Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
I have already written three posts about Governor Scott Walker, his budget repair bill, and the protesters in Wisconsin. People have been interested in
the Wisconsin story and have left nearly 1,800 comments at my three posts. I’ve even received requests to write up another post so that we could continue the discussion on the subject. I think there are others like me who believe the Wisconsin/Walker story is not over yet.
As I did last week, I’m posting links to some articles on the subject for you—as well as excerpts from some of the articles.
Democrats immediately file suit to halt challenges (Journal Sentinel)
By Jason Stein, Don Walker, and Patrick Marley
Excerpt: Wisconsin is now among the vanguard of Midwestern states embarking on a new era with their rules for public unions. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, signed an executive order in 2005 to eliminate collective bargaining for state employees. Ohio is working on a measure to rewrite its collective bargaining law with public-sector unions.
But the fight in Wisconsin isn’t over – Democrats and unions are already filing lawsuits against the proposal and recall actions against GOP senators who approved it.
“It’s just the beginning,” said Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar). “This is the civil rights issue of this century.”
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Wisconsin’s Legacy of Labor Battles (New York Times)
By Kate Zernike
Excerpt: In her book, “Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950,” Professor Feurer recounts how companies in the electrical industry in St. Louis started a network known as the Metal Trades Association in the first part of the 20th century to fight union organizing. The association had been alarmed by union protests that erupted violently with the Haymarket Square riot in 1886 and the demands for an eight-hour day, which started with the 1894 Pullman strike in Illinois — an early effort by Eugene V. Debs, the former Indiana legislator and future Socialist Party candidate for president.
“That left a legacy of the 1930s and ’40s for employers to form deep right-wing networks,” Professor Feurer said.
That network, she argues, was the precursor to the Midwestern groups that have now been assisting the fight against the unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana: the Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, and Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kan. David H. and Charles G. Koch, the billionaire brothers behind the energy and manufacturing conglomerate that bears their name, have been large donors to Mr. Walker in Wisconsin, as has their advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, which first opened an office in Wisconsin in 2005.
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By Ryan Haggerty and Michael Muskal
Excerpt: Even as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Friday signed into law a bill that sharply curbs collective bargaining for most public employees, his opponents were preparing for more demonstrations, court battles and political infighting over what has become a national test of labor’s power.
Organizers were hoping to attract tens of thousands protesters to the Capitol on Saturday for a rally featuring the return of Democratic lawmakers who fled the state on Feb. 17 in an effort to block the measure from passing. Along with the rally, Democrats are planning to ask the courts to overturn the new law and they have begun circulating petitions to recall some lawmakers. GOP supporters are circulating their own recall petitions, directed at the Democrats.
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Op-Ed: The GOP’s costly Wisconsin Koch binge is a wake-up call (Digital Journal)
The Big Shakedown: Wisconsin and the GOP’s Vision for America’s Future (Common Dreams)
Dane County sues state to block budget bill (The Cap Times)
Union Bill Is Law, but Debate Is Far from Over (New York Times)
My Previous Posts
Scott Walker: A Fiscally Responsible Governor or a Politician Who Is Playing Favorites?
Is the Scott Walker Story Just the Tip of the Koch Brothers’ Political Iceberg?
Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and Protesting Workers: The Story Continues
ALEC?
After reading that . . .
Elaine, are your sure their name isn’t SPECTRE?
ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America
May 2010
http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/xbcr/justice/ALEC_Report.pdf
Excerpt:
ALEC’s campaigns and model legislation have run the gamut of issues, but all have either protected or promoted a corporate revenue stream, often at the expense of consumers. For example, ALEC has worked on behalf of:
• Oil companies to undermine climate change proponents;
• Pharmaceutical manufacturers, arguing that states should be banned from importing prescription drugs;
• Telecom firms to block local authorities from offering cheap or free municipally-owned broadband;
• Insurance companies to prevent state insurance commissioners from requiring insurers to meet strengthened accounting and auditing rules;
• Big banks, recommending that seniors be forced to give up their homes via reverse mortgages in order to receive Medicaid;
• The asbestos industry, trying to shut the courthouse door to Americans suff ering from mesothelioma and
other asbestos-related diseases; and,
• Enron to deregulate the utility industries, which eventually caused the U.S. to lose what the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) estimated as $5 trillion in market value.
rafflaw,
I know I had posted about ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) on another thread. Here’s a 2002 Mother Jones article you might find interesting:
Ghostwriting the Law
A little-known corporate lobby is drafting business-friendly bills for state legislators across the country.
— By Karen Olsson
http://motherjones.com/politics/2002/09/ghostwriting-law
Excerpt:
On August 7, thousands of state legislators and corporate lobbyists were scheduled to descend on Orlando, Florida, for the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. There, they could play golf, listen to speeches by Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, and attend the Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award Banquet, raising a glass to limited government. Those able to resist the lure of Epcot and Gatorland could also attend sessions on “free market” reforms designed to minimize government’s role in health care and curb lawsuits by consumers. And all the while, state representatives and business lobbyists would engage in what ALEC calls an “exchange of ideas” about public policy.
But that exchange didn’t end when the conferees returned to their home states. With more than 2,400 state lawmakers as members — roughly one third of the nation’s total — ALEC is a year-round clearinghouse for business-friendly legislation. Its nine task forces, each composed of legislators and representatives from private industry, sit down together to draft model bills on issues ranging from agriculture to school vouchers, which are then introduced in state legislatures across the country.
Though it calls itself “the nation’s largest bipartisan, individual membership association of state legislators,” ALEC might better be described as one of the nation’s most powerful — and least known — corporate lobbies. While other lobbyists focus on the federal government, ALEC gives business a direct hand in writing bills that are considered in state assemblies nationwide. Funded primarily by large corporations, industry groups, and conservative foundations — including R.J. Reynolds, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute — the group takes a chain-restaurant approach to public policy, supplying precooked McBills to state lawmakers. Since most legislators are in session only part of the year and often have no staff to do independent research, they’re quick to swallow what ALEC serves up. In 2000, according to the council, members introduced more than 3,100 bills based on its models, passing 450 into law.
Not surprisingly, many of the bills benefit the companies that helped write them. Consider ALEC’s “Environmental Audit Privilege,” a measure that relieves companies of legal responsibility for their own pollution. The bill got its start in 1992, when Colorado regulators fined the Coors Brewing Company for smog-inducing air emissions at several plants. ALEC was quick to respond, drafting a measure to prevent firms from being fined if they report environmental violations at their facilities, and to keep such disclosures secret. Coors is a corporate member of ALEC, and company executive Allan Auger is a past chairman of the group, to which the Coors family’s Castle Rock Foundation is also a donor. Last year, Kentucky and Oregon passed audit-privilege laws like the one drawn up by ALEC.
n another instance of profitable policymaking, ALEC drafted a model “truth in sentencing” bill that restricts parole eligibility for prisoners, keeping inmates locked up longer. One of the members of the task force that drafted the bill was Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private prison company, which stands to cash in on longer sentences. By the late 1990s, similar sentencing measures had passed in 40 states. “There was never any mention that ALEC or anybody else had any involvement in this,” Walter Dickey, the former head of Wisconsin’s prison system, told reporters after his state passed a version of the measure.
Other corporate-friendly bills drafted by ALEC would require state governments to deregulate electric utilities, repeal minimum-wage laws, limit class-action lawsuits against companies, privatize public pensions, and compensate property owners for environmental regulations that restrict land use. The Electronic Government Securities Act, an ALEC-drafted bill being considered in seven states, would limit state governments from providing Internet services that compete with the private sector.
Blouise,
Glad I was able to give you news to share over cocktails – Cheers!
Stamford Liberal,
Leaving to go out with by buds and this is a great piece of news to be chuckled about over a well prepared bloody-mary.
It’s all part of the master plan, rafflaw … GOP and Corporate America domination.
“Forget the war in Libya, there is a more important war right here at home.” (rafflaw)
Makes one wonder …..
Well, that’s them … I pick my battles and here I stand!
Holy Crap! Thanks to Elaine, Stamford and OS for all of these updates. Gov. Walker and the rest of these Teapublican governors have obviously been planning these moves for awhile. I hope some enterprising investigator can find some emails or notes from the meeting(s) that these guys obviously had to set up this massive attempt to take over the country, one State at a time. Forget the war in Libya, there is a more important war right here at home.
I know this is waaaaaaaaaaay OT but I figured it’s early Friday evening after a long week and we are due a good laugh …
Michele Bachmann has hilarious William F. Buckley-worshiping son
By Alex Pareene
What a treat. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota congresswoman and Mirror Universe America’s next president, has an amazing 28-year-old son named Lucas who apparently emulates the late William F. Buckley. And he is one of her “closest advisers.”
The Daily Beast has the details, from a Star Tribune article about the Bachmann clan: “Lucas lists WFB—along with India—as one of his two interests on his Facebook page.”
Lucas wrote a tribute to Buckley, upon the National Review founder’s death, that he sent to a local paper:
“[M]ovement intellects such as Buckley are indelible,” Lucas Bachmann wrote. “Like the majority of conservatives, I watched and marveled at his eloquent didacticism drawn from a prolix lexicon that can only be described as Buckleyesque.”
Haha “prolix lexicon.” That is indeed “Buckleyesque,” a term that generally means “writing like an asshole.”
Lucas Bachmann is what happens when a professional right-wing culture warrior home-schools her children. If you view public schooling as liberal indoctrination you educate your children through conservative indoctrination. The Bachmann children — five biological and 23 foster, for which the Minnesota government generously gives her a huge cash handout — are all schooled in-house, though they are apparently allowed to go to college. As kids they probably all read Murray Rothbard instead of Beverly Cleary.
This Lucas Bachmann revelation is supposed to be surprising, because his mother “hates” those “Washington elites” so much, and because Buckley himself would’ve immediately pegged her as a dimwit nutter, but the conservative elites need their useful idiots, and a clownish anti-intellectual can quite easily produce a clownish pseudo-intellectual.
http://www.salon.com/news/michele_bachmann/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/25/bachman_son_buckley
And the beat goes on … didn’t these people understand what they were voting into office … what a damn mess!
What’s going on in New Hampshire? Read on…
From TPMDC
Protesters Erupt As New Hampshire GOPers Move Anti-Union Bill That Goes Farther Than Walker’s
Brian Beutler | March 25, 2011
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/protesters-erupt-as-new-hampshire-gopers-move-anti-union-bill-that-goes-farther-than-walkers-video.php?ref=fpb
Late on Tuesday evening, Republicans on a House panel in New Hampshire voted to advance legislation that resembles Scott Walker’s law in Wisconsin ending collective bargaining rights for public sector unions. It’s actually farther reaching.
Under the terms of this plan, public sector workers in the state would become “at will” employees if and when their contracts expire.
That eliminates all the leverage state employees have in negotiation with their employers, and could ultimately end up busting the unions entirely.
A labor fight has been brewing in New Hampshire, where Republicans have huge House and Senate majorities, for weeks. But this was the first legislative step toward actually undermining unions — and the skewed 18-7 vote suggests it could ultimately land on the Democratic governor’s desk, in some form.
The vote came down as protesters jeered and yelled at committee Republicans who had them evicted from the committee room.
From TPMDC
Wis. GOP FOIAs Emails of State University Prof Critical Of Gov. Walker
Eric Kleefeld | March 25, 2011
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/wi-gop-foias-emails-of-state-university-prof-critical-of-gov-walker.php?ref=fpa
Professor William Cronon, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is now in a serious tangle with none other than the state Republican Party, in yet another battle over Scott Walker’s new anti-public employee union law. After Cronon posted a piece on out-of-state think tanks and interest groups that would spur the law, the GOP has responded with an open-records request on Cronon’s own state account e-mails.
On March 15, Cronon posted a blog entry entitled, “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t Start Here)”, seeking to focus attention on out of state conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the infamous phone call that Walker had a month ago with blogger Ian Murphy, who posed as Republican financier David Koch.
“I don’t want this to become an endless professorial lecture on the general outlines of American conservatism today, so let me turn to the question at hand: who’s really behind recent Republican legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere?” Cronon wrote. “I’m professionally interested in this question as a historian, and since I can’t bring myself to believe that the Koch brothers single-handedly masterminded all this, I’ve been trying to discover the deeper networks from which this legislation emerged.”
Then on March 17, as Cronon announced in a blog post Thursday, the state Republicans have filed an open-records request — seeking to read his e-mails from his state university account.
The request, which Cronon has posted online, says in part:
Under Wisconsin open records law, we are requesting copies of the following items:
Copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell.To be clear, that list is composed of: The state’s top Republican leaders, Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers who lead the two houses of the legislature; major unions and union leaders Marty Beil and Mary Bell; and the eight Republican state senators who have been targeted by Democrats for recall campaigns.
In response, Cronon has posted a lengthy rebuttal on his own web site. In the post, Cronon states that he has committed no wrongdoing in terms of the use of his state e-mail account — and also saying that it would violate federal law to reveal e-mail conversations with students that have touched upon these subjects.
Cronon also condemns the records request as an assault on his academic freedom, saying in part:
When should we be more cautious about applying such laws to universities?
Answer: When FOIA is used to harass individual faculty members for asking awkward questions, researching unpopular topics, making uncomfortable arguments, or pursuing lines of inquiry that powerful people would prefer to suppress. If that happens, FOIA and the Open Records Law can too easily become tools for silencing legitimate intellectual inquiries and voices of dissent — whether these emanate from the left or the right or (as in my case) the center. It is precisely this fear of intellectual inquiry being stifled by the abuse of state power that has long led scholars and scientists to cherish the phrase “academic freedom” as passionately as most Americans cherish such phrases as “free speech” and “the First Amendment.”
It is chilling indeed to think that the Republican Party of my state has asked to have access to the emails of a lone professor in the hope of finding messages they can use to attack and discredit that professor. It makes me wonder if they have given even the slightest thought to what would happen to the reputation of this state and of its universities if they were to succeed in such an effort.
A request for comment by TPM to the state Republican Party has not yet been returned as of this writing.
Headline from DKos:
“Michigan Republicans Slashing Worker Safety Laws”
Full story below. You could not make this stuff up. If a fiction writer submitted the antics of Scott Walker and his cabal of Koch sycophants, any competent editor would reject it as being too far fetched.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/24/959870/-Michigan-Republicans-Slashing-Worker-Safety-Laws
From Huffington Post (3/24/2011)
Scott Walker’s Proposed Budget Cuts To Schools Raise Doubts Among Some GOP Voters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/24/scott-walkers-budget-cuts_n_840362.html
Excerpt:
BROOKFIELD, Wis. — Barb Feest wishes she could take back her vote for Wisconsin governor.
The suburban Milwaukee woman cast her ballot for Republican Scott Walker in November. But she could only shake her head recently as she listened at a public forum to how Walker’s proposed budget cuts could affect schools.
“He’s trying to balance the budget on the backs of teachers,” Feest said. “It took so long to get our schools where they are, and they’re going to cut it down in, what, two years? It’s not right.”
Almost five months after the election, Feest and some other Republican voters are having doubts about their choices at the ballot box. Although they consider themselves fiscal conservatives, many of the same people who put Walker and other GOP leaders into office are now having second thoughts, largely because the cuts they are seeking could put the quality of their cherished local schools at risk.
To ease a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit, Walker has sought to eliminate collective-bargaining rights for most public employees, including teachers – a move that has stirred an intense national debate about union rights and drawn tens of thousands of protesters to the Capitol.
But that’s not Walker’s only school-related proposal. His two-year spending plan includes an 8 percent cut in aid to schools – about $835 million. And he wants to require districts to reduce their property-tax authority by an average of $550 per pupil – a move that makes it more difficult for schools to compensate for the lost money.
The forum drew about 100 people, and about half, including Feest, came to find out how bad the cuts would be and express their support for teachers. The others who spoke supported Walker’s proposals, and some even suggested the governor seek more teacher concessions such as raising the minimum retirement age above 55.
High school math teacher Ronn Blaha, 41, said he felt like a “punch-drunk boxer,” taking one hit after another from the community because Walker had completely vilified the entire teaching profession.
“I voted for him because I wanted some restraint on frivolous spending,” Blaha told The Associated Press, adding that he now regrets his vote. “I did not anticipate that he considered education a frivolity.”
Haley Barbour bills Mississippi taxpayers for CPAC travel expanses.
There is more; here is an excerpt from the story: “…this is nothing new for Barbour—he charged taxpayers more than $300,000 for out-of-state travel in 2010, including hotel rooms costing $858 per night for his body guards. In total, he spent 175 days outside of Mississippi in 2010, much of it at political fundraisers interspersed with ‘official’ meetings to justify sticking taxpayers with the bill.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/24/959510/-Haley-Barbour-bills-Mississippi-taxpayers-for-CPAC-travel-expanses
Looks like Scott Walker has some serious competition for the political hypocrite of the year award.
Elaine,
re: post March 24, 2011 at 6:05 pm
I love it, I love it, I loooove it
Otteray,
Thanks for the links.
From Think Progress (3/24/2011)
Despite His ‘Pro-Life’ Crusade, Scott Walker Goes After Pregnant Immigrant Women
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/24/prenatal-care-scott-walker/
Excerpt:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has been criticized for going after students, teachers, seniors, and poor people in his attempt to balance the state budget without raising taxes or fees.
ThinkProgress recently reported that Walker is also proposing to repeal Wisconsin’s Contraceptive Equity Law that requires insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. It turns out that while Walker wants to deny women the right to plan their future, he also wants to prevent undocumented women who are already pregnant from accessing prenatal care.
Where Scott Walker is concerned, the hits just keep on coming. He issued an executive order eliminating apprenticeship jobs for young people. It is not as if the unskilled young needed help bettering their employment prospects or anything like that.
My take on it is that it is in the interest of the Koch crime syndicate and their peers to keep the minimum wage employment pool as large as possible. If they do an apprenticeship, they can demand more money and we can’t have that if you are an industrial oligarch.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/24/959763/-Walker-Slams-Door-on-Young-Workers,-Ends-Apprentice-Jobs
Elaine, you beat me to it by one minute. Same story as seen by diarist at DKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/24/959689/-UPDATE-LAM-RESIGNS-IN-Dep-Prosecutor-Suggested-Gov-Walker-fake-an-attack-on-himself