I missed posting this quote the first time around (January 2012), and felt it was even more relevant now since Mitt Romney has become the GOP’s presidential candidate and has even nominated another plutocrat to govern with him. Enjoy.
Asked for his opinion on the growing concern of Americans re income inequality, Mitt Romney says it’s all about envy:
“You know, I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare.”
Oh, there is certainly a class war going on, but it’s being waged by the 1% against the poor and the middle class. But I digress.
When Romney was asked if it’s ever okay to have a discussion about wealth inequality, Romney said it was fine to do so in “quiet rooms”:
“It's fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like.”
In other words, keep such matters from gaining wide attention or as Mitt might privately say, “We certainly don’t want the servant class to learn that they’re terribly taken advantage of in order to benefit us (the 1%), so STFU!”.
When you take the right side, style trumps substance every time in politics. President Obama was on fire Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, hammering home populist themes that will define his campaign. This was his campaign kick-off. He couldn't have done a better job of stating his case as the candidate of the people, while painting Romney as the darling of The Money Party (Wall Street, big banks).
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The problem with our economy isn’t that the American people aren’t productive enough -- you’ve been working harder than ever. The challenge we face right now -- the challenge we faced for over a decade is that harder work hasn’t led to higher incomes. It’s that bigger profits haven’t led to better jobs. President Obama (Full text of Obama's remarks, Columbus, Ohio, May 5, 2012)
It's not your fault the president tells us, which happens to be absolutely correct. Then he nailed Romney:
During his third State of the Union address on January 24, President Barack Obama called for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes:
“Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes…Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.
We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right.”
“Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union.”
~ Andrew Jackson quote - Veto of the Second Bank of the United States 1832
“We have become and will become ever more so a nation in which a vast economic underclass caters to a tiny upper class that possesses the lion's share of the wealth, which it gains to selling goods with built-in obsolescence to that underclass, which still believes, wrongly, that it can approximate the middle class lifestyle by falling into debt in order to purchase consumer goods which create the shared illusion of superficial prosperity.
In the Middle Class Museum rests the sarcophagus of a mother and father with public high school educations who raised a family and sent their children to college and retired at 65 and did not die in debt. History is full of wonders.”
“They have waged class war on us. It is time for our class to fight back. It's time for us to reach out to one another to fight for the right to organize, to fight corporations that would fight us, to demand that trade agreements protect workers and workers' rights, children, our environment, and our quality of life, and to fight for human dignity.”
Watch the full video of the press conference here.
TRANSCRIPT PRESIDENT OBAMA PRESS CONFERENCE JUNE 29, 2011
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good morning, everybody. Have a seat, please. I just want to say a few words about the economy before I take your questions.
There are a lot of folks out there who are still struggling with the effects of the recession. Many people are still looking for work or looking for a job that pays more. Families are wondering how they'd deal with a broken refrigerator or a busted transmission, or how they're going to finance their kids' college education, and they're also worrying about the possibility of layoffs.
The struggles of middle-class families were a big problem long before the recession hit in 2007. They weren’t created overnight, and the truth is our economic challenges are not going to be solved overnight. But there are more steps that we can take right now that would help businesses create jobs here in America.
In response to the anti-Democratic martial law being enacted in Michigan, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) fired back, calling the bill unconstitutional, emphasis mine:
Worse yet, this bill raises serious constitutional concerns. Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits any State from impairing a contract, which is exactly what this legislation does. As the Supreme Court has held in Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell (1934), the sanctity of contracts cannot be impaired by a state law “which renders them invalid, or releases or extinguishes them . . . . Not only are existing laws read into contracts in order to fix obligations as between the parties, but the reservation of essential attributes of sovereign power is also read into contracts as a postulate of the legal order.”
Rep. Conyers also inferred that some parts of this bill may be racially motivated, something Karoli at Crooks and Liars has also suggested:
The takeover provision of the legislation – allowing the dissolution of locally elected bodies — implicitly targets minority communities that are disproportionately impacted by the economic downturn, without providing meaningful support for improved economic opportunity.
Finally, Conyers also pointed out that by forcing a community in to bankruptcy (which will likely be done to force union consessions for public sector workers or just to break the collective bargaining contracts which the EMF also has the legal authority to do), the financial situation of the community will actually become worse.
Further, the bill empowers this financial czar with the Governor’s approval to force a municipality into bankruptcy, a power that will surely be used to extract further concessions from hardworking public sector workers. And, by making the risk of bankruptcy a reality, the bill will make it more not less expensive for municipalities to obtain financing given this risk, which will make the financial circumstances of municipalities even worse.
Taking it through the courts could take years. In the meantime, thanks to the Republican controlled House and Senate in Michigan, along with our new Dictator Republican Governor Rick Snyder, the people of Michigan will suffer, because this bill is the most draconian, the most un-Democratic piece of legislation in this country right now.
This is what‘s coming for you [referring to the protests in Wisconsin & elsewhere], because the people aren’t going to take it any more.
The people are going to demand justice. They‘re going to demand that your ass is in jail.
You have taken the money, we want the money back.
You have taken our jobs overseas, we want those jobs back. Those are a national resource. Those are not yours to do with as you please. They affect all of us as a society.
We have a right to those jobs. We have a right to that money that used to belong to the people of this country.
A million people evicted from homes, foreclosed this year. Another million expected this year. How many—I just wonder again, if I can, just address the Wall Streeters and banksters out there—how many more people do you think you can throw out of their homes before they do revolt? How long do you think this is going to go on?
Exactly how I feel about it. I’ve had enough, and I hope you have too.
While Wisconsin’s family farmers are not union members, they are members of the American middle class, and they recognize class warfare when they see it. This tractorcade in Madison today is in solidarity with all those fighting the corporate power represented by Corporate Shill, Gov. Scott Walker.
From Minnesota blogger, Mike McMahon, on why a Minnesota group is participating in the Wisconsin tractorcade today, emphasis mine:
The Land Stewardship Project is here today participating in the Farmer-Labor Tractorcade being led by Wisconsin farmers because of the actions taken by Gov. Scott Walker. Walker and his allies have enabled a power-grab by big corporations to the detriment of the land, and people, of Wisconsin.
We know what happens under unchecked corporate power – the people suffer. That’s why family farmers across the Midwest organized in the 1890s, and the 1910s, and the 1930s, and the 1980s – building farmer co-ops, passing public policy that reined in corporate power and assisted family farms, and establishing farm organizations to fight for the well-being of family farmers, rural communities, and the land.
Today is another such time, in which predatory corporations like Monsanto, Dean Foods, Smithfield, and the Koch Brothers, are grabbing control over our seeds, our milk, our livestock, our land, our public assets — even our democracy. And now their political allies in Madison are attempting to pass and implement extremist legislation that breaks the power of working people to organize on their own behalf. They believe it will greatly diminish the power of people to rein in corporate greed that knows no bounds. They further this attack on the middle class by attempting to divide portions of the middle class against one another, alleging that the fight is between a unionized worker and someone who is not in a union. All of this to advance a pro-corporate agenda of business tax cuts, public asset fire-sales, reduced corporate accountability, and increased profits for the biggest of the big.
LAST NIGHT, MAR. 9: As you likely already know, last night Republicans illegally rammed through the portion of Walker’s budget that deals with collective bargaining, enacting, in effect, the end of collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin. Congrats, Koch Bastards.
After that happened, the Wisconsin state capitol was closed, and according to a metro bus driver, his bus was commandeered to take Republican legislator – fascists, out of the immediate area.
TODAY, MAR. 10: Today, the capitol was closed to everyone, with the remaining (unresisting) protesters being dragged out of the building, leading to thousands chanting “Let us in!”
The capitol police were replaced today by Wisconsin State Police troopers. The image below, via @ACLUMadison, is of riot gear being unloaded—wonder if the tear gas is even made in America?
Also today, Wisconsin firefighters went in to the Capitol Square/Madison branch of M&I bank as a group, and withdrew $190,000. M&I was the largest of the banks to back Gov. Scott Walker. That branch was closed for the day shortly thereafter Image below via @mariyastrauss
Additionally, there is a boycott of M&I planned if they don’t publicly oppose Walker’s efforts:
Teachers, firefighters and police officers said they would begin a boycott of M&I Bank if the bank does not begin publicly opposing Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to curtail collective bargaining for public workers.
Unions representing those groups said they would start other boycotts of businesses that backed Walker in his campaign.
The letter to M&I President Tom Ellis said the boycott would begin March 17 if the bank hasn't opposed Walker's efforts by then.
Stay tuned. I’ll be updating until sometime tonight.
5:07 PM Update: Wisconsin lawmakers voted to approve the measure to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees.
Police state (Wisconsin capitol building). Via @thinkprogress twitter stream.
5:45 PM Update: About an hour ago, Wisconsin Minority Assembly Minority Leader , Peter Barca (D), addressed the crown in Madison:
We think this vote will not stand. We believe it violates the law.
6:02 PM Update: We just learned that about 5 hours ago, hundreds of students at Madison West High School walked out of school and began marching to the capitol building, with a Madison police escort.
In the capitol building, Wisconsin state troopers deny media access to the Assembly.
8:00 PM Update: A general strike in Wisconsin? Not yet, it seems.
Calls for a general strike are growing among union members and supporters as the state Legislature advanced a law stripping public sector unions of almost all bargaining rights, but it remains unclear whether strikes or pickets will appear soon.
Union leaders say the Republicans' fast-track passage of the bill has fueled strike talk, but for now most are urging legal measures such as recall of Republican legislators as a way to repeal the law.
"A general strike would be playing the trump card, and you don't play the trump right away, you build up to that," said Jim Cavanaugh, president of the 45,000-member South Central Federal of Labor in Madison.
Michigan is in deep trouble. What makes me really angry is that people voted for this TrojanCorporateBastard, even though he told them that he would “run the state as a business”. What did they think that would look like? (in the next week or so, I’ll be doing a piece on Snyder’s campaign, including the financing-stay tuned) And, more critical now, why weren’t we paying attention?
While we were venting our outrage at shenanigans in Wisconsin politics, in fact while Republicans were planning last night’s attempted coup, the Michigan state legislature quietly passed a bill giving the Governor of Michigan martial control over the state. Except instead of using actual military, the Governor is more likely to use private security. But make no mistake–rights would be suspended.
Here’s how it works:
The governor, on his own initiative, can declare an economic emergency in any town and appoint an administrator. The administrator can be any person, including a corporate person.
The administrator has the power to do anything in the name of economic stability, including void contracts, void collective bargaining agreements, dissolve the town council, dissolve the school board, fire anyone including elected officials, hire private security, unincorporate the town, and sell off public property.
The people of the town have no say in this. They can neither demand nor turn away the administrator. That is because this provision is meant to be used against the people.
What might constitute an emergency in the Governor’s eyes?
A labor strike is the first thing that comes to mind. Too many foreclosures. Crime! In short, anything he wants it to be–and with billionaire backers, any controversy can be created.
What might the administrator do in that emergency?
First, privatize everything. Fire public workers and take over all public functions–running schools, police and fire service, and so on. Michigan just made this legal.
Second, imprison dissidents, shutter businesses, and seize property by eminent domain. This is not legal, but hey, that didn’t stop the Wisconsin Republicans.
In short, take over control and turn it into a corporate town.
We need to pay attention to Michigan because they are farther along the road to corporate statehood–to where the Republicans want to take all of us.
Privatization is going to happen first. And they aren't going to play around. They will go after towns en masse, with people unable to catch their breath long enough to fight back.
Still having never learned to be calm, retract their claws, and sit around and act rationally in a situation that calls for panic, Wisconsin’s Republicans and their Corporate Puppeteers tonight guaranteed themselves an unprecedented and disastrous recall next January.
More over, they also guaranteed themselves that any cloak of stealth under which they have operated in their attacks on teachers, firefighters, policemen, unions, and the settled law of collective bargaining, has been stripped away. If you pass a supposedly urgent “budget repair” bill with key budget components cut from it, you forfeit the fiction that you are doing anything remedial, anything essential, anything except a naked power grab on behalf of corporations who will get the money stolen from organized labor – civic or private.
And further, when you accomplish all this by parliamentary trick – after your national party has spent two years and more decrying Congressional reconciliation – when you deny the minority the right to participate in the outcome whether by compromise or protest, you cut through the cacophony of political-speak in this country and you transmit your sneering indifference towards democracy to ordinary citizens who do not normally pay attention.
Bastards. Hard to know how this will pan out. Keith Olbermann says that Republicans have committed suicide. We’ll see.
I will say that next up for reversal will be minimum wage laws, the 40 hour work week, and so on. This is what they’re working toward at the direction of their corporate masters.
Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate passed the most controversial portions of Governor Scott Walker's budget repair bill late on Wednesday, stripping out the sections that required the presence of their 14 absent Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber.
In an 18-to-1 vote, the Senate approved the curbs on collective bargaining by public employees that Walker has insisted are needed to help the state's cash-strapped municipalities deal with a projected $1.27 billion drop in state aid over the next two years.
Adding….Twitter is going crazy over this news. The hacker group known as “anonymous” appears to have decided to stand with the workers. The link on that tweet is to a chat room, currently inundated with 7000+ people.
The Republican controlled Senate passed the emergency financial manager bill today, and the Republican controlled House passed a version of the same bill yesterday.
Gov. Rick Snyder did an end run around the people by forcing cities, towns and school districts closer to financial emergency via his own state budget cuts. This is nothing more than a union busting power play, no matter how Snyder tries to spin it.
The powers of the emergency financial managers, who would be appointed by Snyder at his whim, since the law does not require that an entity actually be in dire financial straits, are so broad it is likely that they are unconstitutional.
From my previous post, EFM powers include the following:
~ Authority to dismiss all or any elected officials ~ Authority to privatize all or any city services, including schools ~ Authority to break any and all contracts entered in to by your city via your elected officials, including collective bargaining contracts ~ Authority to disincorporate a town or city ~ Authority to merge one school district with another school district
LANSING -- The Senate has passed a bill to give much broader powers to emergency managers appointed to overhaul the finances of cities or schools facing collapse.
The 26-12 vote capped two days of debate, punctuated by protests from union supporters in the halls of the Capitol who object to giving emergency managers authority to nullify employee union contracts in municipalities or school districts where they're appointed. All Republicans voted for it; all Democrats voted against.
A demonstration Tuesday filled the inside of the Capitol and was called the largest protest ever seen inside the usually decorous building.
Democrats blasted the bill as a government power grab that would undermine collective bargaining in targeted communities with appointed, high-paid managers that have almost unlimited authority.
What makes this law so unique is its extensive reach.
Not only can an emergency manager wipe out collective bargaining agreements, he or she can literally push aside duly elected city officials and prevent them from doing the job they were elected to do.
Clearly, this raises some questions of constitutionality and state overreach.
Be sure to watch Rachel Maddow discussing this travesty with Naomi Klein, and stay tuned.
Today, the Republican controlled Michigan Senate will vote on a bill giving newly elected Governor Rick Snyder, unprecedented power to:declare any town, city, or school district in fiscal emergency, and to appoint a fiscal manager to such a town or school district.
The fiscal manager, which can be a corporation, then gains the following powers:
Authority to dismiss all or any of your elected officials
Authority to privatize all or any city services, including schools
Authority to break any and all contracts entered in to by your city via your elected officials, including collective bargaining contracts
Authority to disincorporate your town or city
Authority to merge your school district with another school district
Critics argue that the deep cuts in school funding and revenue sharing proposed by Snyder and Republican legislators could push many cities over the brink into bankruptcy, dramatically increasing the number of cities under the control of state-appointed emergency managers that will, after the passage of this bill, have unprecedented and — many argue — unconstitutional powers.
Rachel Maddow discusses this situation, and Republican plans for disaster capitalism with Naomi Klein. Watch:
For reference purposes, it may be helpful to note that Rick Snyder is a former CEO of Gateway, the same guy who sold it to the Chinese.
Personally, I never, ever, ever watch Fox News. Watching the clips of people such as Megan Kelly, Bill O"Reilly, et al, is more than enough for me. It makes me feel like I need brain bleach. Gah....
Jon Stewart compares teachers to Wall Street and highlights the utterly disgusting hypocrisy of Fox.
An ad which will speak to working people everywhere, created by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy For America.
Watch:
The GOP is out in the open now, playing only to their corporate sponsors, not just in Madison, but union-busting in other states, and forcing draconian cuts to the U.S. budget which will impact ONLY working people and the poor everywhere in this nation.
It is nothing less than a travesty that we’ve allowed it to get this far.
I'm going to get so killed for saying this ... I'm going to get killed for saying this. I don't understand. It seems -- I'm going to get so killed for this. I don't understand. I hate to say this, but the concept of telling people that they cannot come together to negotiate, with a government -- it just kind of seems un-American to me.
Watch:
Then of course, Scarbough goes on to improperly frame the whole issue, but still…..wingnuts should take note when even Scarborough thinks you’re whacked out, you are definitely out there.
On her show last night, Rachel Maddow talked directly to those fighting for their collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, telling them that they are now winning. And she’s right. But, I am seeing less vocal/open support for this battle, which is important to a vast majority of Americans, because when Wisconsin wins, all of the working people in America win.
SHOW your support, America! It is not time to stand down.
From @Triumph68 on Twitter, via Maddow, protesters in #Wisconsin refuse to give in, to give up, after Gov. Scott Walker locked them out of the people’s statehouse. Braving the extreme cold, the snow, they stayed.
Wisconsin, you are winning. I will say that again. Wisconsin, you are winning this fight.
There is a reason that after all of this time, your governor is not willing to negotiate. He is not willing to talk at all. But he is willing to kick you out of the Capitol.
A judge has now ordered that Walker re-open the capitol building. Whether or not he will comply, remains to be seen.
Krugman on the media blackout of the protests occurring in Wisconsin, and on Saturday, in 65 other cities all over the country:
I don’t watch cable news, or actually any kind of TV news. But I gather that there’s a virtual blackout on the huge demonstrations in Wisconsin, except on Fox, which portrays them as thuggish and violent.
What that makes me think of is January-February 2003, when anyone watching cable news would have believed that only a few kooks were opposed to the imminent invasion of Iraq. It was quite spooky, realizing that hundreds of thousands of people could march through New York, and by tacit agreement be ignored by news networks whose headquarters were just a few blocks away.
And it’s even more spooky to see it happening all over again.
Jason Easley, in an article berating the cable news networks for their almost complete lack of coverage of the protests in Madison, Wisconsin, and in 65 other cities in the U.S. on Saturday:
A protest was held today that was bigger than anything that the Tea Party has ever done, but you wouldn’t know it if you were watching TV. There is something seriously wrong with a news gathering and reporting apparatus that devotes more live coverage to the protests in Egypt than protests in Wisconsin. Egypt was a big story, but the a fight for the very survival of the middle class should not be ignored.
Just a quick reminder re the solidarity rallies being held in all fifty states tomorrow. You can find the schedule here.
Help us save what’s really at stake in Wisconsin and elsewhere, the American dream!!
Adding...you can also sign up to attend, or to volunteer, with MoveOn.org. All organizations promoting these events will be attending the same rally, so you do NOT have to sign up in order to attend any specific rally, just check with MoveOn or DefendWisconsin for the schedule in your state. All rallies are being held in each state's respective statehouse.
Former President Ronald Reagan, did not share his party's hatred of unions. From Think Progress, emphasis mine:
As the Main Street Movement of students, workers, and other middle class Americans erupts across America, many conservatives have invoked the legacy of former president Ronald Reagan to demand that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) not back down from his push to end collective bargaining for his state’s public employees. In a prank call with the Buffalo Beast’s Ian Murphy, where Murphy pretended to be right-wing billionare David Koch, Walker himself even fantasized about being just like Reagan.
Yet conservatives may be shocked to learn that their idol Reagan was once a union boss himself. Reagan was the only president in American history to have belonged to a union, the AFL-CIO affiliated Screen Actors Guild. And he even served six terms as president of the organized labor group. Additionally, Reagan was a staunch advocate for the collective bargaining rights of one of the world’s most famous and most influential trade unions, Poland’s Solidarity movement.
Founded in September 1980, Solidarity was formed in Soviet-occupied Poland as the USSR’s first free and independent trade union. By 1981, the union had grown to 10 million people and became a powerful force for demanding economic and political reforms within the Soviet Union. Solidarity began to use strikes to demand these reforms, and the Soviets responded by jailing their leaders and cracking down on their right to organize. During his Christmas address to the nation on December 23, 1981, President Reagan condemned the Soviet-backed Polish crackdowns on labor unions, promoting the “basic right of free trade unions and to strike”:
REAGAN: The Polish government has trampled underfoot to the UN Charter and Helsinki accords. It has even broken the Gdańsk Agreement of 1980 by which the Polish government recognized the basic right of free trade unions and to strike.
He promised to sign legislation if elected governor that prohibits the Legislature from voting after 10 p.m. or before 9 a.m.
Early this morning, the anti-union bill made it past Wisconsin’s Assembly, effectively stripping public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights. Think Progress, emphasis mine:.
Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly approved legislation stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights, in the face of ongoing protests that have gripped Madison for well over a week. The bill passed at 1:17 a.m., and Republicans only held the vote open for “seconds.” The vote was called while many Democrats were outside the Assembly chamber, preventing them from casting no votes. Only 13 of the Assembly’s 38 Democratic members got their votes in on time.Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) praised the Assembly’s action in a statement.
Gov. Walker, praised the Wisconsin lawmakers, never mentioning the trickery involved, nor the fact that Democrats were out of the Chamber when the vote was called:
Day after day Assembly Republicans and Assembly Democrats showed up and did the jobs they were elected to do. After an unprecedented amount of debate, they continued to do their jobs by casting their votes. Republicans should be commended for their willingness to cast a vote that will fix this budget and future budgets. Democrats should also be commended for coming to work every day and giving their constituents a voice at the State Capitol. Now all the attention is on the Senate. The fourteen Senate Democrats need to come home and do their jobs, just like the Assembly Democrats did
The bill still has to get through the Wisconsin Senate, and since the Democratic lawmakers remain out of state, they have no quorum for a vote.
Meanwhile, protests are planned throughout the country to fight the Republican goal of ending the middle class in America.
Shep Smith and Juan Williams discuss Wisconsin, and Smith tells enough truth to get himself in trouble with the oligarchs, including his acknowledgement that it isn’t about the damn budget:
Shepard Smith, on the real reason Walker and the GOP are union-busting:
This is why they are doing it, no doubt about it. In fact, the whole controversy about public employee unions is nothing more than one prong of their "defund the left" strategy. (If you wonder why the plutocrats are going along with efforts to cut Planned Parenthood and the like, that would be it. it's not like they care one way or the other --- rich women will always get abortions if they need them.)
Yesterday USA Today made a big splash when the paper released a Gallup poll finding that 61 percent of Americans nationwide oppose Governor Scott Walker's plan to roll back the bargaining rights of public employees. Today Gallup has released a partisan breakdown of those numbers, and it's striking..
Of course Republicans don’t favor collective bargaining rights. They are the party of the oligarchs.
> We already know that Walker was union-busting for political reasons, and at the Koch brothers bidding, but here’s what he could have done had he really been trying to deal with the budget: "The state's entire budget shortfall for this year -- the reason that Walker has said he must push through immediate cuts -- would be covered by the governor's relatively uncontroversial proposal to restructure the state's debt. By contrast, the proposals that have kicked up a firestorm, especially his call to curtail the collective-bargaining rights of the state's public-employees, wouldn't save any money this year." H/T Steve Benen
> Jeff Cox, the Deputy Attorney General in Indiana who said he wanted to see “live ammunition” used on the Wisconsin protesters was fired.
>Scott Walker lied about campaigning on the collective bargaining issue: “I campaigned on (the proposals in the budget repair bill for Wisconsin) all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years."
> Calls to boycott Koch Industries (tea party sugar daddy/founder of fake grass roots movements tea party AND Wisconsin union busting ALSO sugar daddy to Justice Clarence Thomas) growing.
A New York-based alt-news editor says he got through to the embattled Wisconsin governor on the phone Tuesday by posing as right-wing financier David Koch...then had a far-ranging 20-minute conversation about the collective bargaining protests. According to the audio, Walker told him:
That statehouse GOPers were plotting to hold Democratic senators' pay until they returned to vote on the controversial union-busting bill.
That Walker was looking to nail Dems on ethics violations if they took meals or lodging from union supporters.
That he'd take "Koch" up on this offer: "[O]nce you crush these bastards I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time."
In Indiana, as state legislators debate “right-to-work” legislation that would destroy the ability of unions to organize, thousands protested at the Indiana state capitol, and Democratic legislators havewalked out in order to protect the right of workers to engage in collective bargaining.
In Ohio, thousands of public sector workers gathered at the state capitol today to protest legislation which would cost workers their right to collectively bargain.
In Wisconsin today, protests continued, and Democratic legislators remained absent, as Gov. Scott Walker threatened layoffs. Act Blue has raised $357,000 in support of Wisconsin’s stand-up Democratic lawmakers, and if you’d like to contribute, just click on the Act Blue link.
According to pro-labor protesters in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) may be taking a page from former Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak and cutting off internet access to key protest organizers within the state Capitol building.
If you are in the Capitol attempting to access the internet from a free wifi connection labeled “guest,” you cannot access the site defendwisconsin.org. The site has been used to provide updates on what is happening, where you can volunteer, and where supplies and goods are needed to support protesters. Administrators of the website were notified on Monday that the page is being blocked. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate says that the site was put on a blacklist typically used to filter out pornography sites so that protestors inside the Capitol could not access this key site.
On Saturday, February 26, in solidarity with Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, protests will be held in all fifty states at the respective state capitols. Go here to get the specifics for your states protest.
Now Walker is threatening to begin sending out lay-off notices to state employees if they don’t do what he wants. What an asshat.
MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker warned Tuesday that state employees could start receiving layoff notices as early as next week if a bill eliminating most collective bargaining rights isn't passed soon.
Walker said in a statement to The Associated Press that the layoffs wouldn't take effect immediately. He didn't say which workers would be targeted but he has repeatedly warned that up to 1,500 workers could lose their jobs by July if his proposal isn't passed.
Honestly, I think Walker needs to reassess because I do not think he is going to win this fight.
Some of you reading this quote will think it’s hyperbolic. Let me assure you it isn’t. Wisconsin is just the first step in a well thought out plan by Republicans to destroy the Democratic Party by destroying the unions. Is this possible? Could this really happen? Yes, it could. Rachel Maddow explains how.
No one was expecting this Battle of the Bulge for the Democratic party and our fading unions to come up in this way, or this suddenly. But here it is. And now, the big question is, will progressives finally fight hard, or just die quickly? If you can't see what the GOP is doing with this issue, you simply don't get anything that's happened to this tenation over the past 30 years in general, and certainly in the past five years since Fox News became the steering gear for the Republican Party's ship to nowhere. So just shut the [fck] up and get out of the way.
But if you do get it, then you realize that this can and should be a magic moment in our history. A moment where we can rise up and show this fetid teaparty army and their plutocratic puppet masters like David Koch and Sheldon Adelson that there is still a strong majority of sensible people in this country who know that a fair society is the only one that will ever survive long term. And this generation of wrecking crew Republicans won't just delay that fair and just society. They will crush out any possibility of there ever being one. At least in this country.
And that would be a sad fail of unparalleled dimension. An easy win will have passed us right by due to our own apathetic lethargy and a mass delusion that all the horrible things happening to us were never quite as bad as they seemed. Our collective will to resist an obvious insurrection of selfishness will have failed to come alive at the very moment that it must, and the American experiment will probably die right here in the lab.
Wisconsin poll finds strong support for public employees: With the standoff in Wisconsin intensifying, the well-respected Dem firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner has released a new polling memo -- bankrolled by unions -- finding strong opposition to Governor Scott Walker's proposal to roll back bargaining rights. Key finding: When read a very detailed explanation of Walker's proposal, 52 percent of Wisconsin voters oppose it, 42 percent strongly so. Meanwhile, 42 percent support it, only 24 percent strongly.
The poll finds that since the standoff began, "Walker has seen real erosion in his standing, with a majority expressing disapproval of his job performance and disagreement with his agenda."
And: "When asked more specifically, 58 percent oppose eliminating collective bargaining, 57 percent oppose reducing wages for public employees and 50 percent oppose reducing pension benefits for public employees." And 59 percent of independents oppose the collective bargaining piece, too.
Just so you know, Conservatives are making noise about Obama’s support for the protests, with some even talking impeachment, which is, of course, a reach. You can read a couple of these posts here and here. HT Balloon Juice
If you’d like to contribute to the effort to support Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin while they’re away from the capitol, go here.
If you break the public unions in Wisconsin you can break them everywhere.
And as Maddow points out in the video, the Democratic Party can not survive with out the unions. (thank you again, SCOTUS, for the Citizens United ruling).
One of the most underreported stories about the pro-democracy movement in Egypt was the role of labor unions in the demonstrations, many of which were protesting against neoliberal right-wing economic policies just as much as they were protesting against the Mubarak dictatorship. During the uprising in that country, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka praised the role of organized labor, saying, “The people’s movement for democracy in Egypt and the role unions are playing for freedom and worker rights inspires us and will not be forgotten.”
Now, as tens of thousands of union members and other Wisconsin residents are taking to the streets to protest against Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attempt to abolish collective bargaining rights for most public workers, a leader of Egypt’s largest umbrella group of independent labor unions is praising the Wisconsin movement. In a videotaped statement, Kamal Abbas, the General Coordinator of the Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services, tells the Wisconsin protesters, “We stand with you as you stood with us.” He says “no one believed” that the revolution against the Mubarak regime would succeed, yet they were able to bring the dictator down within 18 days. He encourages demonstrators to stay strong, saying, “Don’t give up on your rights. Victory always belongs to the people who stand firm and demand their just rights”:
Paul Krugman on the motives of Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker:
For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
Hear, hear.
More on the reasons for GOP intractability in Wisconsin in a Maddow piece.
First of all, just to ensure that we’re on the same page, when I say “paid” in this piece, I am referring to total compensation which includes not only salary, but health care plans, and so forth.
That said, a ubiquitous Republican meme is the one where in their world, public sector employees get paid wayyy more than than they’re worth in the real world, and wayyy more than their counterparts in the private sector are paid, which they also rant, is totally unfair and against all that is righteous. Sigh.
The chart depicts the results of a study by the Economic Policy Institute which should lay this stupid meme to rest, although of course it won’t, the right wing will keep spewing the lies, but at least you’ll know exactly how to respond.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the exact opposite is true; public sector workers in Wisconsin are compensated less than their counterparts in the private sector.
In Wisconsin, which has become a focal point in this debate, public servants already take a pretty hefty pay cut just for the opportunity to serve their communities (Keefe 2010). The figure below shows that when comparing the total compensation (which includes non-wage benefits such as health care and pensions) of workers with similar education, public-sector workers consistently make less than their private–sector peers. Workers with a bachelor’s degree or more—which constitute nearly 60% of the state and local workforce in Wisconsin—are compensated between $20,000 less (if they just have a bachelor’s degree) to over $82,000 a year less (if they have a professional degree, such as in law or medicine).
It is necessary for making true apples-to-apples comparisons to control for worker characteristics such as education in order to best measure a worker’s potential earnings in a different sector or industry. Controlling for a larger range of earnings predictors—including not just education but also age, experience, gender, race, etc., Wisconsin public-sector workers face an annual compensation penalty of 11%. Adjusting for the slightly fewer hours worked per week on average, these public workers still face a compensation penalty of 5% for choosing to work in the public sector.
For Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) to attempt to blame his budget woes on public sector workers, to force them not only to take pay cuts, but to give up their collective bargaining rights, is wrong. And if you know that this same Republican governor created his own budget crisis via tax cuts for corporations the minute he took office, you know he has no moral ground to stand on in this face-off.
Adding....According to Stark Reports, the cuts Walker is demanding amount to about $100 per week for public sector workers in Wisconsin. That is one hell of a lot to cut for someone earning $52k, which is what Stark says is the median teacher's salary in Wisconsin.
I mean, when all is said and done, the Governor is reaching into these workers’ pockets and taking out about $100 from every week’s paycheck.
When you take the right side, style trumps substance every time in politics. President Obama was on fire Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, hammering home populist themes that will define his campaign. This was his campaign kick-off. He couldn't have done a better job of stating his case as the candidate of the people, while painting Romney as the darling of 
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