I have questioned whether my cynical perspective on the motives of the GOP was born of my ongoing support for the president. Not any more, the Walker coup in Wisconsin has confirmed my belief that the GOP is determined to defeat Obama at all costs. That's what this attack on unions was about. Destroy the power of unions and destroy the base that overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008.
A post by a fellow blogger, who writes under the handle, Shaw Kenawe, included a repost of a HuffPo piece, Governor Walker's Coup D'Etat Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, and current professor at Berkeley. Reich sums up in a single paragraph a clear explanation of the coup staged by Walker and the GOP members of the Wisconsin state legislature to usurp the power of unions or in other words strip away the bargaining powers of the working class.
Governor Scott Walker and his Wisconsin senate Republicans have laid bare the motives for their coup d'etat. By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn't be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It's been to bust the unions.However, the truly damning evidence is in the words of Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a close ally of Governor Walker in the state legislature. In an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Fitzgerald acknowledged that the union busting is really about defeating President Obama in 2012.
Fitzgerald: If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you're going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.The selfish unmitigated gall of these efforts to bring down the unions to further the political ambitions of the GOP in the 2012 presidential election should galvanize not only progressives but any working class American. I mean working class in the broadest sense. If you get up and go to work for someone else on a regular schedule then you're working class.
I find the opposition of American employees to unions unfathomable. Some of the earliest unions in America arose in the 19th century out of the efforts of women to fight against intolerable sweatshop working conditions--long hours, low wages, and a lack of safety precautions in the workplace. All of the power lay with the employers who could simply fire a single worker who dared complain and easily replace her. Then there was the whole issue of child labor and the lack of a term to even describe sexual harassment in the workplace. The labor movement grew because there was a need for it.
Governor Walker has argued that unions with their unreasonable demands are responsible for the deficit in his state. Bull feathers, and we all know that bulls don't have feathers.
What are those unreasonable demands that unions make on behalf of their members? Cost of living wage increases, decent pensions, and health care benefits. According to the Walker line of thinking, it's the unreasonable demands of unions regarding pensions and health car benefits that are driving state deficits. It appears that in order to resolve the deficit that laborers should do without retirement pensions and health insurance. What's even crazier than this proposition is that so many people who are wage earners seem to think that this is a good idea. The reasoning appears to go like this, "Those union folks make too much money; they learn to need to get by like the rest of us."
Brilliant logic folks! The bullies down the road beat your butt every day. Someone tries to intervene. Suggests that you walk another path after school and offers to walk it with you. You make certain that the bullies are aware of your new route and then they beat the crap out of you and your new friend. You're satisfied because now you and your would be rescuer are in the same boat. I don't know how to say this gently: That's just plain stupid!
A living wage, safe working conditions, and benefits have not always been the norm. We need to think long and hard about returning to the "good old days" of nonexistent or powerless labor unions. To quote that icon, Mae West, "Goodness had nothing to do with it."
In case you may think that Fitzgerald has been misquoted, a little video clip of him being hoisted on his own petard:
A petard is a painful thing to be hoist by!
ReplyDeleteI can only hope, if I can continue to hope at all, that others will reach the same conclusion and get angry enough to actually vote in 2012. The Republicans too often survive only because a third of us bother to show up at the polls. They can crush the unions, but inflame the families they're crushing to take action.
Sheria: I think I'm more paranoid than you are. I've come to the conclusion that it goes way beyond defeating Obama. I think it's a well organized effort to totally take over the country and to turn it into a fascist state.
ReplyDeleteYes, we must vote - if we can. Republicans are trying to pass legislation in some states to disenfranchise certain groups of voters. I think this is only the beginning.
Maybe I'm over reacting to the far-left, or the hard left, or whatever the eff they're called (and frankly, my dears, I don't give two hoots in hell) but they are part of the problem. I see it on FB and in comment sections on blogs. I don't disagree with some of their criticism, but the absolutism, hysteria, pettiness and ugliness is warping my already feeble mind. Worst of all, especially on FB, they exaggerate to the point of not being truthful. They don't seem to get it that we have a really serious threat to our democracy and that Obama and the Democrats in Congress - as flawed as they are - are not the enemy. And that if they stay home in 2012, we may well be doomed.
Sorry for the rant but - well, I'm angry and regrettably I don't have the gift of the classic put-down that the Capt. possesses.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteThree decades ago, Theodore Lowi wrote a ‘themed’ textbook that received scant notice, American Government: Incomplete Conquest. The first problem of human beings, he says, is survival; the second is government. The first act of government is to win control over the territory and population. No matter how enlightened, all governments have a primordial mean streak and will violate their own laws and principles if necessary … as in times of war. Consider the suspension of habeas corpus (Civil War) and the internment of citizens of Japanese origin (WWII) as examples. No matter whom you elect, your life will be subject to control; and your ballot box choice is between competing visions of control.
Earlier today, I watched an interview of Mitch Daniels on MSNBC with Lowi’s ideas in mind. The gist of Daniels: A Chicken Little argument on deficits and spending framed as existential threats to “freedom and prosperity.” How about a moratorium on social issues, asked the interviewer? Invoking Ronald Reagan, Daniels replied: “Results, not rhetoric.”
A no compromise, non-negotiable, we-are-at-war attitude spoken with referent authority. It is the same script followed by GOP governors in Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, plus Congressional Republicans. Between the lines, there is a cleverly crafted framing in Daniels’ talking points:
Chicken Little frames have 2 parts: Fear mongering, and stifling of debate. IOW, when the sky is falling, there is no time to talk or have a debate over veracity of the claim. What is meant by “Results, not rhetoric” translates to “In a state of emergency, shut and do as I say.” Similarly, concepts of freedom are in the eye of the beholder: What Daniels invokes as threats to “freedom and prosperity,” we regard as prescriptions for social control and violations of rights.
The contest between Democrats and Republicans is asymmetrical because the GOP conducts politics as a sovereign entity with a primordial mean streak in a state of war … employing all means necessary including deception, pandering, strategic message framing, and now a frontal assault on an important source of Democratic support – labor unions. Gonzo-gate, voter caging, and the hit on Acorn are earlier manifestations of this strategy.
At least in theory, a true democracy is predicated on voters having a choice, and choice connotes two parties. However, if one party is crippled beyond viability, then what you have left is essentially a one party system with only token opposition. In other words: Democracy in name only. I agree with Reich about Wisconsin representing a Coup D’Etat, and I agree with tnlib with respect to the source: The plutocrats who fund the GOP. Bad news by any measure!
I was sort of half hoping that someone would point out some holes in my beliefs. This is a scary time. In my state legislature, which has a Republican majority for the first time in nearly 100 years, they've introduced bills to require that we all carry ID cards and that you need an ID card to vote. They've also passed a bill that declare that North Carolina is a sovereign state and doesn't have to obey federal law, in particular the provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act. Our governor vetoed it upon the advice of the state attorney general but now they're busy trying to override her veto. They've also introduced legislation to pretty much allow concealed weapons to be carried any where!
ReplyDeleteBtw, tnlib, I agree with you about the fascist state. I've just been trying to avoid admitting it to myself.
tnlib:
ReplyDeleteThanks but that "gift" gets me into trouble more often than not. I don't have to be reminded that the word Gift means poison in German.
But I agree that the intransigent hard liners and panic mongers on "our" side are also part of the problem, if that's what you're saying. That's another proposition that often gets me in trouble. The absolutism, hysteria, pettiness and ugliness is not exclusive to the opposition.
Octo:
I didn't notice Lowi either, but he sounds spot on. "A Chicken Little argument on deficits and spending framed as existential threats to “freedom and prosperity." Well doesn't that sum up Most of the Republican song? (when Democrats are in power) Of course when we were Chicken littling during the Bush interlude, we were traitors. Remember the Fox crusade to picture us as anti-Americans "talking down the economy?"
I think there should be another law of organizational thermodynamics: Power increases.
Sheria,
This is scary stuff and I haven't seen it in the news, but the ID card or internal passport idea should be loathsome to Americans who have been bragging about not needing one all of my life. Florida is also trying to make it a crime not to carry proof of citizenship. To me, our flirtation with Fascism is of long standing and I think we were close to it in the 30's and only were saved by going to war with a Fascist opponent, but one again, we're in financial straits and that old feeling is here again. What's to stop it this time?
One little dig though, no Fascist state ever allows citizens to be armed. There's a strange contradiction in our concept of it that I can't understand - a hatred of government combined with a passion for stronger government opposed by an armed citizenry. Of course it's not so confusing when you realize that they're not rational.
Captain: “… they're not rational.”
ReplyDeleteIt depends on context and subtext and viewpoint. Lies, fear mongering, and disinformation are not rational at face value. Between the lines, however, a propaganda strategy to dominate American politics is brutally rational. Just because a ploy may be legal does not mean it is ethical, and the GOP has proven itself expert at working the fringes of law, even changing the law, to advance their agenda. Lets just say this is rationality in the service of evil.
Lowi would not be known to our college generation because his textbook was published a decade later. I knew Lowi as a client during my years in publishing.
One can show many odd mixtures of the rational and irrational. Look at serial killers for instance, taking great pains to do things that are utterly irrational. Of course I catch our Republican friends spouting fallacies and falsehoods and other things that make no sense all the time. Dana Loesch last Friday insisting that our fraudulently based Iraq invasion was insignificant compared with Clinton's bombing of a "medicine factory" in Sudan( never mind it's connections with al Qaeda and credible reports that it was making nerve gas) He also bombed bin Laden in Afghanistan and remember how they laughed at the danger of bin Laden? Monica Missiles, the smiling bastards called them.
ReplyDeleteOne never knows whether the irrationality is intrinsic or done for tactical reasons. You're right, there's a determination behind the rationalized madness, but a twisted sort of logic and delusion as well.
In my college years I never would have read such a book - particularly if it had been assigned. I was more interested in Alchemy. But that was when I used to hang around Rotterdam with Erasmus. . . and a wild dude he was. Used to call him Nasty Rasty you know.
With the exception of the legislation to declare that North Carolina does not have to adhere to federal law if we believe it to be unconstitutional (I call it the secession bill), these bills haven't been ratified. The governor had the sense and the guts to veto the secession bill; however, how many times she is willing to exercise her veto power is a big question. She's a first term Democratic governor (first female governor in NC) with a Republican legislature.
ReplyDeleteThe gun bills are proposing to allow people to carry in public parks and restaurants, churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. There are two bills to expand the castle doctrine (a man's home is his castle from English Common Law) to allow a person to use deadly force with no obligation to retreat in defense of home (existing law), motor vehicle, the curtilage surrounding the home (driveway, porch, sheds etc.), and the work place. There is additional legislation to permit persons with a lawful permit to take their weapons to the workplace as long as the weapons are secured in a locked motor vehicle.
I don't like guns; however, I respect that my dislike is not a basis for outlawing all weapons. My problem with all of these proposed bills is that they make it far easier to legally take someone's life in defense of property. I like my things and I'd be really ticked off if someone came into my home to take my stuff, however, if I catch someone running out the back door with my laptop, I'm not going to shoot that person. Under these proposed changes, with no duty to retreat, I could not only shoot them, but I would have a presumption of immunity and little likelihood of there even being a hearing to determine if perhaps I used excessive force.
I don't know how the weakening of laws regarding weapons fits in with fascism. Captain, I think perhaps you've hit on it, they're not rational or perhaps Octo is on the right path and these folks are crazy like a fox.
Crazy like a fox. With respect to the above mentioned asymmetry between Democrats and Republicans, there is another dimension - the relationship between Citizens United v Federal Election Commission and the GOP assault on public sector labor unions.
ReplyDeleteIn the Citizens United ruling, corporations win the right to spend unlimited treasury funds on political speech. Although the same ruling applies to labor unions equally, the separate GOP assault on public sector unions leaves the Democrats severely disadvantaged: The GOP gains access to unlimited corporate funds, whereas the Democrats lose a vital resource.
Voter caging and voter ID card requirements deprive Democrats of yet another resource. Since Democrats have traditionally relied on registration drives enlist support, the additional voter ID burden constrains turnout.
These strategies conspire to cripple the Democrats and turn this country into a one-party state with only token opposition. In other words, democracy in name only. The ‘F’ word I am thinking of is fascism by any definition.
Sheria - once again a thoughtful, well-researched post and, unfortunately, a true but scary conclusion of what it all means.
ReplyDeleteThe GOP is not even trying to hide their twisted agenda. They want Obama out and while they cry less government regulation, they don't mean that to include less government intrusion and restriction as long as they are ones in power deciding what intrusions and restrictions to enforce.
I am very disturbed by recent events and I am still keeping leaving the country on the table. What a horrible irony it would be if, sixty years after my parents fled the communist oppression in Europe, I was forced to flee back to Europe to escape American oppression.