Wisconsin, Have you Met L. Paul Bremer?
By Daniel Becker
Now that the story is getting out that Governor Walke et al’s bill is about more than just busting unions, a little bell went off in the back of my head. Yes, I read Shock Doctrine. Yes, I understand the true concept of fascism. I read What would Jefferson do. I read C & L, AB, Hullabaloo, Glen Greenwald, watch Rachel, Ed, Cspan, etc, etc, etc. And, there are some people pointing out the connections between some of all these perspectives. However, Wisconsin’s current event just seemed too familiar. Deja vue familiar. More familiar than all the reading and listening would allow. It is experiencingly familiar and I don’t mean Egypt.
I mean, we can all see (or at least a majority are now seeing) the thread of connection to all the seemingly disjointed liberal/progressive commentary about what has been happening in America since around 1981. We even are accepting that Clinton et al’s governing time was part of the thread. It’s economic. It’s societal structure, it’s civil rights, it’s power (always is since the constitutional convention).
But, where’s the beef. Show me the money. Where is the materialization most recently that it all came together as to the implementation of the play book that Governor Walker et al are using such that I know this is real…this is really and honestly currently America…American?
Folks…I give you Iraq: 10/10/2010
The political deadlock in Baghdad, which has prevented the formation of an Iraqi government more than six months after the parliamentary elections in March, has not prevented the administration of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki from opening the southern oilfields to the world’s giant corporations. Nor has it stopped the US Embassy and Commerce Department from reinvigorating the Bush-era program of selling the country’s public assets to corporate buyers. And because Iraqi unions have organized opposition to privatization since the start of the occupation, the Maliki administration is enforcing with a vengeance Saddam Hussein’s prohibition of public sector unions.The United States may have withdrawn its combat brigades, but it is not leaving Iraq. And while Washington may have scaled back its dreams of nation-building, it has not given up on a key aspect of the economic agenda behind that project: encouraging corporate investment by sacrificing the rights of Iraqi workers.June demonstrations over blackouts, supported by the union — the first national union led by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin — were put down by police, who killed one protester and injured several othersAlso in June, longshoremen protesting the prohibition of unions in ports south of Basra were surrounded by troops, and the union’s leaders were transferred hundreds of miles from their homes.In January the government threw the president of Basra’s Iraqi Teachers Union in jail. According to Nasser al-Hussain, an executive board member, the government seeks to establish control over an organization it views as far too independent.After the 2003 invasion, occupation czar Paul Bremer decided to keep on the books Saddam’s Law 150, which bans public sector unions. Each succeeding Iraqi administration continued the prohibition.
Wisconsin is not Egypt nor the rest of the protesting that is going on in the middle east other than that there is protesting. Not at all. Wisconsin is Iraq for one big, monstrous, sledge hammer to the head reason: Iraq’s oppression and thus resistance by the unions is all American. The union busting to the benefit of capital (big, huge money for the rest of you, as in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil time) in Iraq is purely American. We own it. Yes, we have propped up dictators such as in Egypt. What is singularly different in the protesting of Egypt/Mid East is freedom. They protested for freedom. Now we’ll see if they get unions. However, Wisconsin and Iraq are free. American style free in that Iraq is American made. They also have/had unions.
At the end of World War I, Iraqi workers wasted no time in forming oil, railway and dockworker unions in the fragmented country that Churchill had carved out of the desert, connecting the oil fields of three Ottoman provinces–Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. Their hold on the terrain already tenuous, the British occupiers responded with force. Repeated strikes were quashed, often violently.Under Qasim’s watch, unions along with civic groups swelled in rank and number. By 1959, 250,000 workers had joined unions in Iraq; peasants had formed 3,000 village associations for 200,000 peasants; the Iraqi Women’s League boasted 20,000 members and the Democratic Youth Federation 84,000 youngsters.Qasim’s “progressive” autocracy was fleeting, however, and in February of 1963, the Baath party, in alliance with a sect of the nationalist armed forces, and with the help of the CIA, overthrew Qasim.When Saddam Hussein seized control in 1979, he built upon the Baathist tradition of usurping the unions as an instrument of state power. As part of his brutal purge of all leaders and activists refusing to pledge total allegiance to the Baath party, he eradicated all non-Baathist unions. In 1987, the Baathist unions fully backed Saddam’s Orwellian decree: “From now on, the title ‘worker’ is abolished and all workers shall become official employees by the State…As everybody is now a government employee, there is no more need for trade unions.” Interestingly, Saddam did tolerate private sector unions, albeit with certain laws circumscribing their powers. The exception appears irrelevant, because, since the 1970’s through the fall of Saddam, no strikes are known to have occurred in Iraq, according to Political Risk Services, a well-respected corporate consultancy firm.
If you think Obama’s recent commentary is hopeful for unions, guess again:
When questioned by reporters about the union bans, an official at the US Embassy, the world’s largest, said mildly, “We’re looking into it. We hope that everybody resolves their differences in an amicable way.” The Obama White House has not spoken out, and the latest State Department report on human rights plays down the oppression of Iraqi unionists, calling their situation a “limited exercise of labour rights.”
Can you say Public Option? I knew you could. However, start asking you gen X’ers and younger if they have heard of the “labor wars“. You might be surprised, and not pleasantly. Just like the term “rat race“. Remember that one? You need to.
would it be too much of a stretch to point to “shock therapy,” when the united states sent advisors to the former soviet union to build capitalism and lowered life expectancies by ten years.
It is a question of balance. Unfortunately, there is no balance in today’s political world and it is driven by corporate interests and their unwitting dupes who are convinced that government is the reason their lives are miserable. Unions were a critical part of that balance–neither good nor bad of themselves, but crucial as a counterweight to business which is also neither good nor bad. With free trade both internationally and between union states and “right to work” states, unions have been decimated in my lifetime and the statistics are there for all to see in terms of the result on income inequality and real wages for working people. Walker has played his hand pretty well by pitting working people against working people and the mantle has been taken up by other GOP governors. I am embarrassed that the State which produced Fighting Bob La Follette and had socialist mayors in Milwaukee for 30 years has come to this, but of course we produced tail gunner Joe and have some of the most segregated cities in the nation. I am hopeful that saner minds will prevail, but not particularly optomistic.
And made a killing investing in the place……………….
I think Harvard provided the “brain trust”.
It is good the fire fighters are symapthetic to the teachers. In Wiscossin “public safety” employee unions are exempt and their pay is good and better. Walker is attempting to make the police and other “public safety” employees “cassoacks” for his future needs.
First they, took away the teachers’ union………………..
It is class war, they will not tolerate teaching the kids or feeding poor kids, if it will steal from the wealthy, the police state and their war machine.
Actually, the argument could be made that they came for the Mercury Marine union and the teachers said nothing, they came for the Harley Dividson union and the teachers said nothing…. I do agree that the Firefighters standing up for the public employees is good and I understand that a teamster brought his semi into the Capital Square last week–not an easy task–to show support. The key is for the folks who pay property taxes to realize that these folks are their neighbors and provide services every day. I might resent my property taxes, but a public employee was up before 4:00 and moved the snow out of my street this morning so–after digging out my driveway–I could get to work. I may think that teachers have some advantages that I do not, but my kids got enough education in my village that they got into the colleges of their choice and excelled. Bottom line I do not want these services provided by the lowest common denominator and you get what you pay for.
terry
that’s an important point. the people now called “middle class” have forgotten where they came from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6SMAJQW8Y&feature=related
Republican Governors Desert Wis.’s Scott Walker
by Tula Connell, Feb 22, 2011
Republican Governors Desert Wis.’s Scott Walker
by Tula Connell, Feb 22, 2011
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/02/22/republican-governors-desert-wis-s-scott-walker/
“Funny” phone call today wherein Governor Walker confided to “David Koch” his actual strategy re: the united WI senate democrats.
He got spoofed by Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast – mother jones posted additional details here http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/scott-walker-koch-brother-crank-call-wisconsin
It’s only funny if you think the governor should be listening more to Mr. Koch than Wisconsin workers. But hey they’re getting the government he (Mr. Koch) paid for right? Sanctity of contracts!
Let’s see how much MSM news time is given to Walker’s conversation with Koch’s alter ego from Buffalo. It’s Walker unguarded and refreshingly out spoken about his real agenda. If this were any Democratic pol it would be all over the air and played over repeatedly on FoxNews. Let’s see what NBC, CBS etc will do with it.
Bad luck for Governor Mubarak, the story has legs. So far the most visible result of his attempt to deny, obfuscate and stonewall regarding the real agenda is a hasty retreat from it by his newly elected tea partying colleagues.
So for now he’s been hung out to dry by his own political establishment (unless you think Rick Santorum is a national player). But unfortunately so have the unions – beyond a few comments regarding the right to organize the white house is notably absent so far. So it goes.
My own cynicism didn’t allow me to hope these demonstrations would amount to much – I figured the democratic senators would cave in a few days and make the typical “moderate” back room deal that satisfied nobody. But the way this thing has stayed in the news and captured the public imagination has been a real breath of fresh air in these mid term doldrums.
It reminds me of the 1997 Teamster victory against UPS. The conventional wisdom sampling the inconvenienced UPS customer base predicted that the union would fold within days. But the IBT managed to rally public support with an informational campaign that explained to people in the midst of boom times why UPS drivers deserved better wages and benefits. How quickly we forget.