Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage
Wisconsin Recap: Thanks to Obama, American Left Lies in Smoldering Wreckage
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/wisconsin-recap-thanks-to-obama-american-left-lies-in-smoldering-wreckage.html#comment-729935
On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal activists. The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were ugly, in favor of the Republican. But this wasn’t just any Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue state. Walker waged a direct and very public attack on the major constituencies of the Democratic Party, rolling back rights for women, the working class, and the young with measures such as ending collective bargaining for state employees, privatizing state assets, and repealing Wisconson’s equal pay provisions for women. His agenda provoked a fierce reaction – – Wisconsin citizens occupied the Statehouse for months - and then a recall.
Yesterday, Walker’s agenda was ratified by the voters of Wisconsin, the state where public sector unions were born. It’s hard to overstate how bad this is – Wisconsin is now on the road to becoming a right-to-work state, in what is likely to become a right-to-work country. Right-to-work laws are provisions that allow individual employees to withdraw from unions, and they make it much harder for unions to organize.
And the deeper you look into the race, the worse it looks. By calling for a recall instead of a general strike after Walker stripped collective bargaining rights and cut benefits for workers, labor and Democratic leadership in the state diverted and then subverted populist energy, channeling it into an electoral process (at least one union, one very active in the occupation of the Capitol, stood apart from the electoral stupidity). Then, Barrett, an anti-labor centrist, won the Democratic primary by crushing his labor-backed opponent, Kathleen Falk. Finally, Barrett himself was destroyed by Scott Walker, who outspent Barrett 7-1 with corporate money. In other words, first, liberals lost a policy battle, then they failed to strike, then they lost a primary election, then they lost a general election to the most high-profile effective reactionary policy-maker in the country. The conservative beat the moderate who beat the liberal. And had Barrett won, he wouldn’t even have rolled back Walker’s agenda. Somehow, in a no-win electoral situation, Democrats and labor managed to lose as badly as they possibly could.
What happened?
(more at link)
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I find it a bit ironic that this article calls for a general strike and support from Obama when most of the posts I read by Stoller are divisive and highly critical of the administration, but whatever. Maybe it's just another chance to tell readers how there's no difference between the parties. (This working mother thinks otherwise, but Stoller is a white guy so surely things look different from his perspective.)
But Unions are under attack and over the years I've watched the union pass up many calls for strikes in favor of more bargaining. And every time that bargaining leads to compromises that leave workers with less and corporations with more. There have been calls on this site for a general strike in the past, but they are always reasoned away. What do workers have left? How much worse do things have to be before that would ever be considered?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Believe me his articles are par for the course on nakedcapitalism.com and other supposedly (once) left leaning sites. It does democrats no good to eat their own which is why I'm very unpopular on such sites. 
Sorry I know the article is inflammatory. But I thought the mention of a general strike was interesting. The recall did seem to diffuse things and as a floundering union member I was wondering how bad things have to get before workers in the US would actually consider that as an option. But now the thread is all about how Stoller is known for anti administration rants. 
(I agree with that!)
Good thing I'm not in charge of democratic party messaging huh?
Gotta get my FIL to join the rest of us in CA. 
of destroying home equity really takes the cake for over-the-top false attacks.
If Obama 'destroyed' home equity, then what did Greenspan's monetary policies do, 'create' it?
Jeesh. (Directed at a blatant lie buried in Stoller's piece, not at you
clarification.
Thanks to Obama, American Left Has Been Forcibly Sodomized and Given an Incurable STD While He Laughs Maniacally and Urinates on their Ravaged Flesh.
I'm better at hyperbole than Stoller. 
But yeah, that was an over the top title.
Don't give Stoller any ideas!
Basically it's a story about people who have suddenly discovered that what they had is gone, and what they go through in the aftermath. Some do well, some never break free.
It's told from the perspective of mice who suddenly lose the big block of cheese they had, but the characters are universal.
I can't help thinking that some people are trying to save what they had instead of looking to the future.
What they had may well be gone, and maybe they need to figure out a new direction. That can be hard, terribly hard, and harder to think that perhaps it (job, career, whatever) wasn't as good as it seemed anyway. But maybe not as hard, or sad, as spending the rest of their life trying to reclaim what is gone.
We have lost millions of factory jobs, likely not coming back because of the world we live in. But there are a million opportunities in working toward the future (as soon as enough realizes it has ALWAYS taken the government AND the people to create real opportunity on the scale we need).
so, organizing, educating, doing...
and here is a link which I hoped would tell someone about an effort to promote cooperatives where the employees own the assets. Have their own corporation, let the phone answering machine talk to the greedy bastards. Not easy, but might be better for the human spirit.
Glad to be able to tell someone about SMW, though. Very smart people, put it out every market day, an effort which another poster praised "Our own Economy Group has the BEST images". If the economy is circling the drain, you will hear it there, and why, first.
Seriously, good news is sometimes met with skepticism, perhaps because it often remains just news.
There is a lot of instructive history out there, and it will be applied in a lot of different ways. The United Steelworkers just signed an agreement to explore employee ownership through cooperatives with Mondragon, maybe work on opening some of the factories themselves. In that scenario the union they knew is gone, (well, for them) and they become owners/workers/managers, their union is with each other and other cooperatives. The enemy becomes the competition outside the cooperative. That you own.
Maybe that's a good evolution for some part of the union.
a hard right agenda, in a blue state. Walker waged a direct and very public attack on the major constituencies of the Democratic Party, rolling back rights for women, the working class, and the young with measures such as ending collective bargaining for state employees, privatizing state assets, and repealing Wisconson’s equal pay provisions for women. His agenda provoked a fierce reaction – – Wisconsin citizens occupied the Statehouse for months - and then a recall.
...
Up and down the ticket, Democrats are operating under the shadow of the President, associated with unpopular policies that make the lives of voters worse and show government to be an incompetent, corrupt handmaiden to big business. So they keep losing."
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That's what the article is about - why isn't anyone talking about that evil that is Scott Walker?
Look around - why are more people joining those in poverty, while investment bankers, venture capitalists, and junk bond traders like Mi$$ Rmoney are parading their wealth around in our faces? When I look for cause I tend to follow the money, and it's easy to see who has it.
That is happening under our current policies. One can make all the excuses they want, but where was the real fight to get something better or die trying?
Because there are people who are no longer with us today who died as a result of fraud or cuts, simply so the people with the money could profit. It has been going on for several years now, and yet we haven't stopped it? If Democrats don't, who will? And if they won't , who needs 'em?
Why must people complain about someone who just wants the Democrats to win, or at least our common enemy to lose, or, failing that, to stop acting as serfs to the monied class? Scott Walker is hurting people today. Still. And with all the work Democrats did he won bigger this time than he did last time. And people turned out, by golly.
The rich guy's money can only buy so many people, however. A persuasive message that motivates people's spirit could overcome that. I believe (sorry, into Oz mode for a moment) that if we could hold a persuasive message or real opportunity together as Democrats we could make those people so mad they would throw their 42" digital monitor at the next one of these little Republican turds that dared show their face.
Then how would the Koch's spend their kabillion dollars?
But maybe they are getting help. From us. 
"...he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own?
How does he have any power over you except through you?"
de La Boetie, about 1552
Imho, Democrats, and the country and our neighbors, win when they fight for real opportunity for everyone. The Republicans have a plan, the systematic destruction of the lives that depend on programs the Democrats put in place.
Our plan? To Not Let That Happen!
uh huh.
How about a plan to employ 25 million people for two years, open multiple vo-techs for modern skills, math, metallurgy and philosophy in every state, teach business models, including cooperative business, we cover the tuition because you will likely start a business and pay taxes. At a higher rate than Mi$$ Rmoney, I bet. Maybe update some stuff, tell the congressional thugs trying to block innovation to take a hike and put their pictures on bulletin boards across the U.S. as people standing in between "you and a job"? Talk investment, not debt. Debt can be addressed with the right investment. Assuming we do that.
Anyway...
Our enemies and their destruction are my favorite topic today
Think Scott Walker is going to jail?
