There have been times when I thought that I was being overly defensive and paranoid in my belief that the GOP's primary focus is to ensure that Obama is not re-elected in 2012. I haven't been totally satisfied with all of the president's decisions and there are some with which I fundamentally disagree such as the latest executive order that continues to allow the detention of so-called enemy combatants indefinitely without benefit of charges or trials. Can we say "Gulag" boys and girls? However, in spite of my criticism of some of the president's actions, I still support his overall agenda.
I have questioned whether my cynical perspective on the motives of the GOP was born of my ongoing support for the president. Not any more, the Walker coup in Wisconsin has confirmed my belief that the GOP is determined to defeat Obama at all costs. That's what this attack on unions was about. Destroy the power of unions and destroy the base that overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008.
A post by a fellow blogger, who writes under the handle, Shaw Kenawe, included a repost of a HuffPo piece, Governor Walker's Coup D'Etat Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, and current professor at Berkeley. Reich sums up in a single paragraph a clear explanation of the coup staged by Walker and the GOP members of the Wisconsin state legislature to usurp the power of unions or in other words strip away the bargaining powers of the working class.
Governor Scott Walker and his Wisconsin senate Republicans have laid bare the motives for their coup d'etat. By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn't be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It's been to bust the unions.However, the truly damning evidence is in the words of Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a close ally of Governor Walker in the state legislature. In an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Fitzgerald acknowledged that the union busting is really about defeating President Obama in 2012.
Fitzgerald: If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you're going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.The selfish unmitigated gall of these efforts to bring down the unions to further the political ambitions of the GOP in the 2012 presidential election should galvanize not only progressives but any working class American. I mean working class in the broadest sense. If you get up and go to work for someone else on a regular schedule then you're working class.
I find the opposition of American employees to unions unfathomable. Some of the earliest unions in America arose in the 19th century out of the efforts of women to fight against intolerable sweatshop working conditions--long hours, low wages, and a lack of safety precautions in the workplace. All of the power lay with the employers who could simply fire a single worker who dared complain and easily replace her. Then there was the whole issue of child labor and the lack of a term to even describe sexual harassment in the workplace. The labor movement grew because there was a need for it.
Governor Walker has argued that unions with their unreasonable demands are responsible for the deficit in his state. Bull feathers, and we all know that bulls don't have feathers.
What are those unreasonable demands that unions make on behalf of their members? Cost of living wage increases, decent pensions, and health care benefits. According to the Walker line of thinking, it's the unreasonable demands of unions regarding pensions and health car benefits that are driving state deficits. It appears that in order to resolve the deficit that laborers should do without retirement pensions and health insurance. What's even crazier than this proposition is that so many people who are wage earners seem to think that this is a good idea. The reasoning appears to go like this, "Those union folks make too much money; they learn to need to get by like the rest of us."
Brilliant logic folks! The bullies down the road beat your butt every day. Someone tries to intervene. Suggests that you walk another path after school and offers to walk it with you. You make certain that the bullies are aware of your new route and then they beat the crap out of you and your new friend. You're satisfied because now you and your would be rescuer are in the same boat. I don't know how to say this gently: That's just plain stupid!
A living wage, safe working conditions, and benefits have not always been the norm. We need to think long and hard about returning to the "good old days" of nonexistent or powerless labor unions. To quote that icon, Mae West, "Goodness had nothing to do with it."
In case you may think that Fitzgerald has been misquoted, a little video clip of him being hoisted on his own petard:
I certainly take issue with the Republicans whose aim it is to destroy collective bargaining. The lying and cover up of their true intentions is absurd and insulting. But come one, we knew who they were when they were running. They are acting out their respective parts. Less big government, fewer taxes, blah, blah, blah.
ReplyDeleteWhat freaks me out even more is the fact that they were elected in the first place. What scares me are the Americans who voted them in knowing fairly well what their agenda is. These are the folks who are going to be directly harmed by the decisions of the right, yet they listen to FOX news and Rush and Glenn and follow blindly voting against their own best interests. How can the voters who put Walker and Fitzgerald in office sleep at night?
Henny, setting race aside--which, of course, we can't, because it's there like a big carbuncle on the end of one's nose--I believe that the Republican party fears the President's popularity and are desperate to diminish him. Never have I seen a group so unified in working for their party, the country's interest be damned.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama's grasp of situations and his ability to look at the whole picture... his intelligence, thoughtfulness, ability to listen, and to make himself understood in a calm eloquence, reassures me every time I hear him speak. He is clearly the adult in the room.
I shudder to think of what George Bush might have said and done, given these same crises and the thought of John McCain in the White House, with Sarah Palin there to advise him, is absolutely terrifying.
The people of Wisconsin--in tens of thousands--are rethinking their votes. Do-overs don't come easily, but I admire the way they are standing up. May the lessons they have learned sober us all.
I'm so glad you brought up the child and woman labor abuses that gave rise to the unions. That's what I'm thinking about each time I watch the protests in our middle-north states.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmothers and aunts worked in Piedmont North Carolina's textile mills through the depression to help support their families. I have an old stereopticon with pictures of the inside those mills...the air full of cotton particles, the cramped positions of the sewers.
There is a phrase used in the Wikipedia article on "Labor History of the United States," in reference to the crippling of unions during the Great Depression: "one might have expected a reincarnation of organizations seeking to overthrow the capitalistic system that was now performing so poorly...but, in general, the nation seemed to have been shocked into inaction.”
We, now, have been shocked for two years into inaction. But we are waking up. Aren't we?
We are, aren't we? Because this cannot stand.
You're right, Ms. Henny Red, this is a post about sitting for too long.
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ReplyDeleteVery well put, Ms. Red. I'll admit, sometimes I feel too busy being a teacher/working mother (what would I have done without unions!) to really comprehend what all the cluck is about regarding the current political hot-topic, so I really appreciate finding posts like yours. When I start getting the feeling that someone thinks one side is totally right and the other is totally wrong, I don't bother listening. Thanks for writing something worth "listening" to. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Opaline and please do call me Henny; it makes me laugh when someone does!
ReplyDeleteLoulou, I certainly hope that we're waking up. It disturbs me how easily so many Americans seem to have forgotten that it was abusive and unsafe working conditions, long hours with low wages, a total lack of worker's rights, along with the industrial revolution that set into motion the development of labor unions. We're so seduced by the nostalgia for the "good old days" that we don't recall that the old days weren't really that good for the working class.
Sally, I agree that President Obama's popularity scares the unholy crap out of the GOP. They've thrown everything possible at him but their grime refuses to stick. They don't give a hoot about this country except that they want to be in charge of it. I hope that a lot of people are thinking about a do-over in 2012.
Tim, I share your dismay that so many people voted the current rat pack into office. They never pretended to be anything other than rats.