Tag: scott walker

Citizens United, June 5th, and Money, Money, Money, Money! by Geminijen

“When the madness is directed towards the likes of you and me,

Then our blindness may be lifted and we might begin to see.

For when others are afflicted, with the scourge that has no end,

Then we practice our denial — and the purging, we defend.

So the powers and the peoples of the nations of this Earth

Could be fully in connivance — or denial of the hurt…

And even, in our hubris, in our information age,

We are blinded by our bias — and at petty issues rage.

So the workers were divided and they voted Nazis in,

And so many were the workers, who paid dearly for this sin!

And we see now in Wisconsin, there’s a Walker riding high,

And there’s cash enough from coffers to propagate the lie.”

(excerpted)

Arjun Jalah

Sometimes you would give anything not to be right!  When I started writing this diary three weeks ago, I predicted that Scott Walker would win the recall election for governor in Wisconsin. Walker, with unlimited corporate money, was challenged by a massive people’s movement when he outlawed most collective bargaining rights in what was usually considered a progressive state.  I knew, with the certainty of a cynic that that much money would out-weigh people power.   It was the fight between John Henry and the steel driving machine all over again. Yet, there I was, Tuesday night, praying that the people power would, in the end, win.  Not.  Walker beat Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate 53%-46%, winning by a whopping 6% points. As Ed of the Ed Show so colorfully pointed out, there was no way to put lipstick on that pig. Or as Chris Hedges had said a couple of weeks earlier: “We lost. They won.”

monopoly

What Is Wrong With Wisconsin?

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

MSNBC and other news outlets are calling the Wisconsin recall of Republican Governor Scott Walker for Gov. Walker.

Walker Survives Recall Vote

Scott Walker, the embattled Republican governor of Wisconsin, narrowly survived a recall vote on Tuesday, defeating a union-led effort to remove him from office for pushing laws to restrict the collective bargaining rights of state workers.

The state’s labor movement had marshaled widespread anger earlier this year to force a recall vote just two years into Mr. Walker’s four-year term. Democrats collected close to one million signatures in the petition drive to oust him.

That effort led to the closely-watched rematch between Mr. Walker and the Democratic opponent he beat in 2010, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee. In the voting Tuesday, Mr. Walker once again bested Mr. Barrett for the state’s top job.

The results were a victory for the national Republican Party and conservative groups from around the country, which had rallied behind Mr. Walker with tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Walker will now complete his term.

Unless, he’s indicted.

Wisconsin Recall: Vote Tomorrow

Cross poated from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The vote to recall Wisconsin’s Republican Tea Party Governor Scott Walker is tomorrow. The latest Public Policy Polling results has his challenger Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett with a slight lead over Walker:

   PPP’s final poll on the Wisconsin recall finds Scott Walker ahead, but also a race that’s tightening. Walker leads Tom Barrett 50-47. That’s down from 50-45 on a PPP poll conducted three weeks ago and it’s also down from a 52-45 lead that Walker posted in a Marquette Law poll released last week.

   Barrett is actually winning independent voters by a 48-46 margin. The reason he continues to trail overall is that Republicans are more excited about voting in Tuesday’s election than Democrats are. Our projected electorate voted for Barack Obama by only 7 points, even though he took the state by 14 in 2008. If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually matched the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin. It’s cliche but this is a race that really is going to completely come down to turnout.

This week’s Up with Chris Hayes devoted its first segments to what is at stake for not only Wisconsin but the rest of the country.

The battle for Wisconsin

Up with Chris Hayes panelists Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee; Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers; Michelle Bernard, founder, president and CEO of The Bernard Center for Women, Politics and Public Policy; and Bob Herbert, former New York Times columnist and now a distinguished senior fellow at the progressive think tank Demos, discuss the ferocious recall election in Wisconsin, and its implications for national politics.

John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, joins thepanel to talk about the tidal wave of dark money flowing in from special interests in the Wisconsin recall election.

Mass Exodus of Teachers In Wisconsin

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Teacher Retirement Spike, with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine

Wisconsin facing teacher exodus

Controversial law prompts a spate of retirements

MADISON, Wis. – When students return today for the first day of school across Wisconsin, many familiar faces will be gone, as teachers chose retirement over coming back following the passage of a bill that would have forced them to pay more for benefits and taken away most of their collective bargaining rights.

Documents obtained by the Associated Press under the state’s open records law show that about twice as many public school teachers decided to retire in the first half of this year as in each of the past two full years, part of a mass exit of public employees.

Their departures came after the bill passed but before the new law took effect. The bill, which was pushed by Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature, led to weeks of protests at the Capitol.

The ensuing exodus of teachers and other state employees has spurred fears that the jobs might not be filled and that classroom leadership by veteran teachers will be lost.

So It Begins… Race-Based Voter Intimidation In Wisconsin

-Sorry this is short. This is sort of just happening.

Finally actions are beginning to be taken to stop Republicans tactics in Wisconsin in their tracks — Wisconsin Jobs Now Director Mike Lauer has just filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Board against Alberta Darling, We’re Watching, and their various associated allies, friends, and stooges unveiling Republican bullying tactics that go considerably farther then what was previously known. Including allegations that african-american voters on August 2-4 were “unlawfully followed, trailed, surveilled and otherwise intimidated and coerced voters from freely exercising the franchise” while engaging in early absentee voting.

The complaint (.pdf here) is really quite something and deserves to be read immediately. Vans were observed “Obtrusively following, trailing, and electronically surveilling” black voters, Wisconsin Jobs Now and similar outfits also received the same treatment being trailed and filmed by agents. Can you even imagine being a black woman, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, being stalked, trailed, and photographed by white men? What a terrifying experience, AND a clear violation of State Law if their ever was one.

“no person may personally or through an agent make use of force, violence or restraint in order to induce or compel any person to vote or refrain from voting at an election; or by abduction, duress or any fraudulent device or contrivance, impede or prevent the free exercise of the franchise at an election”

Stop Scott Walker. Please remember to assist in every way you can tuesday to help get voters to the polls.

Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees.

Walker said Friday that he hasn’t called the Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any problems.

When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross — Sinclair Lewis

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – The New Wisconsin Workers Anthem

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE VIDEO

:: ::

Rockthedub.com was scheduled to film a video for this new anthem yesterday in Madison, Wisconsin

While we don’t keep it political on RTD all the time, we’re not just all music all the time.  We come from the era of Public Enemy, where the music was a tool that helped the outside world understand what was going on.  Also helped those within the scene get a better understanding of the ills that life tried throwing at us.  On this leak from the forthcoming rockthedub fifth anniversary compilation, FiF, AWK and Y-Love don’t hold back in trying to educate those who might sleep on the ills of the GOP.

Note: Y-Love & AWKWORD will be IN MADISON, WI on Thursday, April 7, on the streets, filming a video for this song!… If you want to get involved, email TheWisconsinSong[at]gmail.com

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – “I Have Here in My Hand a List of…”

Note: I kept getting errors about text being corrupted while trying to post the complete diary.  This is only half the diary.  There are many more sections and editorial cartoons in this diary that I posted over at Daily Kos.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette



Peter King – Ghost of Hearings Past by Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Sherwood on the Lake

I know, you have “breaking news” overload.  But I can’t help but see the parallels between the Middle East and what happens here at home.

Wisconsin is waging its own fight for democracy and economic liberty, without the aid of an international coalition.  They are planning to oust leaders who voted for enslavement.  But what should they demand from the new people they elect to the legislature?  How could they permanently break the bonds of economic enslavement?  

I have a few suggestions.

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – Unprincipled Zealots and March Madness

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Clay Bennett

Moammar Gadhafi by Clay Bennett, Comics.com, see reader comments in the Chattanooga Times Free Press

Wisconsin unions have a choice: militancy or death

This is going to be short.  I have a clear and succinct point to make.

Wisconsin unions can now either give it all they’ve got, or they’re done for.

Right now, after Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate Republicans have pushed through this step in the decades-long corporate assault on labor, the unions really have their backs against a wall.  Membership has declined, manufacturing has gone oversees, the national Democratic Party has abandoned them, and the cancer of the corporation has metastasized over not just government, but society.  If the unions don’t rediscover their past, if they don’t turn around their more recent history of capitulation and infighting, they’ll die soon enough anyway.  It’s their choice:  militancy or death.

On Wisconsin!

I’m enraged.  Wisconsin’s union workers this evening were temporarily outflanked by a legislative maneuver of questionable legality.  And of despicably sleazy intent. The Senate decided that, as everyone in opposition to it has been saying for months, the union busting bill really wasn’t a fiscal measure, the previous pronouncements that it was be damned.  No, it wasn’t a fiscal measure.  It was a union busting measure.  And therefore, the bill didn’t need a quorum in the Senate.  It could pass the Wisconsin Senate with no democrats voting.  Or even appearing.  So there. This wonderfully disingenuous piece of legislative legerdemain has– let’s call it what it is–  temporarily screwed Wisconsin’s public unions by withdrawing their right to bargain collectively.

And now.  And now, amigo@s, comes the real test.  Will the unions and their supporters and the demonstrators and you and I all throw up our hands in defeat and despair and slink home?  Will we say in words or actions, “Oh, we lost, it’s over, let’s just forget about it and move on?”  Or will we stand up now and fight on (nonviolently) with ever renewed dedication to overturn this evil, unpopular, antidemocratic, antiunion measure?

I hope that hundreds of thousands of people show up in Madison tomorrow to demonstrate against Governor Walker and the Koch funded Teapublicans.  I hope an equal number will show up in Lansing.  And in Union Square, New York.  And in San Francisco.  And Chicago.  And in every town and city in America that recognizes the dignity of workers and their right to bargain collectively.  I hope the recall efforts will be redoubled.  I hope that the demonstrators inspire a nationwide high school strike tomorrow at 2 pm.  And I hope the demonstrators will invite farmers to show their support, to come to Madison, to ride their tractors to and surround the capitol.  And I hope that across Wisconsin and across America teachers and nurses and garbage collectors and firemen and bureaucrats and policemen will all link arms with other workers, students, progressives, anyone who supports the unions and sees that the withdrawal of public unions’ collective bargaining rights is a step back, a regression into the darkness of the Nineteenth Century.

Yes, I’m enraged.  But I’m also hopeful.  I’m hopeful that we, you and I, amig@s, will not let Walker and the Koch funded Teapublicans get away with this.  I’m hopeful that this is the beginning not of a demonstration, but of an actual, popular movement.  I hope that the movement will continue with increased strength and focus to preserve the rights of workers to organize and to bargain collectively.

Yes, I’m idealistic.  And maybe pretty unrealistic.  And not particularly practical.  That doesn’t matter.  I believe that what we are about to see is a real change.  Coming from an organic movement.  And that we will now begin in earnest to link arms and stand in Solidarity in the struggle for what I believe is the survival of the middle class.  Here’s John Lennon:

 

cross posted from The Dream Antilles  

Will Wis. Gov. Scott Walker reap the whirlwind?

These happenings on Madison’s Capitol Square are exhilarating — and exhausting.

They are both inspirational and emotionally draining.

Saturday, March 5, was just another day in Madtown. Not much planned, just a little rally. The formal part, with speakers and musicians, was just announced about 24 hours before it began.

So my expectations were low, having seen last Saturday what the biggest demonstration in Wisconsin history looked like, 100,000 strong.

There weren’t 100,000 again today. Maybe there were 40,000 or 30,000 or something in between. It really doesn’t matter at this point. It’s now in the third week, with no end in sight.

The movement lives, and it is growing. Every time Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican cronies commit another outrage, the coalition grows and the opposition gets stronger.

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