Five hours ahead and one day behind, I went to bed last night, having  just watched Rachel Maddow begin her Tuesday broadcast by roundly proclaiming that the people of Wisconsin had won the battle of wills against their governor’s intransigence.

Now I wake up this morning to find that, despite Rachel’s joyous declaration that the people of Wisconsin had won, that the shifty-eyed corporate tool, who happens to be the duly elected Governor of Wisconsin, had budged, the Governor’s party had, in fact, managed to rewrite the odious bill in question, in such a manner that it could be rammed through the legislature and in one fell swoop, a basic right of working people with a fifty-year pedigree had been consigned to the dustbins of history. Dead as a dod. Kaput. No refunds, no returns.

Let’s be brutally honest, people. This was never about fiscal responsibility. It was never about balancing a budget and job creation, two of the major subjects the Republican party whined and groaned about throughout the fall campaign of 2010, two of the major accusations of failure levied at their Democratic opponents.

It was all about, it was ever about busting union power, bringing those organisations formed by working people, of working people and for working people, to their proverbial knees. It was about quashing the little man. It was about keeping the peasants in their place.

We have it on record. Scott Walker said as much – in fact, he bragged about it – in his oleaginous twenty-minute telephone conversation with faux David Koch.

The demise of the union and the quelling of their remaining power is a major objective, not only of the Republican Party, but also of their corporate puppetmasters, primarily the shady woodwork-dwelling Kochroaches.  It’s also worth mentioning that part and parcel of Walker’s landmark legislation colludes the sale of public utilities to private corporate entities, and we all know who’ll benefit from that. It’s so not rocket science, that even dummies understand it:-

As amusing as the dummies’ take on this situation may be, the bitter irony is, simply, that it is the people of Wisconsin, and – by extension –  the working people and the working poor of our country, who end up being royally rogered up the backside by David Koch and his ilk, via any representative we elect from the Republican party.

I grew up in a union home, in the South. If that sounds like an anomaly today, there actually was a time, in what’s traditionally been known as the Upper South, where unions were visably present and part of everyday working life, and even if they weren’t as strident as they were in the Northern industrial parts of the country, they certainly improved upon the lives of their members and their members’ families.

My dad worked in a textile mill, a huge entity which provided employment for men and women in four predominantly rural counties on the cusp of that monster which grew to become known today as Northern Virginia. Most of the fathers of kids who went to my high school worked there.  The mother of Joe Bageant, author of Deer-Hunting with Jesus and one of the most strident practical Progressive voices of the South, worked there.

In the era before clean air technology became a given, on certain days when the wind was right, you could smell the rotten-egg stench from the factory, certainly, where I lived and sometimes thirty miles south to the town where I attended high school. My dad brought it home on his clothes, and it saturated the interior of his car. But that union-backed stench provided him with fully comprehensive health insurance, which made it possible for me to get my teeth straightened. It paid the hospital bill for my younger cousin, whose appendix ruptured and who had to spend six weeks recovering at the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville. It paid for all my mother’s chemotherapy and radiation therapy, and it topped up my father’s Medicare until the day he died sixteen years ago.

That union-backed stench gave us a living wage, and when I was in college in the mid-Seventies, and the union called its workers out on strike for six weeks, I opened an envelope one day at college, to find a check from the AFL-CIO for the princely sum of $100, as help toward paying for my textbooks, as my dad had been on strike for an overly-long period.

Like the people being targeted inWisconsin, I began my professional life, after taking my degree, in the public sector as a teacher. Virginia, being one of those states who embraced Taft-Hartley and who fervently worshipped at the altar of “right-to-work”, had made it impossible for state employees to unionise. We had to make do with pithy “Education Associations”, professional organisations which were unions in name only, with no collective bargaining allowed. I recall the one time we pushed our weight and even threatened to strike, we were summarily told that, were we to do so, they had enough applications for employment on file, that they’d have the classrooms staffed within two days.

Keith Olbermann, blogging on his new website, FOKNews, reckons the Wisconsin governor and his cronies, by coming out of the thugs’ closet, have effectively signalled the incipient suicide of the Republican Party. Nate Silver reckons this action will do more than anything else to galvanise the base of the Democratic Party.

I wish I could be so hopeful, because we certainly are in need of some adhesive to bind the gaping wounds rent asunder by our own self-destructive tendencies.

Rachel’s all-too-preciptous cry of triumph two nights ago makes me think of the way everyone from the media to the grassroots declared themselves openly Leftist enough in November 2008 to predict that the Republican Party was dead in the water, only to find that by March the following year, the Right had taken a leaf from Saul Alinsky’s book and had organised themselves into a movement that was, at once, strident, vociferous and very ugly. It received its battlecry in the early morning rant of a CNBC business commentator and its backing from the omnipresent Koch machine. It’s field lieutenants were the willfully ignorant Vice Presidential candidate from the losing ticket and an ex-rodeo clown, who was also a recovering alcoholic. They fed their base on fear – fear of a seminal President, like no other we’d had before in our history. Their object was to demonise the Democrats and de-legitimise the first African-American President.

But it was never about race.

Forty years ago, in the wake of the VietNam fiasco, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the violent shambles of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the Democratic party reformed itself, removing its base from the rural Midwest of agricultural cooperatives, Southern working poor, Rust Belt industrial workers, and unions. Didn’t you hear? Like the Don McLean song, the Democrats took the last train to the Coast (Left Coast or Northeastern) and developed attitude.

That attitude basically gave a shrug and a disdainful nod to the old base, turning its back on the old union organisers. The Midwestern farmers were rubes, the Southerners all racist and people like George Meany, many of whom barely had grade school academic credentials, didn’t fit into the cosmopolitan, city-centred, elitist mindset of the newly-minted Democrats. They would lead and the old base would follow. After all, what else were they going to do? Vote Republican?

Fast forward ten years to 1980, the year all this shitstorm we’re suffering now started in earnest with the election of Ronald Reagan, and that’s exactly what they did. The unions endorsed Reagan and he busted their asses. The Reagan Democrats were formed, and the South and rural Midwest bled red. The Republicans communicated with these people on their level, in language they understood, and with operatives with whom these people were familiar.  Like the seasoned conmen they became, they built trust. With the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the culture war battles began in earnest on the airwaves. With the advent of Karl Rove, heir apparent of that king ratfucker, Donald Segretti, the die was cast.

The aim was an unbroken hegemony of Republican rule, appealing to the basic instincts of their uneducated and undereducated base – play up religion, emphasize family values, and use every occasion to keep them scared and compliant. Walk into any remaining factory or warehouse in certain parts of the country today and you’ll see people at work, their minds being indoctrinated over loudspeakers by Rightwing talk radio stations, screaming Rush, Beck or Michael Savage. It’s mind control by osmosis.

And from 2009, we, ourselves, on the Left, became our own worst enemies. Lulled into a false sense of security and faux wealth since the Gipper’s regime, and fed on a diet of instant gratification, whilst nurturing a total ignorance about the way our government functions, instead of actually listening to the President, we chose to have various and sundry celebrity talking heads, so-called scions of the Left, corporately paid, analyse and interpret every word spoken or unspoken, every action completed or contemplated and every thought assumed by the President, not for the way we saw or heard ourselves, but the way they thought we should respond.

They told us so much they confused people who were already confused.

They endowed the President with so many powers of government that, had he chosen to use a fraction of those which they deemed he had, he’d have been successfully impeached. As much as the Right pushed the big lies of death panels, socialism, soft cell terrorism, and phony birth certificates, the Left heard their own tell them that Obama was weak, he was a pussy, he hated Progressives, he wasn’t enough like Bush, he was too much like Bush, he was a coward, he caved, he just wasn’t into the all-pervading Middle Class (which, somehow, seemed to have pushed the working class and working poor into some limbo located between irrelevance and non-existence). One progressive talking head went so far as to issue a clarion cry for all Progressives to boycott voting in the Midterms in order to teach the President a lesson. And the LGBT community was so convinced of the President’s concealed homophobia because he hadn’t whipped out an Executive Order repealing DADT (he couldn’t), that 30% of LGBTs who voted in the Midterms, voted Republican.

Well, that worked out nicely, didn’t it? Especially since, not two weeks ago, that selfsame talking head was screaming into the cameras that the President had better get his ass to Wisconsin and get on the picket lines or risk being a one-term President.

I’m wondering who voted for Scott Walker, because they were sold a bill of sale. Were they people who’d previously voted for the President in 2008 or who’d kept Russ Feingold in the Senate in previous years? Were they decent people who’d been scared shitless by the Tea Party’s virulent warnings about the plug being pulled on Grandma or the myth that the President was really a Manchurian candidate? Or was Walker elected as much by those so-called Progressive sulkers and pouters who stayed at home to make a point? Because as much as the people who voted for this dangerous dolt, the people who didn’t vote enabled him.

Now, like a cancer, we’re seeing this union busting legislatively spread across the Rust Belt and heartland of the industrial Midwest. We’re seeing a South Carolina governor employ an education advisor who’s openly stated that he hates the idea of public schools. We’re watching a redux of Joseph McCarthy sit in the House of Representatives and target a group of American people for having a particular religious belief that labels them, in his eyes, terrorists, whilst it’s actually the Congressman in question, Peter King, who’s not only palled around with real terrorists, the IRA, he’s danced, sung and contributed to their cause.

Maybe Keith and Nate will be right. Maybe this will be our carpe diem moment, and maybe the Democrats genuinely are having an epiphany and remembering that they were, ever and always, the party for working people and not the intellectual idealogues who ponder what might be in a Utopian future over a skinny latte and some New World merlot, the sorts who, even know, are contemplating a great white Progressive hope who’ll primary the President, thereby insuring that Karl Rove’s vision of one-party Republican rule becomes a reality.

It’s important to remember that all roads now in the Republican party are leading to the Koch brothers, who not only had real Nazi relatives, they actually had real Nazi associations. It’s important to remember that the first thing that nice Adolf Hitler – the one who made the downtrodden and conquered German people feel good about themselves – did upon assuming office as Chancellor, was outlaw all the trades unions.

This is starving the beast that is the Democratic party, considering that a very large proportion of its major contributors are unions.

History repeating itself? Well, those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it, so they say. A culture war has been raging in the United States for the past thirty years, with the Republicans presenting themselves and their operatives as guardians of God and fetuses, whilst leaving the women and children to fester and fend for themselves. The wanton destruction of the unions will be the tinder which starts a conflagration.

And the issues at hand for the 2012 election won’t be the deficit or jobs or healthcare reform or Afghanistan, although they’ll be cleverly disguised as such. The main issue will be cultural. And the deciding factor will determine how we define America.

Caveat emporium.

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jkkFL
Guest

Grabbed this this AM from (spit) but it’s still good!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-turner/public-school-teachers-fail_b_835174.html

Buddy McCue
Member

Somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000 people showed up.
[img]http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MadisonProtest2.jpg[/img]

Compare this to the much-ballyhooed September 12th rally where Tea-Partiers gathered to hear Glenn Beck speak. The FOX news network promoted this thing non-stop for weeks beforehand, and they were joined by the rest of the Rightwing media machine. That machine chugged along 24/7, giving it all the energy it could muster, making sure that EVERYONE on the Right heard about it, and encouraging as many people to come as possible. It was an all-out effort.

And yet, they only managed 60-70,000.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/protest-crowd-size-estimate-falsely-attributed-abc-news/story?id=8558055

I don’t feel that I have to point out that the Wisconsin rally had nothing like that kind of media support; there IS no giant messaging machine for progressives like the kind the Right enjoys.

And yet, the protestors in Wisconsin drew greater numbers. This is encouraging.

bito
Member

How many people fighting for their dignity Gov. Walker? are they all thugs and slobs or the citizens of Wisconsin?

http://yfrog.com/h0coopcj

Smedley Butler
Member

Why don’t people vote?

Allow me to answer this question in the traditional tribal method of transmitting information, by storytelling.

In the tiny Midwestern town of Apple Meadow there was a small mom and pop restaurant Named Ma’s Diner. The people of the town ate there often and enjoyed the healthy fare they served.

One day a new Corporate Chain restaurant called McKoch’s moved into town and opened it’s doors. The folks running Ma’s diner soon noticed that thier business had fallen off 10%, as one in ten folks would eat the Crappy McKoch burgers and drink the Mcunionbuster flavored ice milk shakes.

These folks didn’t really care for the noxious fare they just were taken in by the glitzy box’s it was served in and the little plastic Karl Rove action figures that goose steps around the table when you put a nickel in their ass.

The folks at Ma’s diner decided that in order to win these customers back they must change their business to be more like McKoch’s. They felt this was their duty as without the healthy fare served at Ma’s the folks would have no where to get a decent meal.

They changed a few items on their menu and removed others substituting greasy Freedom Fries for salads and McKochburgers in shiny wrappers for grilled Salmon. Ma’s business still seemed to be dropping off although not as abruptly so the owners of Ma’s decided it would be in their best interest to become even more like McKoch’s.

As the two business became more and more alike the crowd of every day diners that used to frequent MA’s was reduced to a small number of loyal diners. Many of the departed felt that the type of healthy fare they enjoyed was no longer available at Ma’s and the menu was much the same as McKoch’s

The loyal diners tried to get their friends who used to join them at Ma’s Diner daily to enjoy a meal to return, explaining that there was a difference Ma’s diner served their McKochburgers with a pickle and slice of lettuce and 20% of the grease was allowed to drip from their Freedom Fries before they were put in the shiny box.

Business continued to fall of until one sad day Ma’s Diner closed it’s door for the final time…

A few moons later Fred Mertz the former co-owner of Ma’s diner stood patiently in line waiting for his Mckoch brothers meal. The fellow in line behind said in a conversational tone: “I wish there was somewhere besides Mckoch’s to get a meal around here.” Fred Mertz replied: “Don’t look at me, there was another place to eat but it’s not my fault people didn’t support it.”

escribacat
Member

Excellent tale, Smedley.

bito
Member
boomer1949
Member

WI Firefighters Spark “Move Your Money” Moment

On the day that the bill passed the Wisconsin Assembly effectively ending 50 years of collective bargaining in Wisconsin and eviscerating the ability of public unions to raise money through dues, a new front opened in the battle for the future of Wisconsin families.

Bagpipes blaring, hundreds of firefighters walked across the street from the Wisconsin Capitol building, stood outside the Marshall and Ilsley Bank (M&I Bank) and played a few tunes — loudly. Later, a group of firefighter and consumers stopped back in at the bank to make a few transactions. One by one they closed their accounts and withdrew their life savings, totaling approximately $190,000. See a video clip. After the last customer left, the bank quickly closed its doors, just in case the spontaneous “Move Your Money” moment caught fire.

The sedate, old fashioned M&I Bank on the Capitol Square has gained some notoriety in recent weeks. Oddly, a tunnel in the M&I parking garage links to the capitol basement. Dubbed the “rat hole” to the Walker palace, the tunnel was used by Governor Scott Walker to ferry lobbyists into the capitol building to hear his budget address during a time when the capitol was in a virtual lock down in defiance of a court order and after Sherriffs has quit the building refusing to be a “palace guard.”

Now the bank is getting caught up in the controversy again. Word is beginning to spread that M&I is one of Walker’s biggest backers. Top executives at M&I Bank have long been boosters of Walker. M&I Chief Executive Dennis Kuester and his wife gave $20,000 to Walker in recent years. When you package individual and PAC contributions by employers, M&I is number one — at $57,000 dollars. The firm apparently uses a conduit to bundle much of its money to Walker. Flyers, webpages, and Facebook sites have popped up encouraging WI consumers to boycott Walker campaign contributors and “Pull the Plug on M&I Bank.” Other banks whose employees have donated large sums to Walker, such as Associated Bank and North Shore Bank may also be seeing their customers soon.

[img]http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/Shame200pxW_0.jpg[/img]

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/03/10341/wi-firefighters-spark-move-your-money-moment

bito
Member

The Rally in MadTown is fantastic!! Inspiring! listen
http://theuptake.org/2011/03/12/wi-rallies-against-gov-walkers-budget/

Chernynkaya
Member

I’ve been listening and watching (ONLINE ONLY–GRRR!) all day. And I have written to every POS media outlet complaining about the fucking blackout.

bito
Member

Wow! just a 8 second shot of the Madison crowd! (why 8 seconds?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXHv7Q5VKGk

Will the chant “Fox News Lies” make into their sound bites about the Union thugs and crybabys?

jkkFL
Guest

No, the sound of the wind thru the palm trees will drown them out..

boomer1949
Member

CROSSPOST from TO/OT:

boomer1949 says:
03/12/2011 at 8:52 AM

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boycott-John-Kasich-Contributors/193496474007614

Home > Ohio 2010 > Contributions to KASICH, JOHN & TAYLOR, MARY

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/contributor_details.phtml?&c=117145&s=OH&y=2010&summary=1

bito
Member

boomer, follow the money and it sure ain’t in the hands of those barons known as teachers, garbage men and sewage workers. Good post!

NanaMex
Member

Just give me something worth voting for.

jkkFL
Guest

My 30 y/o nephew has been saying that for Years!
What a sad commentary on the state of the union.

NanaMex
Member

The point of Dave’s song was that we are constantly distracted by side shows that keep many from seeing the issues that need to be considered when voting.

I don’t care if a candidate is old, young, handsome/pretty, ugly as sin, black, white, gay, str8, tall, short, fat, thin, able-bodied, disabled, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or even Druid. No one should base their vote on any of those factors. It’s the issues that matter.

Chernynkaya
Member

WOW– that flew right over my head! I think I should take a mental health break. I apologize profusely for my density!

NanaMex
Member

Apology accepted. And a Nana hug thrown in. 😀

jkkFL
Guest

He just feels that he is voting against people- not for anyone.

NanaMex
Member

How did you get that from his song? Seriously?

Chernynkaya
Member

I don’t understand that attitude. If you can’t find something worth voting for at a moment when hundreds of thousands are fighting for our democracy against the most dangerous and plutocratic Reich wing Repubs, than as far as I am concerned, you are a BIG part of the problem.

That kind of purist elitism is exactly why this nightmare is happening. The disgruntalists stayed home and instead of pushing for MORE change said, “keep the change.” Thanks.

NanaMex
Member

I have never, ever stayed at home rather than vote. Ever. And have stated several times, on here, that those who don’t vote are a major part of the problem. So please don’t yell at me. Thanks.

Chernynkaya
Member

First, I am very relieved to know you vote. Second, was responding to your video (“Give me something to vote for”)which sends the opposite message of voting. I missed your previous comments stating that you voted and that you feel (as I do) that not voting is a serious problem. And third, I was not “yelling” at you. If disagreement is considered yelling, we can’t discuss much. The use of the pronoun “you” is also problematic. I meant it as “one”–as in, “if ONE can’t find something…”

choicelady
Member

I find the lack of a plural “you” in English very frustrating.

I believe the blue collar folks of the northeast and Midwest have come up with a solution: youze. Never have seen it used incorrectly. In the South it’s
y’all. It is the only way to be inclusive and NOT personal.

I embrace it and suggest youze/y’all do the same for clarity’s sake?

chazmania
Guest

At the risk of sounding like a one tooth hillbilly..youzall make me laugh.

Chernynkaya
Member

C’Lady, the only problem with y’all and youze (and I use the first pretty frequently) is that it still includes the person to whom I am addressing the comment. And that’s not necessarily what I want to do. Hmmm.

How about “peeps”? As in, “If peeps can’t find something to vote for…?” Or maybe the more homey “some folks?” {sigh}

choicelady
Member

Cher – yes, if the person is NOT included, peeps will work. It’s the third person plural I believe? That works well. It’s the ambiguity of the “you” – me, all of us? Him but not me? – that needs the most work though. Do like peeps for the collective entity though. Has a ring to it!

jkkFL
Guest

If you live in Chicago and dont say da- as in ‘da mare’s office’ or youze; or ‘go by’ instead of go to- you will be Branded as an outsider!!
Smiley

bito
Member
bito
Member

This is just getting warmed up and already–WOW!
Music!

bito
Member

Now the Dairy cows are involved!

http://twitgoo.com/20s58z

choicelady
Member

Cows for Democracy! Hoo-HAH!

bito
Member

C’Lady, I have been listening to the rally all day and Wow, just WOW. I don’t know how many people have to be in the streets to get attention from the media, but this and the rallies in WI,IN,OH,FL these last few weeks has been fantastic. I feel there may be a movement afoot. People want a voice not a government directed by the large multi national corporations. I’m sure you remember our “Jobs with Justice” rallies years ago. I could have only dreamed of a turn out to one of those a quarter of the size of some of these rallies.
There are more people in Madison today than there has been and after what, 20+ days?
http://theuptake.org/2011/03/12/wi-rallies-against-gov-walkers-budget/

choicelady
Member

I know bito – it’s the tipping point. I had feared it might not happen. I have people in OH who thought they would stand alone (and some who still are not involved even as public employees they’re getting smashed by Kasich) but without missing a BEAT, out came the UAW, USW, and on and on. They came as allies to the NEA which is not even IN the AFL-CIO. They came from all kinds of backgrounds even NON union folks, and the ground the lies into the mud about “overpaid” public workers.

We are gathered together once again. IMHO the one weak spot is Calfornia where I fear ego and competition for scarce resources will keep us apart, where snotty disregard will drive wedges, where catty backbiting will prevail. My money is on the labor folks as the real leaders followed by those fighting for really disaffected groups – racial equity, immigration rights, women’s rights, etc. They have the REAL fire in the belly! There are just too many others who would leave all these folks OUT while they hobnobbed with Hollywood types and sipped French wine. So keep your eyes on the REAL movement – today’s and right on along the line. That’s where the reality of change really lies. And my money is on them – including YOU, bito – now and forever. All you heirs to the labor movement, progressive change and politics from the 1890s on, and Midwestern good sense – you ROCK! We will work to have CA catch up – there is a GREAT start here at the Planet!

chazmania
Guest

Winds of change CLady?
Could it be? could it be my cynicism is going to be proven wrong? Is my lost faith in humankind going to be restored?
These days i pray to be wrong…Please prove me wrong world…!

choicelady
Member

They are, Chaz, but NOT to your exclusion! You are part of this and keep it moving!

bito
Member

Jim Hightower is speaking! Good stuff.

bito
Member

Am I the only one listening to this rally? MSM isn’t either. John Nichols (the Nation) now speaking!

bito
Member

The new Wisconsin State Flag:
[img]http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhy7444EHV1qg0nxuo1_500.jpg[/img]

bito
Member

Tractorcade has begun #wiunion
http://t.co/2DrAfYZ

Love this pic with the capitol in the background.
http://twitgoo.com/20s2mq

kesmarn
Admin

Forward!

bito
Member

Scary Union thugs pushing candy! 🙂

http://plixi.com/p/83482701

choicelady
Member

Can’t be having THAT, now can we? We know, bito – we union supporters are just sooooo evil! Why, I made SOUP for the EAL striking machinists back in ’89. Obviously I’m un-American. And you practiced – GASP – SOLIDARITY with them. Yikes! Horrible! These folks have obviously brainwashed FARMERS into doing the same. The SKY is falling! End of the World!

And I’m lovin’ it!

bito
Member

C’Lady while this made out as supporting Union collective bargaining, which we both strongly support, this is for workers rights and the heart and money of the Democratic party. This is a futher assault on workers. When did defined pensions become 401K’s that you get to take a gamble with on the stock market?
“They” won’t stop at Unions, they will further deteriorate workers rights.

choicelady
Member

Hi bito- can’t link below, so here – YES! This is about the universal right for all people to participate in their working lives and the direction of their nation.

That they had “only” 150,000 come out in support – wow!

This movement has developed the perfect voice and vision for what we all need to remember and to do.

It’s so exciting to see this happening once again!

jkkFL
Guest

Pretty darn impressive 🙂

jkkFL
Guest
choicelady
Member

Good for Grayson! I spent years documenting labor sites, know the “Pinkerton Landing” which has been preserved at Homestead and is used to remind people what it was like “in the good old days” when Pinkertons shot you in the back. The quest to return America to the age of the Robber Barons NEEDS pushback from working people, and this time most of the police are on our side. That’s not to say they always have choices, but they express clear loyalty to us, not to the bosses.

We’ve been through this before. This time we build on solid union strength, and we need to keep the momentum. Chaz noted my optimism last night – I am. Not because of just Obama but because of the energies of men and women – and even kids – who are speaking out for justice and fair treatment. We’ve allowed the politics of RW “divide and conquer” to keep us apart too long. That is changing. Not everywhere since I still see snotty elitism over at the Dark Side {spit} but in reality across the nation.

There IS a reason to court the Middle Class – people who do not have unions, or roots in collective bargaining, or are people in white collar jobs. They need to understand quickly that their fortunes come from improvements to the lower echelons, NOT to the top. We won’t win them all, but we can talk about fair play, about decency, about what makes us strong as a nation when equitable treatment of all gives us stability. And STABILITY is huge. We can begin with small businesses because they have been hit doubly hard – our lack of buying power hurts their income AND they get taxed to sustain their own competition unfairly. Small business and well paid working people are a strength we need to celebrate not disdain.

I cannot be sure how far the bosses are willing to go, but it is my profound hope that the lessons of Homestead, of Haymarket, of the Memorial Day massacre will prevent violence against working people. Even Kent State figures into our collective memory about things that could have been prevented. Today as tractors roll into Madison in support of working people, it’s a thing to celebrate! We need to build coalitions wherever we can because we do have more in common than we have separation.

For everyone who believes this administration sold out by not transforming the nation overnight, we need also to be realistic. You cannot undo 40 years of history in 2 years. Or 4 or 8. But there are new laws and processes – not perfect but better – to begin curtailing the power of what, yes, COULD become fascism where the government exists entirely in sync with major corporate interests. That is, without hype, what we need to tell smaller businesses and middle class white people – we are your best partners, not Koch.

But at the end of the day, we need to have the courage of Homestead. Anyone near Pittsburgh who has not been there, you will find it sad – but that one building, the Pump House where the Pinkertons came up off the river and were defeated in 1892, survives the shut down/tear down of one of the most productive plants ever built. It’s a lonely but stark reminder that we CAN fight for our rights. Ultimately we CAN win. Never give up.

phread
Member
phread

EVERYBODY who has been following the WI union busting has born witness to FASCISM American style…there is no longer any reason to be afraid of using the correct term FASCISM

FASCISM does not mean gas chambers, FASCISM is predatory capitalism as we have seen in the USA starting with reagan, yes folks reagan was a true blue, dyed in the wool FASCIST. WW2 was planned by IG Farben, the very same petro-chemical cartel that built Auschwitz.

Fascism has been presented to us historically as the savage and murderous plague of antisemitism that it truly was, but what has been conveniently ignored by history are the capitalist who paid to have hitler established in power.

WHY?

as long as the republicans do not murder people they have been able to destroy the middle class and subisidies the corporations who fund them, when reagan destroyed union power in the 1980’s, democrats started taking corporate money too.

we have ONE political party, fascist, corporately controlled and antilabor just like hitler, mussolini, and even stalin was a fascist who was in every way worse than hitler.

Walker is doing the bidding of the koch boys, whose family made their money from stalin. As long as walker does not set up concentration camps he will succeed…propaganda is the only thing in the media, there is no truth…

choicelady
Member

phred – no, we don’t. We do have a powerful ruling class in sync with PART of the national governmental structure, but this administration is slowly picking that apart. Don’t go over the top in emotion or rhetoric. It’s critical to KNOW what is being done and not assume from the superficial media analyses that all power is being sustained for the ruling class. It is NOT.

Take health care reform. I keep reading what a ‘sell out’ it is. Well, those sentiments come from people who have not read the bill or understand it. Is it Romney’s? No. Not in the least. There are elements in terms of affordability for real human beings that were taken directly from the funding part of California’s single payer legislation. Does it capitulate to Pharma? No. It gives them some space – but by 2014 there are huge controls on pharmaceuticals. Do the insurance companies love it because of the mandate? No – they are strongly controlled even now since they have to cover everyone with pre-existing conditions, provide a large number of prevention measures and tests without huge co-pays. It revises all the ills of both the Romney and Schwarzenegger plans – no outrageous deductibles and out-of-pocket costs (that in those two plans were $15K per person per year).

I’ve read all those bills, cross checked them, and stand firmly on the side of the Affordable Care Act as a great start – just as Medicare and Social Security were. Single payer nationally was unattainable – it had 85 co-authors and that was the limit of votes. But ACA moves us toward that – and two weeks ago Obama and Bernie Sanders formed an agreement that states could devise their OWN plans so that the three working on single payer – VT, MD, CA and maybe PA – could do that with no reservations.

When you reduce everything to gross generalizations as we did in 1980 with Carter and Reagan, you miss the incredibly important differences. We are NOT a fascist nation, we DO have oppositional voices, and we need to build on that powerful base to make resistance to the fascism that IS desired by some parts of corporate America. Even that is not universal, witness Soros, Buffet, Silicon Valley and manufacturing sector in the main. They are not overwhelmingly liberal, but they GET the importance of well paid working people and a functioning democracy.

By ignoring those differences, we lose some of our better allies. Yes, we can have allies, even in a radical agenda, within corporate America.

It is simply too mushy-minded to lump everything and everyone into the same pot and declare we’re fascist. No. We are not. And it’s to PREVENT that that we must act. ORGANIZE!

Chernynkaya
Member

A-effing-MEN!

NanaMex
Member

x 2.

choicelady
Member

Thank you, thank you!!! It’s good to have universal standards not least of which is the right to freely speak. Whatever comes to mind! There are times when “fuck” is simply the ONLY applicable word.

jkkFL
Guest

LOL!
My sister, who is a grandma, has a habit of saying ‘shit.’
When two of her grandsons came home after an overnite with grandma, saying ‘shit,’ she got two phone calls, one from her son, one from her daughter inquiring where their sons acquired their ‘extended vocabulary!’

Chernynkaya
Member

Nanamex– perhaps I have misjudged you in the past. I was surprised you endorsed Choice’s comment! So.. x2 to YOUR x2!

NanaMex
Member

I am glad we cleared that up. 🙂

choicelady
Member

Cher dear – you can say “fuck” in front of the churchlady. She’s been known to say it herself. : )

jkkFL
Guest

Whew! That’s a relief! 🙂

choicelady
Member

Yeah – nothing sucks more than self-censorship especially when it’s not even remotely required!

Chernynkaya
Member

Oh, C’Lady! HAHA! That wasn’t why I didn’t say “fuck!” I said “effin” because I thought it had a better literary “flow!”

FerraKnows
Member
FerraKnows

You girls keep saying it, I’ll keep reading. hehehe

choicelady
Member

This I will accept. The grace of language SHOULD be respected, any effin way you see it!

Just did not want you to feel constrained…

phread
Member
phread

a fascist economy is when government subsidizes corporations with tax payer money, its called nationalizing corporate debt…fascism is not mass murder, it is the big business big government collusion which aids predatory monopoly thru oligarchy.

mussolini and hitler did just that very thing too.

our fascist economy started in 1948 when the pentagon system was established to help funnel tax payer money to capital intensive industries under the umbrella of “National Security”.

no emotion or rhetoric on my part, merely facts…

chazmania
Guest

CLady is a very rational intelligent humorous soul here sharing the planet (on line and world) I have become fond of her…But i side with phread on one point the present corporate world IS a fascist entity..we may NOT be A fascist country (yet) but corporate America is leaning way towards a fascist mentality and psychology…Your correct CL its not ALL..but i would argue a vast majority of the major players in Banking and finance are full out embracing the ideology of fascism. They Lobby and bribe governments to side with them almost predominantly against the people.. the erosion is apparent, has happened and is a problem…There is a push back and a ground swell against this as you rightfully point out but you have to admit we are alarmed becasue why? they are gaining ground over us. The reality IS that we are being pushed further and further into some new age corporate fascism..the media backs it.. the pundits back it. politicians vacillate all over the place backing and then backing off confused as to what to do…as they are also succumbed to the corruption of the money system and its power..
I have to agree in the terminology on the one hand to admit is to admit defeat but to admit the problem and or danger of the problem has its usefulness to brake complacency..
I think we are all trying to find ways to fight this gigantic entity known as Corporate fascism that is rearing its head to take us all under its control…

Chernynkaya
Member

Chaz, I agree with you and share your concern. I think you struck the balance with your comment there that speaks for me too.

chazmania
Guest

Thanks Chern..
As radical as i am and can be i am tempered by some really smart folks on here..Such a great community..
HP{SPIT}

Chernynkaya
Member

HAH! {SPIT} (It never seems to get old for me)

I’m thinking of starting a Twitter thread called #{Spit}. (half joke)

bito
Member

Charlie Sheen and Lohan already have that hash. 😉

Chernynkaya
Member

Hey, bito. I read someone say that Sheen makes Lohan like she really has her shit together. 😆

bito
Member

When they took the Vote in the WI Senate to bust the Unions, they said they could legally do it because it wasn’t fiscal after Governor Walker claimed it had to be done for fiscal reasons, then what is this in the bill? Are they not fiscal? Legal bill? Does this take a legal whiz to figure this out?

Between Wisconsin Senate and Assembly Vote, Power Plant Sales Reappear

Thursday, the fiscal bureau was forced to correct its memo describing the bill, after unearthing some more buried treasure. Seems there were a few things the original memo forgot to mention:

There are two items in the LFB’s March 10 document that are not reflected in the March 9 document.

1. The March 10 document includes a provision of the substitute amendment on the Earned Income Tax Credit (page 3, #1).

2. The March 10 document includes a provision of the substitute amendment on the Sale and Contractual Operation of State-Owned Power Plants (page 20, #1)

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/between-wisconsin-senate-and-assembly-vote-

jkkFL
Guest

@bito, does that mean the vote was illegal since there was no quorum?
(BTW-I didn’t recognize you- badass new avi!!)

bito
Member

jkk, That is the way I see it. They said they needed a quorum for any fiscal bills and these look like they involve money to me. You?

(Union avi is now also a Japan avi! It’s a people’s avi!)

jkkFL
Guest

I sure hope you’re right!
Was on the IndyStar comment thread tonight, 800+ anti-union rants; Incredible..
IN was union for many, many years- now all you hear is the TP whine.. makes me embarassed I was born there.
🙁

choicelady
Member

Just remember that most of the bozos who do that sort of ranting are everywhere the same, and a small group at that. I think they go from paper to paper since I keep seeing the same lingo on may of these sites. I look at it this way – if they’re spending that much time getting their rocks off on blogs, they don’t have time to be DOING anything that in ANY way causes greater harm. It’s the relief valve for us! Best practice – don’t read ’em, don’t answer ’em, don’t mind them.

choicelady
Member

BTW – in the rare moments I feel the need to deal with the TP folks, I adopt a persona of sympathizing with them, then restating their covert messages overtly. It provides amazing amusement when I pretend to agree and then put it over the top. It’s a pathetic sort of fun, but it’s my own.

choicelady
Member

I have not seen anything in WI about EITC, bito – can you explain this to me? Are they trying to stop low income working people from GETTING it? Or, more likely, are they trying to TAX it more – you know, in the interest of “shared sacrifice”. I don’t understand.

bito
Member

Too Funny if this proves true. Wonder if he gets his family value tips from Newt?
WI GOP Sen. Randy Hopper’s Wife Tells Protesters Hopper Living with 25-year-old mistress in Madison

[P]rotesters outside the Hopper house this week in Fond du Lac were met by his wife who reportedly came out and told them: Hopper no longer lives there, but with his 25-year-old mistress in Madison. […]

Two sources in Fond du Lac close to the recall effort say the Hopper maid has signed the legal-sized recall sheet. The maid reportedly said it’s likely Hopper’s soon-to-be-ex wife will also sign the recall petition.

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/03/11/wi-gop-sen-randy-hoppers-wife-tells-protesters-hopper-living-with-25-year-old-mistress-in-madison/

Artist50
Member
Artist50

Do as I say – not as I do!

NanaMex
Member

Isn’t that the freaking REPUB Motto?

jkkFL
Guest

Who’s gonna design their new logo?? 🙂

jkkFL
Guest

Guess ‘randy hopper’ is a name you earn, huh??
Fits 🙂

bito
Member

😆 “what a ‘randy hopper’!”

kesmarn
Admin

Good one, jkkFL! 😆