Sunday, February 20, 2011
Exposing:The Wisconsin protests are smoking out various pundits. Earlier, it was Joe Klein who completely ignored the union-eliminating elements of Gov. Walker's proposal. Today, it's Charles Lane of the Washington Post, writing in a similar vein, and saluting Joe: One certified progressive, Joe Klein, has had the courage to make the case against the unions' attempted short-circuiting of democracy, and for Walker's legislation. Klein brilliantly and succinctly describes the conflict between liberal goals such as quality education and apolitical governance on the one hand, and public-sector unionism as currently practiced on the other. Joe Klein, "certified progressive". The problem with Lane's essay is that he's complaining about the incivility of the protests, and while there is the rare Hitler poster, considering the issue and the number of protesters involved, it's been very civil. Lane wants to be outraged, so he looks for small things to justify his belief. Then there's this slander: ... the White House political operation bused in more demonstrators to join those waving Walker = Hitler placards. Yes, to join the dozen or so placards in a crowd of 60,000. And ends with this: (emp add) If the brave Gabrielle Giffords could speak normally, what would she say about these [protests in Wisconsin]? I hope she would agree with me: This is a sad moment for liberalism, for the Democratic Party, and, really, for the whole country. Bringing in Gabrielle Giffords is rank propaganda. Lane's connects Giffords to the Wisconsin protests in the following way: (1) There was a debate about how violent imagery and language leads to events like the Giffords' shooting. (2) The Wisconsin protests are engaging in violent imagery and language. Assertion (2) is false. Charles Lane has no justification for bringing in Giffords other than to attack his enemies. NOTE: Earlier posts stated that Wisconsin had a budget surplus starting out this year and that Walker created the budget shortfall with his spending/tax cuts in January. That is not correct. The Wisconsin budget was not initially as good, but the tax breaks did not help and the unions had worked with the previous Democratic governor on a salary/benefits concession - rejected by Republicans last year. There is a budget problem, but Walker is less interested in tacking that 2 to 3 year problem, and more interested in killing the unions.
posted by Quiddity at 2/20/2011 07:24:00 AM
9 comments
It's all peaceful.
Yep, not like Yemen or Greece last year, the latter comparison courtesy of Ms. Bachmann.typoni
Give them time, DA. They strikers still think they are so powerful that they can't lose. You can tell by the open fraud -- tables where you can get a phony sick note signed by a doctor. What that says to me is that the strikers think that this is all for show. They just have to stay there and strike until the Republicans lose their nerve and back down, then go back to work with no consequences. Just like every other time. How could this time be any different?
I think this time is different, and when the strikers start to realize that, then we'll find out if this stays nonviolent or takes a different turn.
JMS_ The difference is this time state union workers understand that losing means losing their job security, their retirements and for more than a few, their homes.
Scott Walker is selling that GOP pile of manure, tax cuts and calling it roses. You can't cut revenue and then declare that your budget deficit is a crisis worthy of breaking your contracts. This is Scott Walker playing Hosni Mubarek. I will relish the fail.
Well, I guess that technically this doesn't count, because He's not from Wisconsin but if there's any union violence ...
Oh hell, what are the odds of union members committing violent crime? Good thing Democrats don't incite violence like those evil Republicans with their subliminal messages. Capuano may be many things, but he isn't subliminal.
Pangolin -- The public sector unions are behaving exactly the same right now as they have each and every time anyone has even suggested slowing down their gravy train. The difference is that this time no one is scared of them. The assembly just passed the bill. It just got sent to the Senate. When the Democratic Senators return to the capitol the unions are finished. Now there are recall petitions being circulated for all but one of them. The longer they stay away the further the petitions will advance. If they stay away long enough there will be very, very few Democrats left in the Wisconsin Senate. The public is NOT on the side of the unions, and the fact that liberals don't understand this is simply icing on the cake. The Republicans get it, and are taking the opportunity to pass all the non-fiscal legislation they want without even any objection! First off, the Voter ID act. Who could object to that? No one did!!!
I have to give Barack Obama credit. He's doing more damage to the Democratic party than I ever thought possible. Since the election, the tea party movement has been listless, looking and waiting for some idea of what to do next. Thanks to Obama injecting himself and his OFA organization into Wisconsin politics, the national Tea Party movement now has been galvanized into a new mission:
Smash the public sector unions.
I don't think that this would have ever come to pass if Obama hadn't opened his big, dumb mouth.
I stand by my assertation that if Barack Obama is ever impeached, it will be by Democrats, not Republicans.
jms_What's it like being a corporate meatpuppet? You dumb fucks will never understand what's going to happen to you in the next twenty years.
Conservative ideology is anti-life, anti-health and anti-people. You are the party of death, disease, greed and pollution. As younger people start to pay the price for the damage you've done to the planet they will remember who was apologizing for the pollution: conservatves.
You have it backwards. In reality, environmentalism is the ultimate consumer luxury good. Starving people don't care about farm animal rights, or whether their food is genetically engineered, or preserving the forests, or reducing factory emissions. People who are cold and hungry and overworked just want to be warm and fed and get some rest. They will gladly clearcut forests to grow food, even if the land only lasts one season. They will burn oil or coal, and if they can't get those, they will cut down and burn the forests. It's when people are well fed, have everything they want, and the wolf is very, very far from their door that they turn their attention and left over money to spending more for free range meat, or fair-trade coffee, or organic vegetables, or solar panels, or a new hybrid car.
I don't know where you get the idea that conservatives are "anti-life." You certainly aren't talking about abortion, so I assume you are talking about medical research. It's liberals who want to use government to drive new (also known as expensive) drugs out of the marketplace. It's liberals who want to tax and drain money out of the medical industry, which will shut down research. It's conservatives that want the medical industry to be wealthy and successful so they can keep inventing and producing miracle drugs and surgeries, and they understand that miracle drugs and surgeries only become affordable when they can be produced profitably in volume and become ubiquitous, which means that in a free market they start out as boutique items, expensive and rare, then become more and more inexpensive. The best example is vision correction surgery, one of the least regulated branches of medicine. In the absence of crushing regulation, the price has gone down, options have gone up and the industry is continually improving, in spite, or perhaps because virtually no health insurance plans cover the surgery.
Young people are paying the price for liberalism right now. The price is unemployment, possibly lifetime unemployment or underemployment. Nobody, but nobody thinks to themselves, "Well, I can't find a job, and I can't afford anything, and according to the government I may not find a job for the next 10 years, and the house is cold because I can't pay for expensive "green" energy, but at least the dirty energy industry has been shut down.
But I'll bet that Pangolin doesn't see that because it's other people who are paying the price. Are you unemployed? Are you hungry? Are you cold? I don't think you have your head screwed on straight when it comes to what young people are going to yearn for and want as the Obama depression deepens, the government shuts down the energy industry and reduces food production in favor of ethanol farming, and starvation and freezing begin to take their toll on young Americans.
This fool jms blames every problem in the world on liberals. He ignores conservative defense of pollution and attempts to restrict or eliminate access to birth control. It's the usual hash of lies and half-truths.
Without regulation we'd still have lead in gasoline and coal plants would still be spewing sulfur dioxide without restrictions. Cars would have no catalytic converters that restrict smog. Every city in the world would look like Beijing where the pollution is off the scale.
Conservative philosophy starts and stops with the word "MINE." They are forever three years old screaming because mommy won't let them....whatever. As you can tell by the behavior of the Wackenhut mercenaries in Afghanistan they are just barely, barely, toilet trained.
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