Labor Day In Corporate America

'Nuff said!

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What's In A Name?

'Nuff said!

Source

When Is A Corporate Person Not A Person?

From the very talented Stuart Carlson:

Corporate Democracy

Yup, that pretty much sums it up:

Throwaway Citizens

There is a report about Margaret Mary Vojtko, a woman who spent her life teaching as an adjunct at a Roman Catholic university, but never received the respect or the pay she deserved, even in her final years:

In the column, Mr. Kovalik, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh's
law school, writes that the university reduced Ms. Vojtko's course load to one class per semester last fall, decreasing her annual earnings to below $10,000. Ms. Vojtko, a cancer patient, could not afford electricity in her home, he wrote, which was "literally falling in on itself."

Last spring Ms. Vojtko learned that she was not being rehired for this fall's semester, The Duquesne Duke, a student paper, reported earlier this month.

Ms. Vojtko suffered a heart attack in August after she heard from Adult Protective Services that the agency would turn her case over to Orphans' Court if she did not meet with a caseworker.

Mr. Kovalik says Ms. Vojtko asked him to intercede with the agency on her behalf. He describes his interaction with the caseworker:

"The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, 'She was a professor?' I said yes. The caseworker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help."

University officials deny that the situation was as described, but it has been verified by too many other independent sources to be denied with any credibility.

And this perilous situation is not confined to just the academe. Far from it.

Look at what is happening here in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin.

Many jobs, from custodial work to personal care workers are paid at poverty level wages which are insufficient to support a family. In Milwaukee, the only employer that paid these worker sustainable wages was Milwaukee County. But Scott Walker privatized the last of the janitorial jobs before becoming governor and Chris Abele wants to lay off all the personal care workers as he abandons his duties to our most vulnerable citizens.

And after the people spend their lives struggling to just live from hand to mouth and check to check, the GOP is trying to cut their Social Security, benefits which they have paid into for decades and which they have earned with their blood, sweat and tears.

In a final insult, Walker and his fellow corporate lackeys have now made it so that the corporate state can swoop in and seize anything they might have had left at the time of their death, whether or nor their spouse still needs it.

Our "leaders" like Scott Walker and Chris Abele have lost the ability to see people as human beings.  To them we are nothing more than expendable units that are to be profiteered off of and then discarded when no longer useful.

Sadly, until people wake up and start organizing, this will continue, but only because we are allowing it.

Workers Have To Pay To Get Paid

I'm not sure how this is even legal:

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators.

Devonte Yates, 21, who earns $7.25 an hour working a drive-through station at a McDonald’s in Milwaukee, says he spends $40 to $50 a month on fees associated with his JPMorgan Chase payroll card.

“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “There’s a fee for literally everything you do.”

Certain transactions with the Chase pay card are free, according to a fee schedule.

Many employees say they have no choice but to use the cards: some companies no longer offer common payroll options like ordinary checks or direct deposit.

At companies where there is a choice, it is often more in theory than in practice, according to interviews with employees, state regulators and consumer advocates. Employees say they are often automatically enrolled in the payroll card programs and confronted with a pile of paperwork if they want to opt out.

“We hear virtually every week from employees who never knew there were other options, and employers certainly don’t disabuse workers of that idea,” said Deyanira Del Rio, an associate director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

Wonderful.

So now corporations - our employers - are teaming up with the banks to gouge their own employees, making them pay to get the money they've already earned.

Tell me again how we don't need unions.

Branded

How much would it take for you to let your boss put the company brand on you?

Talk about company loyalty.

A New York-based real estate firm Rapid Realty has offered its 800 employees a 15% pay raise if they tattoo the company’s logo onto their bodies, and the offer is snowballing, according to CBS New York. So far, nearly 40 employees accepted the challenge, AOL Jobs reported.

There were apparently no size or location restrictions for the logo tattoos. For instance, Brooke Koropatnick told CBS New York that she got hers behind the ear.

Employees who agreed to get inked said getting a substantially larger paycheck was motivation enough to get a tattoo. In a video, Brooklyn-based broker Adam Altman said the ink would be a reminder to work harder. “I don’t see myself going anywhere, and if I have it on my arm, it’ll force me to keep going and working hard [sic],” Altman said.

Now, I don't have any tattoos and I've never even felt the desire to have one.

But if I did, I would be hard pressed to get one of the company logo put on. The company could lay you off, you could find a better job somewhere else, or the company could be bought out by another one.

It also strikes me to be too much like getting branded like a head of cattle. We work for our employers, we aren't owned by them.

But it could also pose to be an interesting problems for a lot of politicians.

Take Scott Walker for instance.  Would he have to become The Illustrated Man to have all of his corporate sponsors logos on him?   Or would he just have one tattoo, say across his forehead, to represent them all?

Another Thing About Fracking They Didn't Tell Us

Besides polluting the land and poisoning the water, frac sand mining gives the people one more thing to hate about it.

When the frackers skip town, the land owners are responsible for the bill for cleaning up the mess left behind.

Lovely. Just lovely.

Teapublicans Explained

If that's not Fitzwalkerstan, actually, all of Corporate America, I don't know what is.

Cory Versus The Bank

My good friend and fellow lefty blogger, Cory Liebmann, has hit upon tough times, like the majority of us. Worst yet, he is now being victimized by Bank of America and all of their unethical dealings. In part of his effort to fight back, he's taking it public:

I bought my first home in 2001 via a VA Loan. Over that time I've weathered a job slow down, a job loss, the bank induced Great Recession and so much more. Now after over a decade of being a good homeowner, I'm facing the very real prospect of being homeless.

This process is demeaning, frightening and deeply humiliating. Sharing it openly is the only way that I can try to cope with it.

I don't know if I will make it through but I am using this space to detail my own struggles to save my home from a Bank of America foreclosure. I hope it helps give policy makers, wonks and other advocates a real and unvarnished view.

We at Cog Dis wish Cory the best of luck and give 'em hell!

Christmas Greetings From Corporate America

Tis the season...

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Who are the real takers?

Swiped from Facebook:

Oh, Suzy Q! Don't Be A Ding Dong And Believe The Ho Hos!

As the gentle reader most likely knows by now, the executives of Hostess has decided that they sucked all the money they could out of the company and the workers and shut down all of their operations immediately.

Just like that, more than 18,000 were put out of work.

The failure of a CEO, Gregory F. Rayburn, immediately blamed the unions in his announcement of the shutdown.

The corporate media ran with it. Radio squawkers parroted this. The echo chamber mindlessly repeated it as gospel truth.

Of course it was easier for those without critical thinking skills to repeat the talking points that unions are bad instead of actually looking at the facts for themselves. That might lead to some inconvenient and uncomfortable truths.

Things like the unions were not the only problem, or even the primary one:

The company, founded in 1930, was fighting battles beyond labor costs. Competition is increasing in the snack space and Americans are increasingly conscious about healthy eating. Hostess also makes Dolly Madison, Drake’s and Nature’s Pride snacks.

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Of course, while union members were being told - not even asked, but told - to make even greater concessions than they already had made, the executives were completely blameless. Well, not really:

Over the past eight years since the first Hostess bankruptcy, BCTGM members have watched as money from previous concessions that was supposed to go towards capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment, was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants.

BCTGM members are well aware that as the company was preparing to file for bankruptcy earlier this year, the then CEO of Hostess was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000) and at least nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises. One such executive received a pay increase from $500,000 to $900,000 and another received one taking his salary from $375,000 to $656,256.

Over the past 15 months, Hostess workers have seen the company unilaterally end contractually-obligated payments to their pension plan. Despite saving more than $160 million with this action, the company continues to fall deeper and deeper into debt. A mountain of debt and gross mismanagement by a string of failed CEO's with no true experience in the wholesale baking business have left this company unable to compete or survive.

The clearest story of the real course of events comes from who else but a worker that lived through this nightmare roller coaster:

The company of course used it's 'oops' letter to justify asking for concessions from the Union. We gave nothing and gained nothing that year after a 45 minute strike. The status quo continued and I proudly joined the middle class for the first time in my life. I made $14 an hour and had insurance. I even went on vacations for the first time. I had great pride in my job, and the products. We bought a new car for the first and only time in my life. In 2003 I transferred to the Lenexa, KS bakery.

In 2005 it was another contract year and this time there was no way out of concessions. The Union negotiated a deal that would save the company $150 million a year in labor. It was a tough internal battle to get people to vote for it. We turned it down twice. Finally the Union told us it was in our best interest and something had to give. So many of us, including myself, changed our votes and took the offer. Remember that next time you see CEO Rayburn on tv stating that we haven't sacrificed for this company. The company then emerged from bankruptcy. In 2005 before concessions I made $48,000, last year I made $34,000. My pay changed dramatically but at least I was still contributing to my self-funded pension.

In July of 2011 we received a letter from the company. It said that the $3+ per hour that we as a Union contribute to the pension was going to be 'borrowed' by the company until they could be profitable again. Then they would pay it all back. The Union was notified of this the same time and method as the individual members. No contact from the company to the Union on a national level.

This money will never be paid back. The company filed for bankruptcy and the judge ruled that the $3+ per hour was a debt the company couldn't repay. The Union continued to work despite this theft of our self-funded pension contributions for over a year. I consider this money stolen. No other word in the English language describes what they have done to this money.

After securing our hourly cash from the bankruptcy judge they set out on getting approval to force a new contract on us. They had already refused to negotiate outside of court. They received approval from the judge to impose the contract then turned it over to the Union for a vote. You read that right, they got it approved by the judge before ever showing to the Union.

What was this last/best/final offer? You'd never know by watching the main stream media tell the story. So here you go...
1) 8% hourly pay cut in year 1 with additional cuts totaling 27% over 5 years. Currently, I make $16.12 an hour at TOP rate of pay in the bakery. I would drop to $11.26 in 5 years.
2) They get to keep our $3+ an hour forever.
3) Doubling of weekly insurance premium.
4) Lowering of overall quality of insurance plan.
5) TOTAL withdrawal from ALL pensions. If you don't have it now then you never will.

Remember how I said I made $48,000 in 2005 and $34,000 last year? I would make $25,000 in 5 years if I took their offer.
It will be hard to replace the job I had, but it will be easy to replace the job they were trying to give me.
That $3+ per hour they steal totaled $50 million last year that they never paid us. They sold $2.5 BILLION in product last year. If they can't make this profitable without stealing my money then good riddance.

I keep hearing how this strike forced them to liquidate. How we should just take it and be glad to have a job. What an unpatriotic view point. The reason these jobs provided me with a middle class opportunity is because people like my father in law and his father fought for my Union rights. I received that pay and those benefits because previous Union members fought for them. I won't sell them, or my coworkers, out.

The story of Hostess is nothing but an example of capitol vultures pulling a Bain job on the company and its workers, then blaming the unions for their treachery and theft.

This is the kind of life that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan was promoting and Scott Walker is still pushing. This is their idea of being successful and being business friendly.

Hostess would have shut down whether the unions capitulated or not. In fact, it was only the huge concessions the unions had already made that kept it around as long as this. Without those concessions, the executives would have taken the money and ran years ago.

I feel bad for the 18,000+ workers that are now without work, just before the holidays. But I don't blame them. People have to draw the line somewhere. It's just sad that there are so many so-called "patriots" that are still willing to sell out their fellow Americans for this and blame them for standing up for themselves.

For those 18,000 plus that got screwed over by the excessive greed of the executives, know that we still love you and support you:

The American Fascist

Henry A. Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.

He had some strong views about fascism around the world and was not afraid to share them. Some of them were eerily prescient, such as this one:

Henry A. Wallace

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

Talk about your soul-searing epiphanies. My mind is blown just by trying to take in that one paragraph and how it relates to today's America.

I will try to break it down, but it's sheer massiveness is guarantee that I won't be able to do much but scratch at the surface.

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.

This point is obvious on so many levels.

There are the propagandist organizations such as Wisconsin Reporter, MacIver Institute and, who could forget, the brazen liars at Media Trackers. These groups will stop at nothing to distort statistics, selectively edit videos, alter photos and make things up out of whole cloth.

If you look at the mainstream media, it's just as bad. When the protests were happening in early 2011, they called it "Capitol Chaos" or in other similar negative terms. Ofttimes, they don't even cover a liberal event but will fall over themselves gushing about the most thinly attended gathering of teahadists.

And I would be grossly negligent if I did not point out the radio squawkers like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and on a local level, Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling. Like the propagandists of the Internet, these are the propagandists of the airwaves. And like their Internet brethren and sisters, people like Sykes have no qualms about making up things out of thin air and speaking them like it's gospel truth.

This becomes even more frightening as the regulations regarding TV and radio have been systematically destroyed. This has allowed powerhouses like Journal Communications to snatch up TV stations, radio stations and newspapers around the state and the country, all pumping out the same biased and unbalanced news coverage and propaganda.

Fortunately, there are people like Sue Wilson who are out there fighting this illegal monopolization. They have recently filed complaints against WTMJ and WISN radio stations for violating laws surrounding the use of public airwaves to promote partisan candidates and/or positions, something they have been blatantly violating for years.

These propagandists and "credible" news outlets will not hesitate to use the most base strategies to create these fissures: Racism, misogyny, homophobia, dehumanization, union busting and demonization of their enemies, perceived or real, to name just a few of the more common ones.

They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.

For examples of this, just look at what has happened in Wisconsin in the past two years. It's not just the gerrymandering or the voter suppression or the voter intimidation.

The fascists tried to interfere with every aspect of the recalls, including, but not limited to, intimidating signature gatherers, trying to misrepresent the petitions, demonizing the people involved with the recalls, using McCarthyism to intimidate people that signed the petitions or to keep them from signing, complaining about the whole recall process, wanting to limit our rights to recall corrupt politicians, questioning the honesty of poll workers, falsely claiming voter fraud, bringing in people from out of state to harass voters, and giving their own poll watchers false information and directing them to misrepresent themselves.

And that's just the ones that I could think of off the top of my head in two minutes.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

The teahadists like to call themselves patriots and they give themselves such grandiose names like Grandsons of Liberty and the Sam Adams Alliance. They call themselves patriots, freedom fighters. Even the whole Tea Party name is a bastardized romanticization of the original, true American heroes.

Yet, despite their claims to be patriots, the only Constitutional right they seem to care about is the Second Amendment, and even then, they skew its true meeting. And Lord help the person who wants to have Free Speech, the Right to Assemble, the right to vote, the right to own property or any other civil rights.

They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

This one is so self-explanatory that I almost feel ridiculous giving examples of it. All one has to do is look at Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Tommy Thompson, the Republican controlled state legislature that allows corporations to write their own laws and any number of others and you can see it. You have the no-longer-invisible hands of the Koch Brothers, the Bradley Foundation and other money houses that are trying to buy politicians and getting laws passed that only serve to further their own avarice, whether it's for power, money or, most often, both, that it is sickening.

Don't think for a second that this is a recent thing or was just a matter of happenstance. The current degraded state of affairs has been a long time coming due to decades of planning and positioning, using the Powell Memo as their guide.

Unfortunately, while I cited only Republicans in the above text, there are also many Democrats that fit the bill of being a fascist. Sometimes we are able to winnow them out, like we did with Jeff Plale and Peggy Krusick, but there are still many more that we haven't gotten to yet.

But we now know them for who they are and what their agenda is. And as they say, "Knowing is half the battle."

What we must do now is use every tool at our possession to call them out, to counter their lies and smears, and to stand up for not only ourselves, but for everyone - even those that have been duped or bullied by the fascists. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick.

But I, for one, cannot idly stand by and let them run our state and our country into the ground like they want to.

Did Tommy Thompson Illegally Delay Reporting Donation From Troubled Medical Supply Company?

Just last week, I reported how Tommy Thompson, and his son, Jason, had gained some significant lucre from a troubled medical supply company that harmed thousands of women.

For "volunteering" to be on the board of C.R. Bard company, Thompson got about $130,000 in stock options. C.R. Bard is a medical supply company that has paid out $184 million in fines and damages for faulty mesh implants. I have also learned that C.R. Bard and its subsidiaries have outsourced nearly 1,300 jobs since 1994.

Now, after receiving all this money and despite the harm they have caused to innocent victims and outsourcing all those jobs, Thompson has been pushing for massive tax breaks for C.R. Bard.

Pretty bad stuff, right? But as readers of Cog Dis already know, when it comes to the Republicans, there's more. There's always more.

On, September 21, 2012, C.R. Bard made a generous donation of $5,000 to Thompson's campaign, as shown by their report to the Federal Election Commission, which I've also taken a screen shot of for the gentle reader's convenience:

Gee, thanks a lot Citizens United for drowning out the people's voice.

Thompson's campaign recorded and reported the donation on October 30, 2012, per their financial report:

Thompson 48 Hr Report - CR Bard


And therein lies Thompson's problem. You see, by federal election laws, Thompson was required to record and report this donation within ten days of receipt:

Deposit of receipts and disbursements (2 U.S.C. 432(h)(1)).

(a) All receipts by a political committee shall be deposited in account(s) established pursuant to 11 CFR 103.2, except that any contribution may be, within 10 days of the treasurer's receipt, returned to the contributor without being deposited. The treasurer of the committee shall be responsible for making such deposits. All deposits shall be made within 10 days of the treasurer's receipt. A committee shall make all disbursements by check or similar drafts drawn on an account at its designated campaign depository, except for expenditures of $100 or less made from a petty cash fund maintained pursuant to 11 CFR 102.11. Funds may be transferred from the depository for investment purposes, but shall be returned to the depository before such funds are used to make expenditures.

In summary, Thompson tried to skirt the law by illegally delaying the reporting of the campaign donation he received from a company which has made obscene profits by pushing faulty products on thousands of innocent and unsuspecting victims, and which has outsourced so many American jobs. He probably did not want to draw further attention to the way he also profited from their maleficent actions or how he is advocating for this company to get even bigger tax breaks than they already have.

Another thing that Thompson doesn't want Wisconsin voters to know is how cozy he is with so many lobbyists, as Steve Hanson reports.

The choice is clear. You can vote for Baldwin, who will stand up for Wisconsin and against special corporate interests, or you can vote for Thompson who will sell out Wisconsin to the special corporate interests.

The "Yes, We Did Build It" Scam

David Koch, Sheldon Adelson and other multibillionaires have said that they were going to throw a lot of money into the upcoming election in an effort to buy the presidency and put their puppets, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, into the White House.

We now see that some of their lucre being used in Fitzwalkerstan in the form of a scam.

Right wing front groups like Citizens for Responsible Government, Americans for Prosperity, the Heartland Institute and others are coming together this Saturday to host an event they are calling "Yes, We Did Build This!"

The event is supposed to star such teahadist heroes such as Rebecca Kleefisch, Ron Johnson, and Charlie Sykes. They are hyping the event as the revelation of their "plan to take back America." For a taste of just how thick they are laying on the absurdity and grotesque masquerade of being patriots, look at the tripe they have posted on CRG's website:

It is no surprise that the first American Revolution was led by independent business people like Samuel Adams. Large corporations such as the East India Company were too economically important to the throne and were protected. The brunt of new taxes and regulations fell squarely on the shoulders of colonial small business people. Adams sounded the alarm not simply based on current taxes and regulations but what would happen if the trend continued unabated.

Current conditions bear a striking resemblance to those of the first American Revolution. The president and his supporters tell outright lies and use sweeping, "king-like" powers to fundamentally change the the laws of the land. They insinuate that honest, hard-working, risk-taking entreprenuers [sic] and businesspeople "didn't build that" and use it as a pretext to extort ever larger sums for redistribution to the king's cronies.

The time has come for a new, well-mannered American Revolution, one that demands honest representation and an end to the lies, waste, corruption and theft of property by outright taking or regulation that have become the calling cards of these new and would-be kings.

Once again, it must be led by those damaged the most, the economic lifeblood of our country, the small business person. This revolution will not be fought with muskets but with elections. If business as we know it is to survive, we must become adept at winning elections. Sadly, this self-evident fact of life has been widely ignored. We believe we have developed a foolproof plan to win the overwhelming majority of elections.

Wisconsin has been identified as a primary battleground in this new revolution and has attracted significant national attention. We must supply leadership to manage and grow the budding revolution that has produced leaders like U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, Governor Scott Walker, and Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan. These bold and visionary leaders need strong and organized support to counter and defeat our ideological competition, support that only the business community can provide. In order to implement our shared vision for the future of America they need the assurance that can remain in office and, moreover, to rise to higher office in order to finish what they started.

Join us to discover and participate in the new and innovative plan that will make this happen!

This is a free and private event specifically for businesspeople and their employees. Seating is limited and reservations are required for reasons of security and logistics. Register today!

In other words, they are trying to say that the business people are the only ones to save the day against the evil old government, personified by Barack Obama. (Without doubt, there will be a lot of racist code words bantered about at the event.) I also note they don't mention the working people at all in their propaganda. Maybe they are already considering us to be nothing more than serfs.

But what is truly amazing about this event is how much hypocrisy and irony that they can cram into one room.

For example, let's look at some of the characters, or should I say caricatures, involved with this farce.

The figurehead of CRG is Chris Kleismet. Despite his pretenses of wanting to cut governmental spending and having a "responsible government, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of Kleismet's claims to infamy includes trying to parlay his support of Scott Walker for Milwaukee County Executive into a lucrative county contract for getting the county to buy into his Six Sigma plan. This included trying to get Walker to give them an office in the Milwaukee County Courthouse, a move that was not only unethical, but also illegal.

Apparently Kleismet found it too difficult to build it on his own and was looking to Walker to give him some government money to help him out.

The emcee of this hootenanny is local squawker Charlie Sykes. Sykes, as we all know, uses the publicly funded airwaves to promote the Teapublican agenda, even if it means breaking the law to do so.

And Sykes isn't above using those same public airwaves for free advertisement to peddle his books. If he built his reputation as an author on his own, shouldn't he have to pay for commercials like anyone else would?

Likewise, Rebecca Kleehisch first got her name recognition from being a reporter for Channel 12 in Milwaukee. After leaving the station, she got free air time on WTMJ-AM from Charlie Sykes. This naturally led to Sykes giving her more free air time when she was a candidate for lieutenant governor. One has to wonder how well she would have done if she hadn't gotten all that free air time on the publicly funded airwaves. Odds are we'd be looking at Lt. Governor Brett Davis.

But leave it to these teahadists to make the biggest hypocrite their keynote speaker.

RoJo ran for the US Senate claiming to be a self-made millionaire by working hard and building his business from the ground up. The truth is an entirely different matter:

• RoJo didn't start his company, Pacur. He married into it.
• RoJo got a $4 million government low-interest loan to buy equipment and expand the business.
• RoJo got a railroad line built to Pacur using HUD grant money.
• RoJo had his employees using BadgerCare, the state-funded healthcare insurance.
• And speaking of his employees, some of them were prisoners who worked cheap and already had their healthcare covered by the state.

It's a strong possibility that the only thing RoJo did build on his own was his reputation for being a liar and an idiot.

But perhaps the biggest irony of the whole affair is that all of these hypocrites and fakirs are gathering together to preach about their independence and the need to cut government spending in the Waukesha County Expo Center, a government-owned building.

I tell you, I like to think I have a good imagination, but there is no way that I could make up all of this and be ever considered credible again. Leave it to the teahadists to manage to be stranger than fiction.

Perhaps it's the absurdity of this entire charade that is having them make sure that only the true believers are allowed access to the event. Per CRG's website:

This is a private event. Holding a ticket does not guarantee entry nor a right to attend the event. The event organizers retain the right to deny entry or remove attendees without cause. Behavior deemed disruptive or inappropriate by the event organizers may also result in removal from the event and/or prosecution for trespass and disorderly conduct.

Heh. Usually they have to keep the insane locked in a facility. Here they're trying to keep the sane locked out.

I hear that besides their sure fire method to richness and power, they will also be selling the secret to eternal youth, the cure for cancer, Love Potion #9, Dr. Carter's liver pills and other assorted snake oils, elixirs, tonics and charms.

Labor Day In Fitzwalkerstan 2012

So today was Labor Day.

Not that you'd know it from the local paper. The only way one could tell it was Labor Day from the paper would be the Labor Day sales ads and one small blurb at the bottom of the entertainment section saying that Laborfest was today.

You wouldn't know it from the Republicans either, unless you count Paul Ryan using the holiday for shilling for his campaign swag. Like Romney's and the Koch's and Adelson's hundreds of millions of dollars weren't enough.

Well, you do have Lance Burri, Glenn Grothman's chief of staff, cracking jokes about Labor Day and women as well. (Grothman is a much better fit for the lying, misogynistic Burri than his previous boss, Mary Lazich, who is just stupid.)*

I'm not surprised that we have heard anything from Walker or the rest, since they've declared open war on the working men and women of Wisconsin and are poised to enact Right To Work But Not Get Paid For It legislation at the beginning of the new year. They also don't want to attract attention to the fact that Walker has lost more jobs than he has created since he's taken office and imposed his anti-Wisconsin agenda.

My colleague, Meg, did a very nice write up about the true meaning and importance of labor day. She listed just some of the many things that organized labor has brought into being:

Weekends.
Health insurance.
Breaks.
Paid vacations and sick leave.
Time off.
Workers Compensation.
Unionization of the workplace.
8 hour work days.
End of exploitative child labor.
Women's workplace rights.
End of workplace discrimination

I would add a few things to that.

One would be that unions also help prevent retaliation by the employers. The end result of losing this right will be one of two things.

One, the good workers will move on to other jobs, and other states, where they can be treated with respect and be allowed personal freedom to do what they want on their own time. You will be then left with the incompetent suck-ups, like most of Walker's cronies.

The other possibility is that these issues, will be resolved in the courts, costing the employers a lot more money than if they had a grievance procedure in place.

I would also point out that unions benefit everyone, whether they work in the public or the private sector and whether or not they are even union members. Unions, by negotiating with the employers, are able to set a prevailing wage. Non-union shops then will have to match those salaries and benefits or risk losing their best workers to the union shops.

This is why the so-called "right to work" states tend to have, on average, salaries that are $5,000 to $6,000 less than unionized states. I would also point out that with the higher salaries, people are able to buy more things and help stimulate and support the economy. That is exemplified here in Fitzwalkerstan. As Walker has taken money away from the workers, the economy has tanked and there are less businesses and jobs than when he took over as governor. In other words, it ain't working!

Jake at his Playhouse demonstrates how the unions have kept the middle class strong and that there is a direct correlation between the weakening of the unions and the lowering of wages and the diminishing of the middle class.

I would also point out, as I did last year, the US Department of Labor's explanation of the history of Labor Day (emphasis mine):

he form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.

It is not shocking at all that as the country has moved more to a corporate nation status, thanks to the Republicans and corporate Democrats, that the economy has gone in the toilet and we are still mired in a recession, the second one in the past decade.

If Romney, Ryan, Walker, Chris Abele and the rest of them really wanted to go back to the good old days when jobs were much more plentiful and people were able to achieve the American dream, they'd be working with the unions and not against them.

*BTW, someone with more time and money than I might want to do an Open Record's request on Burri's state computer.

Individualized Conformity

Corporate America -
They who have to be
obeyed.

For the past few days, Mitt Rmoney and the entire corporately-controlled right wing of the nation has been attacking President Barack Obama for part of a speech he gave. The quip which they are using as their attack base was, as you'd imagine, taken out of context and conflated to mean something other than the original message, which was pointing out the simple fact that no one is not the beneficiary of being part of society and that we are all in this together. Instead, the right has twisted this message into saying it was a slap at those that have "succeeded."

Scott Feldstein gives us the entire context of Obama's speech, as well as some astute observations

When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. Radical, I know. And when he’s saying “you didn’t build that,” he’s quite obviously referring to the “roads and bridges” of the previous sentence. If you seriously don’t get that…well, no. I don’t even believe someone doesn’t get that.

But wait! The president is still awful and a communist! He doesn’t seem to realize that the business owner himself paid the taxes that built those roads in the first place! He doesn’t get it!

Or maybe it’s the right-wingers who don’t get it. Sure, the successful business owner paid taxes for the roads. (Well, some of them do.) But here’s the thing your’e forgetting: So did everyone else. It’s not that “you didnt build that”–it’s that you didn’t build it alone. We built that road together, through our taxes, through our government. And having done so we created an environment where business can thrive–your business, my business, everyone’s business. If you are successful in America, you owe a little of that success to other Americans. The ones who helped pay for the infrastructure in which your business could thrive.

Obama's statement is not original in its concept. It's been something that has been repeated in different ways for centuries and even in modern times by - gasp - Republicans!

In fact, my colleague Jeff Simpson stole some of my thunder regarding this the other day, including using the Benjamin Franklin quote I was planning to use.

Zach Wisniewski, over at Blogging Blue, astutely points out that even Romney said basically the same thing as Obama. But Romney isn't an African-American Democratic President, so that makes it OK, apparently.

I would add to this Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village" meme as well as this quote from President Theodore Roosevelt from a speech he gave in Pasadena, California on May 8, 1903:

"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."

So with something so easily disputed, why is the corporofascists using this line of attack?
Well, for one, it gives them the easy soundbite that the teahadists love, regardless of how incongruent they may be (See: Keep government out of my Medicare!)

But more importantly, it is another weapon in their arsenal to attain and maintain control of the country.

By selling the artificial construct that Obama's statement, like many of the others before them, is an attack on our individualism and just another example of overreach by the "nanny state."

I recall a conversation I had in June with Laura Hauser-Menting, candidate for the 71st Assembly District, regarding this mindset from the right. We both agreed that this was a depressing, and frightening, attitude to take.

By selling the people that the government, especially anyone on the left, wants to take away their individuality and their chances of success is not only blatantly false, it's utterly hypocritical.

You have teahadists like Ron Johnson, Eric Hovde and Marc Neumann who have gained by feeding at the government trough, even as they gripe about it. Even Scott Walker, who claims that Noah would never have been able to build the ark if the government was involved, turns around and dishes out government money to "successful" companies like Halloween candy even as he asks the feds for assistance.

Nor do the right encourage individuality. Look at the grief that State Senator Dale Schultz took whenever he voted his conscience and with his constituents, even when it opposed the corporate-driven agenda of his fellow Republicans. If one dare steps out of line, they get called a RINO or crazy or both. And if the gentle reader looks at any random picture of a teahadist gathering or Republican political rally, but I repeat myself, you will be able to quickly note the severe lack of diversity in those pictures.

Ironically, it's the left's encouragement of true individuality which often puts itself in a bind. While the right is able to provide an unified front, regardless of how self-destructive their position might be, the left is too busy herding cats to get much accomplished successfully.

By encouraging the false sense of individualized conformity, it enables the right to gain even more control and fortify the control they have. If a company or wealthy person does harm to a person, the person is pretty much screwed when it comes to receiving due reparations. Few people can afford to pay the legal fees that would build if they were to sue the malefactor.

If a company decides that their profit margins just aren't big enough, or if the CEO feels he needs a bigger bonus, they cut the workers' pay. If the workers complain, or God forbid, try to unionize like they're doing at Palermo's, they'll just fire the workers and tell the rest they should be grateful just to have a job, no matter how crappy they get treated.

In other words, they know that if they can thoroughly make people corporate serfs, they can break them of the will and the ability to stand up for themselves.

This is exactly why the corporate right has been attacking the unions with everything they have. By joining together, people in unions are able to pool their money and have more clout in getting reparations, and even more importantly, preventing the harm in the first place. In other words, unions act as an equalizer to the corporate interests and can prevent its members, and the community at large, from being exploited.

In sum, when the right is telling you that people like Obama are trying to belittle the "job makers," and push people to think that the only way to succeed is by pulling themselves up by their own personal bootstraps, they are not doing this to help the people. What they actually are doing is reinforcing the fear and smear attacks in order to keep themselves at the top of the food chain and to keep the unwashed masses in line.

And then the downward spiral where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer continues at an ever-increasing pace. It's time and then some for us to reverse this course.

Walker, Van Hollen: Protecting People From Keeping Money

Shortly after Scott Walker was elected, he gave the green light for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to enter the fight against the Affordable Care Act. It's gone to the Supreme Court on whether it will be allowed to proceed, but when it was attacked by the ALEC-owned Republicans on the appellate level, Van Hollen was celebrating a ruling in the favor of Big Insurance:

If Van Hollen is right and the entire law is tossed out, Wisconsin would not have to implement the law requiring states to create insurance marketplaces known as health care exchanges. States also wouldn't have to expand Medicaid coverage or oversee new rules on private insurers.

It could also give Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers greater power to cut existing state health care programs, such as Badger Care Plus, to fix the state's budget deficit. Walker last week created a new Office of Free Market Health Care that will fight health care reform. Walker's spokesman praised Vinson's ruling in a statement Thursday.

If Van Hollen is wrong and Wisconsin doesn't carry out parts of the health care law, the state could lose federal money and face a federal takeover of some activities.

In other words, they're hoping they don't have to provide health care coverage for all those unworthy poor, disable and/or elderly people. What better way to redistribute all that money to wealthy CEOs than to allow deny people affordable health care?!

But today, word comes out on what it could mean to people with their own health insurance:

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that 12.8 million Americans will benefit from $1.1 billion in rebates from insurance companies this summer, because of the Affordable Care Act’s 80/20 rule. These rebates will be an average of $151 for each family covered by a policy.

However, the fate of the Affordable Care Act is still subject to a Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality. That ruling is expected to be announced soon.
The health care law generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of consumers’ premium dollars on medical care and quality improvement. Insurers can spend the remaining 20 percent on administrative costs, such as salaries, sales, and advertising. Beginning this year, insurers must notify customers how much of their premiums have been actually spent on medical care and quality improvement.

Insurance companies that do not meet the 80/20 standard must provide their policyholders a rebate for the difference no later than Aug. 1, 2012.
The HHS Department today said that Wisconsin consumers will receive nearly $10.4 million in rebates from insurers that did not meet the 80/20 standard. Individual market consumers in Wisconsin will receive $649,028 in rebates, the small group market in Wisconsin will receive $2.95 million in rebates and the large group market will receive $6.77 million in rebates.

Is it any wonder why Koch Brother employees are rooting for SCOTUS to rule against healthcare reform? If it is allowed to stand, Big Insurance would no longer be allowed to gouge us to make their CEOs even more filthy rich.

They just can't allow the common folk to have a few bucks. We're not worthy to have money.

I Am Tired

The following letter was written by Leo Thomasgard, born of Plover and currently living in Port Edward.  The letter was originally published in the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune.  While it was written before the recall election, it still holds true, probably now more then ever:

I am tired, not from age, lack of sleep, or over-scheduling, but from constantly having information -- much of it altered or spun to suit a need -- directed at me with the intent to distract, libel, or otherwise lie about issues to gain my support or opposition. The Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court case that allows huge amounts of money from corporations to flow unchecked into the political arena to promote their interests and to support those of politicians who will do their bidding will destroy the moral compass of the nation if not reversed.

I am tired of being told that we are "broke" and cannot afford to maintain public services, education, or one of the best run and most completely funded public retirement systems in the nation. The Wisconsin Retirement System has served those who work for public agencies for decades with a secure and well-managed defined benefit retirement. It isn't "broken," and it doesn't need to be fixed or studied.

I am tired of watching CEOs and upper management of those firms entrusted with the handling and monitoring of investments and finance and numerous other huge corporations being paid such obscene amounts of money that they will have difficulty spending it during their lifetimes, while those folks who care for our sick and elderly, put out our fires, collect our trash, run our daycare centers, and arrest our criminals sometimes struggle to save for their children's futures and pay their routine bills. Since when did money become more important than people? (Silly question.)

I am particularly tired of public schools and teachers being blamed for every ill found in society by those in the greater community who claim that preparing young people for life has to be done with less money and fewer resources year after year, and then propose giving unlimited amounts of funding to private and charter schools to further undercut the already strapped public education system. Well-run public schools have literally helped create our nation and society for generations and can continue to do so well into the future, if given the support needed.

Finally, I guess I am most tired of greed and selfishness. There are way too many people coming out of the Reagan years who grew up with the idea that "I got mine, now you go get yours," instead of "Here, let me help you come up to where I am." No one is completely
self-made. We all have been helped by someone along the way. When the paralyzed and wheelchair-bound actor Christopher Reeve appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony the year after the riding accident that so seriously injured him, he got an ironic standing ovation from the audience when he said, "America is a better place when everybody looks out for everyone instead of just themselves."

We have to stop the diminishment of some to extract the benefit for the few. The author Nelson Algren wrote in his 1956 novel "Walk On the Wild Side," "When we get more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer is by cutting off those who don't have enough." This is a great country and a wonderful state with a long history of care and concern for all. We need to turn back toward our roots and become what we used to be and what we can be again -- a state of active, concerned citizens who tell the truth, help our neighbors, support our public schools, and elect people to office who promise to do that.