Democratic assembly member Mark Pocan, filibustering, said: "Stand up and explain why you think bigotry in the year 2011 makes sense!"
Before dropping a bomb on race-based scholarships, Wis. Republicans in the state assembly debated and voted on several other contentious bills late into the evening of Nov. 1. These included a "landlords' rights" bill that prohibits local units of governments from establishing their own fair housing ordinances, a bill to reduce the amount of education required to be a school nurse, another one to allow school districts to discriminate against anyone with a felony conviction on their record whether or not the offense had anything to do with the job for which they are applying.
A lot of time was spent on debate and discussion of AB 319, a bill to allow cities and towns to reopen contracts with employees for the sole purpose of extracting more benefit concessions from them. This bill is necessary because Act 10, the infamous Budget Repair Bill that sparked massive protests last February and March, outlaws collective bargaining with public sector unions on anything other than cost of living wage increases.
Building on the theme of Republican hypocrisy he had been making all evening, Democratic minority leader Peter Barca stated, "This is a great illustration of the overreach of the complete elimination of collective bargaining passed earlier this year." He added, "This is an absurdity! We want to regulate from this body when a local unit of government can enter into a contract with a group of employees. In a free and open society, contracts are what make our society work." He asked the Republicans to please drop the term "local control" from their ideology and vocabulary since they had voted against the concept so many times this year.
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