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The War on American Wage Earners, Public Employees, And The Poor Heats Up. Reports from Wisconsin and Beyond. Wisconsin Governor Walker Spills The Beans on How He Plans to End Things In Prank Call.
In Wisconsin, Governor moves to destroy collective bargaining rights.
Wisconsin’s new extreme right-wing Republican governor, Scott Walker, played a little budget sabotage and then proffered Wisconsin needed an austerity plan to “repair it” called the Budget Repair Bill. What it of course boils down to, is an effort by him and the billionaires that funded his candidacy, to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin and beyond. According to Wisconsin’s equivalent to the nation’s Congressional Budget Office, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, there is no budget crisis that would require such extreme measures as to destroy Wisconsin’s collective bargaining rights for its public employees. In fact, in its January 31st, 2011 report, it shows a balance for the end of the fiscal year. It also shows that budget shortfall and budget shortfall projections are caused, in large part, to the governor’s own legislative initiatives passed by the newly minted Republican legislature
Our analysis indicates that for the three-year period, aggregate, general fund tax collections will be $202.8 million lower than those reflected in the November/December reports. More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2
(health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and
Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).
This is the crony capitalism of supply side “economics” in microcosm. Tax cuts at the top for billionaires and business creates a budget deficit. Domestic spending to benefit the public is blamed such as education, safety net and subsistence, public employees, medicare and medicare, etc., prompting budget cuts further contracting the economy, reducing demand, adding to unemployment, reducing tax revenues and creating further deficits. More tax cuts at the top are proposed to “create” jobs and the cycle is repeated. This is nothing but robbing the public sector, middle class, and the poor to benefit the top. It is sold on the fallacy that tax cuts creates jobs, not demand. And when you have policies in Washington that promote free trade instead of reciprocal trade thereby taking more jobs overseas as well as tax revenues, the problem is compounded. The economy is being cannibalized.
The people have responded in Wisconsin with the message their welfare will not be sacrificed for the have mores with large ongoing protests in support of its public workforce. People around the nation and internationally are watching with protestors in Egypt even sending in pizza orders at Ian’s pizza as a show of solidarity.
Local Democratic Party Senators have shown courage by leaving.
Unlike national Democratic Party leaders who have remained largely silent and absent, 14 local Democratic Party senators have decided so far to show solidarity with the public and the middle class in pre-Reagan deity tradition by crossing over into Illinois to avoid a quorum which would allow the “budget repair” bill to go through. There is some indication though that the rich and powerful could get their way in destroying the bargaining rights of Wisconsin’s public workforce in the recent words of state senator Cullen,
“Right now, everybody is solid. I don’t think anybody wants to be the one person who provides the 20th vote. But we are not oblivious to political opinion, and we shouldn’t be oblivious to it. I think there’s a shelf life to staying here. …I didn’t run for Senate to spend the rest of my life in Illinois.”
as reported in The Janesville Gazette. At this point in history, this could prove tragic for both Wisconsin and the nation as Americans seem headed for banana republic status.
Send out the troopers.
Governor Walker was hoping for support from state and local police by preserving their collective bargaining rights while taking the bargaining rights away from other state employees and particularly public education, the perennially proclaimed villain by crony politicians nationwide. He and the Republicans were hoping they could round-up wayward missing Democrats. They, however, have decided to stand by their fellow state employees.
Send in the clowns. The billionaire Koch brothers bus in yellow flag confederates to counter protest and stir up trouble.
The billionaire Koch brothers, major funders of the “tea party” movement and WI Governor Scott Walker, are behind the effort to destroy public unions as reported by Rick Ungar of Forbes. As indicated by Mother Jones
According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker’s gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign’s second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch’s PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used political maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.
also,
Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado
So the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity bused in their usual activists and their tea party rubes to counter the protests of those that were losing their rights to bargain for their pay and benefits, people who said they would negotiate for lower wages, but Governor Walker has refused. So what’s in it for billionaire Kochs? Think Progress offers this
Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant.
And how might they be rewarded? Consider the following from the bill:
“16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”
Wondering if this connection is an exaggeration? Governor Walker spilled the beans of his plan to end the standoff in a prank call by Ian Murphy, editor of the Buffalo Beast posing as David Koch. In the conversation was the following concerning Walker’s plan to bring this to an end. Jason Linkins reporting at the Huffington Post
one tactic they are exploring to bring the wayward Senate Democrats back to the state is stopping the direct deposit of their paychecks. “Koch” asks, “Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?” The other man replies that there is one, state Sen. Tim Cullen, who might be approachable, though he cautions, “He’s pretty reasonable, but he’s not one of us.”
The conversation continued
WALKER: You’ve got a few of the radical ones — unfortunately, one of them’s the minority leader — but most of the rest of them are just looking for a way to get out of this. They’re scared out of their minds. They don’t know what it means. There’s a bunch of recalls up against them. They’d really like to just get back up here and get it over with. So the paycheck thing, some of the other things threatening them, I think collectively there’s enough going on, and as long as they don’t think I’m going to cave, which again we have no interest in. An interesting idea that was brought up to me by my chief of staff, we won’t do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democratic leader. I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders–talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn–but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly. They can recess it… the reason for that, we’re verifying it this afternoon, legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum because it’s turned out that way. So we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. My sense is, hell. I’ll talk. If they want to yell at me for an hour, I’m used to that. I can deal with that. But I’m not negotiating.
Of course, Governor Walker has been trying about every tactic to bust the union and their protest up from bringing in the National Guard to cutting internet access off to the protestors at the state capital.
A 15 state strategy is underway.
Andy Stern of The Daily Beast reports this is a 15 state strategy underway by the GOP. Exempting police and fire fighters and changing laws to affect legal standings of unions is a political move, not an economic one. Does an economy benefit from low wages and laid off public employees? The answer is no. It contracts economic activity even more. How many low wage countries are prosperous countries? The answer is none. There is no such thing as a prosperous low wage country.
Are Americans being subject to the shock doctrine? It would appear so. We shock doctrined Chile in 1973 and Iraq with the Bremer orders. While it has been part of our foreign policy to do it on behalf of multi-national corporations, the US hasn’t fully implemented it here due to the unpopularity of it among populations. But the last 30 years, the corporate state has slowly marched forward implementing tax cuts and steadily privatizing government services. With the Citizens United case recently minted by our corporatist Supreme Court and so-called “austerity” plans, it appears our time has come lest we fight back and fight back now. Remember, austerity is for the average citizen, not the billionaires that will profit from citizen suffering once implemented.
American Hypocrisy. Former C.I.A. Analyst And Army Veteran Beaten And Jailed At Clinton Speech.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was at George Washington University yesterday giving a speech criticizing governments that arrest protestors and deny or restrict free expression or air grievances that are critical. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, age 71, who became at activist for truth after the Bush administration’s lies to war and is a peace activist was in attendance and standing in the audience and he turned his back as Clinton spoke while wearing a Veterans For Peace T shirt. McGovern was grabbed by an unidentified plain clothes official and officers (in full view of her). McGovern remarked as he was carried out the door, “So this is America?”. McGovern was brutalized and left bleeding and bruised in jail as reported at the Partnership for Civil Justice.
McGovern will be represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government’s supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech,” stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.
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Will Obama Find Those Shoes?
In the flashback quote of the day at Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, he mentions a quote candidate Obama made to Slate in 2007. That quote is as follows:
Well, we will see it? Or will it end up like the closing of Guantanamo Bay, a public option, or restoring constitutional checks and balances? He has given credence lately to false framing from the right with his freezing of pay of government workers, extention of the Bush tax cuts, a “deficit commission”, more budget cutting, and lip service to looking into deregulation when deregulation led us to financial collapse. Will he find those shoes?