A Very Modest Victory in Madison - The Editors - National Review Online

A Very Modest Victory in Madison - The Editors - National Review Online
The NRO makes thew fantastic claim that labor unions back workers only to steal their wages. The author neglects to mention that employers have pocketed worker productivity gains for the past thirty years.

Labor Union Resuirgence

This time around, we don't have to take it. In Wisconsin and beyond, we're witnessing a progressive groundswell unlike any in decades, as working people speak their minds, organize recall campaigns and take to the streets in protest.

As this movement gains steam, many mainstream media outlets are doing their best to marginalize and dampen it, protecting their advertisers, corporate sponsors and political allegiances.
Truthout

Wisconsin Lawmaker Arrested for Sexual Misconduct

Dem Rep. Gordon Hintz and Republican Representative Michelle Litjens

Friday morning after the Assembly vote to approve Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill Democrat State Rep. Gordon Hintz turned to Republican Rep. Michelle Litjens and said: “You are F***king dead!”
620 WTMJ reported:

State Rep. Gordon Hintz was issued a municipal citation in Appleton earlier this month for violating a city sexual misconduct ordinance.

Appleton police said the citation was issued Feb. 10 in conjunction with an ongoing investigation of Heavenly Touch Massage Parlor, 342 W. Wisconsin Ave., in Appleton. Police searched the business and a nearby residence in the 1300 block of North Division Street Jan. 28, after investigators had staked out the properties for several days after receiving a tip.

Last Friday…. after the Assembly voted to engross the Budget Repair Bill, Hintz turned to a female colleague, Rep. Michelle Litjens and said: “You are F***king dead!”

Hintz was arrested for sexual misconduct earlier in the week – in a prostitution sting.

Atlas Shrugs

Ridiculous America

Here is a country whose still-lingering greatness was born on the backs of workers who unionized against the will and wishes of the great powers of capitalism. Yet here also is a country where the vital lessons of that effort have been largely disparaged and forgotten, because the truth of those lessons still discomforts those great powers. This week, the progeny of those early organizers used the democratic process to make progress for themselves and their fellow members, and even in defeat were magnificent.

Here is a country that makes men of such courage that they volunteer to die thousands of miles from home, who scramble to save each other when the bullets are flying, and can still smile about it. Yet here also is a country that takes men of this caliber and throws them - not once, not twice, not three but four times - into a meat-grinder based on lies and the desire for profit and power. If the man I met hadn't been shot, like as not he'd either still be in Afghanistan, or would be gearing up for a fifth trip to the other side of the world.

Happy birthday, you ridiculous nation. You are a great and terrible place, and you must do better. Not just because you have to, which you do, but because you can. You have the necessary pieces, and you have the potential. I know, because I saw it all week long on my sidewalk.

William Rivers Pitt, Truthout [excerpt]

United Nations Pursues Burmese Mass Murderers

The UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon came out of his meeting this morning with Burma's top general, Than Shwe, bearing news that the junta is finally prepared - after three fateful weeks of prevaricating - to allow "all" foreign workers into the country, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

However, it was not clear whether Than Shwe had agreed to give visas to foreign aid workers or let them into the devastated Irrawaddy delta region to deliver aid. As a result, Ban Ki-moon was only able to say that he "thinks" the general's agreement is a breakthrough. Nor was it clear whether Than Shwe was referring only to relief workers from partner countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).

The UN leader's meeting with Than Shwe came after an extraordinary day during which he was given a carefully orchestrated helicopter tour of the delta region by the military government, including a visit to a "show camp" where Burmese made homeless by cyclone Nargis lined up to greet him outside pristine blue tents (pictured above), many of which were empty.

And whatever Than Shwe may have said this morning to pacify Ban Ki-moon, the reports that continue to emerge from the delta region only reinforce the ugly truth: that in denying the enormity of the destruction wrought by Nargis, the four generals who run this country, Than Shwe, Maung Aye, Shwe Mann and Thein Sein, and their accolytes, are nothing less than mass murderers.

One of the worst reports to emerge from the delta since the cyclone hit 21 days ago concerns 70 homeless refugees who attempted to disembark from their four flimsy boats near Bogalay. Local government officials refused them permission to land and told them to return to their ruined villages. "They were caught in a sudden storm, the boats capsized and all drowned," said a witness.

This sort of cold-hearted behaviour, typical of the regime, is not what was being reported to Ban Ki-moon yesterday by his Burmese guides. Indeed, at the "show camp" and elsewhere, it transpires that the survivors of Nargis were instructed to "show discipline" and refrain from any complaints about their plight.

Some local authorities reportedly accused destitute rice farmers and their families of "damaging Burma's image" by begging for food at the roadside. Four Burmese journalists reporting from the region for independent Rangoon publications were arrested, held overnight and told the next day to leave the region.

Before Than Shwe’s change of heart this morning, UN agencies and international relief organisations were saying that aid has so far reached only a quarter of the people who desperately need it. Relief workers travelling in the delta region give harrowing first-hand reports of thousands of starving people lining the roads and living among the ruins of remote, flattened villages, scavenging in the flooded fields for any food they can find.

In an email to friends in Thailand, one Burmese relief worker said around 10,000 people lined the roadside as he drove to Bogalay, one of the worst-hit delta towns. "These people previously lived in the paddy fields on the left and right side of the road. Now their homes were destroyed and the fields were flooded. So they moved to the roadside. Some could build small tents, but others have to sleep on the open ground. Most of them are women and children. I saw six or seven family members sitting tightly together under a roof of plastic sheeting held up by four posts."

The relief worker witnessed government officials driving refugees out of a monastery where they had sought shelter. The abbot angrily challenged the expulsion order but was ignored. Like the 70 trying to land their boats at Bogalay, the refugees were ordered to return to their destroyed villages.

FIRST POSTED

The Death of Upward Mobility

Bill Moyers, Doubleday

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries' campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing -- while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.

Tar Baby

Wherever Fascists meet, the suppression of the working class is a priority topic. In America, the Republicans have succeeded in rolling back the power of labor unions and in enlisting working class voters into the right wing ranks. The selling points are racism, jingoistic patriotism and warlike stances. Blacks became welfare chiselers unqualified for the jobs they assumed through affirmative action. Any attempt to enforce labor laws or to enable environmental protection acts received the un-American label. Any attempt to avert wars by negotiation was treasonous.

Incredibly, the GOP persuaded the blue collar workers to adopt stances that harmed their basic self-interests. They reduced work safety enactments, tampered with the minimum wage and reduced the ability of unions to organize. The employers moved factories to non-union locales or out of the country altogether.

Now, the wingnuts intend to repeat their successes with Hispanics as the target.

Tar baby?

The Crypt’s Blog

In a 20-page memo on GOP electoral woes, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) repeatedly misspells Barack Obama’s name – it’s one R, congressman, not two -- and then manages to use the racially charged term “tar baby” in a paragraph about Obama and immigration.

“Remember,” Davis writes, “Hispanic voters are a swing group in this election and future elections. John McCain, being from a border state, may be out of sync with many Republicans but he has standing among Hispanics. Barrack Obama has not made the sale to Hispanic voters. Thus, this issue is a tar baby for anyone who touches it, with land mines everywhere.”