Now What?

Thanks to Pavlovian Obeisance.

Scott Walker and The Fetal Position

Our National Introduction to Scott Walker has been less than inspiring. He is a college drop out with a deep dislike for his "inferiors", ain't that a hoot? A Union busting "good ole boy"*, he has the key to the koch outhouse.

*  Steve Fitzgerald, the father of the top two Republican lawmakers in state government, will lead the Wisconsin State Patrol, Gov. Scott Walker's administration announced Tuesday.

An in depth understanding of Scott Walker (oxymoronic, I know) is emerging. I turns out he is just as dedicated to dis-empowering women as he is unions:

From Andy Kroll at Mother Jones:

Walker's nearly nine-year record in the Wisconsin Assembly, the legislature's lower house, reads like a pro-life handbook, an all-out assault on abortion rights. What's more, the many anti-abortion initiatives he backed are perfectly in sync with the assault on reproductive rights now unfolding on the national level, where House Republicans recently gutted funding for Planned Parenthood and controversially tried to redefine "rape" to limit the long-standing exceptions to the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save a mother's life.

This Is The Real Thing

Madison, Wisconsin...Anytown USA

Have we forgotten who stole all the money? It wasn't the cheese-heads. It wasn't Mexicans or poor people or sick people or elderly people. It wasn't unions or carpenters or doctors or gay people. It wasn't me. It probably wasn't you.

Yup. Hims.

Robert Reich - The Man Who Should Be...

Anything He Wants:

The Republican Strategy

Robert Reich
Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.

***

Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.

***

The strategy as a whole

These three aspects of the Republican strategy – a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy – fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?

*****

Read the whole article here.

Field Trip!

More from FightBack!NEWS :

3000 students walk out in Milwaukee, support public workers

By Mike Gold  

February 17, 2011

Milwaukee, WI - 3000 students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) walked out of classes at noon, Feb. 17 to protest Governor Scott Walker’s proposed union busting bill, which would effectively ban public sector unions from being able to collectively bargain. Students at colleges and high schools across the state organized walkouts and many school districts were shut down by teacher absences.

***

Resistance Continues in Madison

In Madison, the sit-in at the Capitol continues as tens of thousands of workers and students unite in bold resistance. Democrats refused to show up to the Senate, breaking quorum and delaying the vote for the bill. Many Senators crossed the state border in order to delay the vote, as Governor Walker attempted to dispatch state police to find them.

The Revolution Will Be Peaceful, But It Will Be.

Pick Your Side, Buster

This from FightBack!NEWS :

Wisconsin governor tries to strip state employees of union rights, workers fight back 

Huge protests in Madison 
Madison, WI - Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has proposed to take away union collective bargaining rights for more than 175,000 public employees. Walker has made his state the center of a vicious, far-reaching union busting move. But the people of Wisconsin are rising up. They are fighting back.
On Feb. 15 a rally of more than 12,000 people converged on the Capitol with chants of “Recall Walker.” This followed a rally of 2000 students on Feb. 14. The Madison School District has announced that they will not hold classes Feb. 16 because so many teachers have already called in sick in order to attend the protests.

Afghanistan, You Never Loved US

The Silence is deadly. The Silence is bankrupting US, morally and financially. The Silence is stealing the future of our children. The Silence is destroying Afghanistan.

The solution in Afghanistan: Get out

By James P. McGovern and Walter B. Jones

Friday, February 18, 2011; 12:00 AM 
 

washingtonpost.com  

No one, it seems, wants to talk about the war in Afghanistan. This week the House debated a budget bill that is touted as reflecting new fiscal restraint, yet borrows tens of billions more for the war. In an hour-long State of the Union address last month, President Obama devoted less than one minute to the conflict. Given the investment and sacrifices our country has made for nearly 10 years, the phones in our offices should be ringing off the hook with calls from those who are tired of being told that the United States doesn't have enough money to extend unemployment benefits or invest in new jobs.

But by and large, Americans are silent...

What are we giving up to maintain the status quo? Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz told the House Veterans Affairs Committee in September that the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, including interest payments on the money borrowed for these wars and care for our wounded soldiers and veterans, is likely to total $4 trillion to $6 trillion.

Simply put, we believe the human and financial costs of the war are unacceptable and unsustainable. It is bankrupting us. The United States should devise an exit plan to extricate ourselves from Afghanistan, not a plan to stay there four more years and "then we'll see." This doesn't mean that we abandon the Afghan people - rather, we should abandon this war strategy. It is a failure that has not brought stability to Afghanistan and has not enhanced our own security. As the retired career Army officer Andrew J. Bacevich has written, to die for a mystique is the wrong policy.

 It is easier for politicians to "go along" rather than make waves. But we were elected to do the right thing, not what is politically expedient. The discussion of Afghanistan shouldn't be about politics, which we acknowledge are difficult, but what is right for our country. And the right thing is to end this war.

*****

James P. McGovern, a Democrat, represents Massachusetts's 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House. Walter B. Jones, a Republican, represents North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District.

Peas In Their Pods

Peas In Their Pods

Just click the link. It's worth it.

 

The Good Dr. Robert Reich

Someone Had To Say It


Robert Reich has a post on the lack of structural integrity inherent in US income and wealth distribution. There is none.

 

The Jobs Report, and America’s Two Economies

Friday, February 4, 2011

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow is flirting with 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong.

***

We have two economies. The first is in recovery. The second remains in a continuous depression.

The first is a professional, college-educated, high-wage economy centered in New York and Washington, that’s living well off of global corporate profits. Corporations continue to make money by selling abroad from their foreign operations while cutting costs (especially labor) here at home. Wall Street is making money by taking the Fed’s free money and speculating with it. The richest 10 percent of Americans, holding 90 percent of all financial assets, are riding the wave. And their upscale spending has given high-end retailers and producers a bounce.

The second is most of the rest of America, and it’s still struggling with a mountain of debt, declining home prices, and job losses. In coming months most Americans will also be contending with sharply rising prices of food and fuel.

***

... Corporate profits cannot continue to rise on the basis of foreign sales (which are slowing as Europe adopts austerity and China raises interest rates), the purchases of the richest 10 percent of Americans (which are dependent on a rising stock market), and cost-cutting measures at home (which are necessarily limited). Without a strong and broadly-based middle-class recovery, America’s big money economy will fall in on itself. A major stock market “correction” is a certainty.

Thoughts On Egypt, Again

One more time, again...