It should surprise no one that I read Mother Jones. I am the granddaughter of a man who helped unionize coal mining in the hell-on-earth of Eastern Kentucky in the 1940s-1950s, and labor sympathy was bread into my bones and comes out in my blood … along for a love of biscuits and gravy. Needless to say, Mother Jones was keenly interested in the Wisconsin recall election. One article neatly summed up in one info graphic how much money Scott Walker raised, and from who, in contrast to Tom Barrett:
Another article detailed how this out of state loot was being used to try to undermine the recall effort, and the tactics that dark money funded. Walker, having outspent Barrett 7-to-1, defeated the recall and will keep his skanky ass in the governor’s mansion. Teachers and firefighters and other people who really WORK for a living can just fokk themselves, because Walker’s billionaire sugar-daddies have shown who owns voting in America.
In happier news, the sate senate has probably swung back into Democratic control and exit polls show Obama leading Romney by a decent margin.
Still, it’s depressing that money, and out of state money to boot, was that much of contributor to the election. Conservatives have already gotten $400 million from the Koch brothers and their little friends, and may be raking in as much ONE BILLION from those same anti-union and un-American assclowns. After all, the Koch Brothers have $50 Billion dollars so they can spare a billion or two or five to purchase elections. Of course, if they had to spare those same billions in taxes to support the country they CLAIM to love, or help those in need like their religion REQUIRES, that would be a travesty.
We may claim to be a Christian country, but Mammon is clearly the top dog and his High Priests have us by the short and curlies.
As a Wisconsite, don’t get me started on how irate this all makes me. Our rights in this state are being chipped away, one by one. What’s equally upsetting (besides the gross inequities in money spent) is that thanks to a quirk in the law, Tom Barrett had a mere month between the primary and the election to campaign, whereas we’ve been bombarded with Walker ads for months. Gah!
Bred in your bones…. biscuits are the only bread there.
I blame spell check on that one.
You have my heart, as usual, Pope. I’m just sitting here in Kentucky with all these idiots who keep voting in Myth McConnell and the like. I got nothing but sympathy for the average joe in Wisconsin.
I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now, and normally I not only agree with what you say, but I share your insights with my friends. I am a Wisconsinite. I am also a liberal through and through. The disparity in campaign finances between Walker and Barett are, as you point out, abhorant. And, if you happened to follow the election (and the whole stripping away of collective bargaining rights debacle) it is easy to see that Walker is, in fact, a total asshat.
However (and this is a big however), Walker was RIGHT in THIS situation.
I know, it shocked me too. I have many friends that work in the public sector (from school teachers to corrections officers to soical wokers) and are members of public sector unions. Contrary to what republicans would have the public believe…my friends are not highly paid, and leading up to Walker’s reforms some were forced to ake unpaid leave, some lost their jobs, and none received raises. The financial burdens they faced were not trivial, and given the valuable servcies they provide, they deserve the recognition that they are underpaid and overworked. I was angry with them at Walker and his so-called union reform, I signed petitions and supported protests.
But in the aftermath, I have to admit that here Walker was right…he did some good. The public sector unions (public sector only, not all unions) in Wisconsin were too powerful. The operated as a monopoly, driving up costs and our state could not afford them. The most prominent example was health insurance. The public sector unions only provided 1 option for health insurance, a monopoly. By weakening the unions, the school districts were able to shop around and find lower cost (and more coverage) insurance. Some school districts who feared they were going to need to cut more teachers due to Walker’s other budget cuts, we able to keep those teachers because of the money saved in health insurance premiums. This was good, this was right, and even my public sector friends will admit that the reforms did not lead to the total death and destruction of our state as was anticipated (and described by the democrats in the heat of the debate).
Wisconsin was going bankrupt. Walker recognized that letting the public sector unions operate as a monopoly was draining our resources and did something about it. Yes, he’s still an asshat. Yes, I pretty much disagree with him regarding everything else. But here, here he was right. And what I find more distressing than the campaign finance disparity that you discuss is the fact that 99% the people on my side of the political spectrum can’t stop focusing on the facts that only show his asshat-ness and acknowledge that he might have done something good for our state. It’s distressing that we can’t stop all the name calling and recognize that sometimes the other side does have a valid point.
I see your point, and sympathize with your frustration. However, I think any good that came of Walker’s shenanigans was accidental. I think he was putting the ALEC approved agenda into place, in order to weaken, and eventually break, unions. I think that very unhelpful things will come from destroying unions. I also know that Walker has been looking at “privatizing” many things you guys have always had for public use (deer herds, as a lesser known example) and will do everything he can to turn Wisconsin into Kentucky/Indiana. Now that he has won the recall, he and his cronies will assume they have carte blanche to do so.
Moreover, I am extremely skeptical of Walker’s “good”. All states are broke, and the federal government is in the red, because the 1% of the richest Americans are paying less in taxes than they ever have since the inception of the income tax. Union pensions dried up because asshats were no longer prohibited from putting those funds into the Wall Street Gambling Casino, and those asshats promptly lost the funds in the 2007 crash. The unions didn’t give permission for that. Nope, those were “hedge fund manager” friends of politicians. The unions are not the one who weakened and bankrupted the states. The mega-rich and their institutions have done that. So if Walker gave even a mouse-sized shit about his state he would have solved the fiscal problems by going after the real bad guys, not the unions.