Wisconsin Post-Mortem

DonkeyHotey

"Money can't buy you love, but it sure can by you power."  As  Matt Rothschild says:

Walker raised seven-to-ten times as much money as Barrett did. The governor collected six-figure checks from a rogue’s gallery of the far right: Bob Perry of Swift Boat infamy gave $500,000. Sheldon Adelson gave $250,000, Richard Devos gave $250,000, Foster Friess gave $100,000.

A wrinkle in Wisconsin campaign finance laws, which allows for unlimited contributions to a candidate between the time recall papers are filed and the day that the election formally gets scheduled, gave Walker four and a half months to sit on the lap of every rightwing roofer in Missouri (two of whom gave him $250,000 checks), every conservative Wall Street financier, every reactionary Texas oilman that he could find.

On top of that, the Koch Brothers poured in millions through their front groups, and the RNC funneled money in, as did other Republican organizations.

Thus, John Nichols writes:

The Wisconsin result—which followed upon a campaign that saw Walker outspend his Democratic challenger by perhaps 8–1, as the governor’s billionaire backers flooded the state with tens of millions of dollars in “independent” expenditures on his behalf—should send up red flares for Democrats as they prepare for this fall’s presidential and congressional elections. The right has developed a far more sophisticated money-in-politics template than it has ever before employed. That template worked in Wisconsin, on behalf of a deeply divisive and scandal-plagued governor, and it worked.

But, as Nichols is quick to point out, organized money will not always beat organized people, and the anti-Walker forces had other disadvantages.  First, it must be noted, "they were let down by national Democratic players who never quite recognized that Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus and “independent” groups on the right were testing and perfecting strategies for November."

As Rothschild tells it, in contrast to the "rightwing moneymen and the Republican Party," who understood the importance of this election, "the DNC was stingy, and Barack Obama couldn’t find Wisconsin with GPS and a flashlight. Hell, he was in Minneapolis on Friday and didn’t even bother to drive across the Mississippi to set foot in Wisconsin. He never showed up. Neither did Joe Biden. All Obama did was send a tweet on election morning."

Another problem was the unpopularity of recall elections, generally.  Rothschild notes that exit polls showed that "60 percent of Wisconsin voters said recall should be used only for “misconduct” in office, and not for other reasons."

It is important to recognize, therefore, that Walker won not, as Republicans want us to believe, because of the popularity of their ideas, but because of their staggering financial advantage, because the organized right made Walker's victory a national priority, and due to legitimate concerns voters had about using the recall procedure. 

Nevertheless, as Greg Sargent states, "Scott Walker’s victory in tonight’s recall battle is a major wake-up call for the left, Democrats, and unions about the true nature of the new, post-Citizens United political landscape, and it should force a major reckoning among liberals and Democrats about what this means for the future."

Wisconsin Needs You

As Meteor Blades at Daily Kos puts it:

Wisconsin progressives have inspired us, invigorated us and built an aggressive fight against the right-wing's continuing efforts to smash unions, trash equal pay for women, give tax breaks to corporations, raise taxes on low-income people and make it harder for voters to actually vote. Today that battle culminates in the recall election against Gov. Scott Walker. But it's far more than just an effort in one state against one governor. Whatever its unique qualities, it epitomizes the struggle we face nationwide. Today, we progressives are all Wisconsinites.

If you're in Wisconsin, We Are Wisconsin has field offices around the state running canvasses you can participate in.  If you don't live in Wisconsin, you can still help get out the vote by clicking here and signing up for Friends and Neighbors, created by the AFL-CIO and Workers' Voice, which will put you in touch with Wisconsin voters you have already connected with online.

Wisconsin Recall: A Battle We Can't Afford To Lose

By Isaiah J. Poole, cross-posted from Campaign for America's Future

For the progressive movement, it's put up or shut up time in Wisconsin.

We said that we despise the agenda of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. We cheered the thousands of people who occupied the state capitol in 2011 to protest Walker's ramming legislation crippling public employee unions through the legislature. We celebrated when a legislature recall election led to the ousting of two of the state senators who backed the legislation. And we were bolstered when a record number of signatures put a Walker recall election on the ballot.


But now that it's crunch time, we are dangerously close to losing it all. And the consequences of a recall defeat are almost impossible to overstate. Imagine the gloating on Fox News and the right-wing blogs if Walker wins on Tuesday, and the claims that our insurgent movement for rebuilding the middle class is bloodied and can be left for dead.

If we are really serious about standing up against the unholy alliance of conservative extremism and corporate money that has imposed an austerity agenda on the working class while further enriching the wealthy, then we need to help the people in Wisconsin who are trying against the odds to win this Wisconsin recall.

We're asking people this weekend to sign up with Worker's Voice and contribute time to help get out the vote against Walker.

Workers' Voice is a new political action committee affiliated with the AFL-CIO that offers get-out-the-vote tools that leverage the power of your social networks with information in the voter file.
You can help identify voters, make phone calls, or send your own personalized direct mail to people you know. And you can do it all from home, no matter where you live. And in an election race that polls suggest could go either way, every phone call, every email, every knock on a door will matter.

What has me particularly fired up is an article progressive commentator Sally Kohn has posted on The Daily Beast, with a headline that claims "Democrats Lose Momentum in Wisconsin: The left has seemed more comfortable being angry than channeling that emotion into influence."

I respect Sally Kohn and think she's a smart political analyst. But I would really like to see her proved wrong.

Her sense is that grassroots progressives did a good job pulling together a movement based on opposition to Walker's policies—not just on labor rights but also on a budget that, like national conservative policies, cuts services vital to the middle class and poor while cutting taxes to the wealthy and corporations. But the momentum fell apart when it came time to take that energy and translate it into actual change at the ballot box.

"Progressives have had a far harder time yoking grassroots activism to electoral politics than conservatives, who quickly managed to translate Tea Party rabble rousing into political power," Kohn writes.

It is true that progressives need a more solid strategy for electoral and political gains in the face of how, with the aid of the Citizens United ruling, the right and its corporate backers have dominated the political landscape. That is a key focus of the Take Back the American Dream conference, where many of the plenary meetings and strategy sessions will be focused both on how progressives can score gains in the November elections and on how progressives can affect the course of economic policy during December's "taxmageddon," when Congress must decide how to handle the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, payroll tax relief and a deal on federal spending.

But, as The Nation's John Nichols told me in my interview with him today, people power has already accomplished more in Wisconsin than skeptics in either the left or the right expected. As he reminds us, the Capitol protests were supposed to quickly fizzle, but they didn't. The public was supposed to massively turn against supporters of public employees, but they didn't. The Walker recall was expected to flail in the midst of the harsh Wisconsin winter. It didn't.

So now we come to this moment, where it will become clear to the nation whether the 99 percent can in fact use people power to push back against the 1 percent and insist on government policies that restore a measure of prosperity to the majority of Americans, not just those at the very top.

Workers Voice is one way you can help, but it is of course not the only way. However you choose to get involved, this is the time to move from the sideline to the front line.

Then, at our Take Back the American Dream conference, we can do the work of building on a Wisconsin victory. That conference will feature Paul Krugman, Van Jones, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ai-jen Poo, Sandra Fluke, Gov. Howard Dean, Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Hayes and Katrina vanden Heuvel. (Click here to register.)


When you consider all that is at stake throughout the country, as conservatives continue their assault on worker's rights and economic security at both the state and national level, we literally cannot afford to lose on Tuesday.

Wild And Woolly In Wisconsin

Barrett To Face Walker In Historic Recall Election

By Mary Bottari, cross-posted from PRWatch

DonkeyHotey

Wisconsin voters chose Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to run against incumbent Governor Scott Walker in the first gubernatorial recall election in the state's history. It has been 450 days since the first protests against Walker's bill to strip state workers of collective bargaining rights sparked massive protests and an 18 day occupation of the Capitol building. Now, there are only 28 days left before a general election that will decide the next governor of the state.

Barrett told MSNBC: "It will be a wild and woolly 28 days."

Barrett got 58% of the vote. He was trailed by Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk at 34%, State Senator Kathleen Vinehout at 4%, and Secretary of State Doug Lafollette at 3%. Wisconsin State Firefighters President Mahlon Mitchell easily bested two unknown candidates for the right to run in the recall against Republican Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. "Real" Democrats easily defeated the "fake" Democrats run by Republicans in four key State Senate recall elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake that body. Democrats recalled two State Senators in the summer of 2011 and only need to knock off one more to take control of the chamber and put a stop to the GOP agenda. In 2010, Walker beat Barrett by 5% during a national tsunami that swept Democrat Russ Feingold and many other long-serving Democrats out of office and gave the GOP trifecta control of 26 statehouses.

Walker faced a symbolic challenge from self-described (and attired) "Lincoln" Republican Arthur Kohl-Riggs, who received 3% of the vote in the Republican primary. Active campaigning by Walker and full mobilization by right-wing talk radio pumped up voter turnout in the Republican primary to unexpected levels.

State is a Hotbed of Politics

A June 5 general election will determine whether Walker becomes the third governor in U.S. history to be recalled.

Locking Down An American Workforce

Prison Labor as the Past -- and Future -- of American “Free-Market” Capitalism

by Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman, cross-posted from Tom Dispatch

Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world.  Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work.  The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate.  The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

These companies can, in most states, lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside.  All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

Rarely can you find workers so pliable, easy to control, stripped of political rights, and subject to martial discipline at the first sign of recalcitrance -- unless, that is, you traveled back to the nineteenth century when convict labor was commonplace nationwide.  Indeed, a sentence of “confinement at hard labor” was then the essence of the American penal system.  More than that, it was one vital way the United States became a modern industrial capitalist economy -- at a moment, eerily like our own, when the mechanisms of capital accumulation were in crisis.

Occupy The Super Bowl

by Jordan Ward

"[T'he very people that built the stadium in which the Super Bowl is going to be played and the very people who built the city that is enjoying the limelight — the very people who made this possible — are being disrespected.”   Jeff Harris, AFL-CIO

 I had hoped when Major League Baseball held its All Star Game in Arizona last year that the players, especially those of Hispanic descent, would have boycotted or at least spoken out against the state's draconian immigration policy.  (See America Past Time.)  They didn't. Now, its football's turn as Indiana becomes the the nation's 23rd right to work state.  -- Lovechilde

Super Bowl Players Should Stand Up For Indiana Workers

By Travis Waldon, cross-posted from ThinkProgress (originally posted on January 25, 2012)

Last July, Major League Baseball blew an opportunity to make a difference. With 28 players who were either Hispanic or of Hispanic descent participating in the league’s annual All-Star Game in Phoenix, Arizona, and the eyes of the sports world watching, nary a one spoke out against the radical anti-immigration law Arizona had passed a year before, even though it could have directly affected the players and will directly affect many of their fans. “I ain’t Jackie Robinson,” David Ortiz, one of baseball’s biggest characters, said.

Over the next 10 days, the National Football League will have a similar chance to make a difference.

Just two weeks before Super Bowl XLVI kicks off at Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis, more than 10,000 people marched through the city to protest right-to-work legislation that is being pushed through the state’s legislature. The legislation passed the state Senate this week and the state House today, and is backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R). Considering the NFL nearly lost its 2011 season, and Super Bowl XLVI with it, to a labor dispute, Indiana Republicans’ assault on workers is a cause the players should be familiar with.

Fortunately, there are signs that the NFL players aren’t going to repeat Major League Baseball’s mistake. Several players have spoken out against the legislation, and NFL Players Association President DeMaurice Smith said his organization is already taking action. “We’ve been on picket lines in Indianapolis already with hotel workers who were basically pushed to the point of breaking on the hotel rooms that they had to clean because they were not union workers,” Smith told the Nation. “We’ve been on picket lines in Boston and San Antonio. So, the idea of participating in a legal protest is something that we’ve done before.”

That’s a good first step. But it’s not enough. Indiana union officials are contemplating disrupting Super Bowl-related events to draw attention to their cause, clogging city streets and slowing down events around Lucas Oil Stadium (which was built and is maintained by union workers). Labor leaders are hesitant, though, fearing that such actions could give the city and their cause “a black eye” with people who think sports and politics don’t mix. If some of the league’s top players, particularly those participating in the Super Bowl, spoke in support of those efforts, however, that perception could change.

Indiana Dems Push Back Against GOP Union Busters

As ThinkProgress reports, "for the last two days, Democrats in the Indiana legislature have prevented the consideration of a “right to work” bill, which would make Indiana the first state in the U.S. industrial belt to allow non-union workers to free-ride on union contracts, which obviously undermines the ability of the union to do its job."

Today was Day Three, and according to Chris Bowers, the Democrats may be in striking distance (so to speak) of stopping this union-busting legislation:

Thirty-seven Indiana Democrats are on their third day of denying Republicans the 67-member quorum necessary to proceed with union-busting "right to work" legislation in the Indiana House of Representatives. The Democrats continue to not show up to the chamber despite now facing fines of $1,000 a day.
Why do Democrats continue to hold out, despite facing very real financial threats to themselves and their families, and despite Republicans holding a 60-40 majority in the House of Representatives? Because Democrats and unions are within striking distance of stopping the bill.
A source close to the process has told Daily Kos that Indiana Democrats are "very close to having the votes to defeat the bill on the floor." A total of 51 votes is needed to defeat the bill, and while Democrats are united in opposition, Republicans are divided.
This information is based on an anonymous source, so obviously take it with a grain of salt. Still, there is an intuitive logic backing it up. With multiple members of the Democratic caucus actually facing the possibility of losing their homes over this, at this point they would not be staying out of the chamber if the fight was hopeless.

 As Indiana Democrats and unions scramble to round up the final votes needed to stop this bill, Bowers urges us all to "please send a supportive email to the Indiana House Democratic Caucus. It's a small gesture, but right now we need to offer whatever support we can."

Obama Does Recess

The American people deserve to have qualified public servants fighting for them every day - whether it is to enforce new consumer protections or uphold the rights of working Americans.  We can’t wait to act to strengthen the economy and restore security for our middle class and those trying to get in it, and that’s why I am proud to appoint these fine individuals to get to work for the American people.  -- President Barack Obama

Well, this little blog here has argued often that pushing first for Elizabeth Warren and then for Richard Cordray, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a fight very well worth having.  (See, e.g., Party of Nullification; Cordray, It's Not You It's Them; Washington Microcosm.)

This morning I posted a piece by Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress which explained the justification for making a recess appointment in the wake of Republican intransigence.  And as Adam Serwer noted, "few presidents have seen their appointments subject to as much obstruction as Obama, and few have been so timid about taking advantage of recess appointments.

Timid until now.  Obama used a recess appointment today to appoint Cordray as director of the CFPB.  And that's not all.  The President will be announcing three recess appointments (Department of Labor Attorney Sharon Block, labor lawyer Richard Griffin, and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn) to the National Labor Relations Board which as Dave Johnson recently wrote, the Republicans have effectively shut down.

Travis Waldron at ThinkProgress explains:  

Like the CFPB, Republicans have spent the past year blocking nominations to the NLRB in an effort to keep the agency from functioning. Those efforts would have paid off soon, since after Craig Becker’s term on the board expired this week, the NLRB would have been reduced to two members, which is the number it had for more than two years from 2008 to 2010. This effectively shuts down the board, since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that two members does not constitute a legal quorum, and thus, a two-member board can’t make binding rulings.

As Laura Clawson says at Daily Kos, "This is huge."

Without these appointments, the NLRB would have been down to two members; it cannot make decisions without a three-member quorum. Republicans were determined to block Obama's NLRB nominations to shut down the board and prevent it from being able to pass rules like its recent moves streamlining union elections and requiring employers to put up posters informing workers of their existing legal rights.
Obama's decision to recess appoint both these NLRB members and Cordray to the CFPB doesn't just put qualified people into the government—it enables the government agencies themselves to function. That functioning, not the specific individuals, was what Republicans hoped to obstruct. It goes without saying that the GOP will be outraged all over again, despite the fact that the last three Republican presidents all made recess appointments to the NLRB. Kudos to Obama for braving the outrage and doing what needs to be done to keep government working.

Now that the President has finally done the right thing we need to show him our support and encouragement.  Click here to send an email courtesy of Daily Kos to President Obama to thank him for taking these important steps to protect workers and consumers.  Here's another one from Campaign for America's Future.

The Forgotten Leading Actor In The American Dream Story: Labor Unions

By Robert L. Borosage, cross-posted from Campaign for America's Future

When Newt Gingrich maligned our "truly stupid" child labor laws and suggested that children 14 and under be put to work cleaning their schools, he sparked the outrage the former House speaker relishes. Less attention was paid to the other casualty of his proposition: "get rid of the unionized janitors."

This is the slur turned to high art: a little race bait posturing at "poor kids" who, Gingrich tells us, don't work like middle class kids do, and a shot at "unionized janitors"—almost by definition overpaid and lazy, whose work could be done by a grade-schooler.

Newt's blistering of child labor protections expresses his own perversity, but his scorn for union workers is a conservative staple. It's been a basic theme for the right since President Reagan broke the PATCO strike in 1981, and declared open season on unions for corporate employers.

That assault has been stunningly successful. Globalization gave manufacturers a large club in negotiations—concessions or jobs get shipped abroad. And often the reality was concessions AND jobs got shipped abroad. Corporations perfected techniques, often against the law, to crush organizing drives, and stymie new contracts for the few that succeeded. The National Labor Relations Board, stacked with corporate lobbyists under Republican presidents, turned a blind eye to systematic violations of the law.

So now union workers are down to about 7 percent of the private workforce. Virtually the only growing unions are public employees— teachers, nurses, cops. Not surprisingly, conservative Republican governors, led by Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich, used the budget squeeze caused by the Great Recession to go after these unions, combining layoffs with efforts to eviscerate the right of public employees to organize and negotiate.

But if unions remain a prime target of corporate and conservative assaults, they are often slighted in progressive and Democratic narratives.

Restore The Basic Bargain

By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

That basic bargain created a virtuous cycle of higher living standards, more jobs, and better wages.

Back in 1914, Henry Ford announced he was paying workers on his Model T assembly line $5 a day – three times what the typical factory employee earned at the time.

The Wall Street Journal termed his action “an economic crime.”

But Ford knew it was a cunning business move. The higher wage turned Ford’s auto workers into customers who could afford to buy Model T’s. In two years Ford’s profits more than doubled.
That was then. Now, Ford Motor Company is paying its new hires half what it paid new employees a few years ago.

The basic bargain is over – not only at Ford but all over the American economy.

New data from the Commerce Department shows employee pay is now down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary data in 1929.

Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929.

1929, by the way, was the year of the Great Crash that ushered in the Great Depression.

In the years leading up to the Great Crash, most employers forgot Henry Ford’s example. The wages of most American workers remained stagnant. The gains of economic growth went mainly into corporate profits and into the pockets of the very rich. American families maintained their standard of living by going deeper into debt. In 1929 the debt bubble popped.

Sound familiar? It should. The same thing happened in the years leading up to the crash of 2008.

The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven’t learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last seventy-five years: When the economy becomes too lopsided – disproportionately benefitting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers – it tips over.

In other words, we’re in trouble because the basic bargain has been broken.

United Front: Occupy And Labor

In my view, collaboration with and support of organized labor is critical to the long-term health of the Occupy movement.  It is therefore quite heartening to see, as Laura Clawson writes below, "the degree to which unions are embracing not just the movement's message but its right to sustained, peaceful public protest."  -- Lovechilde

Unions Condemn Occupied Wall Street Eviction

by Laura Clawson, cross-posted from Daily Kos


AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has sent out a national email blast reading, in part:

They can take away the tarps and the tents. But they can’t slow down the Occupy Wall Street movement. [...] The Occupy Wall Street movement has been committed to peaceful, nonviolent action from its inception. And it will keep spreading no matter what elected officials tell police to do. But that doesn’t mean these raids are acceptable. In fact, they are inexcusable.
As former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, these protests are “as American as apple pie.” Americans must be allowed to speak out against pervasive inequality, even if the truth discomfits the 1%.
The AFL-CIO will do everything in our power to make sure the free speech rights of these peaceful protesters are protected.

The Communications Workers of America have also issued a statement:

"The Communications Workers of America strongly condemns the decision by Mayor Bloomberg to forcibly remove protesters from Zuccotti park. In two short months, Occupy Wall Street has focused the world's attention on the deep frustration felt by working people about an economy that no longer works for the middle class. The 99% have seen good jobs disappear while the rich get richer and the big banks make billions with impunity. Mayor Bloomberg may have cleared the park for now, but Occupy Wall Street's message cannot be silenced. No one can evict an idea whose time has come.

Greg Sargent observes, correctly, that Trumka and the AFL-CIO are defying a "Conventional wisdom [that] has it that mounting incidents of violence and outsized tactics will put pressure on institutional liberal groups and Dems to edge away from Occupy Wall Street." The same defiance is obviously true of the CWA, which has been joined by Occupy protesters in its efforts to pressure Verizon and which currently has a dozen members marching from Albany to Manhattan to join Thursday's planned day of action.

We've been tracking the growth of cooperation and exchange between unions and Occupy Wall Street. Early on, there was some skepticism, at least in the media, that unions would be committed to Occupy Wall Street in adversity, and reporting that highlighted tensions between the two. These statements make clear, though, the degree to which unions are embracing not just the movement's message but its right to sustained, peaceful public protest.

12:51 PM PT: In an emailed statement:

The United Auto Workers, an early endorser of the Occupy Wall Street movement, today condemned Mayor Michael Bloomberg's overnight raid on the Occupy Wall Street protesters in lower Manhattan. "The right to protest and free assembly are sacrosanct in our country," said UAW President Bob King. "Mayor Bloomberg has been publicly critical of raising taxes on the 1 percent and the message of Occupy Wall Street. The manner in which this raid was carried out can only lead one to believe that the mayor was doing the bidding of Wall Street once again."

Big Day For Labor: Working People Win In Ohio

By Laura Clawson, cross-posted from Daily Kos

The fight to defeat Ohio's Issue 2 was one more look at what a determined mobilization of the 99 percent can look like. And holy crap, what a victory it led to: with 99 percent of votes reporting, the margin is 61-39. ModernEsquire notes that turnout was barely lower than in 2010, when Ohio was voting for both a governor and a senator, and just a handful of counties voted to strip collective bargaining rights from public workers—many counties that would be red in a partisan election voted no.
 * * *
It no doubt is the vehemence with which Ohio voters have rejected this bill, and President Obama has issued his congratulations to:

...the people of Ohio for standing up for workers and defeating efforts to strip away collective bargaining rights, and commends the teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other workers who took a stand to defend those rights.

Unions poured immense resources into this, knowing it was do or die, that a win wouldn't turn around declining union membership and historically high anti-worker political power, but that a loss would cement those things and quite possibly help cost President Obama and Sen. Sherrod Brown the state of Ohio in 2012. And unions were facing off against massive right-wing spending, the full scope of which we may never really know, and a roster of dirty tricks.

We won. Unions won, working people won, the progressive movement won, Democratic prospects in Ohio in 2012 won. It's worth a celebration. It's worth honoring the tenacity with which the good guys fought this awful bill. It's worth looking at the snowplow driver or the city engineer down the street from you and remembering that they're not the enemy and that their fight is your fight. And it's worth as many reminders as it takes to get the pundits to realize the significance of this vote when they're assessing what went down in the 2011 elections. Then, as always, we get ready for the next fight. Because the Koch brothers and the Liz Cheneys and the John Kasichs and Scott Walkers and Rick Scotts aren't giving in just because they had it stuffed back in their face once. They want to drive us all so far into the dirt that we'll envy and turn on the person earning minimum wage for a full 40 hours a week, because he or she will look like a high-on-the-hog elite to us. And this fight remains about refusing to do that.

The Election of 2012: Why the Most Important Issues May Be Off the Table (But Should Be On It)

By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website

We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who:

Believes corporations are people, wants to cut the top corporate rate to 25% (from the current 35%) and no longer require they pay tax on foreign income, who will eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, raise the retirement age for Social Security and turn Medicaid into block grants to states, seek a balanced-budged amendment to the Constitution, require any regulatory agency issuing a new regulation repeal another regulation of equal cost (regardless of the benefits), and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

Or one who:

Believes the Federal Reserve is treasonous when it expands the money supply, doubts human beings evolved from more primitive forms of life, seeks to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and shift most public services to the states, thinks Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, while governor took a meat axe to public education and presided over an economy that generated large numbers of near-minimum-wage jobs, and who will shut down most federal regulatory agencies, cut corporate taxes, and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

Whether it’s Romney or Perry, he’s sure to attack everything Obama has done or proposed. And Obama, for his part, will have to defend his positions and look for ways to counterpunch.

Hence, the parameters of public debate for the next fourteen months.

Happy Labor Day

Here are some pieces recently published at Fair and Unbalanced:  Robert Reich on why this Labor Day we need protest marches, not parades; Andy Kroll on what's next for Wisconsin; and Angelia Wade on Martin Luther King's support for the labor movement.

And, here is Nat Adderley's Work Song:

This Labor Day We Need Protest Marches Not Parades

By Robert Reich, cross-posted from his website.

Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be more appropriate than a parade.

Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American companies continue to cut wages and benefits. The median wage is still dropping, adjusted for inflation. High unemployment has given employers extra bargaining leverage to wring out wage concessions.

All told, it’s been the worst decade for American workers in a century. According to Commerce Department data, private-sector wage gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last ten years, adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).

Big American corporations are making more money, and creating more jobs, outside the United States than in it. If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court’s twisted logic now insists, most of the big ones headquartered here are rapidly losing their American identity.

CEO pay, meanwhile, has soared. The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs at 350 big American companies surged 11 percent last year to $9.3 million (according to a study of proxy statements conducted for The Wall Street Journal by the management consultancy Hay Group.). Bonuses have surged 19.7 percent.

This doesn’t even include all those stock options rewarded to CEOs at rock-bottom prices in 2008 and 2009. Stock prices have ballooned since then, the current downdraft notwithstanding. In March, 2009, for example, Ford CEO Alan Mulally received a grant of options and restricted shares worth an estimated $16 million at the time. But Ford is now showing large profits – in part because the UAW agreed to allow Ford to give its new hires roughly half the wages of older Ford workers – and its share prices have responded. Mulally’s 2009 grant is now worth over $200 million.

The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than at any time since just before the Great Depression.
Meanwhile, the American economy has all but stopped growing – in large part because consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of GDP) are also workers whose jobs and wages are under assault.

Perhaps there would still be something to celebrate on Labor Day if government was coming to the rescue. But Washington is paralyzed, the President seems unwilling or unable to take on labor-bashing Republicans, and several Republican governors are mounting direct assaults on organized labor (see Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and Wisconsin, for example).

So let’s bag the picnics and parades this Labor Day. American workers should march in protest. They’re getting the worst deal they’ve had since before Labor Day was invented – and the economy is suffering as a result.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.  He writes a blog at www.robertreich.org.  His most recent book is Aftershock.

What's Next For Wisconsin?

The Badger State's Bloody Stalemate

By Andy Kroll, cross-posted from Tom Dispatch.

Stephanie Haw needed a good cry.

On the night of August 9th, the rowdy crowd inside Hawk's bar in downtown Madison grew ever quieter as the election results trickled in. Earlier that day, with the nation watching, voters statewide cast their ballots in Wisconsin's eagerly awaited recall elections that threatened the seats of six Republican state senators. Democrats needed to win three of them to regain control of the state senate and block Republican Governor Scott Walker's hard-line agenda. But it wasn't to be.  Deep into the night, an MSNBC anchor announced that a fourth GOP senator, Alberta Darling of north Milwaukee and the nearby suburbs, had clinched a narrow victory.

Haw slipped outside. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this, she thought. Progressives had mobilized damn near every possible supporter they could, phone banking and door knocking and Facebooking and Tweeting, and in the end, it still wasn't enough. She thought of all the energy poured into the recall effort, and of her two-year-old daughter running around the house shouting "Recall Walker! Recall Walker!" Standing on the sidewalk, she burst into tears.

I met Haw and her mother later that night at Hawk's. We sat around chewing over the election results till the bar emptied. Haw, who was wearing a red t-shirt with SOLIDARITY emblazoned on the front, said simply, "I feel terrible that we lost." I reminded her what the Democrats had been up against: with one exception, the six districts in play leaned to the right, and all six of those Republicans had won in 2008 despite the Obama frenzy that gripped the state. (He won it by nearly 14 percentage points.) She nodded along with me and then summed her feelings up this way: "I guess it's the best of times and the worst of times."

That ambivalence seemed to carry through Wisconsin's historic summer of recalls, which ended on August 16th when a pair of Democratic state senators easily defended their seats from a Republican recall effort. Which is to say, when the dust settled in the Badger State, there was no clear winner.

Martin Luther King, A Friend Of Labor

By Angelia Wade, cross-posted from American Constitution Society

This post is part of an ACSblog symposium in honor of the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The author, Angelia Wade, is Associate General Counsel for the AFL-CIO.

The unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial this weekend provides a clear opportunity to reflect on the work of this icon. When he was assassinated in April 1968, Dr. King was in Memphis lending his support to striking garbage sanitation workers who were seeking to have their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, (AFSCME) recognized so they could negotiate a contract that raised their standard of living.

Dr. King’s support of the labor movement as a pathway to better jobs and justice did not just begin in 1968. Throughout much of his life, he advocated as much for economic equality as he did for racial equality. He once stated that it did no good for a man to eat at an integrated lunch counter if that same man could not afford to buy a hamburger at the establishment.

Dr. King said the labor movement was a key vehicle for people of color to gain economic equality. He often extolled the benefits and successes of organized labor. In October 1965, in an address to the Illinois AFL-CIO, he said many forget that it was the labor movement that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress, for out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.