House votes to defund Planned Parenthood: February 18, 2011

House votes to defund Planned Parenthood:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49830.html

…Sound off by commenting.

On Scott Walker

Wisconsin gov-elect Scott Walker is attempting to revoke the union bargaining rights of WI state workers, sending state employees to the streets in protest. Walker has threatened to call out the national guard to quell any “disruptions” caused by protests stemming from his plan of action. Glenn Beck, as fair, accurate and non-fear-mongering as always, warns that the protests are the beginning of an insurrection just like the Egyptian fiasco of late. What’s more, the governors and state legislators in many other states have advanced similar proposals designed to revoke or restrict union rights, eliminate salary schedules, and cut compensation to state employees.

Walker, and the other lawmakers perusing this course of action, are claiming the union-power-stripping is necessary to balance their broken state budgets.

Ironically, or perhaps not-so-ironically, WI’s budget was not all that broken. WI’s budget had a projected surplus until Walker pushed a $140 million series of spending and tax-cut measures in January. Now Walker claims WI is currently $137 million in the red, although the WI state fiscal bureau disputes this claim.

What does stripping unions of bargaining power do to help the state budget?

Nothing, at least for a while. Walker’s plan would prevent state employees from bargaining everything except their wages, but their wages would also be capped to follow the Consumer Price Index. This is akin to that prodigal “permanent solution to a temporary problem.” Rather than treat the depression, they intend to kill the entity. Rather than devise a narrowly-tailored plan to balance the WI budget during this transitory time of The Great Recession, they want to take away worker’s bargaining power indefinitely. Like I said, sure seems like a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and a “temporary problem” that might not even be a real problem at all, as claimed by WI’s state fiscal bureau (you know, the “real” accountant-types who know the math and calculate the numbers with regard to the state’s finances).

Walker’s supporters on “main street” are people angry because the state worker’s benefits are better than their own, but rather than organizing together to bargain and fight to increase their own benefits, they are joining to strip the state workers of theirs. It reminds me of a person drowning in a public pool; in a panic the faltering swimmer grabs a hold of the nearest buoyant person to him, taking them both down rather than helping anything. And this is frightening because Walker’s plan is spreading to other governors who wish to repeat it, sending so many swimmers in that public pool to panic and take down those around them, drowning the public.

Furthermore, Walker’s plan seems, at its heart, to clash with the very ideals he stands to represent. Walker, as a “wet republican” (that is, a tea-party backed republican), purports to adhere to the US Constitution. But a very central tenant to that sacred document is that right of the people to peaceably assemble, free from government intrusion into that assembly. His current actions cut against that grain in two significant ways: first, he is threatening to bring in the national guard to quash the collection of protesters, and second, his union-stripping plan would effectively be a government estoppel of state-workers’ rights to assemble and petition the government. So why is Walker pursuing this course of action? If it’s not really going to balance the budget, and if it goes against his party’s and backers’ constitutional ideals?

One possible explanation—and perhaps the probable explanation: Wet Walker is being loyal not to the people of the state whom he is supposed to represent, but rather to his financial backers. Walker took a huge contribution from a political action committee headed by the Koch brothers, who are big-business corporate fat cats with a huge oil and gas empire based in America’s heartland. And that $140 million series of spending and tax-cut measures Walker pushed through, which created the so-called $137 million budget shortfall that Walker, but not the State’s accountants, say is the reason that the unions must be busted? That $140 million went largely to give tax cuts to rich corporations like the Koch’s. Hmmmm… conflict of interest much?

So, here are the facts: Walker CREATED the appearance of a budget shortfall, which might not even exist, at least to the extent he claims, by giving the state’s accounts-receivables back to rich corporations. Now he intends to refill the state’s coffers by forcing state employees to pay more of their paychecks into the state’s bank account.

The plot is too reminiscent of another one: Once upon a time, in the 1700s, there was a huge corporation whose product was in great demand. The money generated by that product went in part to financially back governors. But the financial well-being of that company was threatened by economic and other market forces. And so, in 1773 the government passed an act that gave the monetary difference back to that company while charging the people it was supposed to represent the difference. The government would rather force its people to pay the difference than risk angering the very company that enabled the governors’ financial contributions. That 1773 act was the Tea Act, and it led to the Boston Tea Party. Now there’s some irony for ya’.