Koch brothers buying our government

An editorial in today's NY Times really caught my attention. If you want a clearer picture of what is going on in our state, where Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison as Walker was being inaugurated, here's another example.

Koch Industries' home base is Wichita KS. Mike Pompeo is a new member of the House of Reps and, according to the editors, is known as 'the Congressman from Koch.'  The now-infamous brothers donated $80,000 to his campaign.  Now they are getting their payback.

"[Pompeo's] contributions to the House Republicans’ budget-slashing legislation included two top priorities of Koch Industries: killing off funds for the Obama administration’s new database for consumer complaints about unsafe products and for a registry of greenhouse gas polluters at the Environmental Protection Agency."

Remember, too, that the Supreme Court ruled last year in the notorious Citizens United case that corporations pretty much have unlimited 'speech,' meaning can spend unlimited funds trying to influence the outcome of elections. President Obama and many others rightly called this a threat to our democracy, a major unbalancing between the power of the richest, biggest corporations in the world and, you know, us.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

It has been suggested that a major reason for busting public sector unions is to remove one of the few organized voices of the folks, a voice with some considerable funds available to lift up an alternative to the corporate media blitz. Crush unions, corporate bosses crush a major opposition voice. Crush unions, crush a source of campaign donations for candidates who oppose their corporate agenda.

And you see from the actions of Pompeo what that agenda looks like, what the intent is - to gut the role of government to regulate the worst corporate practices, to protect citizens and consumers from their toxins and waste, from their bad products and threats to our environment. Also, to protect the rights of workers by defending their rights to collectively bargain over their contracts, basics like decent wages and benefits, working conditions, grievance procedures, and more.

In an article for The New York Review of Books last year, Ronald Dworkin wrote a long, disturbing analysis of the Citizens United ruling. He writes:

"Though the Court’s decision will do nothing to deter corruption in that way, it will do a great deal to encourage one particularly dangerous form of it. It will sharply increase the opportunity of corporations to tempt or intimidate congressmen facing reelection campaigns. Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi had great difficulty persuading some members of the House of Representatives to vote for the health care reform bill, which finally passed with a dangerously thin majority, because those members feared they were risking their seats in the coming midterm elections. They knew, after the Court’s decision, that they might face not just another party and candidate but a tidal wave of negative ads financed by health insurance companies with enormous sums of their shareholders’ money to spend."

We are seeing the results of this power grab by corporations now here in Wisconsin.  This is why I cannot say strongly enough: if organizations of all kinds all around the country do not get focused on issues like campaign finance reform, if taxpayers continue to resist public financing of campaigns, if we continue to appoint Supreme Court justices who believe that corporations have rights to speech as 'persons' under the Constitution, our democracy is in grave danger, indeed.

The political reform needed is becoming more urgent and profound. We are only beginning to realize the extent to which our democracy is being stolen from us by corporate money.

I urge you to read carefully all the linked articles on this post. Our futures are at stake. We need to know what's going on in order to meet the challenges effectively.

And vote on April 5!

Republican assault on democracy - and workers

I understand about having a 2-party system, with fairly big tents joining together folks around a certain orientation across widely divergent viewpoints. I understand the need for respect for the opponent, for decorum, for rules that allow for open debate on legislation, even when we get frustrated with the process. I appreciate that when you reduce democracy to a 2-party system, those large tents are bound to fail some of their constituents most of the time.

But when one party, frankly, begins to undermine democracy itself, this becomes extremely worrisome. When one party dispenses with laws, rules, and procedures to rule by ambush and subterfuge, seeking to brush the competing party aside as so much detritus, things have gone seriously wrong. Then we are not talking about democracy, we are talking about power grab.

This is happening in Wisconsin right now - as has been happening with the power of big money nationally, the Supreme Court vote on Citizens United, the unseemly money plays of Karl Rove, the influence of Goldman Sachs contributions on Barack Obama, or the decisive influence of Koch Industries money on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

But what happened tonight in the Wisconsin legislature is without precedent - a blatantly illegal move on the part of Republican leaders that busts the unions of public sector workers.

What happened a few hours ago is this: violating the Open Meetings law of the state, Republican Senate Majority leader Scott Fitzgerald pulls a power play to take a vote on a bill unseen by Democrats, not clearly understood, and for which notice was not properly given. All it does is destroy 50 years of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers under Wisconsin law. What they did was take out the controversial union-busting language from the budget repair bill and pass it as a separate piece of legislation. Having argued previously that eliminating collective bargaining rights for public sector workers was definitely a fiscal issue, therefore requiring a quorum of 20 senators, suddenly Republicans said it was not a fiscal issue at all and a simple majority will do.

You 14 Democrats who left the state to prevent the quorum they once said was necessary to pass fiscal-related bills? Stay in Illinois as long as you like; we just busted the unions.  And guess what? that's what we wanted to do all along - just like you said.

If this stands, if the state attorney general and the state's courts do not block this vote from taking force, democracy in my state is in big, big trouble.

Check out the video of this hostile anti-procedure:

http://wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3885

Are all legislators subject to the laws, or just not Fitzgerald, Scott Walker, and the others who work for corporate interests? Have we really arrived at a point where one party in the majority can violate rules and laws and then prevail?

Protesters began pouring in to the Capitol as this atrocity took place. If you are anywhere near Madison this weekend, especially Saturday, join the masses in the streets.