This week, Americans for Prosperity -- a right-wing political powerhouse funded by the billionaire Koch brothers -- started running anti-union TV ads in Wisconsin. The ads allege that Wisconsin's public workers, protesting Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to dismantle their right to unionize, "walked off their jobs, abandoning our children." The ads ask, "Who decides Wisconsin's future? Voters or government unions?" Unsurprisingly, the TV spots don't go into detail about who paid for them -- viewers might be less likely to trust faux-populist rhetoric if they knew it came straight from the mouth of a corporate front group run by a pair of billionaires.
The story of the year since Citizens United v. FEC may be perfectly crystallized in the fight that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is waging against his state's public employee unions. Organizations like Americans for Prosperity spent millions of dollars in 2010 running misleading ads bashing health care reform, progressives, immigrants, and American Muslims in order to elect politicians who would stand up for the interests of big business. Now those interests are working hard, and spending a little extra money, to make sure they collect on their investments.
The real story behind the protests in Wisconsin has little to do, as Gov. Walker would have you believe, with a state-level push for fiscal responsibility. It has everything to do with the changing dynamics of money and influence in national politics. Pro-corporate politicians have never liked the power wielded by unionized workers. Last year, in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court handed them the tools do to something about it, paving the way for a wave of corporate money that helped to sweep pro-corporate politicians into power in November. Citizens United also increased the power of labor unions, but union spending was still no match for money pouring into elections from corporate interests. As Rachel Maddow has pointed out, of the top 10 outside spenders in the 2010 elections, 7 were right-wing groups and 3 were labor unions. Gov. Walker's attempt to obliterate Wisconsin's public employee unions, if it succeeds, could be the first of many attempts across the country to permanently wipe out what are the strongest political opponents of the newly empowered corporate force in American politics.
Citizens United alone did not win the 2010 elections for Republicans. But the money it let loose helped ensure that those swept to power by widespread voter dissatisfaction would be eager to pander to the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and to demonize those who oppose them. Instrumental in this movement were David and Charles Koch, the manufacturers behind Americans for Prosperity and central organizers in the movement to create a government more concerned with corporate profits. Americans for Prosperity, freed by the new rules governing corporate spending and unencumbered by financial disclosure requirements, spent millions of dollars on federal races in 2010, including over $350,000 in Wisconsin congressional races. Koch-backed groups were even implicated
Koch Industries, through other means, was also directly involved in the election of Walker. The company's political action committee was the fourth largest contributor to his campaign, contributing $43,000, nearly the maximum amount allowed. It also contributed $1 million to the Republican Governor's Association, which in turn spent millions on ads attacking Walker's opponent. These kinds of direct and indirect contributions to candidates were legal under Wisconsin's campaign finance rules even before Citizens United. But they illustrate the enormous stake that corporations like Koch have in who controls state governments--and the amounts they are willing to spend to elect sympathetic candidates. And, as the recent prank call to Walker shows, that money buys more than a sympathetic candidate. It buys the ultimate access.
What is perhaps most troubling about the post-Citizens United flood of corporate money in politics is the free rein it has given for corporations to hide behind front groups to run misleading ads without ever being held accountable for their content. Americans for Prosperity is now employing the same tactics it used to smear health care reform in key House districts in its ad campaign against Wisconsin unions. Like in its ads falsely claiming that health care reform hurt Medicare recipients, the group's ads in Wisconsin pretend to champion populist values while pushing a decidedly anti-populist agenda. The ads seek not only to misinform voters, but to blame ordinary Americans for problems they did not cause.
Wisconsin's budget shortfall was not caused by greedy government workers. It was caused by the current recession combined with Governor Walker's massive tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. Walker's demonization of teachers, public safety workers, and other public employees conveniently deflects attention from the people who are really benefiting from the state's current budget priorities: the corporations that are bankrolling Republican campaigns.
The Wisconsinites marching in Madison have called Gov. Walker's bluff on this blatant campaign to get rid of a political adversary, and citizens across the country are joining them. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana decided this week that it wouldn't be so smart politically to pull a similar move in his state. Workers in Pennsylvania are preparing to fight another. The right to associate and to form a union is fundamental--and, as a recent USA Today/Gallup poll found, is recognized by a wide majority of Americans.
While most Americans support the right for workers to organize, corporate interests will continue to work -- and spend money -- to dismantle that right. We have to stop Gov. Walker from busting the unions in Wisconsin. But then we must deal with the bigger issue behind his efforts: the increasing power of corporate interests in deciding who benefits from the government, and who becomes a scapegoat.
Follow Michael B. Keegan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/peoplefor
Ugly lies, half-truths and all the other persuasion techniques that are being inflict on the public are the dark side of free speech. Only understanding and critical thinking can combat it.
Charlie
Since when did America become a dictatorship??
For any of you on Facebook I have started a group event called THROW YOUR SHOVELS DOWN! We are watching America get raped by the GOP and their big business buddies and I for one have had it. We need to show them who the REAL Power is - the AMERICAN WORKER! If we throw our shovels down in a collective effort for just ONE WEEK - we would cripple this country! Lets show the GOP who has the REAL power!!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=177582128955000
Koch Products & Companies Include:
- Dixie Cups
- Brawny
- Angel Soft
- Quilted Northern
- Stainmaster
- Vanity Fair napkins
- Mardis Gras napkins
- Georgia Pacific products
- Holiday Companies
- Gander Mountain
No more of that "unions served a useful purpose once, but we don't need them anymore" bs.
Now republicans just go straight for the jugular as they feel they have brainwashed the working class enough to get away with it.
In a communist country the workers (at least in principle) own the means of production. That would rule out a couple of billionaires owning the means of production.
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/25/the-wisconsin-lie-exposed-taxpayers-actually-contribute-nothing-to-public-employee-pensions/
HOWEVER - there is a significant portion of our society that has a negative perception of unions, and their views, unfortunately, are in many regards - well-founded.
In many cases unions go overboard in protecting the unproductive and incompetent from discipline and termination. I know of instances where it has taken TWO YEARS to get a raging incompetent terminated - after numerous hearings and appeals where the union tenaciously DEFENDED the incompetent. That same person would have been off a non-union job in a DAY.
I know of many other incidents where union workers have been told to "slow down - you're making the other workers look bad."
Every time this is allowed to occur - unions are undermining their public support. Once they've allowed the well to be poisoned - no one ever looks at it the same again.
To enjoy bullet-proof support, unions MUST make themselves broadly perceived as partners in prosperity. They are undeniably FAILING at that presently.
The change HAS to come from them - and wise union leaders would recognize this...
Be careful what values you loft higher then the human race.
The simpler explanation is those who pay the bill want to pay less and those who receive the payment want more pay. The best that Walker could ever hope to achieve is to supress unions temporarily. Eliminating them is Republican/Fascist fantasy.
All I bring to your attention is that if you are a supporter of organized labor - as I am - then you would be wise to encourage labor leaders to address the REAL trepidations the general public has about the movement...
They (corporations) have been fighting since the 1940s to get rid of FDR 'new deal' programs. There was an assassination attempt against FDR but got foiled because the person chickened out. These corporate titans are ruthless, without morals, greedy and will stop at nothing to gain power and control of govt coffers and American people. Look at how many liberal, progressive leaders that were gunned down in the 1960s by lone assassins. Look who gained power from all those murders.
Yes, the gullible people need watch up calls. This article works as well as others on HuffPost but it needs to get out to the boarder public. The public that knows something is wrong but their gut tells them it's not what the corporate conservative water carrying media is telling them. But no other voice gets heard - the media don't even carry the president messages unless he says something that the conservatives make a stink about.
The president is out there talking about high speed rail, reducing small business taxes, new internet grids in rural areas, new electrical grinds to support electrical cars, math and science in schools, and corporations to get off the side lines and create jobs.
Yet some solutions are staring us in the face if we have courage to learn from our own past and from others including other countries.
Many married siblings are moving-in with parents and some share meals regularly as joint family system. This could be a great help to single parents. Support and help is both-ways with love in ones heart.
The 50-60 yr old are called 'sandwich generationÂ'. Looking at social results of how our young and old are faring, the sandwich generation could do a lot of good to themselves and society without a 9-5 job.
I am much in favor of Medicare for 55+ as providing flexibilitÂy to the sandwich generation Â.
For others belt-tightÂening will save us from ourselves. By preventing us doing things that are not good for us like over-eatinÂg, over-drinkÂing and over-enterÂtained. Like Pavlovian dogs we are conditioneÂd to buy whatever is advertisedÂ; including the times we cannot afford them.
Most jobs have disappeareÂd because of computer and informatioÂn technology making many many mid-level managers redundant. Blue-collaÂr jobs disappeareÂd due to robotics in the assembly line.
ProgressivÂes are against DREAM ACT. Yet, 20 million could boost demand without govt. stimulus.
Where is the notion in all this that the "Great Recession" originated in the sub-prime frauds on Wall St. Matt Taibbi says 40% of the world's wealth disappeared down this particular black hole, and no one but Bernie Madoff has gone to jail.
When are y'all going to connect the dots: Wall Street tanks the economy, defrauds pensioners, and government revenues follow suit. Never mind the egregious military spending and five-times-the-world-average incarceration rate of the U.S., the sub-prime bubble popping was the final straw.
See http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/22/matt_taibbi_why_isnt_wall_street
police, machinists, air traffic control, you will soon see wages
as low as $6 an hour, no child labor laws, no worker protection
such as unemployment and accident, and no benefits at all.
Costs of doing business for companies will go way down in the
US, maybe then they won't ship jobs overseas.
US, maybe then they won't ship jobs overseas."
SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE.
And pigs can fly.
'Nuff said.
We need the next October revolution where we raid all the corporation, confiscate and nationalize the wealth and evenly distribute it.
We are long overdue for this revolution. I was hoping our president will do it. But he is a disappointment
they may have already shown even the most myopic and uniformed that they are leading a death march for the entire citizenery at a time when the middle east is getting rid of tyrants with serious blood being spilled - which shows americans what their freedom and jobs may be worth in another citizen of the worlds hands
the americans after the depression didnt vote for republicans in the majority for the house and senate for decades - we may be at the cross roads if the MAN appears who can connect to the people in away that they know he is not a charlatan like Obama and the republicans
he may face the right candidate like LBJ did and walk away in the primary