New Orleans    

Understand first exactly how draconian these rules were fashioned.  From the headlines most probably remember that the Republicans tried to hide under the sheep’s clothing of pretending to be more democratic.  In this perversion of the concept they first mandated an annual recertification process, meaning that a “yes” or “no” vote by the workers on continuing to be represented by the union.  At first glance some might thing this would be a nuisance but not that big of a problem, but the “flawmakers” put their hands on the scales against the workers and their unions.  Winning the vote would no longer be on the old rules, where a majority of those voting would decide in the same way legislators and the governor were elected themselves by a plurality of those voting.  No, the unions would have to win by 50% plus one of all of the workers who were eligible to vote, much like the very difficult, old Railway Labor Act standards for transportation workers, rather than the National Labor Relations Act standards of majority rule that have been in place for over 60 years.

And, keep in mind that that was simply the first hurdle the workers were required to jump.  So, how have unions fared under this regime?

Many public sector unions, especially the larger ones affiliated with AFSCME, which were virtually born in Wisconsin originally, announce they would not seek to recertify under these new rules.  This decision last September meant that tens of thousands of state workers and others might be informally represented, but would not be certified any longer.   The head of the largest AFSCME council was quoted flatly as saying that they thought their resources were better spent fighting for a new law and recertifying when collective bargaining returned rather than trying to survive under this mishmash.

Most teachers unions with the National Education Association (NEA) did decide to recertify.  About a third of the bargaining units had to go through the process in the fall of 2011.  The other two-thirds are not yet up or are under existing contracts that delay their decisions.  Importantly of the units eligible, workers won majorities virtually in every contest.  According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel these were the results:

The Wisconsin Employee Relations Commission, which oversaw the voting over the past 20 days, released a list of results showing that 177 teacher and other education unions voted to recertify, and 29 fell short of a recertification vote.  Of the 29 failures to recertify, only one union, made up of teachers in tiny North Cape School in Franksville, actually had more members voting against recertification than for it. The new recertification rules required a vote of 51% of a union’s membership – not just a majority of voting members, as is the case when public officials run for office. The North Cape vote was 6-5 against certification, with 18 members in what the WERC called the “unit population.”

In a “real” democracy unions would have won all of these elections except one, which they lost by one vote!  But who knows what drugs the various “flawmakers” are on in Wisconsin.  The paper further reported on one district where the union failed to recertify:

One unit that just missed certification was Northern Ozaukee School District teachers union. The WERC document lists 64 members in the voting population; the vote was 31-1 in favor of recertification.   Paul Krause, president of the Northern Ozaukee School Board, said he took the failure of recertification as a sign the majority of the district’s teachers have faith in the district. “I hope that the relationship between the board and teachers can continue to improve,” he said.

Are you following this?  The head of the school board watches the union win by a 31-1 with 50% of the eligible teachers voting, and slaps his own back that he won because the majority didn’t vote?!?  Crazy in the cold up there!

I mentioned earlier that recertification was just the first hurdle.  Another big one is the fact that even when recertified, unions by the new “flaws” are not allowed to bargain on very much of anything since all of that has been curtailed.

Oh, and just so there’s no confusion that this might even possibly be about worker democracy, here’s another juicy tidbit from the newspaper story where a legislator makes it clear this is all a game of “gotcha” on the unions, since a big part of this fight is taking away union dues as well.

Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), chairman of the state Senate Education Committee, responded, “If teachers decided they want to recertify their unions, more power to them.” But he said the next question is whether the unions are able to collect their dues; the new state law removed the ability of unions to have dues automatically withheld from members’ paychecks.  “The question is, will the dues come in,” he said. “The proof will be in the pudding.”

The proof of the pudding is here.  This is Republican class war, Wisconsin style, and being copied by other states wherever possible.  Hating unions is one thing, stacking the deck is another, and that’s where it all gets nasty.

 New Orleans   

Reading the story in the Times, it appears that at some point many connected to Gingrich (remember everyone is still pretending these are all separate and independent efforts!) thought Adelson might come up with $20 million.  For all the rest of us know, if Gingrich survives, this $5M might be a downpayment on a bigger play.

Supposedly, Adelson and Gingrich are buddies, BFF’s now.  I’m sure money never had anything to do with it.  Right?

Turns out they were brought together by their anti-union animus.  Adelson has long been notorious in the labor movement for his opposition to Culinary 226’s initial organizing efforts to win card check recognition as Adelson was building the Venetian casino on the Vegas strip.  Local 226 is probably the strongest private sector, service worker union in the country, so this fight was legendary, and unfortunately, the Venetian still stands out as one of the only operations on the strip that is non-union.  Adelson was able to recruit Gingrich for help in his anti-union campaign back to his time as Speaker of the House, and repaid his advice with a big time fundraiser in Vegas for the Republicans.  Subsequently they have worked on a number of anti-union initiatives in this blood war in the desert with national impact.   Here’s a rich irony given Adelson’s $5 M bet on Gingrich.  One of the things they worked on closely were initiatives to prevent unions from collecting political donations from their own union members!!!!

The other day we also were favored with reports of the companies Mitt Romney bought at Bain Capital and their records of union busting and unfair labor practice charges.  It was unclear he was still hanging around the building, but it was clear he was still collecting cash from Bain while this stuff was going on.

I imagine one of the Republican debate questions we can expect, especially in the upcoming South Carolina primary, will be how stridently the Republican candidates will dismantle the NLRB, repeal the National Labor Relations Act, and generally kick labor and their unions to the curb.  Maybe it won’t even be a question, since to make it a debate, there probably has to be a least some differences of opinion, and increasingly on the Republican side anti-unionism is becoming a litmus test, administered, orally by their big money backers, just like their  believe in God and their commitments to blocking abortions.

            New Orleans              

Having Glen Beck and other haters give people my home address and phone number is, admittedly, part of why I am fairly easily offended that there are simply no standards at the Times or anywhere else it would seem over about the privacy of public figures, and the Times would at least like to pretend that it is a place that sets such standards.  Past privacy though, was there no editorial or journalistic judgment that would restrain them from publishing pictures and descriptions of the candidates houses in the interest of public safety and some sense of a basic human right to safety, even if they are so bold, arrogant, or principled to put themselves forward for public office.

On those grounds alone the piece was offensive from its first premise that somehow we (citizens and voyeurs?) have a “right” to peek through the windows of their houses and stalk them on the blocks where they live in order to “get to know them better.”  God, how ridiculous is all of that?

But, then if readers tried to get through the piece, you would quickly be able to discover why Republican candidates of all stripes and persuasions have no problems with the “call and response” from their base about the smug elitism and sensibilities of what former Vice President Spiro Agnew once famously called the “nattering nabobs” of the East Coast corridor.  The article without apology seems to see its mission as making fun of the candidates and their families, parading forward one rock throwing, self-promoting designer after another willing to take a crack at the taste and sensibilities of these candidates and their private spaces.  The article was snide and “bitchy.”  In this case bad taste was truly in the eyes of the beholder, because virtually the entire article reeked of bad taste compounded by terrible judgment.

The reporter and the Times think they are in a position to take potshots at the taste of the candidates because they are so old-fashioned, traditional, and tend towards the “colonial” in housing styles.  Duh?  Quelle shock!   When George McGovern ran for President as a peace candidate against the sitting Democratic President Lyndon Johnson over the issue of the Vietnam War, he clearly stated a universal political law when he said, “those that would be most radical, must remember to appear most conservative,” as he explained his on wardrobe and lifestyle in the post-sixties environment.

Here’s the perfect example from the article.  I’m no friend of Michelle Bachmann, but once one gets past that and wraps one’s mind around the fact that a large family overflowing with adopted and other children that makes its money through public and social services can possibly afford a house with a $750,000 price tag, why is it not in fact admirable that she and her husband bought a house that was part of a charity construction design and build project?   To me it seems commendable in fact, though it rates no comment from the Times other than earning her a couple of body shots from a so-called professional whining about the design and line of the roof, as if Michelle and her gang were the architects and up there hammering away on the beams and shingles.

It never gets better after that, expect that the reporter and her buddies do seem to believe that you get more if you are richer so they had some faint praise for Romney and Huntsman as the zillionaires of the crew.

The Times Public Editor and anyone with an iota of routine manners and slight common sense should recoil and protest this unseemly and unsafe invasion of privacy and ad hominem attack (and that goes for Michelle Bachman , too!).

As always, let’s hope for a better new year!

It started with the police state requirements of last year’s unconstitutional, but frequently copied, Arizona anti-immigrant law and its requirements that folks to always have “papers” on them or risk a quick frisk and a trip to jail if they looked “out of the ordinary.”  Starting with profiling, police could then have someone on the bus to Mexico or beyond because they lacked ID.  Why did the Republicans want to allow government this kind of power to intrude on privacy and personal liberties?

Now we see it cropping up everywhere in the attempts to disenfranchise the poor, the young, or anyone else who seems different (read possibly Democratic) to Republican legislatures.  And, once again, it’s “big brother BS!”  Many of these bills require people to present their birth certificates in order to register and then have a “government approved” photo ID in order to vote.  These are the same people that don’t even believe President Obama’s birth certificate despite a small army of Hawaiians standing to certify it, so what chance is the average person going to have if there’s any kind of problem.  Furthermore, people better be prepared to pay to retrieve a certified copy of their birth certificates, because you can just imagine old Xerox editions are not going to cut it.  There are tens of thousands of people in my hometown of New Orleans alone who have NO original records anymore after Katrina.  Would they be denied the right to vote?

Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer is buckling at signing the so-called medical marijuana reform act in this state because he’s convinced it is unconstitutional as presented and passed by the Republicans.  Why?  Well, it requires having an ID on you at all times AND a copy of your prescription AT ALL TIMES.  The bill also requires that you be willing to submit to search of your house and property at any time by the police and other authorities, if you have a medical prescription.  The bill requires that your medical records be public and that you be listed as having such a prescription, just like a child molester, in any community where you live.  The Republicans did mess up.  They didn’t require an embedded GPS chip up your butt so they could track these suckers every minute of the day, but once they think of that, a new bill will be coming.  Schwietzer happens to be a Democrat, but he also happens not to be stupid.  He actually wants reform on this medical marijuana thing which has been a hot issue in the state ever sense folks from throughout the Northwest registered last year for prescriptions.
Nonetheless, the Republicans when left to their own instincts just want the government to intrude everywhere in the most authoritarian, police state ways imaginable.  This is not a pretty pattern.  It has nothing to do with being conservative.  It’s about brining a “cold war” into the country and using government as a tool to herd and punish, sort and select, and mainly to tilt the field and stack the deck their way.  There are no principles to any of Rthis; it’s just all about how the powers that be can use government to be as punitive as possible.

Washington

Not that anyone is sure what it means and what might be possible, but people are voting with their feet and there is a strong heartbeat and both of those change the game and demand to be taken seriously.  The other thing that seems inarguable is that newly minted Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has pulled a tactical “Gingrich” and tried to play his hand so far past his base that it’s just a matter of time before the pendulum swings back and pops him hard.  The 18-1 Republicans only evisceration of collective bargaining rights for public employees was too transparent, too roughshod, and just way too far over the top for the good people of Wisconsin.  This was a kind of hardball politics played in a New York or a Louisiana or some other uncultured backwater, but not in the world of the nice Midwest for god’s sake!  These are people that have worn cheese on their heads for cry eye!

Organizers are amazed at the polling results being seen from their own numbers as well as more public reports like those in the New York Times for collective bargaining (though not especially for unions unfortunately).  The numbers are moving overwhelmingly in support of collective bargaining from the public, which is also shocking since with 1 of 8 covered by agreements in the United States so few people anymore have the faintest clue what the heck collective bargaining might be.  Hearing about it for the first time in many cases thanks to the good people of Wisconsin, their gut response seems to be, “Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad?”  Which is only a short distance away from “You betcha, let me have some of that,” and that should really worry the Republicans and the right.

This was the Gingrich fallacy when he and the Republicans got outmaneuvered by President Clinton in the budget standoff from which they never recovered.  In a fuzzy world folks were all for the messaging that the “guvament” was wasting their money, but then when the spigot gets shutoff and the lights are turned off and folks are forced to reckon with the fact that parks are closed, social security offices don’t open, VA hospitals can’t accept them now, and the hundreds of other ways they interact with government, it’s a different story and payback is hell.

Wisconsin and Governor Walker are teaching the same lessons about collective bargaining and reminding people that their neighbor who is a teacher, city worker, or whatever is in a slap down not about money, but basic rights, like talking to the boss about your job, which is one way to define “collective bargaining,” and then it’s gone too damn far.

Walker is not alone either.  In a rarity the New York Times sent a truth seeking missile at Governor Christie where it looked at what he says public workers, unions, and teachers versus the facts along with an accompanying chart that pretty much ticked off point by point of the old “liar, liar, you’re pants are on fire!”

Add to that the crash and burn of another Republican presidential candidate wannabe, Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, being pulled down hard by an ethics scandal when he is preaching one sermon and living life another way by fronting for corporate contributions flooding into his wife’s foundation ostensibly for educational tools while 70% of the corporations are being regulated and doing business with the state, and, oh my, is their mud on his shoes and egg all over his face.  Not that he has even recognized there’s a problem except with the fussbudgets at the New York Times who first broke the story, which is now being trumpeted loudly all over Louisiana.  For all of their Biblical references, they probably overlooked the story about removing the “beam” from their own eyes, before they worry about the “mote” or speck in their neighbor’s eyes.

As long as the Republicans are still so committed to self-destructing, maybe there’s hope for a progressive future in spite of our recent lackluster efforts and losses.

Louisiana for years has had a similar “open primary” system that put all comers against all wannabes and let whoever survived go to the runoff and win.  This might have seemed to be good political tactics several decades ago when there was functionally only one party in Louisiana, the Democrats.  The open primary was devised to eliminate the Republicans rather than go through the usually mindless drubbing of whomever the Republicans might have put forward in their own puny primaries.   Fast forward three decades and tactics don’t turn out to be good strategy since now in Louisiana we almost have a one party state again, and it’s fast becoming the Republican Party, though I will guarantee that most of the candidates don’t mention that fact, and that’s what’s on my mind.

The experience recently in Washington State which adopted open primaries and the likely coming reality in California is that candidates can self-label.  Ok, you read my earlier blog, so you know that I’m not all bad with more parties, so what’s my problem?  Partially, it’s truth in advertising.

Travis Ridout of the Washington State poli-sci department raises this issue well:

“Although most candidates still run as Republicans or Democrats in Washington State, some have adopted more creative labels. Some Republicans have declared themselves members of the “GOP Party,” a label that should not confuse anyone familiar with the Republican Party’s nickname.

But there is nothing to prevent a candidate from running as a member of the “No New Taxes” party. And there is nothing to prevent a life-long Republican from running as a “Democrat” on the ballot. A scenario like this may be why the institutionalized political parties have opposed the top-two system: it denies them control over who runs under their party label. Such creative labels also deny voters the wealth of useful information about where a candidate stands on issues of the day that comes from a party label.”

The political sales and promo politicians and businessmen of California sold voters on Prop 14 partially on the premise that it would produce more moderate candidates.  I wonder why?  Certainly that was not the history here in Louisiana where the classic election outcome such a process produced was the contest between the Klan’s David Duke and repeated governor and sometimes offender, Edwin Edwards.

If an open primary system is going to prevail, let’s make sure that there are clear and consistent labels and that real parties – lots of parties – for the “useful information” point that the professor mentions, but even more importantly people should have the ability to align and combine with likeminded people, which is a big part of what parties are and are supposed to be.

If not we need to enforce truth in advertising, because this is going to be a mess, I’ll guarantee it.

Let’s party for real!

New Orleans       

But, upon reflection, a more honest answer, though probably more confusing and less useful to the fine students of Lafayette, would have been to say, that “yes, I support the ‘party,’ just not the principles and the politics.”  I’m a party-guy, just not a Tea Party guy.

I’m frankly bored by all of these articles in the wake of the mid-term election that argue in such lofty terms that the Tea-people will have to move to the center and get their “govern” groove on.  I think the real fight is going to emerge between the Republican Party pols that sucked up to the Tea-people to get elected and hope their movement runs out of steam and caffeine, dying in the cup so to speak.  This is all of the big whoops of the established structure trying to pretend that compromise is all that counts and their way is always the best way, because they believe it’s the only way.  No listening there.

The movement stories about isolated and angry citizens who found their voice in the Tea Party and a life defining cause by channeling their anger and alienation into the movement and the elections, should not be forgotten.  Those are activists and organizers who I can guarantee anyone who will listen, will NOT be happy as Republicans.  They need their own party.  They need a Tea Party that is a real party fighting (win or lose) for votes from a local base, rather than simply another caucus in the elephant herd.

There are states where that is easy and they can even fuse with the Republicans, like New York, Connecticut Vermont, South Carolina, and, perhaps even Oregon, just as the Working Families Party has done in some of these same states.  There are states where it is harder, but in every state, the rules still allow distinct parties to be built, and whether progressives or tea-people, these are real alternatives despite the fact that the work is hard and the road is long.  We simply need more parties that just the Rep-Dem Party that rules now with the favor of big money, daily pundits, and the more powerful Business Party that funds and focuses the whole shebang, but doesn’t have a separate ballot line on election day.

The prevailing wisdom seems to most clearly support the “Me Party” or what Dharmendra Kumar, who directs ACORN International’s work in Delhi famously referred to in the Indian context as the many “parties of one.”  Individuals who believe they are a “brand” or have sufficient wealth to be able to run in state after state as a “Me Party.”  The New Yorker speculated at length on whether or not Mayor Bloomberg from NYC was once again testing the waters to run as an independent for President as a standard bearer for the Me-Party.  I think the Me-Party is the largest in the United States right now no matter what Halloween mask the candidate might be wearing.  A Rand Paul in Kentucky or a Mario Rubio in Florida may be tea-people one day, libertarians the next, or whatevers most of the time, but the press continually tries to document their movements to the “center” while they try to brand themselves with the Me-Party label and run from the rest.

It would all be easier if politicians rather than constantly shucking and jiving, coalesced with like-minded and stood and fought accordingly.  Let there be a Blue Dog Party or a Right Democratic Party with a rural and southern base.  Let there be a Tea Party where they have the muscle.  Let there be a Libertarian Party with its small base and in fact I think there is one, but since it can’t build a base it ends up having to infiltrate the Republicans.  Let there be Progressive Party for whoever is comfortable there.  Let there be a national Working Families party to merge the people of labor, left, and liberal persuasion.  In fact let there be a Liberal Party for whoever is out there willing to say they are liberals and let it stick to them.  Let the Republican Party and the Democratic Party figure out what they really are and even what they really are not.

All of this would make it easier for citizens to both decide how to be active and how to choose, rather than this mush in the middle where no one can make heads or tails of truth or fiction, policy or program.  All of that would be better than the Me-Party which has been in ascendancy for the last several decades.

So, yes, I understand the Tea Party and support their right to be a party rather than a short grass prairie fire or a milquetoast caucus with the elephant band.  Good question, young man!