Here in Wisconsin: Now With Even Less Democracy

A law is not a law in this state until published in the paper of record. A judge enjoined the Secretary of State from publishing Walker's "Budget Repair Bill," aka Neoliberalism's war on people part eleventybillion; Walker and his minions think they found loophole and had the bill published by someone else and have now declared the bill a law despite the fact that a co-equal branch of government in the form of a judge and the official charged with publishing the bill to make it a law say otherwise.

What's the end game here? Do these louts think that by the next election everyone will have forgotten or be so dispirited that they won't vote?  Or like Ohio, do they plan on launching state sponsored voter suppression?

It's worth remembering that Walker compared his war on unions and people to Reagan's war on the old USSR. What does that me his desired outcome is, exactly? The 19th century, it would seem.

Fire

One hundred years ago the Triangle Fire. Whatever it is, I am against it continues the series of reading the NYT from one hundred years ago and offers a round up of the original reporting and a link to the original reporting on the strike.

Here in Wisconsin: Small Town Radicals

Walker went to some little burg upstate for a fund raiser, perhaps under the mistaken impression that only big city elites find his policies and practices repugnant. Over 2,000 people showed up to protest against his anti-human policies and anti-democratic practices. It really does seem as if Walker and Co have made a variety of strategic and tactical errors.

Unionish Organizations

Some years ago, Joel Rodgers and Richard Freedman argued that Unions could expand their membership by accepting "non-majority" unions, that is workers interested in creating a union shop who lack the 50%+1 necessary for certification. It really does seem like a good idea and certainly better than created a workers' rights and interests version of the NRA.

Ring Tones

Macy Halford over to The New Yorker's book bench mentions that there is a free translation of a Russian novel that recasts The Lord of the Rings novels.  I've read the books more than once and seen the movies, which are truly awful because their fidelity to the books exposes the impossibility of much if not all of the action, so I thought why not read The Last Ring Bearer?

It's a nice little book and the translator writes well and spins a nice story; I have no idea how much the same holds for the original Russian and to what extent the English-language version resembles its source material. One of the more interesting aspects of the LRB is recasting the conflict between east and west, leaving aside the now malevolent Elves, Gandalf, and Aragon, was the conflict between the pastoral and the mechanical on the question of progress. Mordor and its allies are, more or less, agents of industrialization, innovation, and enlightenment while the West, under the domination of the Elves, offers a cycle of stagnation and blissful ignorance. The novel is meant as a polemic against what its author sees as the agrarian authoritarianism, if not fascism, of Tolkien's master narrative.

The other aspect of this text as opposed to TLR is that its a spy story in which the tawdry and compromised world of Le Carre replaces Tolkien's gaudy two-toned world in which heroic heroism forthrightly battles the evil empire. It is, in other words, subtler and considerable funnier that TLR.

And the best sign from yesterday? Walker Take a Lesson From Palin: Quit

Mr. State Trooper

Walker is, I think, in increasing amounts of hot water; he should, right now, be glad the Democratic senators fled the state. Why?, you ask. This statement from the Executive Board President of the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Association in which, among other things, she

SPECIFICALLY REGRET[S] THE ENDORSEMENT OF THE WISCONSIN TROOPER’S ASSOCIATION FOR GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER. I REGRET THE GOVERNOR’S DECISION TO “ENDORSE” THE TROOPERS AND INSPECTORS OF THE WISCONSIN STATE PATROL. I REGRET BEING THE RECIPIENT OF ANY OF THE PERCIEVED BENEFITS PROVIDED BY THE GOVERNOR’S ANNOINTING. (all caps in original)

If all the unions understand that this event is one more of the countless assaults on labor and stick together, Walker will have to back down, won't he?

God and Unions: Let No Man Set Asunder

God, it seems, is objectively pro-Socialism, if you believe Catholic Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who, following Popes Benedict and John Paul

 issued a statement calling for Wisconsin legislators to abide by a "moral obligation" to fully consider the "legitimate rights" of public employees

It's Not All About the Benjamins

Paul Ryan, and nearly everyone else, is under a misapprehension or is being willfully ignorant of the causes of the current union activism here in Wisconsin. The anger isn't because Walker wants to reduce workers income, it's because he has decided to destroy workers' ability to negotiated, organize, and generally engage in collective action to improve their economic, political, and social lives.

What's interesting is that "sane" conservatives, like the Wisconsin State Journal, are now realizing that Walker isn't what they expected. It 's not just that he has decided to deal with the unions unreasonably but also his tendency toward cronyism which they find worrying.  I would like to point out, however, that the WSJ is reaping exactly what they sowed.The current crop of Reagan epigones are only fulfilling the the Gipper's vision of an American morning. It's just that Reagan vision included the recreation of the 19th century.

Two Points

David Brooks makes some up a bunch of people and concludes that the reason there is so little economic growth, which isn't true, is that

[d]uring these years, commencement speakers have urged students to seek meaning and not money. Many people, it turns out, were listening.

That's right the millions un- and underemployed are seeking millions while the fewer and richer whose riches are derived from greater productivity, which is another way of saying fewer workers working harder abetted by robots, are the result of a post-materialist society not an insane system of wealth distribution.

What's the solution? It ain't fairy tales about low hanging fruit, that's for sure.



video via

Solidarity

Although the police union continues to think its members are special, the Madison Firefighters' Union is supporting the resistance to Walker's union busting, yeah them.

Here in Wisconsin

The other day, Dana Goldstein made the argument that the current Conservative/Progressive alliance on school reform will collapse in a couple of years once it becomes clear to Progressives that Conservative really only want to destroy teaching unions. Over the course of the last few days, Walker has shown exactly how Conservatives intend on treating all unions, anyone who has been paying attention to the Neoliberal war on workers, unions, and the environment, sold as a dedication to the free market, already understood what was going on.  The "left" wing of the Neoliberal movement thought, it seems to me, that it was being serious and all grown-up when it joined the chorus of the right wing of the Neoliberal movement when they agreed that the "crisis" in education required the destruction or, at least, the diminution of unions' political strength. What they were in fact doing was creating an  intellectual justification for Walker's nonsense.  So thanks for that.

Here in Wisconsin

Last week Gov. Walker declared war on public unions except for police and fire. One hoped that the fire and police unions would recognize that they would be next and, consequently, they would condemn Walker's decision. Instead, these unions seem to think that they are truly special. I suggest that they look at the history of police and fire unions and recognize that they are more likely than not next.