Sometimes it’s difficult to keep my political blogging past in the past. When Wisconsin makes the national news day after day, it’s difficult. When my kids’ schools are closed due to political protests, it’s difficult. I wanted to post about the protests on Friday, but I resisted…for a while, anyway. The more I thought about it, the more I saw this as an opportunity to post about what the protests are NOT about. But first, I’ll post about what the protests are about.
According to the union protesters:
- This bill eliminates the union’s ability bargain with local governments and endangers their union’s ability to protect workers’ rights.
According to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:
- Wisconsin is broke.
- He was elected to shore up deficit spending.
- He will reduce how much money the state provides to local governments to fund vital services.
- This bill provides tools to those local governments to keep government jobs and keep costs under control.
- This bill does so by increasing the amount government workers must contribute to their retirement and health care benefits, while limiting the union’s ability to negotiate with local governments, requiring local voter approval for negotiations.
- Workers rights are protected by Wisconsin law, not the union.
Personally, I think the union has motivated the workers they represent to protest due to another facet of this bill: It gives worker the choice to join the union or not. Workers currently do not have that choice in Wisconsin. For example, if you are hired to work as a teacher for the public school system, you are automatically part of the union and you automatically have to pay union dues. You join the union or you don’t work as a teacher. The unions want to protect this status quo, because it increases their rosters and the amount of dues they collect. I believe that is the primary reason the union has worked so hard to stir up their members.
This is also the primary reason I do not agree with the protesters. There is a lot of misinformation being disseminated on the news stations. Hailing back to my political blogging days, I did something profound: I actually read the bill. Governor Walker is right; it does limit the union’s powers. It does not eliminate them as protesters and pundits have claimed. It also does not increase the amounts workers will have to contribute by nearly as much as many pundits have claimed. However, the bill is also disingenuous, as most pieces of legislation are. It is disingenuous because it lumps things like whether or not union membership can be forced on a worker with an emergency budget bill. That kind of thing happens a lot, but it shouldn’t.
While I support Governor Walker’s efforts to respond to the havoc the recession has wrought on Wisconsin’s economy, I don’t support his decision to include anti-union legislation with an emergency budget bill. While I support workers’ right to protest for the issues that are important to them, I cannot join in a protest that supports forcing workers into a union. Nor do I think it reasonable for government workers to stay isolated from the effects of the recession when that isolation contributes to the hardships the taxpayers must endure. It’s a tough choice, but Governor Walker was elected to make it.
Did it escape your notice that Walker was aided by the Koch brothers to win the governorship? That he’s a Tea Party Republican? That he gave Walmart and other big businesses in Wisconsin large tax breaks recently?
“Hey, let’s give the rich some tax breaks, and force the poor to make up the difference!” Let’s take away their bargaining rights while we’re at it, and have ice cream on our cake!
I made the mistake of taking some Amitriptyline last night to help me sleep, and am not able to form cohesive arguments now, so I’ll ask you to read this interview of Noam Chomsky instead. I believe that the people of Wisconsin have the opportunity to emulate those in Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, etc., and wrest power from those who are obstacles to Democracy!
http://www.alternet.org/story/149953/chomsky%3A_uprising_in_the_usa?page=entire
And see this one, please:
http://www.alternet.org/story/149965/wisconsin_is_a_battleground_against_the_billionaire_kochs%27_plan_to_break_labor%27s_back?page=entire
Clay,
Regarding your comments:
Scott Walker is technically not a Tea Pary Republican. Walker had a well-developed political career and had his eye on the governorship before the Tea Pary movement existed. There are elected officials all across the nation who became politicians because of or through their involvement with the Tea Party movement. Walker’s not one of them; he pre-dates them.
But, yes, I am aware that Walker is affiliated with the Tea Party. I also know that he has been calling for reductions in spending for much of his political career, since before the Tea Party gained influence. More to the point, Walker was elected by the people of Wisconsin because he made campaign promises to reduce spending and has a history of doing it successfully.
The protests going on in Wisconsin are NOTHING like the protests in Egypt or Libya. Walker was elected by voters to do a job; and he’s doing it. You don’t have to like how he chooses to do that job, nor do you have to like that the people of Wisconsin want the job done. But you don’t have to pay our taxes or lose your house because the major employers are moving somewhere less expensive, either.
Two major points of Walker’s campaign were to shore up deficit spending and to make Wisconsin a more business-friendly state. He was elected based on those promises. He, and all the other newly elected Republicans in this state, were elected because the Democrats failed to respond to the needs of the people. We need businesses in order to have jobs; we need businesses and jobs to provide the state with income; we need the income to have schools and police forces and all the other services we rely on for a civilized, democratic state. Walker is providing what his Democrat-predecessor failed to provide: Hope that Wisconsin will recover from this recession.
All the pundits who compare Wisconsin protests to Egypt’s protests are disrespectful of the Wisconsin voters who elected Governor Walker. Sadder still, they are trivializing the hardships the people of Egypt endured before they got the courage to protest. Unless you really agree that denying civil workers’ unions the right to negotiate for higher pay and more generous benefits is the same as police brutality, lacking freedom of speech, lacking free elections, and martial law. Because I just don’t see the comparison.
Regarding the interview:
Chomsky is obviously not an unbiased observer. I didn’t read the New York Times article, I’ve been watching the live feeds from here in Wisconsin instead. Chomsky is spinning the truth to suit his own objectives. Governor Walker never threatened to call the National Guard to deal with the protesters! His statements about the National Guard was ONLY if the prison system experienced the kind of shut downs the schools have experienced; if the prison guards called in sick to work to join the protest in mass amounts, Scott Walker would call in the National Guard to ensure that the prisons were adequately staffed.
All quotes that indicated he intended to call in the National Guard on the protesters were taken out of context to spin it the way the reporters or pundits wanted. I listened to him make the statements. He didn’t say what they’re accusing him of.
Regarding your second article:
I really suggest you pay less attention to pundits and more attention to facts; not the “facts” spun by the pundits but the facts presented by unbiased sources. As much as I’d like to show you the difference, it’d take me about three hours to call up all the sources. That’s $150 of my work time. I cannot afford that just to prove a point.
All in all, I’m not a big Walker fan. Like every other politician, his loyalties are to his campaign donors. I’m well aware of that; my frustration with politics-as-usual is why I stopped blogging politically. But, Walker is also a helluva lot better than former-Governor Doyle. For one, Walker is not raising taxes and killing jobs at the same time. For two, Walker’s not “in bed with” Autism Speaks the way Doyle was. Those two points alone are enough to make me breathe a sigh of relief.
Like the protesters, you have the right to speak out however you wish. Like the protesters, I urge you to look at the motivations and interests of all who participate in the debate and choose whose “facts” you believe carefully.
Clay,
One of the claims made in your second link is that Walker manufactured the budget crisis, because Wisconsin really was going to end with a surplus when Walker took office. There are a lot of problems with that claim. However, the $140 million in “spending” Walker enacted to create a $137 million deficit is easy to disprove.
The $137 million deficit is now. This budget year. The one for next year is in the billions (I think it’s $3.5 billion).
The $140 million in tax breaks does not go into effect this year.
The $137 and the $140 million have virtually nothing to do with each other. The claim is like saying not taking $140 million out of people’s pockets over the next two or five years will close our budget hole today. It doesn’t work that way.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/01/one-wisconsin-now/one-wisconsin-now-says-scott-walker-and-legislatur/
The numbers for this article come from the Wisconsin’s own non-partisan Legislative research agency.
Yes-everyone has an agenda..absolutely. From what I have read and watched..it appeared that people were angry with their bargaining rights being taken away. I understand that.
I could not agree with you more-comparing Wisconsin’s protesters to Egypt, Libya is absolutely ridiculous and insulting. Although I see it as more insulting to the people of those countries.
I agree the comparison is worse for the people of Egypt and Libya, but I’m not sure “insulting” really covers it. It’s insulting to compare Governor Walker’s behavior with the behaviors of dictators; but it’s trivializing to compare lack of basic liberties with the loss of union privileges. The hardships the people of Egypt and Libya have endured should not be trivialized in this manner; it’s more than insulting, it’s dehumanizing and deeply disrespectful.
- February 26, 2011 at 3:07 AM
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