Wisconsin protests: why 'week of rage' matters to

[Nanook]

Re: Who Said This?

You are not keeping me awake! It is not easy going to sleep these days between what is going on in Japan, the Middle East Libya, well hell...every freekin where, but after working so hard to keep what I have through he last decade, which has not been easy... I can't take much more give.

Wisconsin is one of the highest property tax states in the country, but even so...I have farmland so have always gotten a break. I get way more for my money than I did owning lakeshore in Minnesota. However, the way things are going to hell in a hand basket, I'll be lucky to keep 5 acres and a mule by the time this is all over. The five acres is the least they let you have here.

[Nanook]

Re: Who Said This?

Well, maybe I was wrong, maybe Ohio is next, not Minnesota. Either way, the facts are alarming...and coming to a state near you.

<span style="font-size: 20pt">Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class</span>

GALLIPOLIS, Ohio — Jodi and Ralph Taylor are public workers whose jobs as a janitor and a sewer manager cover life’s basics. They have moved out of a trailer into a house, do not have to rely on food stamps and sometimes even splurge for the spicy wing specials at the Courtside Bar and Grill.

While that might not seem like much, jobs like theirs, with benefits and higher-than-minimum wages, are considered plum in this depressed corner of southern Ohio. Decades of industrial decline have eroded private-sector jobs here, leaving a thin crust of low-paying service work that makes public-sector jobs look great in comparison.

Now, as Ohio’s legislature moves toward final approval of a bill that would chip away at public-sector unions, those workers say they see it as the opening bell in a race to the bottom. At stake, they say, is what little they have that makes them middle class.

“These jobs let you put good food on the table and send your kids on school trips,” said Monty Blanton, a retired electrician and union worker. “The gap between low and middle is collapsing.”

Gallipolis (pronounced gal-uh-POLICE) is a faded town on the Ohio River, one whose fortunes fell with the decline in industries like steel in bigger cities along the river. That erased a swath of middle-income jobs in the area, said Bob Walton, who, as a commissioner for the Southern Ohio Port Authority, an economic development agency, has tracked the economic history of the area for decades.

“It’s a real big change,” Mr. Walton said. “It has changed the complexion of our community.”

Today, storefronts are mostly dark. About one in three people live in poverty. Billboards advertise oxygen tanks and motorized wheelchairs. Old photographs in a local diner look like an exhibit from a town obituary. The region has some of the highest rates of prescription drug abuse in the state, with more people dying from overdoses than car crashes, according to Ed Hughes, executive director of the Counseling Center in Portsmouth, about 55 miles west of here.

David Beaver, 65, a barber, said that when he got out of high school, “you could go anywhere you wanted to and pick your job.”

“Now, it’s depressing,” Mr. Beaver said. “I hear the boys talking. They can’t find anything.”

It is not that there are no jobs, but rather that the jobs available pay too little and have no benefits, resulting in, as Mr. Beaver put it, “just scraping by.”

read more:


read it and weep

[johnnycakes]

Re: Who Said This?

Nanook,
You have to know that I wasn't addressing you when I apologized for keeping you awake with talk about workers rights but the generally uninterested public in both countries..

[Nanook]

Re: Who Said This?

It MUST be the uninterested that is allowing this to happen...

WELL, it happened in Michigan yesterday! Coming to a state where you live, like an EPIDEMIC!



<span style="font-weight: bold">
Gov. Snyder signs emergency finanicial manager bill despite protests from students, other citizens </span>

The angry voices of 5,000 protesters did not stop Gov. Rick Snyder from signing emergency financial manager legislation into law.

People rallied at the Michigan Capitol in Lansing Wednesday to protest Snyder’s budget proposal and House Bill 4214, a bill granting increased powers to the position of emergency managers.

“I think this is an abuse of the executive branch,” said Clarkston senior Michael Birach. “No government entity should have this much power.”

Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, said they did not start the fight going on in Lansing, but they did not plan on losing.

Whitmer announced a proposed constitutional amendment to protect collective bargaining.
<span style="font-weight: bold">
<span style="font-size: 17pt">How can you criticize a teacher who makes $40,000 a year,” Whitmer said, “when you have … millionaires in your cabinet?”</span></span>

The controversial bill signed by Snyder gives him and state financial authorities the right to appoint financial managers to local governments in a state of emergency. The emergency manager would have the power to eliminate contracts, end bargaining agreements and dissolve local governments.

The union-sponsored rally also provided a forum for some to protest what they feared was an attack on the middle class and its democratic rights.

“This isn’t about unions — it’s about all of us,” said Temperance resident Jan Smith.”When you take away people’s voices, that’s not democracy.”

Her biggest concern was the effect the cuts to education spending could have on her grandchildren.

The next generation’s fate was also on the mind of Livonia resident Derek Pennington, a member of an electrician’s union.

“My daughter is going for her teaching degree at CMU and I’m worried for her,” he said. “The most important thing our government can do is invest in education.”

As protesters moved inside the Capitol, signs were prohibited but thousands continued chanting “Who’s house? Our house!”

“So far things have gone smoothly and peacefully,” said Sgt. Jeff Hoeld of the Michigan State Police. “They reserved the space through 5:30 tonight. After that they have to leave.”

Toward the end of the rally five people were arrested for refusing to leave the building after it closed. In total, 10 were arrested for trespassing and one for resisting and obstructing an officer.



This post was written by:

Jordan Spence - who has written 36 posts on Central Michigan Life.

Jordan is a staff reporter at Central Michigan Life.

source

[jah_yout]

Re: Who Said This?

i am truly inspired by the people coming out...

just when you thought the working public was completely dead...

like the man said- &quot;get up stand up&quot;

[jamaica_dreamin]

Re: Who Said This?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">i am truly inspired by the people coming out...

just when you thought the working public was completely dead...

like the man said- &quot;get up stand up&quot; </div></div>


I can think of a more appropriate rallying cry

[Nanook]

Re: It is spreading like Wildfire!

It's Spreading Like WILDFIRE!

<span style="font-weight: bold">March 24, 2011</span>

In one of the most petty acts in the recent wave of anti-worker attacks from Republican governors and legislatures, Maine Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history from the Department of Labor. On top of that, he is removing the names of renowned labor leaders from the department’s conference rooms because both the mural and room names “go against the department’s pro-business goals.”

rest of article


Lots has gone on since this thread was last visited. A judge nixed the vote in Wisconsin so far,BUT, the crisis is appearing just about everywhere now. I haven't been around to post but the news has been downright frightening!

[evanovitch]

u know , an air trafficer was just suspended fi

falling asleep n another air traffic controller some 40mls away had to help two small planes land at the airfield whe de sleeper was

as the story was reported all i could think of was it being a result of Reagan busting di air traffic controllers`union bak in his senile period , firing the whole pool n nothing being done since then to beef up said pool

watching Michael Moore`s piece on Capitalism u haffi tek note of all the Wall Streeters who invariably end up in the White House including the one who u can hear n see telling the President of the United States, the supposedly most powerful man in the world , to hurry up wid his speech....i was shocked..n yep, President Reagan hurried up

[Nanook]

Re: Indiana prosecuter resigns after ...

I thought the same thing reading about the air controllers, Vannie. And I just love Michael Moore!

Well, I just love how some of this ish comes crawling out of the woodwork...

<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">Indiana Prosecutor Resigns After Suggesting Fake Attack on Walker, Blame Protesters</span></span>


by Mike Hall, Mar 24, 2011

In an e-mail praising Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attack on worker rights and middle-class jobs, an Indiana deputy prosecutor suggested a fake attack on Walker to discredit the workers and their unions protesting the governor’s actions.

Yesterday, just before the story was scheduled for publication, Carlos Lam, a Johnson County deputy prosecutor, submitted his resignation, reports the Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind.

In the e-mail from Lam to Walker, discovered by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Center Journalism following an open records request, Lam suggests that Walker employ a “false flag operation” to gain sympathy and paint the protesters as violent.

If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions’ cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions….Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic….Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.

Lam told the journalism center that his e-mail address matched the Hotmail address appearing on the Walker e-mail but claimed he had never written to Walker. But according to the center:

At 5 a.m. Thursday, expecting the story to come out that day, Lam called his boss, Johnson County, Ind., Prosecutor Brad Cooper, and told him he had been up all night thinking about it.

“He wanted to come clean, I guess, and said he is the one who sent that email,” Cooper said.

A spokesman for Walker says no one in the governor’s office had seen the e-mail or contacted Lam.

In February, a caller pretending to be right-wing billionaire and Walker campaign donor David Koch got through to the governor and suggested he plant troublemakers in the crowd to incite violence that could be blamed on the protesters. Walker admitted, “We thought about that.”

Click here for the center’s full story.

Lam is the second Indiana prosecutor to lose his job for suggesting Walker use violence. In February, Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox was fired after a tweet he sent that said “live ammunition” and “deadly force” should be used to disperse protesters in Madison was discovered.

hereso