Workers' Revolt in Wisconsin

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Actually, IIRC, the scores ARE like golf scores. Being 1st means you are at the top. Being 30th is pretty bad. Since China has touted their exceptional ratings in the news lately, I suppose I am correct in my understanding.

But, you make a good point....I know places (countries) that have teacher's unions. They also pay a lot more than we do for teachers, mandate they have masters and doctorate degrees, but you will also find they do not operate under politicized educational plans handed down by big government....they also have a country of limited population and strict immigration rules so they don't have classrooms packed with kids because they can't build schools fast enough to deal with the influx.

The International

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

Refrain:
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.






Arise ye Proles of the world. Shamble to the Square dragging your knuckles as ye go and protest!

I have news for you all. The Workers of the World are revolting. Very revolting.

ruveyn

I just saw a clip from O'Reilly's show on FOX News, my Wisconsin friends are beside themselves. The clip talks about professional 'liberals' being bussed in to create the protest, talks about violence and nastiness--all the while showing people on the edge of bad behavior--shouting, approaching physicality. My local friends are livid at these lies and point out that the folks in these clips are walking around coatless, under trees with leaves (a few of which look to be palm trees) while Madison is under at least a foot of snow. Careful what you believe, my friends.

I'd like to see those clips. Being in Wisconsin, while not Madison, I can personally verify the violent rhetoric that has been used about Scott Walker. People have been losing their minds. Even the elected officials have been talking like that, it's an embarrassment. It's really funny considering we're not even two months since the tragedy in Tuscon and supposed "new tone".

They were posted through a friend of a friend's Facebook, and were just a video of the tv (not recorded off the TV, but a recording of the TV playing). I'm working on a way to share the clip (or find it on youtube), it stirred up quite a heated response among my friends--and rightly so.

Okay, here it is, Bill O'Reilly's talking points, and at about 1:12 he clips to supposed coverage of Madison, WI...please note that trees in the background have leaves, people are without heavy coats and if you look very closely, you'll see PALM trees in the background. Madison is currently in about a foot of snow, according to my friends, and the heated exchanges seen are NOT taking place in Madison.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWmJ1bwvmfo[/youtube]

Yea, that doesn't look like Wisconsin in some of those shots(wish it did tho, cold and snow sucks) but he does preface it "all over the country" so I assume those are just protests taking place elsewhere.

And the lead in is about Walker and the lead out is a statement by Obama about Wisconsin. This is deceptive. What protests, where? This was set up to look like Wisconsin, to say that this is the tone in Madison, when it is not. Many of the viewers will not even hear "all over the country". This is media distortion to make the protesters in Madison look unreasonable and violent, when according my 'first-hand' reporters the demonstrations have been very peaceable, filled with civic and community pride. The folks in the rotunda may not reflect the philosophy of Governor Walker or Bill O'Reilly, but they are respecting the laws while they voice what the feel is their civic duty. This does not make them thugs (or 'slobs' as one Republican State Senator told the press today). This broadcast was an active attempt to discredit them for gathering and expressing their patriotic duty.

Well I think the rhetoric has went too far with the protesters but yes, for the most part they've been relatively well behaved. I have more of a problem with the complete unprofessionalism of the state democrats.

Thought this article in Investors Business Daily was pretty good in explaining why unions are growing smaller in size in the US.

How Big Labor Became Little

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... Little.htm

From the article:

When Reagan announced that his administration would not enforce labour laws and then this was done, that destroyed the union movement. Workplace deaths and accidents skyrocketed during his eight years in office, by the way.

Of course the unions were weakened considerably by the anti-communist witch hunts as communists were the most effective union organisers.

Smokestack chasing has been discredited as Third World potentate economics and is by the way a beggar-thy-neighbour policy and yet this Walker clown is treated seriously when he proposes it. Of course there's a lot in common between smokestack chasing and voodoo economics which is still being taken seriously also despite its utter failure to deliver anything but a swindle for 90% of society.

The American Labor Stagnant was technologically reactionary in its operation. The Labor Unions initially took a Luddite stand against improved technology. The Unions were trying to get industry to build roads using teaspoons rather than the latest and greatest labor saving machinery.

ruveyn

I wonder how Inuyasha will answer at that one.

I really don't get how the Koch family figures into this one; the link seems tenuous at best, like the product of a certain chalkboard. The "evidence" seems to consist of a provision in a bill allowing the state to sell of power plants without a bidding process, and that (gasp!) Koch Industries happens to own power plants... Irrefutable! However, from what I understand the power plants in question are out of compliance with new environmental regulations and would be prohibitively expensive to retrofit, hence why the state want's to sell them cheap. Is the idea of out of state billionaires influencing an election in order to buy worthless power plants on the cheap really the simplest or most likely explanation? Or does it just make for a better political narrative if there are shadowy tycoons pulling the strings from off the stage?

Even if all that were true, how is that any different or worse than public sector unions influencing the elections of the very people with whom they'll later be negotiating their pay and working conditions with? It's the exact same scenario that leads to inflated executive compensation in the corporate world, but it's the taxpayers rather than the shareholders who are getting the screwing, and blind partisanship that prevents people from seeing it for what it is.

Dox, it is pretty well established that the Kochs are involved here. They bankrolled Walker's campaign, and he took a 20-minute call from someone he thought was one of the Koch brothers.