Egyptians Stand With Wisconsin Workers
by L. S. Carbonell
On February 10, 2011, millions of Egyptians waited all day and into the night for the announcement that Hosni Mubarak was going to resigned. It had been rumored all day. The protests that began on January 25 were going to bear fruit. What they heard instead was a speech by a delusional old man who patronized them, patted “his children” on the head and told them to go home.
On March 8, 2011, millions of Americans read the leaked e-mails that offered concessions to the Wisconsin public sector unions and the Democratic State Senators who fled the state to stall a vote on a bill that stripped the unions of their collective bargaining rights. Instead, on March 9, the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature broke the law – called a conference committee without notice and without the contested bill having passed both chambers, ignored the legal objections of the Minority Leader of the Assembly that the meeting was illegal and no one had read the bill they were slamming through, voted while those objections were being voiced and rushed into the Senate chamber to pass the unknown bill.
On February 11, 2011, the Egyptian military escorted Hosni Mubarak to the airport and put him on a plane to Sharm al Sheikh.
On March 10, will someone have the courage to finally arrest Scott Walker for accepting a bribe and co-ordinating with a donor? Will someone have the courage to arrest Scott Fitzgerald for breaking the law by calling that conference committee.
Republican pundits like David Frum and Pat Buchanan say that the ban on collective bargaining is about being able to give local governments flexibility in workplace assignments and rules. But no county administrator, no city mayor, no town council in Wisconsin has come out and publicly supported this measure. They didn’t have a clue what was in Walker’s budget, so they could not make decisions about what they needed to do. Now, they know. Walker’s budget bars them from raising taxes to compensate for his cuts. Walker’s budget cuts billions out of the state’s revenues with tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. Walker claims that without tax cuts, the rich would move their businesses out-of-state. The unions have made it very clear that they are willing to work with government to solve real budget problems.
The situations in Egypt and Wisconsin are virtually the same. The Egyptians wanted a place at the table. They wanted a voice in their own government. They wanted the right to make their own choices. The people of Wisconsin want a voice in their own government – over half of them disapprove of the union-busting provisions. The unions want to be partners in the decisions being made to solve Wisconsin’s budget problems. The unions want to retain their hard-fought-for rights. Where is the difference?
In Michigan, the Republicans are pushing through a bill that will give the governor the power to dissolve towns. All Gov. Rick Snyder has to do is declare that a town, city or county is in a state of “fiscal emergency” to appoint a person or company to take over the entity. That manager can then dissolve the local government, dissolve all contracts, dissolve the very charter that created the town, city or county. The managers could un-incorporate the entire state and put it directly under the control of Gov. Snyder.
In New Hampshire, there is a bill to strip students of their voting rights, a right guaranteed in 1979 by the United States Supreme Court.
There are anti-union bills in the pipeline in Ohio, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee, South Carolina (in spite of Gov. Nicki Haley bragging about how there are no unions in her government), Iowa, Kansas and amazingly, Massachusetts. In Indiana, Mitch Daniels has taken the anti-union bill off the agenda. None of these states are in the top ranks of state budget deficits. None of these bills have anything to do with budgets. The Republicans flatly refuse to admit that the recession means lost revenues and increased subsidies for the unemployed. They refuse to acknowledge that their big donors – those big companies and ultra-rich 1% of Americans who hold as much wealth as the bottom 50% of us – are responsible for their budget deficits. They have convinced a bunch of lame-brained blind followers that somehow a union caused the economic collapse.
There is a bill being pushed in the United States House of Representatives that would make all of America a “right to work” state. Those laws have nothing to do with people having a right to work. They say that one does not have to belong to a union to be hired for a job. They also remove any worker’s protections against harassment, unfair firing practices, lack of benefits, all those things that big corporations like Walmart practice. The lack of a union among Walmart employees, the lack of laws that limit how Walmart treats its employees have left hundreds of thousands of Walmart employees’ children receiving medical care at the public trough through Medicaid and S-CHIP.
Anyone who thinks this is a national issue, anyone who thinks the whole world isn’t watching, is an idiot. Google these laws, see for yourself the foreign newspapers that are carrying stories about our unions, about the laws that will restrict American voting rights. The Republican party is doing more damage to our image overseas than Bill Clinton’s blow jobs. Those were laughed about because they were so tame compared to so may of the sex scandals in other countries. Losing our voting rights is not being laughed about. How do we claim to be supporting liberty elsewhere when we are losing it here?
Enough. These laws may be violations of our constitutional rights. The actions that destroyed ACORN and the laws limiting voting rights to holders of drivers licenses and non-students certainly were illegal. It is past time to use the courts to reassert our rights.
And this time, we must demand that Koch brothers’ associates Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas recuse themselves from any hearings.
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