Monday, March 9, 2015

Scott Walker Boldly Caves In To Extortion

By now, the gentle reader is probably aware that the Teapublicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature have all hopped in the corporate clown car and passed Right To Work Woe legislation despite people coming out 70:1 against it. And that doesn't include the more than 400 companies that formed a coalition in an effort to stop it.

Scott Walker was originally for it and introduced a similar bill when he was a legislator. Then, while running for reelection, called it "a distraction" and said it would never get to his desk because he didn't want it. Now, he is all for it again and is planning to sign it on Monday, with all the grandstanding and showboating he can muster.

In fact, Walker has decided that he is going to sign the bill into law at the company of one of his biggest supporters, Badger Meter.

To show what a disgusting, vile, little man the owner of Badger Meter, Rich Meeusen, is, one does not have to go any further than his comments on Right to Woe:
"For the last 10 years, I have systematically reduced employment in Milwaukee, from 350 union workers 10 years ago to 120 today," Meeusen said. "If Wisconsin didn't go right-to-work ... and our contract is up November of 2016 ... we have plans we could be down to zero by then."

Indeed, Badger Meter has a history of shipping good paying jobs to Mexico. Even worse, Meeusen extorted Right to Woe laws by threatening to ship more jobs there if he didn't get to screw over his workers here.

It's not like the company really needed it. The company has gross profits of nearly $31 million. Meeusen personally raked in $1.3 million in 2013.

While the legislature was busy rushing this piece of malfeasance through at breakneck speed, Walker has been traveling the country that he needs to be tough on Wisconsin workers and their unions to send a message to ISIS terrorists.

But just what is that message that he is sending them? That if he were president ISIS threatened to attack the United States, he would attack his own people first? That he would destroy the United States in order to save it? Or that he would have to get back to them after he finds out what his campaign donors want him to do?

With Walker, as the entire world is beginning to see, it's all about freedumb and demockracy.

Cross posted at Crooks and Liars.

13 comments:

  1. This is all true. But what we need to do now is publicize that all the cuts in Walker's budget that will impact every citizen in Wisconsin are all due to his tax cuts and nothing else. We have to make sure that the people know that Walker caused these cuts either by ignorance or purposely. His tax cuts led to reduced revenues which led to fiscal shortages which led to budget cuts in public services and then he repeats the same process resulting in more cuts in government [ public services]! Wisconsinites must be made aware that these severe budget cuts are al the responsibility of one Scott Walker who is destroying Wisconsin one budget at a time.

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    1. "Starve the beast."

      All of Walkers budgeting f---ups are intentional. Always promise a glorious success if the unrealistic economic growth projections and bad accounting looks good on paper.

      Failure IS the desired outcome. This is how they can justify further cuts in spending on programs to help the poor, public education...

      Walker needs the citizens in Wisconsin to be desperate. He needs to cut unemployment benefits, food stamps and any programs that aid people in need. Walker needs these people to be desperate enough to take the sh-t jobs that his supporters are wanting to offer. Not willing to offer but wanting to offer. They may be willing to offer good wages but they want to offer sh-t wages so they can keep profits high and CEO pay high. That won't happen if people can manage to get by with unemployment benefits and food stamps.

      Look at Walkers record for proof. The problems that he had to deal with as Milw. Cnty. Exec. were largely created by his budgets. No real crisis existed until he created it.

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  2. So you are saying that Walker bowed to those few companies who said they were leaving Wisconsin or cutting their work forces without a RTW law. Those companies are not worth keeping in Wisconsin. He would have been much further ahead listening to the 400+ companies and the 70:1 who did not want the law. But, that is not the Tea Party or Right Wing M.O. and he has to please those few people regardless of what the majority wants. When did our country decide to let a few bullies run it rather than the majority.

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  3. Just betcha Badger Meter ships more jobs to Mexico anyhow. Walker doesn't understand that you don't build the state's economy by demonizing labor. When you take pride in an educated and skillful work force, businesses will be attracted to your state, grow, and expand their payrolls. Everything Walker does is counter productive.

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  4. Thanks capper.

    Another elite issue is a "balanced" federal budget which hammers the 99% in two ways. What has to “balance” are the three economic sectors, private (domestic), public, and foreign.

    “Beware Of Politicians Bearing Household Analogies http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevekeen/2015/01/14/beware-of-politicians-bearing-household-analogies-3/

    Japan can run huge federal deficits, because of their massive trade surplus. Our huge trade deficit (along with the rampaging fiscal illiteracy in both parties) makes it more difficult to extend the federal deficit, invest in infrastructure, health care, and education (not Wall Street/quantitative easing, other stuff that doesn't "trickle down"). Unions should lead in pointing this out.

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    2. I agree, but the unions HAVE been pointing out a number of things, and nobody can hear them above the hoofbeats of the Repubican Gish Gallop. Union workers, after all, are the reason the state is facing a 2.2 billion dollar shortfall in the next 2 years. [/snark]

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    3. Dice, agree. Oligarchs control the media. Couple years ago, AFL-CIO could have bought Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and all their radio and TV stations for a song. It's more expensive now. OT, this 98-second video of Reagan praising collective bargaining is a way to make every Republican who voted for right-to-freeload to run against Reagan/Dems and unions.

      "These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland, the values that have inspired other dissidents under communist domination, who have been willing to go into the gulag and suffer the torture of imprisonment, because of their dissidence. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost... They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here, or it will not be passed on to our children and it will disappear everywhere in the world. Today, the workers in Poland are showing a new generation how high is the price of freedom, but also how much, it is worth that price. I want more than anything I've ever wanted, to have an administration that will through its actions, at home and in the international arena, let millions of people know, that Miss Liberty, still lifts her lamp beside the golden door."

      http://bloggingblue.com/2015/03/ronald-reagan-collective-bargaining-freedom-video/#comment-146867


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  5. This is what election losses look like. Own it.

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    1. "This is what rape is like. It's worse if you struggle. Lie back and take it."

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  6. Notice that pile of thirty or so pens on the table by Governor Walker's left hand? That's what this so-called Right to Work bill is about. Some will be given to his henchmen for ramming this through, some will be given to his biggest manufacturing-sector donors in return for past and future payments, and I expect a few will go on the national campaign auction block to attract anti-union zealots with a few hundred thousand to spare for the Governor's political "charity".

    You can bet that not one will go to an actual worker in an actual union shop, or seeking a job in one, who will actually benefit from this "Freedom to Work" (as the GOPpers kept on insisting it is) bill, because such a person does not exist in WI. No one but the Governor's big money backers (or potential backers -- must not forget them!) ever wanted this, and now they'll have a pen to wave around to show they got it, and that this Governor delivers what big money wants, for a price.

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  7. Replies
    1. Envy? Hardly. Plenty of pens for all the little piggies to mount and display like trophies from a canned hunt. Does it matter to them that they are tanking the WI economy, and peoples' lives in the process? Not one whit. Our government has been bought by a backslapping crew of bloated, useless jerks, desperate for the trappings of power and acclaim, envious of the people who get real things done by their own sweat and skill. Any time you wonder why Wisconsin is in decline take another look at that picture.

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