Protests against public sector union busting continue

Real protests like this are putting the astroturf Tea Party movement in perspective.  Maybe this is the shift whereby the working class can see where its interests really lie:

Quote:

Social tensions have now reached a breaking point. Two and half years since the eruption of the financial crisis, more than 26 million workers cannot find a full-time job. State governments, under both Democrats and Republicans, are responding to budget deficits by closing schools, libraries, clinics and other public facilities, and carrying out attacks on state and municipal employees.

 

Meanwhile, Wall Street share values have fully recovered since the crash of 2008 and the corporations and their top executives are richer than ever. President Obama has refused to provide a penny of relief to workers losing their jobs, homes and life savings. Instead he has outlined plans to slash a trillion dollars from vitally needed social services, to pay for the bailout of Wall Street, the extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the rich and the Pentagon war machine. And this is only the beginning.

 

The emergence of open class conflict is exposing myths propagated by the political establishment. Among these is the supposed mass support for the "Tea Party." Largely a media creation, fueled by millions of dollars from corporate billionaires, the Tea Party backers of Governor Walker could muster no more than a small crowd of demoralized supporters in Madison Saturday. The overwhelming popular sentiment, expressed by nearly everyone one encountered in the city, was support for the protests.

The struggle of Wisconsin workers enters a new stage

Then again, the political system is so bound up in the oligarchy that any popular movement may be neutered before it can get going.

Fighting the Five Fascisms in Wisconsin and Ohio - by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/5036-fight...

"The escalating confrontations in Wisconsin and Ohio are ultimately about preventing the United States from becoming a full-on fascist state.."

Thinking he was talking to one of his major campaign backers, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker yesterday compared his stand against Wisconsin public employee unions to Ronald Reagan's 1981 firing of the air traffic controllers, saying that it was a moment that changed the course of history and led to the fall of communism.

"This is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history," Walker says, talking about his fight with the unions in a phone call that was secretly taped by a Buffalo man posing as billionaire oilman David Koch.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/23/6116445-walker-in-prank-...

Thats why you have to be careful with legal agreements and laws with government. The firing was allowed by the very law that banned federal government union strikes {5 U.S.C. (Supp. III 1956) 118p.}.

Alan Greenspan noted "The President invoked the law that striking government employees forfeit their jobs, an action that unsettled those who cynically believed no President would ever uphold that law."

Dont give them something and just figure they will never use it. You give it they will eventually use it

But since neoconservatism in the U. S of A is yesterday's news, no correlation will be made between U.S. adventures overseas and the events unfolding in Wisconsin.  Obviously the politics of personality is on a roll.

[b]Groups officially begin recall process for seven lawmakers[/b]

The clock is now running for groups trying to collect enough signatures to trigger recall elections against seven Democratic senators, state officials said today.

Reid Magney, spokesman for the Government Accountability Board, said local groups have officially registered recall committees with his agency to try to recall Sen. Bob Wirch of Kenosha and Jim Holperin of Eagle River.

In addition, a Utah group, American Recall Coalition, has registered electronically to set up recall committees against Wirch and five other Senate Democrats - Lena Taylor of Milwaukee, Mark Miller of Monona, Julie Lassa of Stevens Point, Fred Risser of Madison and Dave Hansen of Green Bay.

Magney said his office is still waiting to receive paper registrations from American Recall Coalition but that the out-of-state group may begin collecting signatures for the recall elections in those districts.

"We thought we were going to have a quiet time after the election," Magney said. "Apparently not."

The only Democratic senator who is not currently the subject of a recall bid is Spencer Coggs of Milwaukee.

The groups need about 16,000 signatures to force a recall election for a senator, Magney said. The exact number will vary from 11,000 to 21,000 signatures, he said, depending on how many votes were cast in the 2010 governor's race in the targeted district.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois last week to prevent their Republican colleagues from being able to push through Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill. That measure would curb collectiv-bargaining rights for state workers and require them to pay toward their retirement and health care costs.

Democrats and labor unions are also weighing whether to recall up to six Senate Republicans for supporting Walker's plan. Among those being targeted is Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills.

In addition, Magney said a group has formed a political action fund to collect donations to support a recall election for Walker. But an official recall effort could not start until Walker, who took office last month, has served in the Capitol for at least a year.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/116853618.html

And the Wisconsin Constitution says:

Quote:

SECTION 10. [Vacancies in office.] (1) The legislature may declare the cases in which any office shall be deemed vacant, and also the manner of filling the vacancy where no provision is made for that purpose in this constitution.

http://my.execpc.com/~fedsoc/wi-con13.html

@ George

I love that title. I like when 100,000 people are protesting and the Unions talk about what they have to give up to maintain the current class structure.

These class colaberators selling out the working class at every turn make me sick.

If I was the Unin leader, this would be my negotiating point. "OK buddy, we're taking over. You fucked up and have to go now".

Jack, read the above NYTimes piece on the poll.  "I just feel they do a job that needs to be done, and in our country today if you work hard, then you should be able to have a home, be able to save for retirement and you should be able to send your kids to college," he said. "Most public employees have to struggle to do those things, and generally both spouses must work." That's the voice of mainstreet America...you work hard and you should be able to expect that kind of life.

You want the protesters to "up the ante with their demands, from petitioning for the sake of their own hides, to demanding the hide of the Governor and his henchmen as their final bargaining position.  Become Libyans for awhile."

And you are probably serious, about workers just wanting to save their own "hides."  They are not being the bloody-minded revolutionaries with a death wish that turns your otherworldly crank. Which means our correspondence across such a huge gulf of political and social understanding isn't worth a tinker's damn. 

 I have been aware of the danger of neoo-conservatism for a third of a century now, Jack. My interest in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine comes out of my concern for Chicago School economics and Reaganism over that period.  It's just that I do not couch my concerns in terms of "annihilation." 

(And yes, I was being unfair to trippie.)

George Victor wrote:

 I have been aware of the danger of neoo-conservatism for a third of a century now, Jack. My interest in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine comes out of my concern for Chicago School economics and Reaganism over that period.  It's just that I do not couch my concerns in terms of "annihilation." 

For all of your reading, I fail to see how you manage to avoid the conclusions of corporatism's finished product, which has everywhere else been provided to us in the form of sneak previews which really needn't be unveiled anymore to improve our view of it.  That is, unless the bulk of what you've turned has its basis in those happily ever after fictional tomes.

You are working entirely from events in your mind, Jack. You and trippie and Gaia knows how many other hereabouts are working out of the past. You are the generals of the First War ordering their troops oveer the top. Give me one source coming from current political economy that suggests you have any relevancy at all. From political economy!  One!

George, the discerning reader might also take note of the fact that whatever breathing room is gained by the Union leadership in return for concessions here and there will be re-fastened to the stake at the earliest down the road opportunity. With corporatism's insatiable requirement for increased growth it is inevitable that workers and their families will once again come under a more vicious assault. The next time though, the overall situation within the context of the ongoing class war will have deteriorated to the point where these minimum standards 'enjoyed' by labour will be depicted more than ever before as an unstainable level of excessive greed by general comparison, laying the groundwork for their isolation and defeat. We have to begin looking at these proletarian outbursts as pyrrhic victories when confronted by an aggressor who will never stop, but is left to regroup every time.  Wisconson strikers should up the ante with their demands, from petitioning for the sake of their own hides, to demanding the hide of the Governor and his henchmen as their final bargaining position.  Become Libyans for awhile.

And George...sparing a little time away from the reading/spelling flame warz would be helpful in allowing one to recognize that all of us, in varying degrees, have been placed against our will on a battlefield where we find a monstrous aggressor standing openly against us in a civil war, one where their final objective is enslavement for profit, or annihilation. They'll actually wind up with both for their efforts.

Notice Rob Ford is now parlaying Mike Harris's earlier work of downloading responsibility for social housing from province to city into the complete privatization of social housing? Same process at work, from a common hymn (ideology) book, the ideas dating from a common source and with long-term goal now in sight. And we've seen it coming...the predictable result. 

But have done nothing but bitch and complain and lament and beat up on our own people.

And instead of trying to bring understanding of what's afoot to all the city's taxpayer/electorate, I'll bet you appeal for unity of the workers of the world. And condemn a "leadership" for selling out.  How could they sell out when they - like yourself - haven't the foggiest bloody idea of what's afoot?  People like your "authors in the political, economic and philosophical realms (who) write for users, not readers."

In another century.

It condemns other labour elements, but without a named cause flowing from changes in our economic and political world, and some idea of how to reverse the process, it's only the old emasculating, defeatist line. Anything informative to come?

I believe it ends with taking stock as a prerequisite for understanding how things came to pass.  There's was little aggregate consistency to be found across the bunker mentality, micro-bureaucracy organizations that typically floated to the surface of many union hierarchies. Every struggle became isolated from the others until a language of struggle that was once held in common became like centuries of unchanged hymnals, where fewer people exist nowadays who even bother repeating them on cue for those selected occasions when they are permitted to speak.  Between these chasms, the language and actions of corporatism was able to rage with virtual impunity to push the divides even further apart, until today you have something resembling Weygand's quadrillage defence against the onslaught, each one surrounded, isolated and rendered irrelevant on its own while the main assault moved on to other objectives.  Essentially the same circumstances the left in general finds itself confronting today.

How about the betrayal time and time again by the bought and paid for representatives of globalization on both sides of the isle, where the response from labour amounted to a few take note sessions, and with a shrug proceeded to faithfully return to shop floor jobs that were being bundled up during the night for overseas shipment.

George Victor wrote:

Gallup found a mixed result about the overall popularity of unions, suggesting that labor is on firm ground in defending its basic rights but still needs to negotiate with the public good in mind.

Who's good again?  This is nothing more than another serving of gut wrenching nausea from the 1.2 Trillion dollar per year corporate national security apparatus, with their broke and busted pantomime tears.  Apparently Boehner is a natural when it comes to reaching for the kleenex on cue.  The majority of USians oppose the war in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation of Iraq, but they're still there with no real intention of ever leaving.  But all they need to do in this instance is to cultivate and maintain a majority opposition to these vicious attacks on domestic program spending and the citizenry at large, and lo and behold the corporatists will eventually recognize the error of their ways, and be compelled through the sheer weight of popular opinion to set a new course to the rescue.  I believe it is inevitable that people will come to determine that more options are required than simply applying themselves in futility to the grand charades.

George Victor wrote:

"We're broke! We're broke!" Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday. "We're broke in this state," Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said a few days ago. "New Jersey's broke," Gov. Chris Christie has said repeatedly. The United States faces a "looming bankruptcy," Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

It's all obfuscating nonsense, of course, a scare tactic employed for political ends. A country with a deficit is not necessarily any more "broke" than a family with a mortgage or a college loan. And states have to balance their budgets. Though it may disappoint many conservatives, there will be no federal or state bankruptcies.

The federal deficit is too large for comfort, and most states are struggling to balance their books. Some of that is because of excessive spending, and much is because the recession has driven down tax revenues. But a substantial part was caused by deliberate decisions by state and federal lawmakers to drain government of resources by handing out huge tax cuts, mostly to the rich. As governments begin to stagger from the self-induced hemorrhaging, Republican politicians like Mr. Boehner and Mr. Walker cry poverty and use it as an excuse to break unions and kill programs they never liked in flush years......

But now voters are starting to notice the effects of these cuts and to get angry at the ideological overreach. A New York Times/CBS News poll published on Tuesday showed that Americans oppose ending bargaining rights for public unions by a majority of nearly two to one. And the poll sharply refutes the post-Reagan Republican mantra that the public invariably abhors all tax increases. Nearly twice as many people said they would prefer a tax increase to cutting benefits of public employees or to cutting spending on roads.

A Gallup poll last week showed that 61 percent of respondents nationwide reject Mr. Walker's attempt to revoke collective-bargaining rights for public unions, including 41 percent of the Republicans polled. Like the Times/CBS poll, Gallup found a mixed result about the overall popularity of unions, suggesting that labor is on firm ground in defending its basic rights but still needs to negotiate with the public good in mind.........

It condemns some of the elements, but without a named cause flowing from changes in our economic and political world, and some idea of how to reverse the process, it's only the old emasculating, defeatist line. Anything informative to come?

Actually George I responded with a rewrite of your dismissive comment of what I thought was a fairly well written piece. It is called plagiarism so dismiss me from school. This thread was not opened by you and you didn't post until #18.  I find the NY Times to be a MSM outlet and I did not really come here to discuss anything through its lens.  I didn't the find the piece you dissed very revolutionary so I am not sure what you are commenting on with the revolutionary zeal comment.  You aren't really trying to judge me over the internet are you?