03.10.11
The President doesn’t like Facebook bullies
Teachers get their rights taken away by a GOP ambush in Madison and the President spends the day on the scourge of Facebook bullying.
Democracy Now has an interview with Michael Moore where he states the obvious — the wealthy, through the GOP, are waging open class war. It’s here. He needs to do it a lot more in many more venues.
The Milwaukee newspaper ran a fairly conservative opinion piece. Although it had to admit:
Both parties are playing with fire. A walkout to thwart legislation will be as attractive to Republicans when they are no longer in power as it is to Democrats now. And scorched-earth tactics, such as those practiced by Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald, will seem just as attractive to Democrats when they regain control of the matches and accelerant.
Walker never campaigned on disenfranchising public-employee unions. If he had, he would not have been elected. He got a spare 52% of the vote – hardly a mandate for what he is trying to do.
Later in the day I’ll run a piece cut for the Economic Treason series.
It focuses on defense contracts to Wisconsin.
Here are the figures you need to know:
Contracts for defense manufacturing to Wisconsin, this year: $9 billion.
Wisconsin state budget gap claimed by Scott “We’re Broke” Walker in order to destroy public sector unions: $137 million.
Teachers, no! They’re selfish parasites.
But:
“Oshkosh Corp. has recently geared up to produce 23,000 Army trucks and trailers in a five-year deal valued at $3 billion. It is the largest Wisconsin-based defense contractor.” — a Madison newspaper
The defense industry in the United States is an exercise in socialism for the private sector. It’s jobs are protected and underwritten by the US government and taxpayer.
And while these contracts means manufacturing jobs, the remain virtually the only such jobs protected in the United States. While everyone else gets tossed to the mercies of the wind from Wall Street.
In a related rumination it’s seems fairly obvious the Wisconsin voters put Ted Nugent in a suit in the governor’s seat.
While Nugent is unelectable because of his public unsavory character and views, the current crop of GOP leaders are as extreme as he is. And they kept some of it under a basket for November. Now that they’re in power, it’s a different story.
It unequivocally shows the peril of staying home come voting time because the lame Democratic Party and its disinterested President have depressed you.
In California, it didn’t happen and the Visigoths were turned away at the gate. And it’s because the GOP tried to paint Latinos as arch enemies of the state. They voted.
Whether or not Wisconsin’s voters can recall the GOP extremists remains to be seen since the latter have shown they’re willing to break and bend laws to disenfranchise their opponents.
Paradoxically, it now seems like it was easier to arrive at some kind of result with a people’s revolt in Egypt than here, the so-called biggest democracy in the world.