When you talk to political folks in Wisconsin, you realize that transparency and procedure matter a lot. This violation of law is actually but one of the many dubious marks on yesterday’s action, and actually all the action around the budget repair bill and the assault on workers’ rights. Perhaps the open meetings violation could be rectified merely by waiting another day and starting over. But there are all the questions surrounding the content of the bill itself. The whole reason this ordeal has lasted three weeks is that the collective bargaining piece was tied into the budget repair bill, which had a fiscal impact. That’s what triggered the quorum requirement. But the Republicans supposedly stripped out the fiscal pieces and passed a purely non-fiscal bill last night in the Senate, and later this morning they’ll do the same in the Assembly.

So where was all this “fiscally responsible” fighting spirit when it came to paying out $32.6 billion in taxpayer funded banker bonuses?

Well, as Larry Summers said, “we are a country of law.”

Public pension funds would not be facing a crisis if economists’ projections of stock returns had been accurate.

Today, the Comptroller of the City of New York along with the presidents of several large unions sent a letter to some of the biggest baddest banks in the foreclosure mess and told those banks to get their acts together and start making mortgage modifications.