On, Wisconsin!

So, I'm clicking through Time Magazine yesterday, and I come across this column by Joe Klein, regarding the Wisconsin trade union debate. Now, I don't always disagree with Klein, but this column was just a revelation to me.

Revolutions everywhere--in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they're protesting against it.

Actually, it sounds to me like the public employees in Wisconsin are demonstrating so that they can keep getting their voices heard, and so the government doesn't gain more control over their lives. Really, it sounds kind of like "democracy" to me.

But maybe I'm misreading the situation up there. Go on, Joe.

I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote? Isn't it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process?

Isn't it interesting That the Senate Republicans want to force through a bill to strip away decades of rights, and only allow it three days of debate? Why is it that they're in such a hurry again?

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that.

Absolutely right! There was an election! And because of that, you people have to lose your civil rights! That's just logic!

(You know, it's funny. I've been hearing that quote from the Right a lot lately. "Elections have consequences." It's funny, though. You'd think that if they really believed it, they'd have been saying it after the 2008 elections, wouldn't you? But I digress.)

There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can't be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter.

Uhh... Joe? Isn't that the point here? The unions want to be able to renegotiate as needed. The governor wants to take that right away from them.

Oh, yeah. And by the way, "contracts can be terminated"? (I reworded that a little; the double negative bothered me.) Yes, they can. But, being a contract, the courts get to step in, and if it turns out that one side is not "acting in good faith," they get to face penalties for being a lying bag of douche.

That's the point of a contract, isn't it?

And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do.

Well, yeah. When you factor in all the private sector employees who don't even have heath insurance, sure. (That's about 46 million people nationwide, incidentally.)

But here's the point you're missing, Joey. "Governor Scott Walker's basic requests" - what he's asking for now. Because he's also taking away any ability to argue later, when he gets completely unreasonable.

And he will. See, Scott Walker has always been against unions. He longs for the days when the worker had no rights, and the employer could pay slave wages and fire for no reason. It's been a dream of his for years.

But again, I digress.

When I covered local government in New York 30 years ago, the school janitors (then paid a robust $60,000 plus per year)...

OK, hang on here for just a minute.

You're saying that thirty years ago, a janitor was paid almost twice what he is now? Because the current median salary for a janitor in New York is $33,483. And in 30 years, without adjusting for inflation, janitors are earning 44% less than they did in the 80's?

Man, that union sucks!

(Quick math check - 60,000 - 33,483 = 26,517 / 60,000 = 44.195% - does that sound right to everybody?)

I'll skip a little here, while Klein spends about a paragraph whining about how mean unions are. I mean, I could point out the backbreaking demands of the industrial Barons of the 1800s, leading to the formation of labor unions, which were opposed by those privileged elite millionaires who hired thugs to yadda yadda yadda...

Nobody cares. Rich people want to stay rich, and don't care who they have to destroy to do that. If you don't know this history, you're probably too stupid to care.

But that does bring us to this:

Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public?

Uh... no, Joey, that would be the government. You know, like millionaire governor Scott Walker and his billionaire backers. How is that hard to understand?

But then Joey just gets stupid.

Despite their questionable provenance, public unions can serve an important social justice role, guaranteeing that a great many underpaid workers--school bus drivers, janitors (outside of New York City), home health care workers--won't be too severely underpaid. That role will be kept intact in Wisconsin. In any given negotiation, I'm rooting for the union to win the highest base rates of pay possible...and for management to win the least restrictive work rules and guidelines governing how much truly creative public employees can be paid.

Oh, god. I swear we've covered this. Read back up to the top. I'll wait.

OK, now, since Walker wants to remove any ability of the unions to bargain for anything except base salaries... what the hell are you saying here? That they'll win on topics that they can't even argue about anymore?

You're an idiot, Klein. In fact, let's go further than that.

The basic theme here is that public employees are overpaid. According to a study by Jeffrey Keefe, professor of Labor and Employment Relations at Rutgers, public employees are compensated 3.75% less than similarly skilled and educated private-sector counterparts.

And, in fact, Scott Walker is trying to say that he has to do all this to "save" Wisconsin, to plug a big hole in the budget. But you know the funny part? Wisconsin was doing fine (in fact, they had a budget surplus) until Scott Walker became governor, and created a crisis by giving the state's money away to his cronies.

So, basically, Walker is a lying, thieving bag of fuck, with all the integrity of a rabid weasel.

And here you are, Joey, supporting him. What does that make you?

Union Maid

I looked forward to enjoying retirement - to kicking off my shoes and watching my tentacles wriggle in silhouette against the glare of late night TV without a care in the world. What Wisconsin taught me:  The battles for social progress won by my forbearers are fragile and tenuous at best. The social safety net, public education, environmental protection, Planned Parenthood, decent wages - all under siege.  It seems the Kochroaches are hell bent on reversing civilization itself.  Hells, bells, they are even turning back the clock on evolution as Bagheads and Beckheads, devoid of conscience, slither legless on their stomachs.

I hope this YouTube video will remind our progeny how their forbearers fought the good fight.

The Republican War Against Women

As a member of MoveOn.org, I receive regular email on issues of vital importance. This one can't wait so I am posting it here and now:

10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have proposed a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. 

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. 

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress voted yesterday on a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country. 

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).

Motes and beams

There was a wicked messenger
From Eli he did come
With a mind that multiplied
The smallest matter.

-Bob Dylan-

_______________________

To distort the importance of a matter, to exaggerate little things, perhaps to draw attention away from big things, to belabor the significance of a problem long past: making a mountain out of a molehill. If you need to elevate this common human tendency to the level of psychology, call it magnification. Call it hyperbole. Call it catastrophization. Otherwise call it politics. It's how governments handle problems both real and invented. High purpose, Liberal or Conservative; it usually ends in hyperbole and fraudulent accounting.

Dismayed at how may people are dying in automobiles? One might expect a focus on the areas where most of them occur, but once the problem is taken up by zealots, hyperbolized and dressed up as catastrophic, we have unbearable pressure to apply oppressive speed limits to the safest areas while doing essentially nothing about those areas where the bulk of fatalities occur. As crime declines, we make every next one a bigger problem, focus on the most spectacular and base our estimations of the whole on a freak occurrence. It's human nature and it's also a human weakness to be exploited.

But there are more sinister applications. Take the constant carping about how trade unions are harming our economy, now that their membership and power are at low tide. One might infer that eliminating them entirely is a better description of the hidden intent.

Take the heavy emphasis on medical liability claims as a way to reduce the accelerating cost of health care. They account for a tiny fraction of the whole and seem to be the whole and sole solution offered by one particular political party. Never mind the mountain, look here instead. A cynic might suggest a motive having to do with benefiting from high medical costs.

Spending cuts. We need spending cuts and you're crazy if you don't think we need spending cuts so lets propose spending cuts and lets keep cackling and gobbling and chanting about cutting the little things so that no one notices where the money is going and why the income can't keep up with it. Never mind that mountain LOOK AT THAT MOLEHILL!

So what are we told we have to cut? In general we're told about programs that aren't as much financially significant as doctrinally anathematic. NPR has to go, particularly now that it's credibility exceeds that of Fox. It may cost the average American pennies a year, but never mind, it has to go. The EPA of course since it retards the wanton rape and pillage of corporate vikings. Gingrich wants it dead. Planned Parenthood: it's offensive to religious tyrants -- it has to go.

Hyperbole and fraudulent accounting, Let's cut the debt by .001% and make things that are cheap seem prohibitively expensive and those trillions and trillions we didn't make from cutting taxes and those trillions we blew on unnecessary wars obsolete weapons and fraudulent procurement? Don't look at that, look at school lunches!

Stop Glenn Beck: New Petition Letter Addressed to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes

As part of an ongoing effort to pressure Fox News into pulling the plug on the Glenn Beck Show, here is a standard petition letter addressed to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Please feel free to copy the text of this letter and paste it into your letterhead - adjusting type size and font style as needed (11 or 12 points should suffice):

Roger Ailes
Chairman and CEO, Fox News Channel
News Corporation
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036

(Date)

Dear Mr. Ailes:

After the shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and thirteen injured, you offered this appeal for civility: “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.”

Weeks after Tucson, nothing has changed.  Glenn Beck has turned up the volume on partisan hate speech.  The poisoned atmosphere unleashed by Glenn Beck means any citizen - Democrat, Independent, or Republican - can be defamed in public and targeted for persecution.  Beck’s messages provoke unstable persons to act on impulse, and events have shown that violent rhetoric leads to violent acts:

Prison Term for Man Who Threatened Speaker Pelosi:

Mother of Accused Man Blames Fox News

Renowned Professor Terrorized After Glenn Beck Broadcasts

League of Women Voters Targeted by Glenn Beck Fans

Two California Highway Patrolmen Shot by Glenn Beck Fan

Three Pittsburgh Policemen Killed by Glenn Beck Follower

There is no plausible deniability that can wipe the blood off Beck’s hands or absolve the Fox News Channel of responsibility for reckless incitement.  Shooting sprees, murder, malicious defamations and infamous provocations … these have no place in a free society.  When toxic television threatens public safety, all citizens of all persuasions have grounds for alarm.

Glenn Beck has crossed boundaries that should never be crossed.  It is time to pull the plug on the Glenn Beck Show before more people are terrorized, injured and killed.

Sincerely yours,
(name and signature)

The letter is short enough to fit on a single page (word count=265). Within a few days, please look for another petition letter addressed to Fox News advertisers (i.e. the boycott letter). A startup list of advertisers will be included with this post.

Abeckalypse Now

Why would a news organization retain the services of someone who calls their veracity into constant question and may actually cost them money by making advertisers queasy and uncomfortable at the flow of misinformation and distortion and psychodrama?

Well, perhaps one of the ways a chronic failure in the prophecy business covers up an unblemished record of being wrong is to maintain the distraction that theatrical extremists provide. The Fox Faithful aren't likely to reflect as much on such failures when their ears are filled with brand new, fresh and fabricated outrages from their stable of performance artists.

Why, for instance, allow speculation and comparison with our failed attempts at nation building and regime changing so vehemently supported by the GOP News Outlet with spontaneous and indigenous and possibly more successful attempts we had nothing to do with other than supporting the status quo? If Egypt moves toward democracy without and in spite of American economic and military assistance to a dictator, people might become cynical.

So keep them busy with visions of the Apocalypse and associate it with people exercising their endowed right to assemble, to speak out, to petition peacefully. Find a video clip where hazy air, a dirty lens and bright lights create lens flare. If you're a photographer, if you have aging eyes, you know what it is, but if you're a sheep in the Fox Flock, it's an apocalyptic horseman:



You get paid actors to report this idiocy with a straight face. You get Glenn Beck to howl insanely about a Muslim Caliphate to the illiterates who buzz about him like flies. You use everything you can to keep the audience focused on the moment and to make the moment seem perilous. You do anything you can to keep them from remembering that they've been on the wrong side of every prediction, whether dire or deliriously optimistic. If you run out of smoke and mirrors, dust and streetlights, you just make it up.

It's a bit like a Ponzi scheme. You need new lies coming in to cover the old ones, but sooner or later, no matter how gullible the patsies are, it blows up. It becomes an Abeckalypse. And they are gullible. According to a University study, Fox watchers will believe anything and the more they watch, the stupider they get.

Help Pull the Plug on Glenn Beck

After the shooting rampage in Tucson that left six people dead and thirteen injured, including Congresswoman Giffords, Fox News President Roger Ailes appealed for civility:  “I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.”

Weeks after Tucson, nothing has changed.  If anything, Fox News has turned up the volume on partisan hate speech.  Fevered hysteria and conspiratorial fear mongering on national television are not harmless.

How quickly we forget the lessons of history. The bogeymen of 1930s anti-Semitism that morphed into the bogeymen of 1950s McCarthyism has morphed again into the mainstreaming of Glenn Beck Militia Theater. The message is clear: Glenn Beck wants to extort your silence, and anyone who refuses to capitulate will be targeted and stalked:

Glenn Beck, Self-Appointed "Progressive Hunter"
The poisoned atmosphere unleashed by Glenn Beck and Fox News means any citizen - Democrat, Centrist, or Republican - can be slandered in public and targeted for persecution.  Beck pitches his messages at unhinged misfits who are most likely to act on impulse, and events have shown that violent rhetoric leads to violent acts. There is no plausible deniability that can remove this blood from Beck’s hands:

Man Shoots Two California Highway Patrol Officers:

Accused Gunman Acknowledges Influence of Glenn Beck

Three Pittsburgh Police Officers Ambushed and Killed:

Gunman Posted Glenn Beck Video on White Supremacist Website

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened Senator Murray:

Glenn Beck Cast Spell on Accused Man, Says Family

Federal Prison for Man Who Threatened House Speaker Pelosi:

Mother of Accused Man Blames Fox News

Glenn Beck Fans Target Legendary Scholar with Death Threats

Death Threats Against League of Women Voters Linked to Glenn Beck

Murders, shooting sprees, domestic terrorism, private citizens hiding in fear, infamous intimidations and provocations broadcast on national television - all linked to Glenn Beck - enough is enough!  When toxic television threatens public safety, it concerns everyone.  Even prominent Republicans are becoming alarmed:

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum:

“[Glenn Beck] such people do terrible damage”

Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner: 

“the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality”

National correspondent for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg:

“a classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling”

It is time to pull the plug on Glenn Beck and serve notice to Fox News that partisan hate speech has no place in a free society. The strongest message you can send is to vote your pocketbook. Write letters to Fox News advertisers; tell them you will no longer patronize their products and services; and keep boycotting sponsors of Fox News until these outrageous partisan witch-hunts have stopped. Removing Glenn Beck from the airwaves will save lives.

Resources:
Visit the Drop Fox Website Here
Visit the Fox News Boycott Website Here
Visit the Stop Beck Website Here

Endorsements:
Captain Fogg, Sheria, BJ, Octopus, Squatlo, Sue, Nance, TnLib, TomCat, Truth 101, Maleeper, Green Eagle, Kay, Shaw Kenawe, RockyNC.

UPDATE: To help spread this message, I am placing this article in the public domain, which means anyone may use it freely without credit or attribution. If you want a copy of the complete text (including imbedded links and html code), please send a request via email to swashzone@gmail.com. Finally, a note of special recognition to The Legendary Spocko who taught us how to take on Big Media by boycotting their sponsors.

Egypt - a brief look back

You know, with as short an attention span as the average American has, you'd think that the recent uprising in Egypt would have disappeared from the radar. After all, the first major protests against Mubarak started on January 25, and his government was overthrown in two and a half weeks.

And now, here we are, with a military council in power, saying that they'll ensure an orderly transition to an elected government. It's over, and American Idol is on. Why are people still paying attention?

Maybe it's the cognitive dissonance. We like democracy, but only on our terms.

Muhammed Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is not a nice man. He ruled Egypt for thirty years, primarily because the Egyptian constitution set him to be "elected" by a referendum of the Assembly, and nobody could run against him. When he grudgingly allowed a "democratic election" in 2005, he "won" by 89% of the vote, in an election so openly rigged that the Egyptians rioted in the streets. Mubarak's response? He had his chief political rival, Ayman Nour, convicted to five years hard labor.

(What Nour was claiming was, of course, totally unfair: of course you buy votes in poorer neighborhoods - that's just basic economics; and if security forces prevented people from voting for opposition candidates, sometimes with simple beatings, sometimes with tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live bullets - well, that's just high spirits on the part of patriots, right?)

Mubarak's government openly persecuted political opponents, and was a willing participant in Bush's policy of extraordinary rendition* (often orchestrated directly by his vice president, Omar Suleiman, who might have ended up in charge of Egypt had the the Egyptian people not opposed the "orderly transition" supported by the US and European governments).

Mubarak's police and security forces were blatant in their abuses:

In one video, a woman is forced to strip and is abused by a police officer and in another Egyptian mini-bus driver, Emad el-Kabir... is shown screaming on the floor as officers sodomize him with a wooden pole. The police then sent the video to el-Kabir’s friends to humiliate him. These videos remove the abstract quality of the debate over U.S. torture policies, both in terms of waterboarding and extraordinary renditions.

Both of the videos were put on Youtube and have been seen around the world. What is most striking about the el-Kabir video is that the police were so unconcerned about disclosure of torture that they sent it to the victim’s friends. It was only due to Youtube and public outcry that the officers were given relatively short prison sentences.

The Mubarak family amassed billions in crooked deals during his time with the government (both as a politician and earlier, as a high-ranking army officer).

The notably corrupt* Egyptian government bears some striking parallels to Iraq under Saddam Hussein: an almost cartoonish dictator (who was grooming one of this two sons for succession), security forces kidnapping people off the streets for rape and torture, corruption throughout all levels of government. But the American right wing cheered when Saddam was brought down. Why are they sobbing and clutching their pearls now that Mubarak has been ousted?

Is it because we weren't involved with the overthrow of this government?

Well, let's consider some of the people we did help put into power: the Shah of Iran; the Somoza family of Nicaragua; "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti; General Suharto of Indonesia. (This ignores all the dictators America has helped keep in power.)

Maybe allowing other countries to decide their own fate is the best policy.

____________

* Note: Microsoft Word documents

CHARLES DARWIN, 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo

h/t Pharyngula


And here is a chart showing those countries with the lowest and highest numbers of people who accept Evolution as a fact:

h/t Green Eagle

Thank youTurkey! Otherwise the good ole USofA would be the bottom feeder.

For a technologically advanced country, how can the USA be so backward? We and radical Islamists share the ignorant ideology that Evolution is only a "theory." (Actually, one of our presidents, RWR, shared that belief as well. Oh, Dog!) And several Tea Party candidates proudly raised their hands in the last presidential campaign when asked how many DID NOT accept Evolution as fact.

That alone should disqualify any man or woman from holding public office. We should have some basic requirements for the leader of the free world, not the least of which should be intelligence.

Evolution is a fact. Period.

Anyone saying otherwise should not be considered fit to hold important political office.

It's time for some New Rules

New Rule:

If everyone wants to insist that we make no more comparisons between raging right wing hate shouters and Hitler, they're going to have to get their candidates to stop doing those Hitler impersonations.