Ohio Set to Reject Rove and Kasich in Working Families' Win, Wisconsin Next

Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr

Working families are just trying to make it. Sell their labor product at a fair price. Raise families. Maybe even have a home for their children. But not if Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers and John Kasich have their way.

Now, working families are fighting back.

A new poll in Ohio shows overwhelming hostility to the Rove-Koch-Kasich anti-working family bill, Senate Bill 5 [Issue 2], that citizens of Ohio look to reject in a binding election Tuesday, just one week before the start of the recall of fellow anti-family governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin for his signing a similarly unpopular law with support from anti-family billionaires.

Senate Bill 5 targets health care, collective bargaining, pensions, and is seen as effort to continue the enterprise of attacking private working families by moving the attack against those families working in the public sphere.

As Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer, said in September 2010,

I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and ‘shareholder value’ the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP’s decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be ‘forced’ to make ‘hard choices’ – and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

Wisconsin State Journal Stands Alone as Only Daily Getting Story Right

Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha)

Update: MJS coverage catching up now (Bill Glauber).

Kudos to the Wisconsin State Journal's Clay Barbour and Ed Treleven. So far the State Journal is the only daily newspaper to report this story right.

The Wisconsin writer, Illusory Tenant, noted to me that virtually every headline in the country is wrong, misreporting what the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) publishing the anti-collective bargaining-GOP bill means.

This includes the Milwuakee Journal-Sentinel which really blew it, "out to lunch," writes the Illusory Tenant.

Congrats to Rep. Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) and LRB Director Steve Miller for flushing the facts out as well.

GOP move does not enact law, say experts

Publication online is administrative step, not legally binding

Update IV: From WisPolitics:

Dane County District Attorney Ismael R. Ozanne knocks down GOP contention with statement:

I was surprised to learn shortly before 5 p.m. this afternoon that, despite Judge Maryann Sumi’s temporary restraining order, an effort was undertaken to try and make 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 (Governor Walker’s Budget Repair Bill) effective. I was even more surprised to learn that the impetus for an attempt at publication, contrary to Judge Sumi’s order, came from a named defendant in the lawsuit.

As Judge Sumi said in issuing the temporary restraining order enjoining publication of the bill on March 18, 2011:

Finally, the necessity to preserve the status quo. I think relief is essential to preserve the status quo, which is what exists here and now. The bill has passed. But it has not been published.

I believe that, pursuant to Judge Sumi’s order, the status quo is preserved. This case, including the legal significance of today’s actions, should be resolved in a court of law. I look forward to presenting our case on behalf of the People of the State of Wisconsin Tuesday morning, March 29, 2011, at 8:30 a.m.

Update III: I told my mother, we feel like we were just mugged, but we checked and we still have our wallets. This could have been a Friday night massacre of sorts, but instead the perp just committed suicide in the capitol.

Update II: Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and "[LRB Director Steve Miller] met Friday. Miller said Fitzgerald asked him to publish the law and, after reading the statutes, Miller agreed that he could do so. He said he had never published a law without being given a date by the secretary of state during his 12 years of running the reference bureau." (Marley and Stein, MJS) Fitzgerald said, "It's law." [Note: Fitzgerald's status as a legislative expert is under some dispute.]

Update: Via Rep. Peter Barca comes this:

[LRB Director Steve Miller] ... indicated that the LRB published the Act in order to satisfy a statutory publication requirement that is separate from the publication duty of the Secretary of State, and that such separate and additional publication by the Secretary of State is required in order for Act 10 to take effect.

The "bomb" that Gov. Scott Walker bragged about dropping on Wisconsin was
followed by the latest bomb that has GOP leaders smiling.

Keep smiling. [The mad bombers—Scott Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch—just blew themselves up with their home-made bombs. These guys are either very foolish, playing games with Wisconsin, or some combination of both.]

The bombers are known. And recall efforts of the GOP senators just got another great push, reminding citizens the GOP will do anything in pursuit of the goals of its far-right ideology.

The Wisconsin State Journal's report (Clay Barbour and Ed Treleven) includes experts' explaining why the GOP celebration of sticking it to working families is premature.

The legislative bomb, the anti-collective bargaining bill, had been pushed through the legislature without the necessary quorum and in violation of Wisconsin Open Meeting laws.

Now, the "drama over Gov. Scott Walker's controversial measure limiting public sector collective bargaining took a sharp turn Friday when the Legislative Reference Bureau published the law — normally the last step before legislation takes effect." (Barbour and Treleven)

But this act will not stand either inside a courtroom or in the homes of Wisconsin families.

From Barbour and Treleven:

But officials with the nonpartisan Reference Bureau (LRB) and the Legislative Council — the Legislature's drafting and research agency and its legal service, respectively — said publication of the act online was only an administrative step.

Reference Bureau Director Steve Miller and Legislative Council staff attorney Scott Grosz both said La Follette still needs to designate a date for publication and actually publish the act in the Wisconsin State Journal — something the court order bars the secretary of state from doing.

The WSJ report continues: "If the bureau's action did constitute publication, it could make moot the state's appeal of Sumi's order, now before the state Supreme Court."

And if Judge Sumi's order becomes moot, other remedies become available.

Madison attorney Lester Pines is quoted, saying: "I suspect that if Judge Sumi was willing to take up a (temporary restraining order) against publication I suspect she'd do the same thing on enforcement" of the new law. "This is going to unleash a tsunami of litigation." (Barbour and Treleven)

GOP Offices Hiding from Phone Calls, Hiding from Wisconsinites

Update: Walker lied; "Manufactured" Budget Crisis: The non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau reports that projected deficits assume new spending requests by state agencies THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN.

These are the Republicans who can — make that MUST — do the right thing for Wisconsin (Capital Times), but they are refusing to even pick up the phone. Try it.

• Eau Claire area — Terry Moulton: Sen.moulton@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-7511
• Green Bay area — Rob Cowles: Sen.cowles@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-0484
• La Crosse area — Dan Kapanke: Sen.kapanke@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-5490
• Ripon area — Luther Olsen: Sen.olsen@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-0751
• Richland County — Dale Schultz: Sen.schultz@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-0703 
• Racine area — Van Wanggaard: Sen.Wanggaard@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-1832
• Sheboygan area — Joe Leibham: Sen.liebham@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-2056
• Menasha/Fox Valley — Michael Ellis: Sen.ellis@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-0718
• Fond du Lac area — Randy Hopper: Sen.Hopper@legis.wisconsin.gov and 608-266-5300

Employee Free Choice Act Now

What’s the worth of an American’s work?

If you believe that America ought to resemble feudalistic serfdom—not very much.

But since the later part of the ninetieth century when workers began organizing with fellow workers during the industrial revolution, the social and economic value of work, its worth, has been acclaimed as a valuable commodity.

Yet many through history, including the contemporary GOP, persist in believing that America's labor is not worth all that much and have endlessly fought, often violently, against the attempts of Americans to organize to sell their labor product at a reasonable price.

As the late Sidney Lens, the great labor activist and historian, pointed out: Thousands of corpses and cracked skulls litter the battle to organize and sell American labor.

The pro-labor view, held in today's Democratic Party and organized labor, is that labor is sacred and ought to command a price sufficient to raise a family.

The right to organize to sell the American labor product was enshrined in the Wagner Act of 1935, singed into law by FDR.

Wrote FDR in his statement signing the Wagner Act:

This Act defines, as a part of our substantive law, the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purpose of collective bargaining, and provides methods by which the Government can safeguard that legal right.

In the spirit of the Wagner Act, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) now under consideration in Congress continues the legacy of the American labor movement, FDR and the belief that one's work is sacred.

Look for the Republicans to do their worst to stop it.

As the AFL-CIO points out, the Employee Free Choice Act would help workers join "together in a union to bargain for health care, pensions, fair wages and better working conditions is the best opportunity working people have to get ahead" in the face of corporate intimidation and a broken regulatory system.

It's really simple, the Employee Free Choice Act guarantees "that if a majority of workers wants a union, they can have one, allowing them to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation."

Now will come GOP and corporate lies to halt this needed labor reform.

As former Rep. Newt Gingrich says, “This bill is a mortal threat to American freedom and we will never forgive somebody who votes for cloture or for passage.”

Right, Newt. Read more corporate and rightwing fear mongering here.