The Wisconsin protests are about much more than budgets and unions. As I observed in "What Conservatives Really Want," the conservative story about budget deficits is a ruse to turn the country conservative in every area. Karl Rove and Shep Smith have made it clear on Fox: If the Wisconsin plan to kill the public employees' unions succeeds, then there will be little union money in the future to support democratic candidates. Conservatives will be effectively unopposed in raising campaign funding in most elections, including the presidential elections. This will mean a thoroughly conservative America in every issue area.
The media, with few exceptions, is failing to get at the deeper issues.
Let's start with the case of the Lincoln legislators. As is well known about Lincoln, and as the Political Wire reports,
On December 5, 1840, Democrats "proposed an early adjournment, knowing this would bring a speedy end to the State Bank. The Whigs tried to counter by leaving the capitol building before the vote, but the doors were locked. That's when Lincoln made his move. He headed for the second story, opened a window and jumped to the ground!"
Lincoln would be, and we all should be, proud that the Wisconsin state senators have courageously crossed the state line to Illinois to avoid a quorum in Wisconsin that would have a disastrous effect, not only on Wisconsin, but on America for the indefinite future.
Quorum rules are an inherent part of democracy. They are in the Wisconsin Constitution for a reason. When an extreme move by a legislative majority would be a disaster, patriotic legislators can, like Lincoln, refuse to allow the disaster is the have the power to stop it. That is their democratic duty, not only to their constituents, but to the nation.
That is why I think these legislators should be called the "Lincoln Legislators" as a term of honor. They understand that their courage is being called upon, not just in the name of collective bargaining rights, but in the name of protecting democracy from a total conservative takeover. The Lincoln story, and the greater good story, should be in the media every day. And Democrats nationwide should be hailing the courage, and vital importance, of those legislators.
Yet the media keeps reporting on them as "fleeing" and refusing to do their jobs. Where there is positive reporting, as on MSNBC's The Ed Show, it is only about defending unions and collective bargaining rights for working people.
The media -- and the Democrats -- also need to do a much better job on a sneaky conservative media strategy. The clearest example occurred in the NY Times. David Brooks, in his Feb. 21, 2011 column wrote: "Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers." I turned on CNN that day and heard Anderson Cooper introduce the Wisconsin protest story as a battle between taxpayers and unions. These are massive distortions, but they are what conservatives want the public to believe.
The real issue is whether conservatives will get what they really want: the ability to turn the country conservative on every issue, legally and permanently. Eliminating the public sector unions could achieve that. Collective bargaining rights are the immediate issue, but they are symbolic of the real issue at stake. That is the story the media should be telling -- and that Democrats everywhere in America should be shouting out loud.
What is standing in the way of having the real story told? It is the frame of collective bargaining itself, which only points to the parties that are doing the bargaining and what they are bargaining over.
The real point of collective bargaining is the idea of fairness inherent in democracy. Without unions, large corporations have an unfair advantage in hiring individual workers: Workers have to take what is offered, a fair wage for work done or not. Unions help to even the playing field, enabling workers to have a fair chance against wealthy, powerful large organizations -- whether corporations or governments.
But public employees' unions, in bargaining with governments, are raising deeper issues in which wealthy corporations and individuals play a huge role. The public employees' unions are aware that the top one percent of Americans have more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent -- a staggering disproportion of wealth. The wealthy have, to a large extent, amassed that wealth through indirect contributions to them by governments -- governments build roads corporations use, fund schools that train their workers, subsidize their energy costs, do research they capitalize on, subsidize their access to resources, promote trade for them, and on and on.
Meanwhile, over the past three decades, while corporations and their investors have grown immensely richer on the public largesse, middle class workers have had no substantive wage increases, leaving them poorer and poorer. Those immensely wealthy corporations and individuals have, through political contributions, have managed to rig our politics so that they pay back only an inadequate amount into the system that has enabled them to become wealthy.
The real targets of the public employees' unions are the wealthy free riders who, in a fair political economy, would be giving back more to the nation, and to the states and communities they function in.
That is the obvious half of what the Wisconsin protests are about. The other half concerns the rights of ordinary people in a democracy -- rights conservatives want to deny, whether gay rights, women's rights, immigrant rights, retirement rights, or the right to the best health a nation can provide to all its citizens. Unions, through their political contributions, support the basic freedoms, protections, and resources we all require to have a decent life and live in a civilized society. If those unions are destroyed, American life will become unrecognizable in a remarkably short time.
Democracy as we know it is at stake in the Wisconsin protests, not just budgets and unions.
Progressives are organizing rallies to "Save The American Dream." They are understating the case.
If Democrats are not talking out loud about these deeper issues, then they are, by their reticence and silence, helping conservatives destroy unions, defund the Democratic party, and take over the country.
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman: Why Madison Rabbis Oppose Wisconsin Governor's Budget Repair Bill
Unambiguos 100 words or less on each issue. Each politition writes a rebutal to the oponents issues
unambiguos in 100 words or less and signs the statements. This is done every Tuesday for 8 weeks prior to elections. This is done with equal public funds.
4 30 minute televised debates are held; One every two weeks prior to elections.
This is done with equal public funds.
No media ads. No mailed adds, No media interviews. The media may orgiasticaly argue, spin, and postulate on these issues, but not with the polititions. This is done with equal public funds.
All Election stations are exactly alike at locations agreed to by all parties. Total redistricting overhaul must be made, agreed to by all parties. That is a good start.
But you're right! Wisconsin's Scott Walker is trying to take away the power of not only unions but the elderly, the poor, minorities, the disabled, and students -- the latter groups by pushing the strictest photo-ID voting law in the United States, (These are the groups least likely to have driver's licenses, plus likely to vote Democratic.)
And traditionally Wisconsin has had just about the highest voter turnout in the nation. It's heartbreaking. The state's proud progressive tradition, honored even by former longtime Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, is being turned upside down.
Americans give their money to corporations when we buy needed goods. The corporations take our money and give it to Republicans and influence elections. Many of us don't like that. But we still have to buy certain goods.
If union members give to Democrats, it's a drop in the bucket to what corporations give to Republicans. Even so, that's not good enough for Republicans -- they want to totally destroy unions.
Is that fair? Do conservatives truly want one-party rule in the United States -- corporate rule -- by the rich and for the rich? We're on a rapid road to that destination.
Republican politicians like Scott Walker have made it very clear since the mid-terms that they don't care about people or jobs. They only care about their billionaire puppet-masters and their own power.
"Battle between taxpayers and unions?" Excuse me, corporate media, but are not all union members -- including public employees -- also taxpayers? (Unlike many corporations.) And has not the middle class, union or not, public or private, agreed to stagnant wages -- which means cuts -- over the past 20 or 30 years while the wealthy have raked in previously unimagined billions?
Public employees do the most vital work for our communities and nation, and their pay is almost never more than modest middle class. Police, firefighters, teachers, nurses ... they've always been there for us and our families. We take them for granted, yet we truly, truly need them. Shame on anyone who vilifies them for partisan reasons.
Corporatism in the US is doing just that: appropriate all power, all wealth, all resources, and while they thrive, they leave all the Joe and Jane Does to rot and die in poverty and misery.
1. The entitlement of private health care insurance carriers to pimp off of doctors and nurses.
2. The entitlement of financial institutions to pimp off of people who actually produce goods and services.
3. People with money being entitled to bribe government officials , through lobbyists and campaign contributions to make them even richer
Count on a MAJOR recall campaign against Walker next January. Also MAJOR recall efforts against key Republican senators this spring.
Walker and his cohorts in the Legislature have many people-unfriendly schemes in the works that are just beginning to seep out to the public.
There was an election. The Democrats LOST- stop crying and vote on the bill. If you don't like it, win the next election and change the law. That's democracy.
And by the way, the law is currently that the unions have the RIGHT to negotiate, so the governor is breaking the law by refusing to negotiate. It shouldn't be an easy thing to get rid of the RIGHT of workers to organize and have representation when it's been the law for well over 50 years!
"If the Wisconsin plan to kill the public employees' unions succeeds, then there will be little union money in the future to support democratic candidates."
Yes. Then the left will have to make an honest political living. The horror!
BTW: Lincoln immediately regretted his "window jump" and returned to restore democracy to the Illinois legislature. Funny that George left that out of his narrative.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A
Take all the union donations out, and then the corporate donations out, and you have yourself a democracy.
They would still have untold billions available from corporations -- mega-billionaires like Scott Walker's patron David Koch.
Let's see. The Supreme Court conservatives open the floodgates to unlimited money from corporations, and oh by the way unions. Of course corporations have far more money to give to Republicans than unions do to Democrats.
But that isn't good enough for Republicans -- months later they set out to not just beat the competition but eradicate the competition.
That is the horror, sir!
Here is my try: Democracy can't exist in a country whose leaders are owned by corporate thugs.
OK, it is not "No new taxes" but I like it.
I don't know where this mythology started. All federal employees have the right to bargain collectively in accordance with the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act but the president has the power to restrict those rights for employees working in the intelligence or national security fields.
To the best of my knowledge, Bush meddled with some collective bargaining. Deteriorating rights for TSA, ATF and civilian DoD employees.