Economic Riots Reach the Socialist States of America

Public Worker Protests Spread from Wisconsin to Ohio

February 18, 2011

Bloomberg - In what union leaders say is becoming a national fight, protests against legislation to restrict public employees’ collective-bargaining rights spread from Wisconsin to Ohio.

In Madison, Wisconsin, crowds that police estimated at 25,000 engulfed the Capitol and its lawns yesterday during a third-straight day of protests as Democratic senators fled the legislative session. In Columbus, Ohio, about 3,800 state workers, teachers and other public employees came to the statehouse for a committee hearing. President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohioan, argued over whether the bills are “an assault on unions.”

Ohio firefighters Dave Hefflinger and Jerry Greer said they were. They stood near hundreds of workers elbow-to-elbow in the statehouse atrium and listened to a Senate hearing through speakers. Chants of “Kill the bill” echoed.

“We’re here to support our brothers and sisters,” Hefflinger, a 27-year veteran, said in an interview. “They’re trying to take away what we fought for all of these years.”

Hefflinger, 49, and Greer, 39, members of the department in Findlay, Ohio, drove two hours south to protest the bill. The measure would eliminate collective bargaining for state workers, prevent local-government employees from negotiating for health insurance, and replace salary schedules with merit pay.

With states facing deficits that may reach a combined $125 billion next year, Republican governors including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and New Jersey’s Chris Christie are targeting changes in rules for collective bargaining and worker contributions for health-care coverage and pensions.

In Wisconsin, Walker championed a bill that would make public workers bargain for wages alone and require them to pay 5.8 percent of their pension costs; they pay nothing now. They would have to foot 12 percent of their health-care premiums, up from 6 percent. Police and firefighters wouldn’t be covered by the measure.

Fourteen Democratic senators disappeared from the Capitol yesterday, just as the Senate was about to begin debating, according to the Associated Press. Their flight brought the debate to a swift halt by denying the chamber a quorum, the news agency said.

Yesterday, University of Wisconsin-Madison students walked out of classes at the urging of student government and campus newspapers and marched to the Capitol, about a mile away. There, they joined protesters who filled the rotunda to chant, bang drums and sing, and spilled outside.

In a telephone interview Feb. 15, Walker said he spoke with Kasich about the demonstrations. When asked for advice, Walker said,

“Don’t blink.”

The White House’s political operation, Organizing for America, helped to build crowds using social media, the Washington Post reported today, citing an unidentified Democratic Party official. Obama himself spoke to Milwaukee television station WTMJ.

“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions,” the president said.

Boehner, a Republican from a Cincinnati suburb, responded with a statement saying he was “disappointed” that Obama criticized Walker.

“Republicans in Congress -- and reform-minded GOP governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Chris Christie -- are daring to speak the truth about the dire fiscal challenges Americans face at all levels of government, and daring to commit themselves to solutions that will liberate our economy and help put our citizens on a path to prosperity,” Boehner said.

The bills are state-level skirmishes in a national battle, said John Russo, a professor and co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio.

“It’s really an ideological battle that’s being fought across the country right now,” Russo said yesterday in an interview while waiting to testify before the Ohio Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee.

There were 50 witnesses scheduled, and Chairman Kevin Bacon said the committee would hear them without a break.

“This is a true test of democracy,” Bacon said.

The Statehouse spokesman, Gregg Dodd, estimated the crowd at about 3,800 and said it was the largest gathering inside the statehouse since it was renovated in 1996.

Mixing with protesters were members of Tea Party groups who staged their own rally in support of the legislation.

Mike Wilson, who founded the Cincinnati Tea Party, said the bill is an effort to restore balance between governments and their workers, who he said are overpaid.

“This bill is not on attack on public employees; it is not an attack on the middle class,” Wilson, 34, a technology consultant, said at the rally. “This bill is about math.”

Joe Rugola, the former president of the Ohio AFL-CIO who also is executive director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, said he represents bus drivers and janitors who earn about $24,000 a year.

“I’m still looking for this privileged class of workers,” Rugola said in an interview while waiting to testify. “This is just part of a national attack on working people.”

Wisconsin Police Hunt Democratic Minority Leader as Public Sector Protests Continue

February 18, 2011

AP - The Wisconsin State Patrol was dispatched Friday to find a Democratic state senator who fled the Capitol to delay the near-certain passage of a bill to end a half-century of collective bargaining rights for public workers, a measure that's attracted thousands of protesters for four days.

With Democrats saying they won't return before Saturday, it was unclear when the Senate would be able to begin debating Gov. Scott Walker's measure meant to ease the state's budget woes. Democrats who disappeared Thursday at first kept their whereabouts secret, then started to emerge to give interviews and fan the protests.

Senate Republicans convened briefly Friday morning to renew a call to find the Democrats, then recessed. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, told reporters he has asked the governor to send two state troopers to Senate Democratic Minority Leader Mark Miller's suburban Madison home. He said he believes Miller may be there — he did not elaborate on why he thought that — and Walker agreed to dispatch the officers.

The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits police from arresting state lawmakers while the Legislature is in session, except in cases of felonies, breaches of the peace or treason. Fitzgerald said he's not looking to have Miller arrested, but he wants to send a signal about how serious things are becoming in the Capitol.

Fitzgerald said he spoke with Miller by phone late Thursday night and asked him to bring his caucus back to Madison for a vote on Friday morning, but Miller refused. Meanwhile, the protests are growing so large that Capitol workers and lawmakers' staff cannot safely move through the halls, he said.

The situation has become "a powder keg," he said.

"I'm starting to hold Sen. Miller responsible for this," Fitzgerald said. "He shut down democracy."

The protests have attracted teachers, grade school children, college students and other workers over four days. Police report they have been largely peaceful, with only nine people cited for minor acts of civil disobedience as of Thursday night.

While the Senate was paralyzed, the Assembly met briefly on Friday. Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said the Assembly would vote on the bill later in the day after Democrats have had a chance to meet privately.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca vowed to fight to the "bitter end," in a speech delivered on the Assembly floor after Republicans had turned off the microphones and left.

"This is wrong!" Barca shouted to wild applause from the packed gallery. "Desperately wrong and we will not stand for it!"

Several hundred protesters were in the building early in the morning. The ranks grew as the day progressed. Many of them spent the night in the Capitol and another large rally was planned around noon.

As many as 25,000 students, teachers and prison guards have turned out at the Capitol this week to protest, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the building's hallways, sitting cross-legged across the floor and making it difficult to move from room to room. Some brought along sleeping bags and stayed through the night. Union organizers expected yet more to gather Friday.

The protesters chants of "Kill the Bill!" and "Recall Walker Now!" could be heard throughout the day and long past dark. They beat on drums and carried signs deriding Walker and his plan to end collective bargaining for state, county and local workers, except for police, firefighters and the state patrol.

Hundreds of teachers have joined the protests by calling in sick, forcing school districts — including the state's largest, Milwaukee Public Schools — to cancel classes.

Some signs seen at the Capitol compared the governor to former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down last week after weeks of mass protests against his three-decade rule. On read, "Impeach Scott Mubarak!" and another said, "Walker like an Egyptian." Others compared to Walker and his supporters to boy wizard Harry Potter's nemesis and his evil minions, calling them "Governor Voldemort and his DeathEater Legislators."

Despite the groundswell of support, it seems Democrats are merely delaying the inevitable — Republicans say they have the votes to pass the bill — yet the protesters are undeterred.

"I always expect the worst, but at the least I figure this would lead to such larger strikes that it would be a bad move for Republicans and Scott Walker," Graupner said.

In an interview with Milwaukee television station WTMJ, President Barack Obama compared Walker's bill to "an assault on unions."

Senate Republicans planned to try for a vote again Friday. With 19 seats, they hold a majority in the 33-member chamber, but they are one vote short of the number necessary to conduct business. The GOP needs at least one Democrat to be present before any voting can take place. The measure needs 17 votes to pass.

Speaking on CBS' "The Early Show" on Friday morning, Walker urged the Democrats to return to Madison and face the vote.

"The state senators who are hiding out down in Illinois should show up for work, have their say, have their vote, add their amendments, but in the end, we've got a $3.6 billion budget deficit we've got to balance."

Senate rules and the state constitution say absent members can be compelled to appear, but it does not say how.

"We left the state so we were out of the reach of the Wisconsin state patrol, which has the authority to round us up and bring us back to the legislature," state Sen. Mark Miller told ABC's "Good Morning America" from an undisclosed location Friday.

Sen. Tim Cullen said he and other Democrats planned to stage their boycott until Saturday to give the public more time to speak out against the bill.

"The plan is to try and slow this down because it's an extreme piece of legislation that's tearing this state apart," said Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who was with Democratic senators in northern Illinois on Thursday before they dispersed.

Walker, who took office last month, called the boycott a "stunt." He vowed not to concede.

"It's more about theatrics than anything else," Walker said.

Some Democrats elsewhere applauded the developments as a long-awaited sign that their party was fighting back against the Republican wave created by November's midterm election.

"I am glad to see some Democrats, for a change, with a backbone. I'm really proud to hear that they did that," said Democratic state Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre of Oklahoma, another state where Republicans won the governorship in November and also control both legislative chambers.

Thursday's events were reminiscent of a 2003 dispute in Texas, where Democrats twice fled the state to prevent adoption of a redistricting bill designed to give Republicans more seats in Congress. The bill passed a few months later.

The proposal marks a dramatic shift for Wisconsin, which passed a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959 and was the birthplace of the national union representing all non-federal public employees.

In addition to eliminating collective-bargaining rights, the legislation also would make public workers pay half the costs of their pensions and at least 12.6 percent of their health care coverage — increases Walker calls "modest" compared with those in the private sector.

Republican leaders said they expected Wisconsin residents would be pleased with the savings the bill would achieve — $30 million by July 1 and $300 million over the next two years to address a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.

Returning National Guard Troops Set to Smash Wisconsin Protest?

February 18, 2011

Infowars.com - Coincidence or not, the fact that hundreds of National Guard troops are returning to Wisconsin today fresh from battling insurgents in Iraq is sure to alarm union protesters who labeled Governor Scott Walker’s move to put the Guard on alert last week a “threat” designed to intimidate demonstrators who are currently massed around the Capitol in Madison.

In case of a widespread walkout in response to his “budget repair bill,” Walker told reporters last week that he would use National Guard troops to be “prepared…for whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for. … I am fully prepared for whatever may happen.”

Ostensibly, Walker’s announcement was a signal that he is prepared to replace state workers with National Guard troops, deploying them for example as prison guards. However, protesters cried foul, claiming that Walker was invoking the Guard as an intimidation tactic to suppress dissent.

“Hundreds of Wisconsin National Guard soldiers return to the state Friday,” reports the Wausau Daily Herald.

“About 300 soldiers from the 724th Engineer Battalion will be back at Volk Field where they will be met by senior National Guard officials and family members. A brief ceremony will be held before the soldiers are taken to nearby Fort McCoy to begin about five days of demobilization before their release.”

The unit comprises roughly half of Wisconsin’s National Guard soldiers that are currently on active duty. They return fresh from Iraq after having been on missions to remove roadside bombs placed by insurgents.

They may now face a different type of insurgency, one led by state workers who are furious that their pension and health care contributions are set to double to fill a $3.6 billion budget deficit black hole, while two-thirds of corporations in the state pay no taxes whatsoever according to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

The sight of fully uniformed National Guard soldiers policing angry Americans could see a repeat of the scenes witnessed in Cairo over the last few weeks. Indeed, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (R) is already drawing similar comparisons.

Ryan expressed his opposition to the demands of the protesters, pointing out that even after Walker’s bill is passed, state sector workers would still pay far less in pension and health contributions that private sector workers, but noted that the level of fury surrounding the legislation meant that Walker was now facing,

“Riots — it’s like Cairo has moved to Madison these days.”

Making reference to Walker’s threat to bring in the National Guard, liberal activist and author Noam Chomsky told Democracy Now that what happened in Egypt was “the beginning of what we need here — democracy uprising.”

Some have even expressed fears that the Guard could be used to break the strikes at the point of a gun. Such a move would not be without historical precedent.

“The last time Wisconsin called in the National Guard was in 1886. The Guard, then called the State Militia were brought in to break a rally of Milwaukee workers advocating an 8-hour work day. The militia fired into a crowd of unarmed picketers; it’s estimated that 5 to 7 workers were killed,” reports the Huffington Post.

“Maybe the new governor doesn’t understand yet — but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force to be mobilized to quash political dissent,” said Robin Eckstein, a former Wisconsin National Guard member, Iraq War Veteran from Appleton, WI, and member of VoteVets.org. “The Guard is to be used in case of true emergencies and disasters, to help the people of Wisconsin, not to bully political opponents.”

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Threatens to Deploy National Guard as ‘Intimidation Force’ Against Workers’ Unions

February 14, 2011

Think Progress - Last month, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) said that if employees strike, “they should be fired,” and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) wrote in an op-ed that the moral case for unions “does not apply to public employment.” Now, facing a $137 million budget deficit, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a “budget repair bill” that would severely limit collective bargaining, eliminate the right of unions to negotiate pensions, retirement and benefits.

Walker is facing fierce criticism for this all-out assault against state workers, especially after he insisted that the “National Guard” will be used against a walkout:

When asked by a reporter what will happen if workers resist, Walker replied that he would call out the National Guard. He said that the National Guard is “prepared…for whatever the governor, their commander-in-chief, might call for. … I am fully prepared for whatever may happen.”

Traditionally, the National Guard is called to assist Americans in times of crisis; so Walker’s attempt to use the National Guard as a tool to suppress dissent is particularly deplorable. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, more than 50,000 Guard members were called to help, and following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, more than 50,000 Guards were deployed. Veterans have strongly objected to Walker’s recent intent to use the National Guard as a vessel to intimidate state workers. VoteVet released a statement today that says Walker shouldn’t use the National Guard as an “intimidation force“:

“Maybe the new governor doesn’t understand yet – but the National Guard is not his own personal intimidation force to be mobilized to quash political dissent,” said Robin Eckstein, a former Wisconsin National Guard member, Iraq War Veteran from Appleton, WI, and member of VoteVets.org. “The Guard is to be used in case of true emergencies and disasters, to help the people of Wisconsin, not to bully political opponents. Considering many veterans and Guard members are union members, it’s even more inappropriate to use the Guard in this way. This is a very dangerous line the Governor is about to cross.”

Wisconsin state employee unions already made $100 million in concessions last December. Now, under Walker’s new proposal, state workers would have to make further sacrifices by doubling their contributions to health insurance premiums and increasing allocations to their pensions. Walker’s bill would effectively take away the right of state employees to collectively bargain for everything from vacation, sick hours, and even the hours they work. But, smacking of political favoritism for the unions that supported Walker’s campaign, the State Patrol, local police, and fire departments would stay absolutely unchanged.

In response to Walker’s assault, the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO launched a major advertising campaign, in which they say Walker and other politicians plan to “take away rights of thousands of nurses, teachers and other trusted public employees” with almost no public debate.

A pattern is emerging, where Republican dominated governments across the country are shaping up to strip workers’ rights. In addition to Walker’s new proposal, last week, Ohio Gov. Kasich said that if lawmakers don’t pass a collective bargaining bill that he approves, Kasich will impose his own changes in the Ohio budget next month. Following in lockstep, Indiana, Idaho, and Tennessee all have legislation in the works to strip teachers’ ability to collectively bargain.

Blame the Fed for the Pension Crisis Because They Engineered It