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
http://www.salon.com/news/the_labor_movement/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/03/30/the_gop_war_on_labor_moves_to_academia The GOP is waging war on liberal professors.
http://www.strengthensocialsecurity.org/callcongress Call Tuesday and Wednesday to preserve Social Security.
dear anti – for the same reason that the government is involved in the building and maintaining of highways: there is a public good that is derived from their existence that outweighs the risk.
Just because YOU may not see the benefit does not mean it does not exist.
The bigger question to ask is why is government involved in ownership of Amtrak to begin with?
So how is requesting federal funds to repair the track of a federally owned business lying?
Why should the state pay for it? Since the revenues from Amtrak tickets are owned by the federal government why should the states pay for maintenance of rolling stock and tracks? If someone owned a road that went through my property and I had no or minimal financial gain, I would not want to pay for the maintenance. Seems reasonable to me.
“The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak (reporting mark AMTK), is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. “Amtrak” is a portmanteau of the words “America” and “track”.[1] It is headquartered at Union Station in Washington, D.C.[2]
All of Amtrak’s preferred stock is owned by the U.S. federal government. The members of its board of directors are appointed by the President of the United States and are subject to confirmation by the United States Senate. Common stock was issued in 1971 to railroads that contributed capital and equipment; these shares convey almost no benefits[3] but their current holders[4] declined a 2002 buy-out offer by Amtrak.[5]
Amtrak employs nearly 19,000 people. It operates passenger service on 21,000 miles (34,000 km) of track primarily owned by freight railroads connecting 500 destinations in 46 states[6] and three Canadian provinces. In fiscal year 2008, Amtrak served 28.7 million passengers, representing six straight years of record ridership.[6][7] Despite this recent growth, the United States still has one of the lowest inter-city rail usages in the developed world.”
from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
OS,
My apologies to just the nerds! It is good to hear from you.
raff, you managed to insult lying pieces of crap, zoo animals and nerds in one sentence. You are a man of many talents. Heh!
Blouise,
He isn’t worth the money to buy the peanuts!
I would gladly toss peanuts to him.
Walker is one lying piece of crap. He nerds to be behind bars….in a zoo.
Scott Walker Seeking Federal Stimulus Funds For Rail Line Improvements, After Campaigning On Rejecting Them
(Huffington Post, 3/29/2011)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/scott-walker-seeking-fede_n_842267.html
Excerpt:
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won election in 2010, in large part by campaigning fiercely on limited government. One of his signature promises was a rejection of $810 million in federal stimulus dollars for high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison.
Walker followed through on turning those dollars down. But now, he is joining several other Midwestern states in asking for $150 million in federal funds to pay for upgrades to an Amtrak line.
In a striking irony, the funds he’s requesting are only available because another conservative governor, Rick Scott of Florida, rejected some $2 billion for a high-speed rail project in his state. That line would have joined Tampa and Orlando along a busy corridor whose Interstate 4 is often packed with traffic.
Those $2 billion are now available for other states, and Walker’s hoping to get a piece of the action.
UPDATE: Wisconsin Judge Halts Further Implementation Of Union Law
AP is reporting:
“MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin judge for the second time directed the state to put on hold an explosive law that strips most public workers of nearly all their union bargaining rights, ordering officials on Tuesday to follow her original instructions to stand down.
“Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was the further implementation of (the law) was enjoined,” said a visibly annoyed Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi. “That is what I now want to make crystal clear.”
Last week, Sumi issued an emergency injunction prohibiting the Wisconsin secretary of state from formally publishing the law – the final step before it could take effect.
Republican legislative leaders responded by directing the law be published by another state agency, and then declared it valid. State officials began implementing the law this weekend, stopping the collection of union dues for state workers and taking more from their pay for health care and retirement.
Sumi said Tuesday that action violated her original order, and she made it clear after a daylong hearing that the law was on hold while she considers a broader challenge to its legality.”
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/in-michigan-conservative-think-tank-seeks-labor-prof-emails.php?ref=fpblg
Brian,
Your change in posting has shown you to be in the EMH category.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, March 29, 2011 at 10:25 am
In the world in which I find my life happening, I am unable to have actual enemies; yet there are as-though people I have yet to learn how to properly understand.
I wonder if it would be useful to allow that autistic people tend to be of two batches, those who are at best trainable-mentally-handicapped (TMH) and those who are educable-mentally-handicapped (EMH).
Were I not too handicapped to do so, I would guess that I am of the EMH batch.
Sadly(?), as I experience human life, every person has both abilities and handicaps.
One of my handicaps appears to me to be my being unable to predict in advance what someone else will find objectionable; I guess being able to do that would require my having some sort of “theory of mind” to which I have no access whatsoever.
Therefore, I blunder, and when possible, apologize; and continue to learn as I am able to learn.
As much as is achievable, I seek to never actually hurt anyone.
I find I cannot be who I am not.
Two crows were sitting on the tundra one day and both of them were freezing. One said to the lion, “I’m cold!” and the lion said, “Step into my mouth where it is nice and warm.” The crow did and was promptly eaten. The second crow said to the elephant, “I’m cold!” and the elephant promptly crapped on the crow, providing a haven of warmth which allowed the crow to survive the cold snap, dirty but unharmed.
The moral of this story is that not everyone who offers to protect you is your friend and not everyone who gives you shit is your enemy.
Incomplete is acceptable when contrasted with incoherent or factually incorrect.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, March 29, 2011 at 10:03 am
So your stated theory, while not prima facie untrue, is a bit incomplete.
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Like everything I will post here in the future, it is very incomplete, because I encountered some very aversive stimuli during my prior, dreadfully misguided, efforts to communicate with some hint of a semblance of completeness.
Incompleteness will henceforth have to suffice.
In my comment of March 29, 2011 at 9:54 am, I described a very incomplete notion of mine on the off-chance it might happen to be of some unknown-to-me value.
I plan to get an unbroken string of incomplete grades hereafter on this blawg.
Brian,
My only problem with your theory rest upon this:
“It is my view, which I allow may be utter nonsense, that collaboration increases when environmental factors make competetion unduly dangerous and competition increases when environmental factors are sufficiently benign.”
Competition increases for another reason as well: simple greed.
The greediest of the greedy are technically pathological sociopaths which statistically make up about 4% of the population. Being that it’s the 1% of populace representing the most greedy driving most of the discord? It’s not unreasonable to draw a correlation between the causes of our political, economic and social problems to the actions of sociopaths.
So your stated theory, while not prima facie untrue, is a bit incomplete.
I have a theory regarding what is happening in Wisconsin, it may be absurd. Theories can be absurd, at least some of the time.
One book of what I deem reasonable size which may be useful in making sense of what is happening in Wisconsin is Robert C. Nesbit, “Wisconsin: A History, Second Edition” The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
The two oldest “churches” in Wisconsin are a few blocks apart in Green Bay, the oldest being St. John the Evangelist (Roman Catholic) and the second oldest being Union Congregational Church, now a United Church of Christ congregation which was originally First Presbyterian Church in Green Bay.
Roman Catholics outnumber those of any particular protestant denomination, yet protestants as a whole outnumber Roman Catholics.
Wikipedia being what it is, I find the following religious grouping to be plausibly accurate enough for what follows it…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin#Religion
It may be useful to review the Demographics information on that Wikipedia page.
With about 80 percent of Wisconsinites being of “Christian” orientation, it may be easy to understand why the Wisconsin Constitution has a majority-based provision mentioning “Almighty God” and “conscience.”
There is something about the early development of Wisconsin on its path of statehood. When German Lutheran Roman Catholics became a majority of Catholics in Wisconsin, supplementing the earlier French Catholic majority, parishes tended to stay separate, yet both groups began to collaborate on survival issues during the “harsh Wisconsin winters.”
When German Lutherans began arriving in formidable numbers, Wisconsinites faced a problem; while religious identity was kept rather separate, social identity came together as a way to survive those harsh winters.
The split of the reformation came together in Wisconsin, framed by winter survival needs, and a form of social union formed in which religious diversity was respected because of mutual needs among “those of the two sides of the earlier reformation” in Germany.
There is a very long-standing cultural tradition in Wisconsin, of people of diverse views and beliefs working together for the benefit of everyone, regardless of otherwise-divisive beliefs. This is, in my view, the basis of the progressive movements throughout Wisconsin history. Divisiveness in sufficiently harsh climates tends to become lethal. Collaboration may be driven by simple aspects of evolution and survival of the sufficiently evolved.
Along comes modern technology, natural gas, propane, wood, better insulated homes, and the survival requirements for collaboration begin to fade. The social requirements for collaboration continue in many communities in Wisconsin after the physical threat is no longer so intense.
It is my view, which I allow may be utter nonsense, that collaboration increases when environmental factors make competetion unduly dangerous and competition increases when environmental factors are sufficiently benign.
It is my guess that Wisconsinites, sensing a threat to the future of the United States from divisiveness, formed the first progressive party (Republican as the Civil War began to loom ahead). Later, as the Republican party began to shed its progressive origins, the Progressive Party arose.
Now many Wisconsinites again have a sense of threat to the collaboration which is deeply rooted in the social culture of Wisconsin.
So, I wonder whether the latest attempt to set Wisconsinite against Wisconsinite will succeed when all past efforts to achieve that have failed.
For myself, I vote for collaboration. It has worked in the past, and worked very well in Wisconsin.
And a theory is merely a theory, and no theory is fact, per se (because it would not be a theory if it were fact).
Clobber the message, spare the misguided messenger?