Showing posts with label Scott Walker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott Walker. Show all posts

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Nader on 2012 Race, Wisconsin Recall and the Attack on Pensions & the Su...


Excellent piece of the big picture.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

government worker and unionize host come together to defeat government workers and other unionized workers.



A unionized television host interviews a government worker with all the union benefits - health care and pension - that ordinary workers can no longer afford.



These were apparently taken at the union hall.

These unionize government tools spoke many time on the public air waves.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Inside Story Americas - Wisconsin: A nail in the coffin of US unions?



One of the best discussions on this is once again a foreign news service. Shocking.

Why Did So Many Workers Vote for Walker? | Labor Notes

Why Did So Many Workers Vote for Walker? | Labor Notes:

'via Blog this'


How can a government of the 1% receive so much support from the 99%?
In the case of the Wisconsin election, there’s been a lot of finger pointing and speculation post-election: Walker used loose campaign finance rules to overwhelm Barrett financially; Obama didn’t come to Wisconsin; unions didn’t force the collective bargaining issue front and center. And so on.
Yet pre-election polling and Election Day exit polling showed that the vast majority of voters had taken their positions months before the serious campaigning. So, the money and the celebrities made little difference. And people were already as informed on the issues as they wanted to be.
The fact is the radical right is very good at propaganda. They have used race and cultural issues to hold their base and they have used anti-government rhetoric in an era of frustrated economic hopes and resentment to expand that base to majority status.
Walker, even more so than in 2010, ran against Milwaukee and Madison.
His negative ads against Milwaukee Mayor Barrett were actually negative ads against the mayor’s city, equating it with high unemployment, rising property taxes, crime, and poverty. This is the tried-and-true GOP race card because everybody knows Milwaukee has a substantial population of dark-skinned people.
And Madison, of course, is the state capital where privileged bureaucrats earn too much, enjoy too rich benefits, and do too little work.
Walker did not dream up this argument. Even before the 2010 election, on-the-ground research from a University of Wisconsin professor showed that ordinary Wisconsinites outside of Madison had a very negative view of this city of large government office buildings, a fairly high standard of living, and liberal politics. Walker simply exploited an existing bias.
Exit polling showed Walker won the votes of a majority of non-college graduates, along with way too many union households (around 38 percent) in both 2010 and 2012.



Sunday, June 3, 2012

The question to ask is who is more closely representing you lots of middle class union members or one non-tax paying billionaire

A major election is about to happen in Wisconsin to determine whether democracy is now totally for sale or whether it is just deeply flawed and in bad need of an overhaul. The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has declared a plan to "divide and conquer." That in itself suggests that the attack on the public employee unions was not an end unto itself but rather the first step toward some larger goal. And where the first step of the plan was largely an attack on people making less than $100,000, it wouldn't be surprising if the steps to follow will be more of the same. Only this time the wages will be lowered on someone else, as the unions would have already taken their hit. Of course Walker says one thing when he thinks no one is around; and quite another when he's serving up the pablum to the rubes for public consumption.


Diane Hendrick, the lady in the infamous Scott Walker video, is the richest woman in Wisconsin and doesn't pay taxes. Instead she thinks nothing of giving Walker a little taste, by cutting him a check for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Republican politicians seem desperate from keeping themselves from being stuck in the muck with their fellow citizens. Instead they'd rather hang out with the very rich: and who wouldn't, after all the rich tend to stay in better hotel rooms and travel in a lot of corporate jets.






As Newt Gingrich's sugar daddy, Sheldon Adelson, proved that all's that it really takes anymore is one sugar dady to keep someone afloat whether or not anyone else wants him in the race or not. They can prop someone up singlehandedly and the corporate media will take them seriously pretending that the one eccentric billionaire isn't the only one who supports their campaign, with more money than he knows what to do with. If a politician has a huge following of Americans behind him but no billionaire their candidacy in essentially over. Adelson's favorite charity case, who jealously hated other chairty cases, Newt Gingrich, is out. Adelson needs to find another hopeless wretch to put his money behind and along comes Scott Walker. Adelson tossed the poor waif another 250,000 and tells him to shine his car. ( story here: http://www.americablog.com/2012/05/former-gingrich-billionaire-sheldon.html). The shining car part  will be attributed to sarcasm.

Newt Gingrich back in happier times when he was Sheldon Adelson's boy toy, long before Adelson hooked up with that flavor of the week Scott Walker.


Scott Walker still waiting for his free trip to Cali on David Koch's dime. He may be corrupt but as his chattering away to the fake David Koch he isn't the sharpest knife in the draw.



The Republicans have the unenviable task of convincing people who are a long way from the richest people in the state and who do pay taxes, that Hendrick's goals and are exactly like theirs. Still they have an unending stream of money to badger people into voting the way they want.even if it is against their own interest. They can flood the air waves with  ubiquitous ads until a lie becomes the truth. The ads can talk about guns, abortion, welfare, union thugs, gay marriage, foreigners, and whether their president was born in America... anything other than the fact that Scott Walker's friends makes scads more money than they do and doesn't pay nearly as much taxes they do. After all taxes are for suckers. In this Scott Walker is little more than a gopher for the well connected. As much of a gopher as someone who brings Hendricks a glass of water when she beckons for it, fetches her mail, and calls for a car when she needs to travel downtown. Of course Walker is a much better paid tool than the average gopher. He is a very well paid government worker who is paid to sell out his fellow citizens, which isn't surprising as it takes a lot for some people to turn Quisling. 


France: the storming of the Bastille. There might have been a different outcome if only they had had a campaign that the Jacobins want to take your guns away and give your jobs to foreigners and Robespierre is really a left wing, Kenyan Muslim Socialist. The crowd instead have been cheering for the Bourbon dynasy "four hundred more years."




So the wisconsin election literally comes down to people who are being screwed or know family members being screwed, or friends or neighbors being screwed or  expect to be screwed at some future date; against scads and scads of dollars, and a built in believe that there are enough people stupid enough to buy anything if you put a bunch of money behind it and repeat lies over and over again. One side believes in lifting all boats; while the other seeks to have people fight in the mud puddle to jealously pull their neighbors in with them.


Did you here some of your fellow pigs have a pension plan? Don't demand you should have one too but instead pull them right down in the mud




For a government worker who apparently hates government workers it is amazing how hard Scott Walker has fought to hold onto his government job. He certainly appears to loathe the idea of being in the private sector. He appears perfectly willing to lie, break laws, harass his enemies, and sell access to as many outside interest to keep his good fat government job, with his government pension and his government health care. Of course that's what he desires to deny to his fellow Wisconsin citizens . It's like he climbed to his version of political/economic nirvana and he wants to pull the latter up behind him. In fact, he seems quite content to use the state government as his own private ATM.


Who wants to buy a politician? Will work cheap.




So what this all comes down to is whether Wisconsin voters actually believe that these middle class workers unions, which have been freely chosen by their membership, actually do a better job representing  middle class interests than one billionaire, who doesn't pay taxes and gives lots of gifts to their "supposed" representatives. And whether money swamps democracy this time or not, this movement needs to go forward and continues to be more unruly until this government stops being governable. To complacently sit back and to hope their corrupt leaders just do the right thing is a way towards "wage slavery."