How We Can Prevent the Slide into Theocratic Banana Republicanism

February 20, 2011 at 12:26:50

Name-calling works, if you can make it stick

By Don Smith (about the author)

opednews.com

In a recent, otherwise excellent article How Angry Are You? Time To Channel and Say It Smartly Rob Kall repeatedly warns against (empty) name-calling. "We can't waste our time venting or calling right wingers names." "We are in times that are too dire to lapse into the luxury of cathartic name calling." And "We must not call names, we must think hard..."

I beg to differ. Name-calling works very well! That's how the right wins. The problem is that their name-calling sticks, but the Right is able to deflect our attacks.

Conservatives' success is based on name-calling (as well as big bucks). They call us "baby killers'. They call us "tax-and-spend liberals." They call us "effete." Their attacks worked so well that liberals don't even call themselves liberals anymore; they call themselves "progressives." Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck area masters of invective and anger and name-calling.

Conservatives say the Left is anti-family and anti-God. They say we "feed at the trough." They have all their talking points and pat arguments. "Government is the problem, not the solution." "Government is inefficient and corrupt." (Yeah, and conservatives do their darndest to make it that way.) "There isn't a revenue problem; there's a spending problem." They say Democrats are "anti-liberty." They exploit anti-gay and anti-immigrant bigotry. They exploit fear. They exploit religious fanaticism. They exploit patriotism. They exploit peoples' anger and direct it at government and unions -- the only forces that could possibly save the people from unconstrained capitalism.

Republicans ridiculed Gore for having pretended to invent the Internet (though he never made that claim). They called Kerry a "waffler." They painted Kucinich as an extremist. They tore down screamer Howard Dean.

Conservatives call Obama a "socialist." (lol) They call progressives extremists. Heck, even Obama (no liberal) more or less calls progressives extremists.

The invective and anger on the right are very ugly and very effective.

In fact, in his article Rob engages in name calling: "We are seeing the vile eruption of a virulent right wing, long fulminating pustule of hate, misogyny, and corporate, fascist extremism."

Yeah!

Names alone won't work, but they're necessary and useful.

The problem is: how can we make names stick?

We need names, as well as talking points and slogans. But we need to back them up with facts and images and videos and songs and repetition and narrative. We need a viable progressive media. We need to direct peoples' anger towards the real villains.

Unfortunately, the real villains have infiltrated the Democratic Party as well. The Democratic leadership seems more interested in protecting the torturers and war criminals than in effecting real change in government.

The Republicans are horrid. The Democrats are at best mixed. Both major parties are expert at exploiting populist anger and directing it at the other party. Fundraising letters describe the evil deeds of their opponents.

Right wing populists (the Tea Party) get some things right. They're aware of the immorality of militarism, and they oppose corrupt corporate control over the government. But they're libertarian: they want to destroy government agencies and services that are the most effective counter-weights against corporations, Wall Street, and ignorance. Tea Partiers' opposition to taxation will further enrich the super-rich and harm the general welfare.

Just as the Democrats betrayed and co-opted populist progressives, the GOP will betray and co-opt populist Tea Partiers. But they'll throw them enough scraps to keep their support -- just as they granted enough scraps to religious conservatives to keep their support. The crumbs that the Democrats throw progressives leave us starving for nourishment.

The country is moving further to the right, and it's not clear how to prevent a slide into theocratic banana Republicanism.

Effective name-calling is one part of the solution.



Banana by Art Explosion and Don Smith

DFA organizer, Democratic Precinct Committee Officer, writer, and programmer. My op-ed pieces have appeared in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and elsewhere. See http://TruthSite.org for my writing, my musical creations, and my (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

February 19, 2011 at 11:01:49

It's Not Just Wisconsin, People!

By Dennis Kaiser (about the author)

opednews.com

The people of Wisconsin have been voicing their discontent over their newly elected governor's plan to remove the spine of the public employees' union. Well, not all public employees. He is leaving the unions of the firefighters, state troopers, and police from his dismantling, for no other reason than those three groups voted for him in the November elections. Hmmmm, that makes this sound more of a vendetta than one of cost cutting, it sounds more like one of enabling one to destroy opponents for future elections.

The gonadless Governor announced his plan on Friday February 11 and order the legislature to pass it on the 17th. Since then he has gone underground without any attempt at addressing any comments from residents of the State of Wisconsin, even though thousands have poured into Madison, as well as other locations throughout the state to voice their concerns, as a democracy, as set forth by our founding fathers, intended it to be.

The intentions of this governor and the other Tea Party gerbils is simply to destroy those groups who have traditionally backed Democrats. It is politically motivated and nothing else, but if successful will create a authoritarian fascist society where corporations already control the power. This move will completely take the people out of the equation.

In observing the top ten groups backing political candidates only one, unions, backed democrats. All others were supporting Tea Party/Republican candidates.

Now, the stated reason given by this governor is to cut costs due to the deficit, but when he took over the state had a several hundred million dollar surplus. It also had federal money that would be used to create thousands of jobs which also would, in turn, add to the tax revenues the state would receive. His first act, however, was to stop that, thus eliminating jobs and revenues while actually adding to the costs resulting in continued unemployment.

Not stopping there he gave huge tax cutting measures to corporations doing business in the state which has resulted in erasing the surplus he should have enjoyed

This, he has done is less than one month since taking office, but we should not be entirely focusing on Wisconsin as what is being done there is but the beginning of what the Tea Party governors have in their game plan. Soon, Ohio and Florida, to name two, will follow suit, but now are simply using the Wisconsin invasion to assist them in their attack in order to make their attack go more smoothly.

We, the people, should also be using this, and other attacks on our liberties, in order to prevent them from occurring in the future. We should have learned long ago that politicians will say anything in order to get elected. We listened to Obama's cry for "Change" and look what we have - nothing more than the same with absolutely no change. We listened to the Corporate Media Propagandists whose job it is to "sell" the candidate they are ordered to sell. Remember, they are "corporate.' My experience has been the person(s) the CMP "attacks' would be the best for the people. In the 2008 presidential campaign they discredited Dennis Kucinich, who in the few debates he was allowed to take part in, actually won the polls taken afterwards. They also had little or negative things to say about Ron Paul. Hence, listen to the CMP and look more closely at those candidates they are discrediting as they more than likely would be the best for the people, you, over the corporations, them (remember the media is "corporate'). Years ago the CMP did a great job on Ross Perot who warned against NAFTA and favored better paying jobs for American workers -- against corporate goals -- hence people did not listen to Perot, but to CMP and one can only wonder what our nation might look like today.

No, we, as voters, need to be much more diligent in researching the candidates. That takes effort on our part, but failing to do so brings us to the point we are now at -- a lost democracy.

One of the areas we must research is where the money is coming from for each candidate. Make no mistake, people giving the money will expect much more in return once their puppet gains office. Is the money coming from a corporation backed group or from a people backed group? Remember, the CMP will "sell' those who pay them.

Getting back to Wisconsin, and the Tea Party movement one can only begin to realize why we, the voter, needs to become more diligent in casting our vote. All the money and all the propaganda is not more valuable than our vote. We must begin using our intelligence in determining what we want from our elected officials. Do we want them to support us? Or do we want them to continue to build corporate power?

Dennis Kaiser is an author and consultant focusing on individual rights. As a US citizen Dennis is deeply concerned over how our nation has fallen from being productive and full of hope to one where that hope is being stripped from the majority as (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

February 19, 2011 at 09:23:04

How Angry Are You? Time To Channel and Say It Smartly

By Rob Kall (about the author)

opednews.com

Watching the right wing, funded by the Koch brothers, unleash a multipronged, massive assault on Liberal, Democratic Bastions of power-- unions, Planned Parenthood (and really, women) I am feeling anger rage I have not felt since the Supreme Court declared Bush president and then the lead-up of lies and betrayals that led up to the beginning of the Iraq war.

I am seeing the vision of the US that I have in my head, heart and soul under greater threat than perhaps any time before. This is not a time for empty name calling, though there are many names that keep coming to mind. No, We are in times that are too dire to lapse into the luxury of cathartic name calling.

We are seeing the vile eruption of a virulent right wing, long fulminating pustule of hate, misogyny, and corporate, fascist extremism-- a profound threat to the America our parents and grandparents fought and worked and died for.

We have been subjected to an ethically corrupted Supreme Court decision-- Citizens United-- decided by two corrupt justices who accepted special treatment from interested parties. That decision led to a shifting of the rules and the balance of powers that could permanently shift the path of America towards what dailykos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga described as an American Taliban, in his book by the same name, and which Linda Milazzo, one of OpEdNews.com's managing editors, suggests is working toward a Christian Sharia-type state, without the community and family support that exists in the parts of the world where Sharia exists.

Our lives as we've known them are threatened and endangered. Our nation is at risk of being destroyed by corporate forces and moneys from within and multinational corporate influences from without.

We cannot sit still and accept, as good sports, that we lost in fair elections. The elections were run based on an obscenely corrupted Supreme Court. We cannot allow women to lose access to birth control and the counsel of Planned Parenthood. We cannot allow a governor who is a shill for big corporations to declare full out war on unions and workers.

We must take a stand. We may have to take many stands. That will mean sacrifices.

We must face the reality that the Democratic party was a part of the problem and they cannot be relied upon to be part of the solution.

We have to do it. Maybe we have to find leaders. Maybe we don't. The Egyptians and Tunisians did it without clear leaders. They DID have bottom up "leaders" people who took initiative and helped wake people up, get the word out and set the framing and language. Perhaps we can learn from the Egyptians. American Democracy is dusty and antiquated-- over 200 years old-- and may not work as well as it did, when fully cranked up.

There are groups and media people and sole bloggers and tweeters who are taking action, coming up with ideas. Stick your head out of the digital window and look around you. You will find others shouting, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

Photo: Flickr By philippe leroyer

Try shouting it yourself. Then, take that anger, that intense passion and energy and do something with other people. Go to Wisconsin. Find out about a local protest. They will happen. They will emerge out of the mass of voices and tweets and Facebook shares and pages and blog entries and comments and phone conversations and insults to our perceptions of what America is and who we are.

We can't waste our time venting or calling right wingers names. We must focus and channel our anger and use it to energize our actions. We must not call names, we must think hard and smart to identify new ways to frame what the right wingers are doing to Women, to workers, to America.

Please share your thoughts-- on framing the right without calling them nasty names,. This is a new, unprecedentedly toxic, extreme right wing that Citizens United enable. Naomi Klein, observing that what we're seeing are examples of the shock doctrine and that the way to stop them is to be AWARE of them while they are happening. We have to identify the name, or the names of the beast. Klein says that to resist the Shock Doctrine, you have to have your own story to replace the shock attack with. We need to have that conversation" NOW" not just talk about the right wing as usual.

And share what actions you will be engaging in, what social networking on -line you are engaging in. It is time to go digital and time to wear out shoe-leather.

Should we all go to Wisconsin? Should we be engaging in mass acts of civil disobedience? Should we be calling for unions across the US to walk out. It is an extraordinary thing that even police and firefighter unions, which were to be exempted from the Wisconsin assault on unions, have acted in solidarity. Maybe police and firefighter and teacher and bridge toll workers and sanitation worker unions across the US should stand in solidarity and show the right wingers they won because the American people were pissed at the Democrats, not because they have a mandate to tear down the America the majority of Americans still want and love.

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

February 19, 2011 at 09:29:00

Time to Topple Corporate Dictators

By Ralph Nader (about the author)

opednews.com

The 18 day non-violent Egyptian protests for freedom raise the question: is America next? Were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine around, they would likely say "what are we waiting for?" They would be appalled by the concentration of economic and political power in such a few hands. Remember how often these two men warned about concentrated power.

Our Declaration of Independence (1776) listed grievances against King George III. A good number of them could have been made against "King" George W. Bush who not only brushed aside Congressional War-making authority under the Constitution but plunged the nation through lies into extended illegal wars which he conducted in violation of international law. Even conservative legal scholars such as Republicans Bruce Fein and former Judge Andrew Napolitano believe he and Dick Cheney still should be prosecuted for war and other related crimes. The conservative American Bar Association sent George W. Bush three "white papers" in 2005-2006 that documented his distinct violations of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

Here at home, the political system is a two-party dictatorship whose gerrymandering results in most electoral districts being one-party fiefdoms. The two Parties block the freedom of third parties and independent candidates to have equal access to the ballots and to the debates. Another barrier to competitive democratic elections is big money, largely commercial in source, which marinates most politicians in cowardliness and sinecurism.

Our legislative and executive branches, at the federal and state levels, can fairly be called corporate regimes. This is corporatism where government is controlled by private economic power. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called this grip "fascism" in a formal message to Congress in 1938.

Corporatism shuts out the people and opens governmental largesse paid for by taxpayers to insatiable corporations.

Screen shot from youtube video Corporate Criminals

Notice how each decade the bailouts, subsidies, hand-outs, giveaways, and tax escapes for big business grow larger. The word "trillions" is increasingly used, as in the magnitude of the rescue by Washington of the Wall Street crooks and speculators who looted the peoples' pensions and savings.

It is not as if these giant companies demonstrate any gratitude to the people who save them again and again. Instead, U.S. companies are fast quitting the country in which they were chartered and prospered. These corporations, which were built on the backs of American workers, are shipping millions of jobs and whole industries to repressive foreign regimes abroad, such as China.

Over 70 percent of Americans in a September 2000 Business Week poll said corporations had "too much control over their lives." It's gotten worse with the last decade's corporate corruption and crime wave.

Wal-Mart imports over $20 billion a year in products from sweatshops in China. About a million Wal-Mart workers make under $10.50 per hour before deductions--many in the $8 an hour range. While Wal-Mart's CEO makes about $11,000 a hour plus benefits and perks.

This scenario has metastasized through the economy. One in three workers in the U.S. makes Wal-Mart level wages. Fifty million people have no health insurance and every year about 45,000 die because they cannot afford diagnosis or treatment. Child poverty is climbing as household income falls. Unemployment and underemployment are near 20% levels. The federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation since 1968, would be $10.00 per hour now. Instead, it is $7.25.

Yet one percent of the richest Americans have financial wealth equivalent to the bottom ninety-five percent of the people. Corporate profits and compensation of corporate bosses are at record levels. While companies, excluding financial firms, are sitting on two trillion dollars in cash.

On February 7, President Obama showed us where the power is by walking across LaFayette Park from the White House to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Before a large audience of CEOs, he pleaded for them to invest more in jobs in America. Imagine, CEOs of pampered, privileged mega-companies often on welfare and in trouble with the law sitting there while the President curtsied.

With Bill Clinton in the Nineties, corporate lobbies tightened their grip on our country by greasing through Congress both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that subordinated our sovereignty and workers to the global government of corporations.

All this adds to the growing sense of powerlessness by the citizenry. They experience hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and many more injuries every year in the workplace, the environment, and the marketplace. Massive budgets and technologies do not go to reduce these costly casualties, instead they go to the big business of exaggerated security threats.

While the ObamaBush deficit-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been destroying those nations, our public works here, such as mass transit, schools and clincs crumble for lack of repairs. Foreclosures keep rising.

The debt servitude of consumers is stripping them of control of their own money as fine print contracts, credit ratings and credit scores tighten the noose on family budgets.

Half of democracy is showing up. Too many Americans, despairingly, are not "showing up" at the polls, at rallies, marches, courtrooms or city council meetings. If "we the people" want to reassert our proper constitutional sovereignty over our country--we can start by amassing ourselves in public squares and around the giant buildings of our rulers.

In a country that has so many problems it doesn't deserve and so many solutions that it doesn't apply; all things are possible when people begin looking at themselves for the necessary power to produce a just society.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Media futurist: Time to replace the Internet

Media futurist: Time to replace the Internet

By Nathan Diebenow

Friday, February 18th, 2011 -- 4:54 pm

Tags: angel orensanz center, Contact, cyber dissent, douglas rushkoff, dream, Earth, egyptian revolution, futurist, humanity, idea, internet blackout, Media, networking, networking revolution, Revolution, stranglehold

'Contact' summit to study replacing DNS with peer-to-peer, democratic networks

How can the stranglehold on humanity's digital communications be broken? One media studies professor has a revolutionary idea.

"If we have a dream of how social media could restore peer-to-peer commerce, culture, and government, and if the current Internet is too tightly controlled [by the network owners] to allow for it, why not build the kind of network and mechanisms to realize it?” asked Douglas Rushkoff, writing for Mashable earlier this month.

Rushkoff is the author of "Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and a noted Internet futurist. He also teaches media studies at The New School University in Manhattan.

To foster this emerging, peer-to-peer Internet, Rushkoff announced plans for a summit called “Contact” in October at the Angel Orensanz Center in New York City.

“From the development of a new non-hierarchical Internet to the implementation of alternative e-currencies, the prototyping of open source democracy to experiments in collective cultural expression, Contact will seek to initiate mechanisms that realize the true promise of the networking revolution,” he said.

Rushkoff told Raw Story last December that authorities already have the ability to quash cyber dissent. This is due to the Internet's original design as a top-down, authoritarian device with a centralized indexing system.

Rushkoff concluded that the Internet in its current form is simply unredeemable. From the near expulsion of WikiLeaks to Egypt's Internet blackout, it became clear to him that a fundamental change must be made.

As evidenced by the troubles dealt to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, essentially all one needs to do to halt a website is delete its address from the domain name system registry. A peer-to-peer Internet would use individual computers to route traffic to sites, as opposed to one centralized server, making it more resistant to censorship.

"This is not rocket science," Rushkoff quipped.

“A p2p network protected only by laws -- that exists but for the grace of those in charge -- is not a p2p network,” he wrote. “It is a hierarchical network allowing itself to be used in a p2p fashion, when convenient to those currently in charge.”

Rushkoff previously theorized that the new system might operate like FidoNet, a pre-Internet network that relied on personal computers acting as their own servers connected by modems via telephones.

“25 years of networking later, lessons learned, and battles fought; can you imagine how much better we could do?” he asked. “So let's get on it.”

Ohio’s turn to revolt: Thousands flood statehouse over anti-union bill

Ohio’s turn to revolt: Thousands flood statehouse over anti-union bill

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, February 18th, 2011 -- 3:53 pm

Tags: american laborers, bill, gop leadership, gov, pay health insurance, revolt, senate gop, state, statehouse, wtam 1100

The massive, government-crippling protests in Madison, Wisconsin have now spilled over into Ohio, where over 5,000 rallied Thursday in opposition to a bill that would eliminate collective bargaining rights for state workers.

Ohio's Senate Bill 5 is essentially the same as what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker proposed, and it seems to be recieving about the same response. Just last week, more than 800 people showed up to protest the bill while it was still in committee, packing out the statehouse in a show of numbers that Thursday's demonstration easily topped.

The collective bargaining power of unionized workers is a key bullwark for American laborers, who've often been forced to organize throughout US history to force management into offering better pay, health insurance, greater job security, vacation time or even maternity leave. Without collective bargaining, the power of unionized workers would be reduced to their last and most extreme tool in their set: the general strike.

Teachers in Wisconsin showed earlier this week what that may look like, with more than 1,100 of them calling in "sick" and not showing up for work for one single day, to emphasize their importance in the education system.

Estimates on the number of protesters who turned out in Columbus, Ohio on Friday differed, but Cleveland's WTAM 1100 News Radio put the figure at "thousands," noting that it had grown from prior protests. The station also added that Friday's demonstration also drew a counter-protest from a group of tea party Republicans, who were "far outnumbered" by the workers.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Friday's protest attracted "about 3,500" demonstrators, with the Republican counter-protest stacking up at just over 200.

“Instead of focusing on solving the economic problems facing Ohio and creating family-sustaining jobs for the 500,000 Ohioans who still remain jobless, Sen. Jones and Senate GOP leadership are trying to scapegoat hard-working public service workers for our economic and budget woes,” Tim Burga, president of Ohio's AFL-CIO labor union federation, said in a statement.

"This bill is a partisan assault on working families and does nothing but punish workers and hurt the middle class, plain and simple. This bill would destroy the middle class because the working families this bill affects not only provide vital services, but put money and resources back into their communities, which support local merchants and other small businesses."

This video was published to YouTube by user truthaboutbills on Feb. 17, 2011. It contains adult language.

Class Warfare in Wisconsin: 10 Things You Should Know

Class Warfare in Wisconsin: 10 Things You Should Know

By Josh Healey

For most of the last decade, I lived in the crazy, cold, contradictory state that is Wisconsin. I wrote research papers in Madison, performed poems in Milwaukee, walked picket lines in Jefferson, organized student conferences in Eau Claire, led artistic workshops in Green Bay, spoke at my roommate’s wedding in Merrill, and went camping with my future wife at Black River Falls.

A big-city kid from the East Coast, I never fully got used to the overwhelming whiteness of Wisconsin – the winter, and yes, the people. But I eventually learned how to wear five layers in February, and that amidst the farms and abandoned factories, there was a working-class people with a strong populist ethic. As my freshman roommate from Wausau once told me, “Josh, I don’t follow politics. I just hate corporations.”

Fast-forward to 2011: the new Republican Governor, Scott Walker, has declared war on my old roommate and all Wisconsin workers. Under the guise of a budget deficit, Walker just put forth a bill that would destroy the unions that represent teachers, social workers, and over 100,000 public employees. He’s also making huge cuts to schools, health care, public transportation, and anything that actually helps people live.

Want more crazy? Walker ordered the National Guard to get ready to respond to a strike or any resistance to his plan. The last time Wisconsin called in the National Guard was way back in 1886, when they shot on a rally of Milwaukee workers advocating an 8-hour work day. Five unarmed workers were killed in the massacre.

I loved living in Wisconsin. Truth be told, I hated it many times too, especially when its ugly side came out, like now. I was fighting this same struggle during most of my junior and senior years at UW. Our campaign demands were nothing new: lower tuition for students, better health care for workers, higher taxes on the rich, and a real investment in public education over private incarceration. That was with Jim Doyle in office. But now with this dude Walker, it’s at a whole new level.

Of course, the people aren’t going down without a fight. There have been unprecedented demonstrations at the state Capitol in Madison every day this week – from 1,000 the first day to over 25,000 yesterday.

I wish I could be out there on State Street with my Badgers in the struggle, but at the very least, I can do my best to spread the word. So for all my old students and roommates taking to the streets, and for everyone else wondering what the hell is going on in America’s Dairyland, let’s clear some things up:

1. The deficit is a made-up crisis.
Like most states, Wisconsin is struggling in the recession, but the state government isn’t actually broke. The state legislature’s fiscal bureau estimated the state would end the year with a $121 million balance. Walker claims there is a $137 million deficit – but it is not because of an increase in worker wages or benefits. According to the Capital Times, it is because “Walker and his allies pushed through $140 million in new spending for corporate and special-interest groups in January.” Nice. A man-made “crisis” as an excuse to push neoliberal cutbacks: Shock Doctrine, anyone?

2. Even if there was a deficit, blame Wall Street – not the workers.
The economy isn’t crumbling because state workers in Madison have decent pensions. It’s because Wall Street bankers stole our money, Bush and now Obama have us in two trillion-dollar wars, and states like Wisconsin keep spending more on prisons than schools. What do the rich pay? According to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, corporate tax income has fallen by half since 1981 and over two-thirds of Wisconsin corporations pay zero taxes.

3. The Green Bay Packers are with the people.
They won the Super Bowl. They’re owned by the people of Green Bay, not some schmuck billionaire. And now the Pack is standing in solidarity with their union brothers and sisters. If only Brady Poppinga (pictured at right) would tackle Scott Walker like that. If the green and gold are down, you already know what side to roll with. (I heard Walker is a Vikings fan, anyway.)

4. This is not “just another Madison protest.”
Madison is famous for its progressive tradition, but this is more than just another march down State Street. This struggle is engaging people across the state – not just Madison and Milwaukee, but LaCrosse, Eau Claire, and outside Gov. Walker’s home in Wauwatosa. This struggle is multi-racial, multi-generational, and multi-issue. Working- and middle-class white folks (the majority population) might finally realize that long-term unity is stronger than short-term tax relief. Looking for the progressive antidote to the Tea Party? They’re brewing something in the Badger State.

5. Public worker unions were founded in Wisconsin.
The first union for public employees was actually started in Madison in 1932, to ensure living wages for the workers and end political patronage for government jobs. The biggest public union, AFSCME, was born right where the protests are happening today in Madison. Wisconsin has always had a dual legacy – home to the last Socialist mayor in the country (Frank Zeidler of Milwaukee) and the ultimate anti-Communist himself, Joe McCarthy; more recently, both progressive Sen. Russ Feingold and immigrant-basher Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner – but the Dairyland’s populist ethos can be traced back to the Progressive Era and its public unions.

6. Hurting public workers will not help you get a better job.
Many conservatives, and even some liberals, argue that we need to “bring public workers’ benefits down to the level of private workers.” First off, it’s not true that public workers are better off – they usually get lower wages in exchange for better benefits. More important, though, is the idea that we should raise all boats, rather than continue this race to the bottom. Russ Feingold said yesterday that “Republicans are trying to pit private workers against their public counterparts.” No more divide and conquer. Yes, people with a private-sector job (or, people who like 50% of black men in Milwaukee don’t have a job at all) have a right to be angry: but that anger should be reserved for the companies who are downsizing and outsourcing those jobs, not for middle school teachers and the lunch lady.

7. This is about more than unions.
This is about public education, affirmative action, immigrant rights, stopping foreclosures, and basic human rights. This is about how much the Radical Right thinks they can get away with. This is about drawing a line in the sand – if first they come for the unions, who will they come for next?

8. The country is watching Wisconsin.
What happens this week in Madison has national ramifications. Right now, everyone’s eyes are on Wisconsin. The governor of Ohio and Tennessee are threatening to adopt similar legislation – and Obama has his own conservative budget proposal at the federal level. If they can force it through relatively liberal Wisconsin, your state could be next.

9. Wisconsin was watching Egypt.
News travels fast, and uprisings inspire each other across continents. The protesters out on the Madison streets watched the millions of Egyptians who successfully, nonviolently took down their dictator. Many of them are now carrying signs like the one below calling Scott Walker “the Mubarak of the Midwest.” And while the American media loves the union workers that toppled a dictator in Egypt, CNN has little sympathy for the workers that will be silenced right here in the heartland.

10. Who’s Capitol? OUR Capitol!
This is our moment. Our state. Our growing movement to change the course of the country. The legislature could vote as soon as today on Walker’s bill – unless the real Badgers stand up to stop him.

The protests are escalating every day, inside and outside the Capitol. To all my Madison folks, stay strong and know that we’re with you. To the rest of the country, spread the word, donate to the legal defense funds, and make sure your own states don’t go down this same road.

For resources and up-to-date info on what’s happening on the ground, check out:

AFT-Wisconsin
Teaching Assistants’ Association
Student Labor Action Coalition

On, Wisconsin! Solidarity Forever!

Josh Healey is a writer, an organizer, and the author of Hammertime: Poems and Possibilities. Featured by the New York Times, NPR, and Al-Jazeera, he lives in Oakland, California, and works with Youth Speaks to empower young artists and activists. He has written for Tikkun about Justice in Jerusalem and Invincible, the Detroit hip-hop emcee. This piece was crossposted from his blog.

A Bright Spot in an Otherwise Dreary Wisconsin Spring

The Fraud of Wisconsin’s Political System, Youth Political Activism, and a Possible Future for the State’s Concept of the "Public"

by Bill Reck / February 18th, 2011

The furor over Wisconsin’s budgetary “crisis” continues to escalate, demonstrated by the fact that as I write this, the state’s law enforcement is searching for Democratic legislators who have crossed state lines and gone into hiding as a way to stop passage of the bill or at least force serious negotiations. The budget bill, now infamous across the country, would force state employees to pay into their pensions at a higher percentage, would raise the price of health care for said employees, and also effectively end collective bargaining rights for state-level public employee unions. Of course, much of this debate is not about budgetary crisis, but about how to move towards effectively ending the public sector as Wisconsinites know it so that Walker can funnel tax money to political cronies or corporate investors.

The end of collective bargaining rights for unionized public employees is something that strikes me as odd as I write from Milwaukee on what is an otherwise wet, gray, and depressing day, one of many I expect over the next several weeks in a city that takes forever to heat up in the springtime. What is so odd is that the view on the public/private divide as presented by the city’s corporate media so easily does away with any concept that residents pay taxes so that public-sector employees can perform services deemed necessary. Television viewers and readers of newspapers, such as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel or the myriad websites set up to mirror the reporting of the city’s dominant media, learn that without Walker’s budget bill, the state can expect a deficit of over three billion dollars during the next couple of years, and are forced to make “common sense” decisions about “fiscal responsibility” and flushing their children’s financial opportunities down the drain.

In fact, many Milwaukeeans and suburbanites have picked up on this, as reader comments on, for example, the Milwaukee JS website, spew vitriol about the slothful and parasitic nature of public employees, and point out that apparently the gravy train is coming to an end. I am unsure to which gravy train they refer, as my colleague Joe Walzer has pointed out in the UWM Post that much of Walker’s cuts would have the effect of trying to “squeeze blood from an orange.” Interspersed through the comments on the budget bill are other assaults on the notion of the “public,” such as ugly racist statements about the purposes of welfare in one of the country’s most segregated cities, along with accusations that public employees are communists and thugs. Particularly suggestive of the power of the rigidity and narrowness of discourse on this issue are the ways that residents have appropriated protest. For example, Walker’s threat to call out the National Guard is justified in light of demonstrations outside his home or because of the escalation of opposition in Madison. There is no mention of the fact that low-paid public sector work such as the kind I perform as a teaching assistant is one reason that the state can subsidize low-cost higher education.

In the Milwaukee metropolitan area, based upon the ways the city’s corporate media tends to portray the state’s budgetary situation, and based upon the responses of those who read, watch, or listen to news reporting, one would think that it would be pointless to protest the passage of the bill. Republican state legislators reassure everyone they have the votes to pass the bill, and they are probably right. Residents of the metropolitan area descend upon the great democratic space of the twentieth century, the internet, to opine that notions of the public are dead and that privatization is the key to the future. Recent developments in Madison have the state’s flagship institution breaking away from the rest of the system, likely leaving the state’s periphery colleges in a bind, while education news in Milwaukee is even more grim, as city school officials discuss the reality of massive teacher layoffs and inner-city school closings. In other words, the view from one of Wisconsin’s metropoles is depressing: one would think opposition is useless, as the framing of discourse is top-down enough not only to make dissent pointless but also to invert opposition to make the threat of force justified.

Yet, my experiences over the last several days have shown that despite the support for Walker in Milwaukee and its suburbs, the long-term implications of the passage of the budget bill will likely have a negative effect on the state’s Republican Party and actually could result in the radicalization of thousands of young Wisconsinites.

Yesterday, Wednesday, February 16. I attended the protests in Madison. Students at UW-Milwaukee were provided with buses to head there, and once settled I immediately struck up a conversation with a student much younger than me. A second-year student from outside of Stevens Point, my traveling neighbor was an intelligent, conscious, and sensitive young person, the type of person I wish I were six or seven years ago. We discussed music and literature, sharing thoughts on Don Delillo, David Foster Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk, and a musician who only records in the winter so that his work reflects the desolation of that season in the North.

In the seats ahead of us, four undergraduate students who knew each other discussed peak oil and anarcho-primitivism with a couple other young students who became interested once the discussion of consumerism, waste, and the problems with industrialization came up among the original four.

Upon arriving in Madison, we were told where the protests were being held, directed there by city police, an important show of solidarity from Wisconsinites who have not yet been threatened by their governor. Throughout the late morning and early afternoon, firefighter squadrons from across the state marched, another critical show of support from a group not yet affected.

Most importantly, though, were the young people who descended on the state capitol, yelling slogans that, for example, reminded those of us there that union busting is, in fact, disgusting. On the website for one Milwaukee Right-wing radio show, there is a video of high school students being asked why they were protesting, and giving confused answers. This was not the case in Madison, as students barely as tall as my shoulders and flashing the colors of the bands on their braces each time they yelled, became part of a tradition that is hallowed, rightly or not, within this country. The passion with which they yelled suggested they were not simply forced to be there by their teachers, and this is even less likely the case considering Madison schools were closed so teachers could be at the legislature.

After arriving home yesterday, it was made known that unionized teaching assistants at UW-Milwaukee were to take a sick day along with many other teachers throughout the state, and that undergraduates would walk out of class in solidarity. Today at noon, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, often times at odds over grades and workloads, came together in support of the right for unionized people to collectively bargain and for their teaching assistants to be compensated at what might be above a hopelessly impoverished level. The crowd ebbed forward and flowed backward, jamming the commons and becoming impassable and immovable in places; the sea of bodies provided a warming effect, blocking the cool, humid wind that often blows on campus and was made worse today by the melting snow. I saw students of mine chanting, many of whom covertly use their cell phones when we discuss history in the classroom, as a well-respected Marx(ish) labor historian held a banner in support of, well, labor.

Of course, despite the actions of Wisconsinites young and old, there is every indication that Walker’s bill will pass. Milwaukee’s Right-wing radio will cast this as a victory for democracy, as the elected governor will get his way, and at the same time they will mock the actions of activists and protestors while likely calling for the firing of teachers up and down the spectrum for encouraging students to protest. In some cases, termination of educators will occur. Dominant, corporate discourse will do what it does.

What is less clear, however, is the lesson young people will take from the events of this week. They might view the possible failure of their actions to change politicians’ minds to demonstrate the futility of American politics, and they would be partly correct when one considers the incredibly narrow and corporate-crafted nature of this country’s political structures. In this regard, will they retreat to their iPhones, laptops, and other insular ways to alleviate the constricted opportunities they will face in a society that decreasingly values the “public,” or will they consider the failure of protest as a fundamental lesson that radicalizes them and pisses them off? What happens when their teachers are fired for budgetary reasons and they lose writers of college recommendation letters, or when their teaching assistants are laid off and they do not receive a grade for which they paid thousands of dollars of tuition? Will the notion of togetherness and mutual obligation be stronger than the competitive individualism this country’s discourse seems to favor?

This marks a pivotal moment for young people in Wisconsin. The political lessons learned this week could create a large contingent of new voters and citizens that experienced the conceptual break necessary to understand the corporate domination of the country’s political institutions. Many Americans of all ages buy into notions of individualism, competition, and private life. This prevents them from asking important questions about how corporate interests frame public debate both in politics and the media, and leaves many people feeling disempowered or unable to cause change. In Wisconsin, however, the lie is clear. This is not hegemony: young people are not consenting, force is being used against them, and the channels of dissent and American democracy are not responding to them. Scott Walker is attempting to create a friendly environment for private profit, but he is also creating a climate in which knowledge about, and experience with, politics are being transmitted to youth in such a way that what is learned this week will have an effect on the consciousnesses of young people that could have a radicalizing potential for decades to come.

Bill Reck is a teaching assistant and PhD student in the Department of History at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Read other articles by Bill.

This article was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Democracy, Labor, Media, Neoliberalism, Unions.

Wisconsin Crowds Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators Waver

Wisconsin Crowds Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators Waver

Thursday 17 February 2011

by: John Nichols | The Nation | Op-Ed

Protesters demonstrate at the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin, on February 16, 2011. (Photo: Narayan Mahon / The New York Times)

"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment," shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

Where Tuesday’s mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, Wednesday's mid-day rally drew 30,000, according to estimates by organizers. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of 27 years on the city’s force, said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol – and he noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was “packed.”

On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of "What's disgusting? Union busting!" shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into the night.

For continuing updates on Wisconsin protests, follow Truthout's blog.

The country was starting to take notice, as broadcast and cable-news satellite trucks rolled into town. The images they captured were stunning, as peaceful crowds filled vast stretches of the square that surrounds the seat of state government.

Republican legislators -- who had been poised to pass the governor’s plan Thursday, and might yet do so – were clearly paying attention. Two GOP senators broke with the governor, at least to some extent. Dale Schultz from rural southeastern Wisconsin and Van Wanggaard from the traditional manufacturing center of Racine, proposed an alternative bill that would allow limit bargaining rights for public employees on wages, pensions and health care for the next two years but allow them to continue to bargain on other issues.

While that’s hardly an attractive prospect to state workers – as it would also require them to make significantly higher pension and health-care contributions – the measure rejects the most draconian component’s of the governor’s plan. Other Republicans resisted the proposal, however, offering only minor amendments to the governor's plan.

If Schultz and Wanggaard actually vote "no" Thursday, when the measure is to be taken up, just one more Republican senator would have to join them in order to block the bill.

That the first real movement by Republicans came after Wednesday’s rally was hardly surprising, as few state capital’s have seen the sort of mobilization that occurred at mid-day, and that is likely to reoccur at nightfall as teachers from across the state are expected to pour into the city for a rally and candlelight vigil.

At a time when it's often tough to tell the difference between the corporate news and its advertisements, it's essential to keep independent journalism strong. Support Truthout today by clicking here.

In some senses, Wednesday’s remarkable rally began Tuesday evening, when Madison Teachers Inc., the local education union, announced that teachers would leave their classrooms to spend the day lobbying legislators to “Kill the Bill” that has been proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.

The teachers showed up en masse in downtown Madison Wednesday morning.

And then something remarkable happened.

Instead of taking the day off, their students gathered at schools on the west and east sides of Madison and marched miles along the city’s main thoroughfares to join the largest mass demonstration the city has seen in decades – perhaps since the great protests of the Vietnam War era.

Thousands of high school students arrived at the Capital Square, coming from opposite directions, chanting: “We support our teachers! We support public education!”

Thousands of University of Wisconsin students joined them, decked out in the school’s red-and-white colors.

Buses rolled in from every corner of the state, from Racine and Kenosha in the southeast to Green Bay in the northeast, from La Crosse on the Mississippi River to Milwaukee on Lake Michigan.

Buses and cars arrived from Illinois and Minnesota and as far away as Kansas, as teachers and public employees from those states showed up at what American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union president Gerald McEntee says is “ground zero “in the struggle for labor rights in America.

The moms and dads of the elementary school kids came, and the kids, carrying hand-lettered signs:

“I love my teacher!”

“Scott Walker needs to go back to school!”

“Scott Walker needs a time out!”

And, “We are Wisconsin!

“I’ve been here since the 1960s, I’ve seen great demonstrations,” said former Mayor Paul Soglin, a proud former student radical who was nominated for a new term in Tuesday’s local primary election. “This is different. This is everyone – everyone turning out.”

Everyone except the governor, who high-tailed it out of town, launching a tour of outlying communities in hopes of drumming up support for his bill. Most of the support Walker was getting was coming from national conservative political groups, such as the Club for Growth, which have long hoped to break public-employee unions. But the governor held firm, saying after a day of unprecedented protests – in Madison and small towns and cities across the state – that he still wanted to pass his bill. He’s got strong support in the overwhelmingly Republican Assembly. But he cannot afford to lose one more Republican state senator. And the unions and their backers are determined to find that one Republican who is smart enough and honest enough to recognize that the governor's assault of public employees is an assault on Wisconsin itself.

• 
  

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

'Everyone Is Coming': Wisconsin Revolts Against Tea Party

Published on Thursday, February 17, 2011 by The Nation

"What's Disgusting? Union Busting!" Chant Wisconsin Crowds That Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators Waver

by John Nichols

"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment," shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.

Where Tuesday’s mid-day protests drew crowds estimated at 12,000 to 15,000, Wednesday's mid-day rally drew 30,000, according to estimates by organizers. Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, a veteran of 27 years on the city’s force, said he had has never see a protest of this size at the Capitol – and he noted that, while crowd estimates usually just measure those outside, this time the inside of the sprawling state Capitol was “packed.”
On Wednesday night, an estimated 20,000 teachers and their supporters rallied outside the Capitol and then marched into the building, filling the rotunda, stairways and hallways. Chants of "What's disgusting? Union busting!" shook the building as legislators met in committee rooms late into the night.

Protestors to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many state workers demonstrate in at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011. (AP Photo/Andy Manis) The country was starting to take notice, as broadcast and cable-news satellite trucks rolled into town. The images they captured were stunning, as peaceful crowds filled vast stretches of the square that surrounds the seat of state government.

Republican legislators -- who had been poised to pass the governor’s plan Thursday, and might yet do so – were clearly paying attention. Two GOP senators broke with the governor, at least to some extent. Dale Schultz from rural southeastern Wisconsin and Van Wanggaard from the traditional manufacturing center of Racine, proposed an alternative bill that would allow limit bargaining rights for public employees on wages, pensions and health care for the next two years but allow them to continue to bargain on other issues.

While that’s hardly an attractive prospect to state workers – as it would also require them to make significantly higher pension and health-care contributions – the measure rejects the most draconian component’s of the governor’s plan. Other Republicans resisted the proposal, however, offering only minor amendments to the governor's plan.

If Schultz and Wanggaard actually vote "no" Thursday, when the measure is to be taken up, just one more Republican senator would have to join them in order to block the bill.

That the first real movement by Republicans came after Wednesday’s rally was hardly surprising, as few state capital’s have seen the sort of mobilization that occurred at mid-day, and that is likely to reoccur at nightfall as teachers from across the state are expected to pour into the city for a rally and candlelight vigil.

In some senses, Wednesday’s remarkable rally began Tuesday evening, when Madison Teachers Inc., the local education union, announced that teachers would leave their classrooms to spend the day lobbying legislators to “Kill the Bill” that has been proposed by newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker.

The teachers showed up en masse in downtown Madison Wednesday morning.

And then something remarkable happened.

Instead of taking the day off, their students gathered at schools on the west and east sides of Madison and marched miles along the city’s main thoroughfares to join the largest mass demonstration the city has seen in decades – perhaps since the great protests of the Vietnam War era.

Thousands of high school students arrived at the Capital Square, coming from opposite directions, chanting: “We support our teachers! We support public education!”

Thousands of University of Wisconsin students joined them, decked out in the school’s red-and-white colors.

Buses rolled in from every corner of the state, from Racine and Kenosha in the southeast to Green Bay in the northeast, from La Crosse on the Mississippi River to Milwaukee on Lake Michigan.

Buses and cars arrived from Illinois and Minnesota and as far away as Kansas, as teachers and public employees from those states showed up at what American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union president Gerald McEntee says is “ground zero “in the struggle for labor rights in America.

The moms and dads of the elementary school kids came, and the kids, carrying hand-lettered signs:

“I love my teacher!”

“Scott Walker needs to go back to school!”

“Scott Walker needs a time out!”

And, “We are Wisconsin!

“I’ve been here since the 1960s, I’ve seen great demonstrations,” said former Mayor Paul Soglin, a proud former student radical who was nominated for a new term in Tuesday’s local primary election. “This is different. This is everyone – everyone turning out.”

Everyone except the governor, who high-tailed it out of town, launching a tour of outlying communities in hopes of drumming up support for his bill. Most of the support Walker was getting was coming from national conservative political groups, such as the Club for Growth, which have long hoped to break public-employee unions. But the governor held firm, saying after a day of unprecedented protests – in Madison and small towns and cities across the state – that he still wanted to pass his bill. He’s got strong support in the overwhelmingly Republican Assembly. But he cannot afford to lose one more Republican state senator. And the unions and their backers are determined to find that one Republican who is smart enough and honest enough to recognize that the governor's assault of public employees is an assault on Wisconsin itself.

The state's largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council has called on its 98,000 members to come to rally in their hometowns and then come to the Capitol. "All citizens of Wisconsin should come to Madison!" reads the call. Tens of thousands will come. The state, county and municipal employees will come. The nurses will come. The small business owners will come. The parents and students will come. They will ask the question: "What's disgusting?" And they will answer with a roar: "Union busting!"

© 2011 The Nation

As Protests Grow, Wisconsin Dems Boycott Budget Vote

Published on Thursday, February 17, 2011 by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Senate Democrats Boycott Thursday Vote on Walker's Budget Plan

by Jason Stein, Patrick Marley and Steve Schultze

MADISON, WI — Law enforcement officers are searching for Democratic senators boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair plan Thursday in an attempt to bring the lawmakers to the floor to allow Republicans to move forward with action on the bill.

Thousands pack into the State Capitol Wednesday to protest Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill for a second consecutive day. (Credit: Tom Lynn) One Democratic senator said that he believed at least most of the members of his caucus are in another state. At least one, however, Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said he was still in his Capitol office listening to constituents.

In a press conference just off the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said that Democrats were "not showing up for work" and that police were searching for them to bring them to the floor.

"That's not democracy. That's not what this chamber is about," Fitzgerald said of the boycott to reporters.

Sen. Tim Cullen (D-Janesville) confirmed Thursday that Democrats are boycotting the Senate action on the bill in efforts to block a quorum and keep the measure from passing. Because 20 senators of the 33-member house are needed to be present to pass a fiscal bill, the body's 19 Republicans will not be enough to pass the budget repair bill without at least one Democrat present.

"They can't pass this bill if there's not a Democrat in the chamber," Cullen said.

Cullen said he believed at least most of the Democrats were now outside Wisconsin, though he declined to say where.

"I think they're all out of state. I am anyway," Cullen said.

Speculation in the Capitol pointed to Illinois as the state where Democrats had headed.

Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D-Monona) released a statement calling on Republicans to listen to unions and protesters calling for changes to the bill, which would cut benefits and almost all union bargaining rights for public employees.

"Democrats believe it is wrong to strip people of their right to have a say in the conditions of their employment and to use state law to bust unions," Miller said. "These people deserve to be heard and their rights ought to be respected."

Cullen said Democrats hope delaying the bill will give more time for union demonstrators to win over any possible wavering Republicans. He said the decision was made by other Democrats at a meeting at which he was not present.

Fitzgerald said he believed the last time such an action had happened was in the mid-1990s when the Assembly was at odds over a bill to help finance Miller Park. He said he was not sure how much authority law enforcement officials would have to compel Democrats to show up.

The tactic wasn't winning over Sen. Rob Cowles (R-Green Bay), a moderate whom unions had been trying to court to vote against the bill. Cowles called the blockage of the Senate vote an attempt to "shut down democracy."

The Senate convened at 11:30, with 17 Republicans but no Democrats present. After a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, action was immediately disrupted by demonstrators in the gallery shouting, "Freedom, democracy, unions."

Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) made a call of the house to bring the three additional senators needed to vote on the bill to the Senate floor.

If a Democrat does show up for the vote, a handful of GOP senators will decide the fate of Walker's bill.

The Senate is meeting amid massive demonstrations that have so packed the Capitol that movement outside the Senate chambers is difficult at best.

Spokesmen for the Republican governor and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said they were confident that the GOP lawmakers had the votes they needed to pass the bill without further changes. Walker has said that the proposal's cuts to worker benefits and to decades-old union bargaining laws are needed to help balance the state's gaping budget shortfall in this year and the next two.

Republicans control the Senate 19-14, meaning they can lose only two votes and still pass the bill if all Democrats oppose it. Some Republicans have shown reluctance about the bill, though so far none have said publicly that they will vote against it.

Even after voting for the proposal in the Legislature's budget committee just before midnight Wednesday, Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) showed his concern about the effects of the proposal on workers.

"I will probably vote for it" on the Senate floor, Olsen said.

On a 12-4 party-line vote Wednesday, the Joint Finance Committee added new civil-service protections for local government employees and kept cuts to public worker benefits. The budget committee began debating the bill at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, after Republicans spent hours behind closed doors crafting the changes. The Senate and Assembly could now act on it as early as Thursday.

"This will pass in that form," Fitzgerald said.

His brother, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon), said he also expected the Legislature to accept the changes the committee adopted and not make any further ones.

Some senators attempted to make significant changes to the bill Wednesday, but it appeared their efforts had failed.

The changes the committee adopted would require all local governments to create civil-service systems similar to the one for the state. It would also allow limited-term employees to keep their benefits. Some limited-term employees have worked for the state for years, and the original version of the bill would have taken away all their health care coverage and retirement benefits.

The debate in the committee was impassioned and at times emotional.

"People have said they're willing to sacrifice. Why are we going after people's rights?" asked Rep. Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee).

But Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), whose wife is a teacher, said he believed the bill was needed to ensure schools are run efficiently.

"What about the right of the taxpayer to run a frugal school district?" Nygren said.

The changes did not appease the thousands of teachers and state workers who have filled the Capitol for two days.

They booed loudly as they learned the bill still would take away their union rights as they watched the committee proceedings on televisions mounted in the Capitol Rotunda.

"I think it's disgusting," said John Bausch, a Darlington music teacher in elementary and middle school.

"This is not what Wisconsin is all about. We've had collective bargaining for (50) years and to throw it all out without our say is a disgrace."

More are expected to come to the Capitol after Mary Bell, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, urged teachers and other Wisconsin residents to come to Madison on Thursday and Friday. She stopped short of asking teachers to walk off their jobs.

In Milwaukee, Superintendent Gregory E. Thornton said teachers are expected to be at work Thursday and Friday, and failure to do so, without a valid excuse, will result in disciplinary action.

WEAC's effort came as Madison schools closed Wednesday because more than 40% of teachers called in sick so they could lobby legislators. Madison schools will be closed Thursday for the same reason. Other districts also were considering closing.

Walker, who proposed the bill, said he was "disappointed" with the action by the Madison teachers and that he appreciates that other public employees are showing up for work. He said he respects workers' right to demonstrate but that he is "not intimidated into thinking that they're the only voices out there."

In a sign of the national attention the proposal is drawing, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has scheduled a telephone call with Walker for Thursday, said Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the federal agency. The Associated Press reported Duncan said Wednesday at a Denver conference of teacher unions and school administrators that the move in Wisconsin and other states to strip teachers of bargaining rights worries him.

In an interview with WTMJ-TV (Channel 4), President Barack Obama said public workers have to be prepared to make concessions but that he thought Walker's plan was unduly harsh on unions.

Walker offered the bill to help shore up the state's finances in advance of a budget to be delivered Tuesday that is expected to include major cuts in areas like aid to local schools and governments.

He first wants the budget repair bill passed to help clear up a $137 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year ending June 30 and ease solving a deficit of more than $3 billion over the next two years. The cuts to benefits would save taxpayers nearly $330 million through mid-2013.

Major elements of the budget-repair bill remain in place. It would require most public workers to pay half their pension costs - typically 5.8% of pay for state workers - and at least 12% of their health care costs. It applies to most state and local employees but does not apply to police, firefighters and state troopers, who would continue to bargain for their benefits.

Except for police, firefighters and troopers, raises would be limited to inflation unless a bigger increase was approved in a referendum. The non-law enforcement unions would lose their rights to bargain over anything but wages, would have to hold annual elections to keep their organizations intact and would lose the ability to have union dues deducted from state paychecks.

The most significant change the Joint Finance Committee approved would require local governments that don't have civil-service systems to create an employee grievance system within months. Those local civil-service systems would have to address grievances for employee termination, employee discipline and workplace safety.

The bill also gives Walker's Department of Health Services the power to write rules that would change state laws dealing with medical care for children, parents and childless adults; prescription drug plans for seniors; nursing home care for the elderly; and long-term care for the elderly and disabled outside of nursing homes.

The programs that could see changes under the proposal would include the BadgerCare Plus and BadgerCare Core plans, Family Care and SeniorCare.

Lawmakers planned to modify the bill so that the Walker administration could drop people from BadgerCare Plus because of having too high an income temporarily, but not permanently. Current income eligibility standards would be restored on Jan. 1, 2015, under the changes the committee adopted.

The bill was also amended to allow the Walker administration to sell or lease state-owned heating plants but first require a review of any deals by the Joint Finance Committee.

Separate from the committee's action, individual lawmakers are hoping to make other changes to the bill.

Two GOP sources familiar with internal talks said Sens. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) and Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) were backing a plan to put at least some union bargaining rights back into the bill. One source said the plan would make use of devices such as sunset clause to bring back certain bargaining rights in future years.

Schultz acknowledged he was working on alternatives, though he said he couldn't comment on any details. He said he was headed to his home and expected to find both protesters and law enforcement protection there.

"Everything is a work in progress and everything is fluid and there are no lines drawn in the sand," Schultz said. "Obviously, it's a very emotional time for us."

Wanggaard sent out a statement after the budget committee action saying he would vote for the bill as amended by the panel.

"'In a democracy, making law is like making sausage.' I never fully understood that statement until this week," Wanggaard said. "No compromise is perfect, but I am thankful that the bill has been substantially modified to add additional worker protection."

Before the committee met Wednesday, Walker told reporters he still had the votes to pass the proposal without changes.

"We're willing to (make changes), but we're just not going to fundamentally undermine the principle of the proposal, which is to let not only the state but local governments balance their budgets," he said.

The committee debated the bill Wednesday night after holding a 17-hour public hearing on it that ended at 3 a.m. Wednesday. Hundreds of people were still registered to speak when Republicans halted the hearing.

Democratic lawmakers then started an impromptu hearing of their own. They were still taking testimony as of 10 p.m. Wednesday - 36 hours after the official hearing started.

© 2010 Journal Sentinel

AlterNet.org

Ed Schultz Hammers Home the Importance of Wisconsin Protests

Last night MSNBC host Ed Schultz spent his show's hour focusing on the unprecedented people power being demonstrated in Wisconsin. He covered every angle from the media's ignoring domestic left-wing protests, to the over-hyping of the "financial crisis" in the State of Wisconsin, to the absence of Democratic "fire" and leadership on the issue of labor.

Schultz says that this is a fight for the "soul of America."

Watch the first segment below, and the rest of the show at MSNBC.com

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Atlas Slacked (and So Should We)

by E.R. Bills / February 16th, 2011

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

Thus spake Henry Miller on the first page of his first book, Tropic of Cancer, in 1934—no doubt one of the reasons it was banned from publication in the United States until 1961. Miller was a square wheel and not the kind of influence a country trying to get things rolling after a Great Depression wanted folks being exposed to. The book was deemed pornographic as well, but the social criticism was more risqué than the gratuitous sex.

Today, as we continue to work our way out of the Great Recession, many of Miller’s Cancer sentiments still ring true as we mark the 50th anniversary of its appearance on our shores. Materialism is unwise. Over-consumption is destructive. And the most recent incarnation of American Capitalism is simply a diagonally slit wrist that we’re watching bleed out.

Deep down, we all know this, but we can’t seem to muster the craw or the courage to square our wheels. It makes me think back to a time and place in my life when people tried.

It was Austin, Texas in the early 1990s and I lived on my friend Jerry’s couch in a duplex in Hyde Park for nine months. I kept odd jobs and odder hours, usually scheduled around manic chess marathons and bleary-eyed, late-night philosophical volleys. The debates always started with a lob, but three hours later we were both trying to maintain serve with obscure, paraphrased excerpts from Nietzche or clever parries from Kierkegaard, Camus, or Sartre.

Jerry had an uncanny knowledge of local happy hours at restaurants that offered free finger foods for the thirsty souls that frequented their establishments to imbibe alcohol. So we would show up, buy one beer each and then just eat; it was a nice dinner 2-3 days a week.

When the hinges of our toilet seat broke off, we simply hung the lid on the bathroom door. Using our water closet involved placing the lid on the toilet bowl and balancing yourself.

I barely had a pot to piss in, and it was one of the happiest times in my life. I didn’t have a mortgage or car payments or credit cards. I wasn’t prostituting myself in some pathetic, cubicled slog and I wasn’t a stock-optioned salary-slave with no place to go but up the arse of a corporate colossus slinking after ill-begotten profit margins.

I was free. I could loaf. And I could sit still and think.

Richard Linklater’s Slacker touched on the phenomena, but conveyed the weirder aspects of the process more than the wisdom. In fact, the movie reinforced the stereotype that a “slacker” was a young adult whose existence was characterized by apathy, lack of ambition and general aimlessness. The derogatory connotations masked the profounder aspects of what was really happening. We weren’t apathetic or lazy or aimless; we just had serious reservations about the catalogue of ways people demeaned themselves for money.

Austin in the early 1990s was a place where “Atlases” came to shrug. Moms and dads across the state were sending their kids off to UT or Southwest Texas State for vocational training, but some of stuff in some of the books was leaving an impression. And a significant number of students theretofore scheduled to become normal, traditionally successful yuppies were garnering (1) levels of awareness that were counterproductive, (2) penchants for self-examination that were downright dangerous, and (3) a contrarian vein that approached anarchy.

Resignation, obsequiousness and utter convention were out. Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf had observed that to think was to undermine and, with our educations in hand, that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t have much practice and our non-conformist leanings were almost unanimously discouraged by real “grown-ups,” but once we thought for ourselves for a summery instant we realized the entire phony system wasn’t worth engaging in, struggling for or reducing ourselves to. So we stayed in Austin and held out as long as we could (but not nearly long enough).

I bring this up because my happy “shrug” in Austin comes to mind a lot lately, especially when I see Tea Partiers hold up signs that say “Who is John Galt?” For the record, I like Ayn Rand, but she made a mistake in Atlas Shrugged when she assumed that talented folks and great innovators would automatically be capitalists. Rand had too much reverence for the “system” and naively suggested that capitalist Atlases might shrug, but that’s never been the case–because they always benefited too much from the “system.” Rand might as well have titled the book Robber-Barron Shrugged or Industrialist Shrugged or When Corporations Shrug.

History clearly suggests that the “shruggers” were never members of the upper capitalist caste. They were hardscrabble types, common people, beset-upon folks that refused to surrender to the robber-barons, industrialists, and corporatists who solemnly and repeatedly endeavored to relegate them to capitalism’s dirty, secret byproduct: a powerless heap of the collaterally damaged and chronically disenfranchised (also known as the middle and lower classes).

So take notes, Ayn. A union work stoppage is John Galt. A strain of talented college graduates refusing to become cogs in a soul-crushing, environment-ravaging corporate machine is John Galt. And collection of Egyptian protestors speaking truth to power in Tahir Square is also John Galt.

America is in trouble because we don’t believe in it anymore. And we shouldn’t. But not because our president is black or because our government is too big or we pay too many taxes. It’s because we no longer operate under the precept of collective self-interest. We have self-interest down to a science and regard self-indulgence as the fulfillment of the American Dream. But “collective” no longer has a place in the equation because it’s an unpleasantness that the have-mores and the have-mosts pay legions of lawmakers and lobbyists to help them avoid. Then they enthusiastically hail unrestrained, unregulated free markets as the amazing cure-all for our times and utilize their government-sanctioned privileges to remove the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th wrung on every ten foot stretch of the socio-economic ladder so that we are systemically and perpetually beholden to them if we are inclined to climb.

The ladder is still navigable if you’re connected, related, incredibly lucky or prepared to jump real high when they tell you to—but if you question their authority or resent their entitlement, you’re an extremist, a radical or an insurrectionist who must be quashed.

As I think Henry Miller would have colorfully noted, unrestrained capitalism, corporatism, materialism and our destructive way of life in general are not too big to fail and we’re not so small that we won’t survive when they do.

The have-mores and the have-mosts who control everything in this country are a conglomerate version of Hosni Mubarak. Different crime scene, different M.O., but same criminality. And obligatorily shouldering their burden simply makes us enablers.

So become a square wheel. Slack a little. Take some time and think.

The mortgage, the car and the flat-screen can wait.

There’s always surrender. But it should be a last resort. Not our chief priority.

E. R. Bills is a freelance writer from Fort Worth, Texas. His works appear in Fort Worth Weekly, South Texas Nation, Fort Worth Magazine, etc. He can be reached at: erbillsthinks@gmail.com. Read other articles by E.R..

This article was posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 8:02am and is filed under Capitalism, Classism, Corporate Globalization, Economy/Economics.