an assault complaint.
"He came after me and I was just shaking," she said. "I picked something up, I don't even know what it was, like a little globe, a paperweight or something, and threw it and didn't even come close and smashed the painting. And I said, 'Do you see how this is going?' "
Robert Ingrassia can be reached at ringrassia@ pioneerpress.com or 651-292-1892.
Its never over Wisc AG sues Supreme Court http://jurist.org/paperchase/2011/04/wisconsin-ag-sues-judge-calls-for-supreme-court-intervention.php
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