Black Lies, Black Hearts – Koch Brothers vs Wisconsin Middle Class

Yes, it’s a snow day here in Wisconsin, but a “Winter Storm Warning” should have been declared the moment that Scott Walker took office. His first acts were to take a budget surplus and give away so much to his wealthy corporate supporters, that a budget deficit existed. Even this deficit did not rise to the level of a mandated “Budget Repair Bill”, but wrapping himself in the need to correct the deficit, Walker set about to destroy the public unions.

As Ezra Klein reports in the Washington Post:

The Badger State was actually in pretty good shape. It was supposed to end this budget cycle with about $120 million in the bank. Instead, it’s facing a deficit. Why? I’ll let the state’s official fiscal scorekeeper explain:

More than half of the lower estimate ($117.2 million) is due to the impact of Special Session Senate Bill 2 (health savings accounts), Assembly Bill 3 (tax deductions/credits for relocated businesses), and Assembly Bill 7 (tax exclusion for new employees).

In English: The governor called a special session of the legislature and signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it helped turn a surplus into a deficit [see update at end of post]. As Brian Beutler writes, “public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda.”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/unions_arent_to_blame_for_wisc.html

But that is not all Walker wanted. He chose to bust the union by taking away their collective bargaining rights, the primary reason for having a union in the first place. As Karl Rove stated on Fox News, in order for the GOP to be successful in 2012, they must defund the unions which are major contributors to the Democratic Party. Without unions, the Democrats would have a “serious crimp” in their fund-raising, according to Karl Rove.

But Scott Walker was exposed in what his true agenda was. The union heads offered Scott Walker everything he wanted in wage and benefits cuts, as long as collective bargaining was not taken away. Walker mocked the offer, revealing that busting the public sector unions was the true priority, not dealing with a deficit. From Forbes magazine:

As the nation focuses on the efforts of Governor Scott Walker to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees in Wisconsin, new information is coming to light that reveals what is truly going on here. Mother Jones is reporting that much of the funding behind the Walker for Governor campaign came from none other than uber-conservatives, the infamous Koch Brothers.

What’s more, the plan to kill the unions is right out of the Koch Brothers play book.

Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado;

Via Mother Jones

If you are reluctant to believe that this is a coordinated attack, consider this:

This afternoon, Marty Beil, executive director of the Wisconsin Public Workers Union, sent a message to the Governor’s office agreeing to the cuts to pension & welfare benefits sought by Walker in his bill.  The governor’s response was “nothing doing.”  He wants the whole kit and kaboodle – the end of the collective bargaining rights of the public unions.

As noted in my earlier post, this is, indeed, the first shot in the final battle to end unionism in America.

UPDATE: The Americans for Prosperity group, a Tea Party group that is a Koch Brothers front, has put up a website and petition called www.standwithwalker.com. The website attacks all collective bargaining – not just for public employees’ unions. Americans for Prosperity is also organizing a rally tomorrow in Wisconsin to support Gov. Walker.

Why are the Koch Brothers so interested in Wisconsin? They are a major business player in the state.

This from Think Progress:

Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines in Wisconsin. While Koch controls much of the infrastructure in the state, they have laid off workers to boost profits. At a time when Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch awarded themselves an extra $11 billion of income from the company, Koch slashed jobs at their Green Bay plant:

Officials at Georgia-Pacific said the company is laying off 158 workers at its Day Street plant because out-of-date equipment at the facility is being replaced with newer, more-efficient equipment. The company said much of the new, papermaking equipment will be automated. [...] Malach tells FOX 11 that the layoffs are not because of a drop in demand. In fact, Malach said demand is high for the bath tissue and napkins manufactured at the plant.

You really have to wonder how long it will take for Tea Party devotees to realize just how badly they are being used.

Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions – Rick Ungar – The Policy Page – Forbes.

So, the Koch Brothers have bused in paid Tea Partiers to shout out their support for Walker. Andrew Breitbart, the illegitimate son of the Tea Party, came as well, showing his desire to bask in the spotlight wherever his brand of hateful rhetoric might be useful to the people that fund his efforts. Joe the Plumber came too, with even less to offer the crowd than Sarah Palin, who gave her regrets to the Tea Party crowd. Sarah is not likely to show up anywhere there is work to be done or where the paycheck is less than $100,000 for an hour’s speech.

Besides the paid members of the corporate Tea Party, there were plenty of Tea Party grass roots Wisconsin who realized that this was an attack on the middle class, pure and simple. They held up signs saying, “Republican no more”. Members of the unions who had voted for Walker expressed their dismay and their shame for having voted for the Governor.  One can only hope that they will remember this lesson, now that the GOP has struck them personally.

Still, one has to feel a certain amount of pity for the Tea Party members rallying in support of Walker, and against their friends and neighbors.  Yes, yes, yes – we know that they are authoritarian-loving people who side with bullies because it makes them feel important.  But there is more to it than that.  Fear is at the heart of all of these anti-union people.  They fear their own loss of status and believe that the way to maintain it is to see other groups fall.

Fear is what makes them easily manipulate­d with bogus facts about unions. They don’t complain about the tax breaks for the millionair­es, because they know that they will never achieve that status. Targeting fellow workers is a much more achievable goal, and allows them to identify with the wealthy people, making them “one of them”, though the wealthy scorn the teabaggers in private.

Thus, the Koch Brothers, with plans to eliminate all Democratic obstacles to GOP electoral dominance are using the very people who will be hurt by such a move.  The Tea Partiers as a whole, are unaware of this.  The blackest hearts in our country, the ones that do not believe in Democracy, only in power, are manipulating the Tea Party with the blackest of lies hoping for the ruin of the middle class.

Much to their chagrin, the Koch Brothers will see what real Wisconsin workers are made of in the coming weeks.  Movements are already underway to recall eight vulnerable Republican members of the legislature over this issue.  That will flip the majority to the Democrats, who have yet to be bought by the Koch Brothers, though one must assume that they will try.