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
Wisconsin’s Cronon Affair: The Power of a Simple Fact
Jon Wiener
(The Nation, 3/28/2011)
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159521/wisconsins-cronon-affair-power-simple-fact
Excerpt:
More than a million people teach at colleges and universities in the United States, but only one faces a Republican demand for his e-mails: William Cronon, who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cronon is a brilliant historian. He’s the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. He’s president-elect of the American Historical Association. His books on environmental history have won the biggest awards a historian can receive.
The Republican Party of Wisconsin last week filed an open records request demanding access to any e-mails Cronon sent or received since Jan. 1 containing the search terms “Republican,” “collective bargaining,” “rally,” “union” or the names of eight Republicans targeted for recall by liberal activists. That seems to be legal under the state’s version of the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Of course this is a fishing expedition in search of something embarrassing. And of course there’s a big difference between an individual using Freedom of Information legislation to expose government misconduct, and the party in power using it to harass and intimidate a critic of the government.
What does it take to become the target of this kind of attack?
Many faculty members call themselves “Marxists” or “socialists,” and some describe themselves as “anarchists” or “revolutionaries”—but Cronon doesn’t. He’s not Bill Ayres, the education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who happily defends his Weatherman past. Cronon describes himself as a “centrist.” He says he’s never belonged to the Democratic (or the Republican) party. Yet he faces a Republican demand for his e-mail, while Bill Ayres never did.
Some commentators have suggested Cronon became a target because he wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, suggesting that Wisconsin’s Republicans were reviving McCarthyism. But the demand for Cronon’s e-mail came a couple of days before his column appeared.
What provoked the Republicans was Cronon’s first-ever blog post, published at his new website, “Scholar as Citizen.” The demand for his e-mail was filed right after that appeared; thus that blog post provides the key to understanding why the Republicans want to stop Bill Cronon. It was titled “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?” Cronon’s post didn’t make a complex argument, the way his books do. Instead it presented a simple fact, pointing to a little-known group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts model laws which are then introduced by Republicans in state legislatures—for example, laws eliminating collective bargaining with state employee unions. ALEC has been in operation since the seventies and claims its members introduce 1,000 pieces of legislation every year in all fifty states.
Swarthmore mom,
Thanks for that link.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/28/michigan-first-state-to-curtail-jobless-aid-congress_n_841432.html They must have buyer’s remorse in Michigan.
TPMDC
Indiana Dems To Return Home With Big Concessions From GOPers
Evan McMorris-Santoro | March 28, 2011
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/indiana-dems-to-return-home-with-big-concessions-from-gopers.php?ref=fpa
Just about a month ago, dozens of Indiana state House Democrats fled to Illinois to shut down what they said was a Republican agenda that targeted workers rights and the public schools. Now they’re set to return, having won several concessions from the GOP that will change the face of what Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) was hoping would be a signature session.
Rep. Patrick Bauer, leader of the state House Democrats, called the deal “not perfect” but said the deal shows the standoff — which shut down the state legislature in Indiana for weeks — paid off in the end.
“The principled stand by House Democrats forced concessions by the House Republicans that reflected the concerns expressed by so many people who came to the Statehouse in recent weeks,” he told TPM in a statement. “Today we can announce compromises that are great steps forward for working Hoosiers.”
Here are two big highlights from compromise, provided to TPM by a Democratic source:
• Labor: Republicans have agreed to scrap the controversial right-to-work law that led the Democrats to shut things down back on Feb. 22. Republicans have also pledged not to pass a law making the state’s existing ban on collective bargaining for state workers, created by Daniels executive order, permanent.
Daniels had suggested the legislature not take up the bill in the first place, saying he supported it but that it could “wreck” his goals of making the session about education reform and other top priorities for his administration. So the deal to take labor off the table can be seen as a victory for both the Democrats and Daniels, who’s eager to move on to other things, possibly in advance of a run for the White House.
• Education Daniels’ signature policy agenda for this legislative session was a proposal to create a state-funded private school voucher system for low- and middle-income families. That plan will be curtailed considerably in the deal with House Republicans.
The compromise calls for strict caps on the number of vouchers the state can give out the program’s first two years, denying, as a Democratic source put it, “the largest voucher program in the nation the Republicans originally wanted.” Under the new plan, vouchers will be limited to 7,500 students in the first year and 15,000 in the second year.
Other concessions in the deal call for the abandonment of plan to let private companies take over failing public schools.
Republicans in the Hoosier State say what Democrats call concessions are “accommodations,” and will be part of an open amendment process that will be voted on on the floor. House Speaker Brian Bosma’s office told TPM that Republicans are ready to get back to work, and will convene the legislature at 5 PM today. A spokesperson for Bosma said the Speaker believes Democrats are coming home because of “public pressure.”
“It’s been a long five weeks and an expensive five weeks,” Bosma spokesperson Tory Flynn told TPM. “He is glad the democrats have decided to return.”
Even with the concessions, Bauer said Democrats are probably not going to vote in favor of Daniels’ education reforms, or other parts of the legislative agenda they railed against from across the Indiana border. But Republicans don’t need their votes — they have a big enough majority to pass anything they want — but they do need the Democrats in the room to get a quorum. They’ll get that now, but Bauer says Democrats have made their point, and shifted the Republican-led agenda back in their direction.
“We’ve protected working people from a march to the minimum wage. We’ve protected collective bargaining rights for Hoosier workers and teachers. We’ve softened the blow to public schools and prevented a bill for private takeover of public schools,” he said. “This timeout gave millions of Hoosiers a real voice in their state government.”
Blouise,
I don’t think Charles and David like having their delicate derrieres on the hot seat. Poor widdle rich boys.
Elaine, Thanks for posting the Greenwald piece on the Koch Brothers. Greenwald seems amazed the the Koch brothers and much of the republican party think Obama is the most radical left wing president that we have ever had.
It would appear the Koch siblings are feeling the heat … getting the idea that nobody loves them for themselves and only the crazies love them for their money. The gold plating on their toilets must be getting crimped.
Elaine,
Thanks … I had missed the Fang piece.
Weekly Standard Publishes Hagiography To Koch Brothers, Doesn’t Disclose Financial Ties To Kochs
By Lee Fang
(Think Progress, 3/28/2011)
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/28/koch-weekly-standard/
The Weekly Standard’s Matt Continetti, a writer who gained fame defending Sarah Palin from public scrutiny, has a new article blasting critics of Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, David and Charles Koch. Continetti traveled to Koch’s headquarters in Wichita, gained unprecedented access to the brothers, as well as their top executives, and came away with nothing but praise for the company and its peerless role in financing right-wing front groups.
In over 8,000 words of hagiography, Continetti did not find space to disclose that his fellow opinion editor at the Weekly Standard, Michael Goldfarb, is currently employed by Koch Industries to help improve the company’s political image. Or that the Weekly Standard’s reporters routinely attend Koch’s secret political strategy and fundraising meetings. Or that Continetti had received a fellowship funded by the Phillips Foundation, a nonprofit heavily reliant on Koch funds. Or that the Weekly Standard is owned by billionaire Phil Anschutz, a friend of the Koch brothers and an attendee of Koch donor events.
The article includes a deceptive claim that the Koch brothers do not lobby or fund groups to financially benefit Koch Industries. The evidence would suggest otherwise:
– As we have reported, the Koch Industries business empire is inextricably linked to carbon pollution. Koch refineries specialize in high-carbon crude, Koch fertilizer plants emit large amounts of carbon dioxide, and its manufacturing plants are particularly harmful. Just as Koch funded opposition to acid rain regulations using “libertarian” fronts in 1990, the current $50 million Koch-funded campaign to deny climate change is an effort to allow Koch Industries to pollute for free. Tim Phillips, one of Koch’s top political deputies, has admitted that his efforts are less about debating the nuances of climate science and more of a political strategy to take clean energy solutions off the table.
– The tax giveaways to the rich, from oil company subsidies protected by Koch’s favorite lawmakers, to the extension of the Bush tax cuts to the rich, of course benefit the Koch brothers. Let’s assume the Koch brothers make another $11 billion in the next two years, which is roughly the amount they made in the last two. In this hypothetical situation, the extension of the Bush tax cuts would save them over $500 million dollars. At one of his Tea Party conferences, David Koch’s political assistants even instructed attendees to help repeal the estate tax on billionaires like Koch.
– Koch’s charitable giving strategy is directed from Koch’s lobbying office in DC. Kevin Gentry, Richard Fink, and other Koch executives at Koch Industries’ lobbying office (Koch Public Sector) — one of the most expensive lobbying operations in the country — are simultaneously in charge of giving out Koch charitable donations to libertarian nonprofits. To Continetti, perhaps this is a coincidence. But given the fact many of Koch’s conservative front groups blatantly further Koch Industries’ business interests, we doubt it.
All the talk about Charles Koch as a selfless libertarian is a bit silly. Of course, not every dollar Koch donates is linked to the Koch bottom line. But it should be noted that the libertarian thinker who supposedly inspired Charles, F.A. Hayek, wrote that government has a duty to regulate pollution. Charles apparently disregards this aspect of libertarian philosophy as he directs donations to “libertarian” outfits obsessed with slashing environmental safeguards. Moreover, the term “Kochtopus” was invented by libertarians — not progressives, as Continetti’s piece seems to suggest — to decry the Koch brother’s moneyed takeover of the libertarian movement.
Continetti’s piece, and more articles like it, are to be expected as Koch’s public relations machine moves into gear and contacts more friendly journalists. As ThinkProgress has reported extensively, Koch hired a small army of communications consultants to spin the facts about the brothers and their role financing the Tea Party, climate change denial, and various front groups dedicated to making companies like Koch richer. Recently, ThinkProgress revealed that one of Koch’s most stalwart defenders in the conservative blogosphere works at a law firm that counts Koch as a major client. We also uncovered the fact that Koch employs a company called New Media Strategies to unethically air brush Koch’s Wikipedia page.
Billionaire self-pity and the Koch brothers
By Glenn Greenwald
(Salon, 3/27/2011)
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/27/koch/index.html
Excerpt:
Since the financial crisis of 2008, one of the most revealing spectacles has been the parade of financial elites who petulantly insist that they are the victims of societal hostility: political officials heap too much blame on them, public policy burdens them so unfairly, the public resents them, and — most amazingly of all — President Obama is a radical egalitarian who is unprecedentedly hostile to business interests. One particularly illustrative example was the whiny little multi-millionaire hedge fund manager (and CNBC contributor), Anthony Scaramucci, who stood up at an October, 201o, town hall meeting and demanded to know: “when are we going to stop whacking at the Wall Street pinata?”
The Weekly Standard now has a very lengthy defense of — including rare interviews with — Charles and David Koch, the libertarian billionaires who fund everything from right-wing economic policy, union-busting, and anti-climate-change advocacy to civil liberties and liberalized social policies — though far more the former goals than the latter. In this article one finds the purest and most instructive expression of billionaire self-pity that I think I’ve ever seen — one that is as self-absorbed and detached from reality as it destructive. It’s really worth examining their revealed mindset to see how those who wield the greatest financial power (and thus the greatest political power) think of themselves and those who are outside of their class.
I’m not someone who sees the Koch Brothers as some sort of unique threat. I mostly regard them as little more than a symbol of the death of democratic values in the U.S. — the way in which the possession of vast financial resources is an absolute prerequisite to making any impact on the national political process, and conversely, how those without such resources are politically inconsequential and impotent (short of their fomenting serious social unrest). Every political movement needs demons lurking behind every problem — the more hidden and omnipotent the better — and the Koch Brothers now serve the same function for the Left as George Soros long served for the Right: the bogeymen who motivate the loyalists and on whom everything bad, including political losses, can be blamed.
There’s no question in my mind that the unrestrained power over the political process and both political parties enjoyed by oligarchs is the single greatest political problem the country faces — the overarching problem — but in the scheme of corporate and oligarchical dominance, the Koch Brothers are a small part of that dynamic. Nor do I believe that they’re motivated in their political activism by personal profit: for people with a net worth of $20 billion, there are vastly more efficient ways to convert one’s wealth into greater wealth than spending money to influence public policy; I think they’re True Believers.
That said, this Weekly Standard interview shows how delusional and extreme the Koch Brothers are — though in ways quite representative of other resentful elites. Let’s begin with this:
Ask Charles Koch what he thinks about Obama and he looks like he’s just bit into a lemon. “He’s a dedicated egalitarian,” Charles said. “I’m not saying he’s a Marxist, but he’s internalized some Marxist models — that is, that business tends to be successful by exploiting its customers and workers.”
David agreed. “He’s the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation,” he said, “and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had.” David suggested the president’s radicalism was tied to his upbringing. “His father was a hard core economic socialist in Kenya,” he said. “Obama didn’t really interact with his father face-to-face very much, but was apparently from what I read a great admirer of his father’s points of view. So he had sort of antibusiness, anti-free enterprise influences affecting him almost all his life. It just shows you what a person with a silver tongue can achieve.”
You’ll have to do better than that after your previous massive failure, troll.
Buddha is Laughing:
Who is Charlie and Kurt and why do you think I am the new guy?
So you admit to killing your father and having a vasectomy.
That’s right Luke, I am your father.
Now get out of the basement and go do your chores and quit bugging the nice people on the blog.
Sorry folks, he is a bit precocious, his mother and I don’t know what to do with him. He is only 15, but at least he isn’t smoking dope, and impregnating the local girls.
Awwww. Total troll failure! You really should try a better range of names you consider insulting because we’ve all seen Buddapest before. Then again, trolls aren’t known for creativity or originality.
Which one of Andy’s goons are you?
Charlie or Kurt? If so, seriously do you expect that work or are you guys just bored and fluffing your bill? Or are you some new guy they sent over to get the crap kicked out of? If so, I’ll have to give them props for finding an effective way to haze the new guy.
On the off chance you’re badtroll undercover or that other one?
Well, then you should just know better by now.
And if you were my father, I’d have gotten a vasectomy to eliminate the chance of your foul genes from propagating.
That would be, of course, after I disposed of your body.
Auntee Social:
is that anyway to talk to that nice green man? You should be ashamed of yourself. Just because he is talking about killing people, seems he has a habit of wanting to control people (take that nice autistic gentleman he wants to ban for speaking his mind) so he cant help himself. Although you might be right, the nuns could smack that totalitarian streak right out of him.
Auntee you always were the smart one in the bunch.
Son,
If you were mine I’d have to put it up for adoption in a catholic one. You would be right at home.
Buddapest is Looking in the Mirror,
Yeah right. You and what gay crews are going to come to that. Is that your foreplay, if so, I do not want any.
By the way, if I were your “son”, Mr. Faux Tough Marine Talker?
I would finally understand the motivations for patricide.
I’m not your son, Koch Sucker.
Auntee Insipid,
You would know, troll. You’d best run along before I have to give you another wedgie. Unless you just like that sort of thing.
Son, a Troll does what a Troll does. Is that a confession that you are stupid or that you are too stupid to know that you two are stupid? We live in the land of the free. Well at least here on the east side of the Atlantic near Boca. Well, we are all free. See.
From The Nation (March 27, 2011)
In Lawless Fitzwalkerstan, a Constitution Officer Refuses to Bend to a Royal Governor’s Dictate
By John Nichols
http://www.thenation.com/blog/159511/lawless-fitzwalkerstan-constitution-officer-refuses-bend-royal-governor%E2%80%99s-dictate
Excerpt:
The fear that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Republican allies such as state Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald are turning Wisconsin into the American equivalent of a lawless “rogue state”—dubbed “Fitzwalkerstan” by state Rep. Mark Pocan, the former co-chair of the powerful Legislative Joint Finance Committee—was being taken more seriously Sunday. Walker’s lieutenants have announced that they would begin implementing the governor’s draconian anti-union power grab, despite the fact that a judge has issued an order blocking the law from going into effect.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi had issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking publication of the anti-union law until the courts could weigh multiple questions about the legislature’s actions and the law itself. But Walker’s minions are now claiming that steps taken Friday by the state’s Legislative Reference Bureau to prepare for publication of the bill are an authorization to begin implementing it.
“Upon the advice of my legal counsel, the Department of Administration will begin the process of implementing [the law] as we are required to do the day after a bill is lawfully published,” claimed Walker’s Department of Administration secretary Mike Huebsch.
The problem is that bill has not been lawfully published.
“Official publication by the Secretary of State is required for this act to go into effect,” state Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca explained. “The Secretary of State, the only Constitutional officer with the power to publish law, is prohibited by court order from publishing this Act.”
Barca’s right.
State law in Wisconsin clearly says that the elected secretary of state has the authority to order the publication of laws on a timeline established by statutes. Secretary of State Doug La Follette, responding to concerns expressed by local governments with regard to the confusing and potentially illegal manner in which Walker’s law was forced through the legislature, delayed publication in keeping with the statutory timeline.
Then, in response to legal challenges to the new law, which have focused on violations of the state’s open-meetings rules and core constitutional questions, Judge Sumi issued the TRO. Sumi’s order prevented La Follette from ordering the law published. La Follette embraced the order.
Now, with the Walker administration is trying to go around the elected secretary of state and the courts, the talk of Wisconsin as a lawless “Fitzwalkerstan” has spread.