"It's the God, guns and gays wedge issue,"

[rodeodance]

I never expected to see this happen in Wisconsin!!!!!!!!
Worth reading the whole article!



http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=41357&ntpid=5
Lampert Smith:

It's about what families value

00:00 am 5/26/05
Susan Lampert Smith Wisconsin State Journal


Now that Assembly Speaker John Gard and his pals have killed health insurance for domestic partners of University of Wisconsin System employees, can we please stop pretending?

It's not about the money.

If it was about the money, legislators would have accepted language from Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, to allow the System to compete for employees by offering the benefits, providing they did so with existing money.

If it was about the money, they might have read the Legislative Fiscal Bureau report that suggests the benefits could cost less than the $500,000 Gov. Jim Doyle set aside for them. Since every other Big Ten university offers these benefits, the bureau looked at them and found that less than 1 percent of employees apply for these benefits. At the University of Minnesota, which offers insurance to same-sex partners, that amounted to 89 of 16,000 employees. At Michigan, it was 213 of 30,000 employees. And at Iowa, which offers insurance to any unmarried couple, 63 of 13,000 employees took the insurance........

[beyurslf]

1. As a state issue, domestic parnter benefits cost LESS money than

not offering them. The reason is that the partner may otherwise be uninsured and costing the state money. In the long run, everyone benefits by allowing this coverage.