Sunday, November 30, 2014

Shankland Looks Forward to Working With Republicans

I had strong concerns about State Representative Katrina Shankland ("D" - Stevens Point) when she first ran for office two years ago.

Two years later, my concerns remain as strong as ever.  Shankland, who is entering her second term in office, was recently elected by the Democratic Assembly Caucus to be the assistant minority leader.  Apparently, her first order of business is to acquiesce to the Republicans:
I think the key here is managing relationships and building coalitions, so my goal is to sit down with everyone in the Assembly. There have been a lot of talks about how ‘green’ the Assembly is. Over half of us haven’t even been through Act 10 anymore. I think, personally, that’s positive. That means while we lack institutional knowledge, we also have tremendous motivation to build personal relationships and work across the aisle. I see that potential in the new members as well as the current freshman caucuses … so my goal is to help facilitate that conversation.

I also am really looking forward to sitting down with every member of leadership, especially in the Republican caucus, talking about priorities and picking their brains seeing where we can work together. There are so many nonpartisan issues in this state. I wish that education were considered nonpartisan. It is not, unfortunately, because of the voucher expansion lobby. I wish that our natural resources and preserving our natural resources were less partisan. I’ll be fighting very hard for that. But I think there are other issues. Protecting women and ensuring that domestic violence is being curbed and we’re finding good plans to help domestic abuse victims is one example where I think we can work together. And we’ve seen that. We passed mental health and heroin packages in the last session. Every kind of corner or angle I can see, I want to capitalize on and make sure that Democrats can advance an agenda that is reflective of what the people of Wisconsin want and that starts by finding ways to work together.
Oh, yay!

You know who else likes to work with the Republicans? The sellout senator, Lena Taylor.

Thanks to Taylor's "bipartisanship," we have a number of unhealthy laws in the books, including, but in no way limited to:


With friends like these, who needs enemies?

How is she going to compromise with people that want to ruin the state ten times over? By making them settle for ruining it only seven times over?

It's pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Democrats have a messaging problem.  I think their problems go much deeper than that.  They have a spinal fortitude deficiency.

5 comments:

  1. Speaking strictly "Tri-Partisanly," as a Green Party activist, I'd like to say, we're interested in "working together" on things that further the Greens' Ten Key Values:

    http://wigp.nationbuilder.com/ten_key_values

    Otherwise? not so much. In the time of raging class warfare, how can we find common ground with those who seek to economically (and by extension, politically) obliterate the precarious working class (AKA "precariat") in Wisconsin?

    We look forward to ejecting Republicans from their seats, and reclaiming those seats for the 99% of the natural persons in Wisconsin. Unless, of course, they may decide to "defect" to our cause. Then, we may consider it on a case-by-case basis.

    Green and Growing, as George Martin says...

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    Replies
    1. Aside from a few individual WI Democrats in office, I don't have a clue why you'd want to collaborate with the DPW, (if that is what you are proposing) to address raging class warfare.

      Blue democratic sentiments are still strong in the state, not so much in the DPW, from the top on down to county "leadership." dictates.

      Don't have the answers for forming a coalition, but as the OP suggests, who you gonna call on for representation?

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  2. In other news:
    "The meeting ended amicably with Chamberlain confiding to Hitler his hopes they would be able to work out other problems in Europe in the same spirit. "

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  3. "...That means while we lack institutional knowledge, we also have tremendous motivation to build personal relationships and work across the aisle..." Shankland enters the Assembly in 2012 and already is given a Democratic party leadership role. She may be motivated, but that can be a bad omen of things to come. "Working with" right-wing extremists and making compromising deals does not represent our interests or the public's, either. I can see why Dale Schultz thought and did what he did.

    The DPW really doesn't know what it stands for, and has a marked inability to communicate honestly with the voters they are supposed to represent. It's no wonder there are so few Democrats elected to the Assembly. If it comes down to 'If we can't beat 'em, we'll join 'em,' then there really is no purpose to pretending that we voters and work in live in a representative democracy.
    I think those chosing to break away from the Democrats and starting a Green Party would understand that frustration.

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  4. Is the rumor also true that I've heard she's hired a former lobbyist for the payday loan industry as her chief of staff who will also help with the campaigning and fundraising the DPW?

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