Something's Fishy In Wisconsin

[UPDATE]:


Scout at First Draft has this quote from Gov. Walker on Wednesday:

“As long as the rules are clear, as long as there aren’t ballots somehow found out of the blue that weren’t counted before, things of that nature, as long as everything’s above board, I think that’s fair,” said Walker.

Yes, out of the blue. Out of the red is a different story, isn't it? Because always, always, always IOKIYAR.

------------------------------

Nobody could have anticipated! Really!

In a stunning turnaround, the county clerk for Waukesha County, a heavily Republican district in southeast Wisconsin, announced on Thursday evening that she'd failed to count more than 14,000 votes cast in Tuesday's state Supreme Court election. The error, disclosed by a former state GOP lawmaker who's been criticized for her handling of local elections, handed conservative incumbent David Prosser a lead of 7,582 votes, flipping the result of the race after an initial tally put liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg ahead by a mere 204 votes.

The Waukesha clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, a Republican, said in a press conference that the new votes, all of which were cast in the city of Brookfield, were missed because of human error that's "common in this process." Nickolaus apologized for the mistake, saying, "The purpose of the canvas is to catch these kind of mistakes."

This isn't the first time Nickolaus' role in overseeing elections in Waukesha has been engulfed in controversy. In 2010, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that she bucked the traditional election results system in Wisconsin and instead kept the county's election results on "stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office." Nickolaus cited security reasons for her unorthodox method.

Well isn't that convenient! Nothing to see here, folks ... move along. But I'm sure there were hundreds of people named Mickey Mouse and Snow White voting on election day, right? RIGHT? Because we all know voter fraud is just something those dirty ACORN libs do.

Nice GOP Majority Ya Got, Shame If Anything Happened To It

The blowback against Wisconsin’s extremist Tea Party government has begun.

JoAnne Kloppenburg has won her Wisconsin State Supreme Court seat by a margin so thin it will surely be challenged in court. Even the Wall Street Journal can’t bear to come out and say it, but they note the number of votes cast in the lone precinct still counting would not be enough to overcome Kloppenburg’s lead. (Update: all precincts are now in and she's won.)

This was definitely a referendum on Scott Walker’s government. So watch out, State Senator Dan Kapanke:

Miller made one more point. According to his math, Kloppenburg won by a 60-40 margin in the district of Dan Kapanke, the first Republican that recall petitions were submitted against.

And while all of the attention has been focused on the State Supreme Court race, another Democratic win is to my “honorary Wisconsinite” eyes every bit the Scott Walker referendum the Prosser/Kloppenburg race has been. This was for Scott Walker’s old seat as Milwaukee County Executive, and it was won by Democrat Chris Abele over Republican Jeff Stone, now serving in the Wisconsin state house. Said Stone:

After losing the Milwaukee County executive race to Chris Abele, state Rep. Jeff Stone said the political environment in Madison made it tough for a state legislator to get elected.

“We just have to give the environment a little bit of time,” Stone said. “Chris has some big challenges ahead of him.”

Yes, I’m sure being despised to the point where you’ve actually mobilized tens of thousands of people in the dead of a Wisconsin winter to haul ass off their sofas and out into the cold to protest your crazy legislation would qualify as a "tough political environment." [/sarcasm]

And what are these challenges awaiting new the Milwaukee County Executive?

“It’s going to put in a new, eager, ambitious young man who's going to have to come up with a budget in 60 days,” he said.

Cesarz said the county’s current fiscal problems mean the County Board and Abele must work cooperatively.

“I think it has to, because all of the fixes for the last 20 years aren’t available to us any more,” Cesarz said.

I do not live in this community, but this is the first I've heard that Milwaukee County is having fiscal problems. Wouldn’t that be the fault of the last person to hold the County Executive seat? Isn’t that ... Governor Scott Walker? How did this assclown get elected?

Any Wisconsinites out there who can enlighten me?

Anyway, I have to think Republicans across the country -- especially John Boehner, currently caught between a soggy Tea Bag and a hard place -- are looking at what this extremism has done for the party and will now feel free to distance themselves. Hell, even Glenn Beck is leaving his self-titled show.

It appears schadenfreude is what’s on the lunch menu today.

Dropping Pretenses

Well, at least they are now admitting that this is not about budgets or fiscal responsibility. It’s about breaking unions, breaking Obama and winning the 2012 election:

This was just the final step in removing any doubt about the true nature of this fight. There was the announcement that Crossroads GPS, an independent campaign group founded by former George W. Bush political guru Karl Rove, among others, launched a $750,000 cable television ad buy blistering President Obama and public sector unions, with the Wisconsin battle as the hook and clearly painting it as being about breaking the unions. (As a side note, the ad contained assertions about union pay that even their ostensible source—a libertarian Cato Institute—said were misleading.)

Then there was Scott Fitzgerald, the state senate GOP leader, admitting to Fox News that the battle was about crippling the unions. He said:

“If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”

Presumably that relates to fixing the state budget somehow. (And as an aside: Really? A great American drama is being played out before us and one of the characters is named Scott Fitzgerald? Awesome.)

It’s been fascinating to watch this political striptease, as prevarication after prevarication is stripped away, laying bare a naked political power grab. Poll after poll after poll showed Americans in general and Wisconsites in particular opposed Walker’s plan—and most especially his union-busting proposal. It was almost as it these polls focused and distilled the issue to its core.

Yes, this is what we Lefties have been saying all along. When we tried to tell the Teanutties that they were being played by corporate interests bent on a power grab, they said oh no! Not us! We really care about government spending!

Yeah, right.

So while Wisconsin is center stage for this class struggle, make no mistake: the battle is being waged everywhere. Here in Tennessee, and in Ohio, and in Michigan and Virginia and everywhere else. It’s not about budgets or the size of government. It’s about political power, specifically taking it away from the people and giving it to the wealthy corporate elite. It’s about making sure workers no longer have a voice and the Democratic Party no longer has a major fundraiser. That’s what this has always been about. Pure, unadulterated political power.

I mean hello, people. What does it say that the Wisconsin Republicans are running to Washington D.C. to collect their money from a big-time D.C. lobbyist, BGR Group? Doesn't that just say it all right there?

And it’s about President Obama. POTUS has been taking a lot of heat for backing away from a campaign vow to walk the picket line to support unions. It’s funny because the right is hilariously trying to claim the Wisconsin recall effort has been organized by the White House, when Obama can’t distance himself fast enough from the biggest event to affect American workers of his presidency.

Oh, I know, he needs to worry about Libya and the budget debate and there’s a trip to the UK coming up and blah blah. He doesn’t want to make it look like he’s involved in a state issue like worker’s collective bargaining rights. Well, sorry dude, but you are involved because this is all about defeating you in November 2012. The White House needs to wake up and smell the coffee. This is about Obama, the Wisconsin Republicans have said so. It’s about the 2012 election. It’s about breaking the president and breaking the Democratic Party. It’s about politics, it always has been. So wake the fuck up and put some skin in the game. You can’t pretend you’re not involved when you’re one of the main reasons this is happening in the first place. This is about you. This is about the Democratic Party.

Get your shit together, Democrats. They’ve come for you. What are you going to do about it?

It’s That Voodoo Republican Math

First Wisconsin state officials claimed marble damaged by the painters tape that protestors used would cost $7.5 million to repair:

Cari Anne Renlund, chief legal counsel for the state Department of Administration, said in Dane County court that estimates of damage to marble includes $6 million to repair damaged marble inside the Capitol, $1 million for damage outside and $500,000 for costs to supervise the damage.

Turns out, not so much:

Madison - Officials charged with overseeing the state Capitol Friday backpedaled sharply from their estimate - delivered in a high-profile court case only the day before - that demonstrators did more than $7 million in damage to the building and grounds during the tumultuous yet peaceful protests that erupted Feb. 15.

Touring the building on Friday morning with state architect Dan Stephans, who oversaw the Capitol's restoration that concluded in 2001, Jeff Plale said he had not immediately observed any damage from demonstrations over Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill. Plale is a former Democratic state senator and now the state facilities administrator.

Hey Cari Anne! What’s your game, girl? Can anybody play? Why yes they can!

Two local news organizations sued Gov. Scott Walker Friday for alleged failure to respond to their requests for e-mails that the governor claimed were overwhelmingly in favor of his controversial budget repair bill.

[...]

Isthmus and the AP did not receive a response to their records requests, the lawsuit states.

But Richmond received an e-mail response late Friday, which was dated Feb. 25, from Nate Ristow, associate legal counsel for the governor, in which Ristow detailed the cost of printing out the e-mails of more than $31,250, to be paid in advance. Ristow also invited Richmond to review the records at Walker's office for no charge.

In his records request, Lueders had asked that the e-mails be put on a disk instead of being printed on paper.

Wow: $31,250 to print out e-mails? I’m calling bullshit. It seems the latest conservative tactic in the propaganda war is to pull a wildly inflated number out of someone’s ass and attach it to whatever it is someone wants. Then watch as everyone starts screaming about my money! Seriously, some of the comments on these stories are hilarious. Are liberals the only ones who have developed a healthy skepticism over the years? Are we the only ones with highly developed bullshit meters?

Alternately, this can explain a lot about Republicans’ repeated failure to balance a budget. Perhaps the poor dears simply can’t do math. Remember how the Iraq War was only supposed to cost $50-$60 billion? Remember Paul Wolfowitz saying the war would pay for itself? Yeah that was a good one.

So you know, we're left with the eternal question: stupid or lying? Which is it, Republicans?

(h/t, DailyKos)

Fox News Lies

[UPDATE]:

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!!!!

Shocking.

Palm trees in Madison, Wisconsin?? Green leaves on trees in March?

And they wondered why people shouted “Fox News Lies!” at them. Really, Mike Tobin? Really?

Yes, this would be the very same Mike Tobin whose specious claims of being “punched” by a union thug were neatly debunked with this video. It’s the ol’ “shoulder tap of death.” Ow ow ow!

We know Fox News are not honest brokers, they lie and doctor video footage and switch poll numbers to make them say what they want them to and take quotes out of context and repeat GOP press releases verbatim and commit all manner of sins against journalism because they are not journalists, they are partisans with a political agenda. Yet they continue to be treated as journalists, by the White House Correspondents Assn. and President Obama himself. Enough, already. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?

This will get written off as just another minor error committed by an overzealous staffer. Feh. Meanwhile, Judith Regan announces that Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes told her to lie about her affair with Bernie Kerik to protect Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions -- a claim she says she can back up with an audio recording. Oh, my.

Yes, this rotten carcass of a news organization stinks from the head down. Not a shocker, of course. But one wonders how much longer this propaganda machine can keep up the charade or, more importantly, how much longer everyone else in the media will keep up the pretense, as well. I mean really: don't you folks take pride in your work? In your industry? It's almost like the rest of the media universe is purposely pretending that Fox is a legitimate media outlet, but why?

Every broadcast minute Fox shits on the Fourth Estate. They delegitimize an entire industry. They tell the world, and American viewers in particular, that the news media is an industry akin to used car salesmen and bail bondsmen. I don't for the life of me understand why people like Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric and Christiane Amanpour and the rest don't kick folks like Mike Tobin out of the club. Don't they understand that claiming to be "punched" when you were tapped on the shoulder and cutting in video footage of some other event at some other time and place to give the erroneous perception that union thugs are running amok in Madison Wisconsin is a serious breach of journalistic ethics? And when Fox News does it, that tarnishes everyone? Don't y'all see that?

I guess not.

I really don't get it.

[UPDATE]:

This nails it:

If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news' partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point. Cable news reporting on Wisconsin is like going to a whorehouse and then bragging to your buddies about this girl you seduced.

Our corporate media is now irrelevant. And it’s not the fault of foul-mouthed bloggers.

They Forgot Poland

You know, despite conservatives' claim that Ronald Reagan singlehandedly destroyed the Berlin wall with the tweak of his mighty pinkie, those of us who actually remember the 1980s remember the Polish trade union which got the democracy ball rolling. You kids who were still in your nappies back in 1981 might want to read up on Solidarity and how it took down Soviet domination in Poland, the first chink in a movement which steamrolled across the Baltic region and ultimately destroyed the iron curtain. I was a sophomore in college then and well remember the Polish uprisings. By 1982 I was living in Copenhagen and several friends traveled "behind the iron curtain" to Poland to see what was happening for themselves.

I went on an organized student trip to the Soviet Union instead -- all trips by Westerners to the USSR were closely monitored, rigidly organized affairs back then (though that didn't stop us from having some adventures). We had a Q&A session with some low-level Party official, can't remember his function now, where we asked tough questions about oppression of gays in the USSR ("We have no homosexuals in the Soviet Union," the guy actually told us. "This is a Western issue.") And we asked about Solidarity. He told us it was an example of how much freedom the people of Poland have, that they can protest and strike (never mentioning martial law and other attempts to oppress the movement). It was all a ruse, not too different from what we see from conservatives today, where they talk publicly about the freedom to assemble and all that and then privately talk about sneaking in troublemakers to discredit those protesting.

Today Poland's Solidarity leaders have sent Wisconsin workers their support:

On behalf of the 700,000 members of the Polish Trade Union NSZZ
“Solidarnosc” (Solidarity) I wish to express our solidarity and support for your struggle against the recent assault on trade unions and trade union rights unleashed by Governor Scott Walker.

We are witnessing yet another attempt of transferring the costs of the economic crisis and of the failed financial policies to working people and their families. As much as some adjustments are necessary, we can not and must not agree that the austerity measures are synonymous with union-busting practices, the elimination of bargaining rights and the reduction of social benefits and wages.

Dear friends, please rest assured that our thoughts are with you during your protest, as we truly do hope that your just fight for decent working and living conditions, for the workers’ rights will be successful.

Your victory is our victory as well.

In Solidarity,

Piotr Duda
President

You know, conservatives have long tried to connect labor unions with communism. Yet it was a labor union which destroyed communism in a key Soviet Bloc country.

I guess they forgot Poland.

The Grand Plan

Well I found this to be extremely interesting:

One old trick is to suggest a thought experiment that asks readers to consider the mirror image of what is going on. In this case, you'd be asked what the reaction would be from Republicans and business interests if a newly elected Democratic governor and legislature proposed to deal with a budget deficit by first raising unemployment benefits and then pushing through a big corporate tax increase for all but the Democratic-leaning tech sector. For good measure, the package would also contain a ban on corporations making political donations without getting the permission of each shareholder, lest they use their power to repeal the tax increase and push the budget out of balance.

I love a good analogy. Remember: the plutocrats went nuts when the Democrats passed very modest healthcare reform -- something President Obama campaigned on, I might add (whereas Walker did not campaign on destroying unions’ bargaining power). It was nothing close to the extremism on display in our state legislatures around the country but good lord they squealed like stuck pigs. Let's remember the town brawls and Teanuts with guns and the member of Congress hung in effigy and another member of Congress nearly killed by a gunman at a public event.

More:

This is analogous, of course, to what Gov. Scott Walker has proposed for dealing with Wisconsin's budget gap: the tax breaks for businesses, the benefit cuts for all state employees except Republican-leaning police and firefighters, the automatic decertification of all public-sector unions and the stripping of their right to bargain anything but wages. Looking at Walker's reflection in the political fun-house mirror makes it abundantly clear that the governor has a more ambitious agenda than merely closing a modest budget gap.

Well duh. That’s what we’ve all been saying, for days now. That was why I transcribed that part of Walker’s phone call with Fake David Koch where he talks about the other governors he says were elected “to do something big.”

[Elected by whom? You really think the voters elected you to destroy unions? Was that what the November elections were about? I don’t think so. Elected by Koch Industries to do so? Yeah. That's more probable.]

Anyway, for more on that ambitious agenda, today’s must read is Mike Konczal‘s “Conservative Road Map for State Governance”. Konczal lays it all out for you (here is where I give a hat-tip to E.D. Kain at Balloon Juice) and if anyone harbors any delusions that this has squat to do with state finances or budgets or anything other than a blatant power grab and transfer of wealth from the public to corporate interests, well, this should disabuse you of such notions post-haste:

There’s a three-prong approach in Governor Walker’s plan that highlights a blueprint for conservative governorship after the 2010 election. The first is breaking public sector unions and public sector workers generally. The second is streamlining benefits away from legislative authority, especially for health care and in fighting the Health Care Reform Act. The third is the selling of public assets to private interests under firesale and crony capitalist situations.

This is, as has been noted elsewhere, the industrialist’s wet dream. It took them a while, but finally they have a chance to turn the clock back ... not to the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was over 90% GOD NO we can’t have that, but back to 1900. The era of the Robber Barons and industrialists. The “gilded age” when folks like Andrew Carnegie and John Pierpont Morgan ruled. And also the era of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, and no minimum wage and child labor. You know, the good ol’ days.

This is what this fight is about.

This is what we DFH’s have been saying ... for years. I’m not joking, we’ve been talking about this on blogs and in lefty magazines like The Nation and Mother Jones and other places where the mushy-middle pragmatic centrist “Third Way” approach is generally regarded to be bullshit because the modern right’s agenda is extreme! And they don’t give a crap about bipartisanship.

Wake up, people! Once upon a time we could disagree without being disagreeable and there could be some issues where everyone could find common ground. Those days passed a long, long time ago. Hell, none other than Republican Christie Todd Whitman noticed the shift toward extremism in the Republican Party when she penned ”It’s My Party, Too!” And we lefties have been warning for years that as the Republicans get more extreme, and the Democrats bend over backwards to make concessions in the interest of “bi-partisanship” they are moving the country futher to the right and basically enabling an extreme agenda.

And here is where we are.

How You Call A Governor

I mean, I’d love to know how you get through. Back in my reporter’s days I’d always get stuck leaving a message with the assistant. Over and over again. So what’s the secret to getting powerful people on the phone?

Apparently it’s pretending to be an asshole:

First, it's remarkable Ian Murphy, pretending to be Koch, even got through. He talked to Walker's chief of staff, Keith Gilkes, and said he couldn't leave a return number because, "My goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I'd have her deported, but she works for next to nothing." This, oddly enough, led Gilkes to invite "Koch" to call back and speak directly to the governor.

Oh my God. I’ve totally been doing it wrong all these years.

More ..... here. Un freaking believable.

Crank, Prank or Pwn? It's Real! Walker Punk'd

[UPDATE]: 2

After threatening to file ethics charges against Wisconsin Democrats, it appears Gov. Walker may be in some ethics trouble himself. Taking a phone call from a big campaign donor? That's a no-no:

“If you didn’t believe it before, you have to now—this fight isn’t about the budget, it’s about favors for corporate special interests,” continued Donnelly. “If Wisconsin law forbids coordination with political donors similar to federal law, Gov. Scott Walker is not just in political trouble, but in legal hot water.”

Public Campaign Action Fund is currently in discussions with election experts on whether Gov. Walker may have broken state election law and whether a complaint should be filed.

Woopsies.

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[UPDATE]:

Walker's office confirms the call is for real. Oy vey. Scott Walker just made a colossally stupid mistake, bragging in true fan boy fashion to a man he thought was oil billionaire David Koch. Wisconsin, this just tells you so much about the guy you elected governor, where his allegiance lies and how he thinks. He won’t talk to Senate Democrats (unless it’s a trick to get them back into the state capitol so Republicans can declare a quorum), but he eagerly takes “David Koch’s” phone call and dishes all his secrets.

Schadenfreude. It's what's for breakfast.

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Did a crank caller really convince Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that he was talking to David Koch? And did Walker really spill the beans on his strategy to hold Wisconsin Senate Democrats’ pay and file ethics charges if any took help from union supporters? And did the prankster really tape the whole thing and post it on the internet?

We still don’t know if This is for real but the tapes sound pretty convincing. and it's not the first time a prominent conservative got punk'd, either.

(Note: I accidentally left off the second recording in my original post. I've corrected that mistake now ...)





Here are some juicy bits. For one thing, if this IS for real, it seems Walker is trying to set a trap:

GOV. WALKER: An interesting idea brought up to me this morning by my chief of staff, we won’t do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democrat leader that 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 -- I’ll only do it if all 14 of ‘em come back and sit down in the state Assembly. They can recess it to come back over and talk to me but they’ll have to come back there.

The reason for that is, we’re verifying it this afternoon but 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, this 19 senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have a quorum because they started out that way. Um ... so we’re double checking that.

If you heard that we’re gonna talk to ‘em that would be the only reason why, is we would only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of ‘em. 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.

What. An. Asshole.

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More ....

I just finished listening to the second part of the recording. I'm struck by three things: Walker has a tremendous ego and is incredibly arrogant. This is not a humble man.

Two: he realizes this is not about Wisconsin, this is about crushing organized labor nationally. He knows what killing collective bargaining in Wisconsin means. This was the plan. This was never about Wisconsin.

And three: Walker's obviously seeking David Koch's approval, which speaks volumes about Koch's role in all of this. Walker might as well be saying, "I did good, didn't I, huh huh, didn't I?" He reminds me of my dog when we're playing fetch, the way she's just so eager for approval when she drops the ball at my feet. Walker is practically doing somersaults and handstands to show Fake Koch what a star politician he is, what a big player he is, how in control and manly. If he were a peacock he'd be spreading his tail feathers. He is, in short, showing off. Which, knowing this was Fake Koch not a real Koch, is sorta pathetic.

Anyway, it's clear David Koch is the Republican Party's new king maker. That's just obvious from the conversation, from Walker's conversation. Fake Koch barely says two words and Walker is tripping over himself doing the "how do you like me now!" song and dance.

And here's my question: Who the hell is David Koch's "guy on the ground" in Madison? Hello? Hello news media, the fact that Koch Industries has "a guy on the ground" should sorta tell you everything you need to know about the Tea Party!

Anyway, here's some more transcript:

FAKE KOCH: Goddamn right! We sent Andrew Breitbart down there.

WALKER: Yeah!

FAKE KOCH: Yeah!

WALKER: Good stuff!

FAKE KOCH: He’s our man, y’know.

WALKER: Well it has been amazing to me the massive amount of attention .. I’ve done all, you know -- every day I do a 5 o’clock press conference, tonight I’m actually doing a fireside chat which the state TV stations are gonna tape but I guess a bunch of the national ones are too, and um in the last couple of days when I do the TV shows I’ve been going after Obama, ‘cuz he stuck his -- although he’s backed off now -- but he stuck his nose in here and I said -- they asked me what I thought and I said, “Y’know, last time I checked, this guy’s got a much bigger budget deficit than we do, maybe he should worry about that!

FAKE KOCH: (laughs)

WALKER: ... and not stick his nose in Wisconsin business, right?. We’ve had all the national shows, we were on Hannity last night, I did Good Morning America, The Today Show and all that sort of stuff, was on Morning Joe this morning, we’ve done Greta, we’re going to keep getting our message out, Mark Levine last night. And I gotta tell ya, the response from around the country has been phenomenal. I had Brian the new governor over in Nevada call me last night, said he was out on the Lincoln Day circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me -- he’s new as well as me -- he said, “Scott don’t come to Nevada, cuz I’d be afraid you’d beat me running for the governor.”

FAKE KOCH: (Laughs)

WALKER: That’s all they want to talk about is, what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin? The next question is, I talk to Kasich every day, and John’s gonna stand firm in Ohio, I think we do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida. I think Snyder if he got a little more support probably could do that in Michigan, when you start going down the list, there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.

FAKE KOCH: You’re the first domino!

WALKER: Yup! This is our moment.

FAKE KOCH: Now what else can we do for you down there?

Walker: Well the biggest thing would be, and your guy on the ground is probably seeing this, is the, well two things: one, our members, originally kinda got freaked out by all the bodies down here, although I told them an interesting story about when I was first elected county executive in Milwaukee of all places....

Actually, the story was really boring about how when he was a county executive and pissed off the unions, everyone totally loved him at a Veteran's Day parade except one guy who gave him the finger. It was another piece of arrogance and ego on display, showing off to the guy who is clearly Very Important. Later in the conversation Walker compares what he's doing to Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers, and how he sees that as the first chink in the Berlin Wall because the Communists were put on notice that Reagan "wouldn't be pushed around."

So this is all very interesting ... very interesting indeed.

Next Stop Indiana!

[UPDATE]:

Gov. Mitch Daniels now tells legislature to drop "right to work" legislation that forced Indiana Democrats to flee.

I'll bet someone is thinking of his 2012 presidential aspirations.

----------------------------

Indiana statehouse fills with protestors as Indiana's Democrats leave the state to avoid vote against unions:



Here's a question I've asked: how come no one is mentioning ALEC in all of this? The industry-funded, free-market, limited-government, conservative anti-worker American Legislative Exchange Council? Through their "model legislation" they push industry's agenda at the state legislative level. I mean, it's no coincidence that so many states have similar anti-union legislation on the floor right now. This is all coordinated. And ALEC is funded by big corporations.

And here's another question: if industry can unite and push their agenda under the aegis of groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ALEC, the American Enterprise Institute, etc., then why can't workers unite and push their interests in the form of unions? I mean, if you're going to say unions are bad for democracy (though no one has ever adequately explained that one to me) then isn't the U.S. Chamber bad for democracy, too? If you want to get rid of one, shouldn't you get rid of the other?

It doesn't make sense unless your entire worldview is based on the idea that everything is peachy when workers are slaves to their employers, that all of the power should be handed up to big business and workers should be silent and take what lumps of coal they are given. You know, I get why billionaire corporate elites think this way, but I don't get why anyone else does.

It makes no sense.

There Are Two Sides To Every Budget

I dunno, but our discourse in this country is really just too stupid. I just never understood why when we’re discussing things like budgets, government spending and tax cuts we always address these as separate things. I’m no math whiz but last time I checked, budgets are made of two things: spending AND revenue. Yet our national debate has somehow separated these things as if they are completely unrelated issues.

I just finished hearing an interview on Good Morning America with Mike Huckabee where he goes on and on about how the government is broke, state governments are broke, and we have to live within our means. We all have to tighten our belts. Right. Raising revenue wasn't even mentioned.

And then I read this rundown of Wisconsin lawmakers’ views on Gov. Walker’s controversial budget bill. Most Republicans seem to be supporting Walker despite the thousands of protestors because, hey, the state is broke:

"We have a financial crisis facing the state of $137 million in cuts that's needed to balance the budget by June 30 as we are required to do by the state's constitution and an expected deficit in the 2011-13 budget of upward of $3.5 billion in a budget that hasn't even begun," Lazich said.

And:

"I think the bill was done to cause the least amount of pain," Wynn said. "The state is broke. It's the best way to prevent a lot more tragedy."

And finally, we have Gov. Scott Walker himself, refusing to budge on the collective bargaining issue, despite wage and benefits concessions the unions have agreed to, because, he says

I want to give those local governments the tools they need to balance the budget now and in the future. They can't do that with the current collective bargaining laws in the state.

Walker has failed to adequately explain how collective bargaining prevents local governments from negotiating, or why collective bargaining is fine for some groups (police, firemen) but it’s a budget-buster for others (teachers). Oh well, we’ll just have to take that one on faith since no one in the media seems interested in asking that question either.

But no one asks about raising revenue, either. Gov. Walker signed a bill eliminating corporate taxes back in January; well, if he’s so worried about future budgets (since the unions have made concessions addressing the current one), then why did he cut revenue? Why, when we’re trying to balance budgets, is it always done on one side of the ledger sheet? You can’t cut revenue and then all of a sudden go “oh my GOD we have no money how did THAT happen?!”

I mean, I thought the whole conservative ideology was that tax cuts were stimulative. Apparently they aren’t, since we’ve been cutting taxes on people and corporations for years now and the result appears to be a fiscal crisis from the federal level on down to local governments. Guess this just proves you guys have been wrong all these years, then.

And if Walker's tax cuts are supposed to be so wonderful for the economy, then I'm sure local governments won't need to worry about ditching collective bargaining for certain groups of workers because the money will just be flooding in to government coffers.

No? Well why the hell not? Why did you cut all those taxes, then? And maybe y'all ought not have done that? Ya think?

Of course, we never draw these conclusions because we always address spending and revenue as completely separate issues when they are quite obviously part of the same conversation. I just have to wonder how the hell that happened.

We just went through a few weeks of yammering about extending the Bush tax cuts which affect the wealthiest individuals in America; now suddenly we are yammering about a national budget crisis. We have people like Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin and other conservatives talking about the need for Americans to sacrifice. Clearly, since they just supported tax cuts to the wealthy, they mean other people need to sacrifice -- not the millionaires and billionaires, the ones who can most afford it. They mean the people already living with tight belts. That's just immoral.

I mean, I’m just waiting for Diane Sawyer or Katie Couric or someone to ask Walker (or any legislator) this question: “You cut taxes and now you complain the government is broke. Did you flunk math in school?” Forget raising taxes, how about just leaving them where they are for a while?

But no one asks these questions because we always treat these two issues as if they weren’t connected. And it’s such an obvious failure on the part of the national narrative that I have to think it’s intentional. With that in mind, I direct readers to Amy Dean’s Huffington Post column today. She writes:

While the particulars of each individual battle are important, in the end this is not about one state. It is about confronting the disturbing tendency among our lawmakers to seek scapegoats rather than real solutions to our nation's most central problems.

Yes, I think that’s the nib of the nub. As long as no one slaps their forehead and says, “wow maybe we shouldn’t have tax cuts at a time when our budgets are already strapped and we’re killing sacred cows like education,” it’s so much easier to scapegoat middle class public employees and sell the idea that eliminating their rights will solve everything.

I mean, seriously. There are two issues at work here. Why are we only talking about one of them?

Jealousy

In 1979, a movie about a union organizer in a North Carolina textile mill won nine Academy Awards and was a huge box office hit. Some 30 years later, unions have been so demonized I wonder if "Norma Rae" would even sell 10 tickets if it were released today?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot in the past few years: when did unions become the bad guys? We’ve all heard the stereotypes about “union thugs” and corruption, a narrative so firmly embedded in the American consciousness that conservative activists like Phil Parlock have capitalized on the shifting attitudes for political gain. I’ve always wondered how unions went from American hero to zero in one generation.

Andrew Leonard’s interview with author/labor historian/Georgetown University professor Joseph McCartin touches on this very topic. Leonard asks the “what changed” question. McCartin responds:

A lot of this was really produced by the events of the last few years. There was a tremendous loss in the stock market that left a lot of pension funds looking underfunded, and that set off a lot of alarms in people. Now I'm not going to say that there aren't some workers in some places that have gotten some pensions that aren't really fully justifiable but that is different than saying that the whole principle of collective bargaining is wrong.

But an even more important factor is basically a 20- or 30-year period of failure in the private sector. What we are really looking at here is a private sector that for quite a long time now has not generated a lot of rising income for the great majority. It has not generated stable benefits for its workers, it has not generated increasing retirement security -- in fact we've had income stagnation or decline, we've had rising indebtedness, we've had growing insecurity for retirement. The private sector has failed on a massive level. And the tenuous position that so many American workers find themselves in as a result of that now makes it suddenly appear that public sector workers are just living off the fatted calf. I think some of it has to do quite simply with the way in which so many nongovernment workers have been suffering, and legitimately so. You can go to those folks and say: Why are you paying for the pension of the guy down the street? You don't have one!

That seems to be a real political liability for public sector unions.

It is a real liability, but it is liability that is not the result of union munificence, or that came from squeezing the taxpayers; it is a liability that basically flows from the fact that the private sector has done so poorly at creating a really broad growing thriving middle class in the past 20 years. And without a broad growing, thriving middle class, government workers are increasingly isolated and increasingly under threat and it is easy to play the dynamic this way, unfortunately for them.

In short, capitalism has failed a large segment of the American population, and conservatives have successfully laid the blame on unions. How they did that is a neat trick, but I think corporate interests in the guise of the GOP have been selling anti-union Kool Aid for decades, so it's no surprise some of it started to stick. These days we've got “right to work” states and anti-minimum wage movements and the current spate of anti-collective bargaining initiatives in places like Wisconsin and Tennessee, and yet the glorious free hand of the market still hasn't righted things. Indeed, it's made things worse.

The result is resentment and jealousy directed at those people who have what I don’t have. Instead of directing their anger where it belongs -- the wealthy and powerful who enjoy the lowest taxes in the Western world who have pulled the ladders up to keep out the riff-raff -- conservatives are resentful of the people with the crappy jobs who were able to secure some very modest concessions over years of negotiating -- and renegotiating, and renegotiating. The history of unions is nothing if not a history of reneged deals.

Somehow folks think if they work hard enough they’ll be bazillionaires like the Koch Brothers, not realizing the Koch Brothers have stacked the deck against them. I mean Jesus, it's not like people aren't working hard now. I know people with four jobs. They're barely treading water. There's no getting ahead when you are saddled with healthcare debt, or can't get a job because your credit score isn't high enough or because you're unemployed, which takes the cake for stupid reasons not to hire someone. We are fast headed to a country with a permanent underclass and a permanent ruling class, and no movement betwixt the two.

Yes, somehow jealousy and resentment has convinced some people that their solution is to hand their power over to those who will never give them a place at the table. It's quite baffling, really, how the wealthiest and most powerful interests managed to convince those lower down on the ladder that they should accept a less equitable arrangement. I really don't get it, but then women tend to understand these things more easily anyway. We're always being asked by society to give up our power to someone else. We're always being told our priorities and issues are less important and we're somehow deserving of less. So naturally we're suspicious when some rich asshole drives up in his limousine and tells us that we should accept lower wages and pay higher taxes than he does, just 'cuz. Being asked to accept inequality is something most of us women find a little reprehensible. And we know when we're being sold a shit sandwich.

I've linked to this Financial Times article from last summer before, but I'm going to do it again. Here we go:

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.

Combine those two deep-seated trends with a third – steeply rising inequality – and you get the slow-burning ­crisis of American capitalism. It is one thing to suffer grinding income stagnation. It is another to realise that you have a diminishing likelihood of escaping it – particularly when the fortunate few living across the proverbial tracks seem more pampered each time you catch a glimpse. “Who killed the American Dream?” say the banners at leftwing protest marches. “Take America back,” shout the rightwing Tea Party demonstrators.

Statistics only capture one slice of the problem. But it is the renowned Harvard economist, Larry Katz, who offers the most compelling analogy. “Think of the American economy as a large apartment block,” says the softly spoken professor. “A century ago – even 30 years ago – it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.”

CNN recently covered this issue in its "Rise Of The Super Rich" piece, and included a neat little chart:


Admit it, folks. This is why you are angry. Not at some public school teacher who earns $50,000 a year but if you include their union-negotiated benefits and pension it sounds like a whole lot more, while the guy selling this resentment tea has a personal net worth of $27 $21.5 billion.

You're pissed because capitalism has failed. For the past 25 years 90 percent of us have been working harder to stay in the same place, while a very small group of people have surged ahead thanks to policies which keep everyone else down. Everyone else has seen the American Dream slip away.