On Wisconsin, part three.

The conclusion of 'On Wisconsin'. Part one. Part two.

A narrative tossed about lately calls for public-union employees — namely teachers — to do their part. That the private sector is hurting, that jobs are being lost, that benefits are disappearing, that it is only fair for the hurt of the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression to now be shared by employees of the state by way of reduced benefits.

Purely and wholly on a basic level, this narrative makes sense. Perhaps it even qualifies as fair, given the unions agreeing to the monetary demands of Walker's budget repair bill.  But beyond the level of discourse found at a kindergarten playground, the argument is specious at best and Ostrichian at worst.

Composite sketch of the typical Governor Walker supporter

On Fox News.

A request, dear reader, to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAJg8AVRgN8

If you're not one to watch seven minutes of Rachel Maddow tackling Glenn Beck on the strife in Wisconsin, a summary:

-- In 2009, WorldNetDaily publishes a column by Joel Richardson: What Obama and the Antichrist have in common.

-- Richardson is now being booked by Fox News to appear as an expert on the Wisconsin protests... and how there's a menacing, ancient-evil connect with the turmoil in Egypt.

-- "Now, now--especially if you do not watch Fox News, just so you're inoculated as to what you are likely to hear the next time a fervent Fox News viewer tells you what's going on in Wisconsin--now it is important to know what it is that Fox News is telling its viewers about how to understand the protests in Wisconsin.  Because what Fox is telling their viewers involves The Anti-Christ."

-- Beck believes the Wisconsin protests to be the progeny of an Islamic end-of-days cabal. [NOTE: Fox News allows Beck to host a self-titled, hour-long program each weekday at 5pm ET.]

-- Beck having Richardson on his show.

-- Beck saying he "about wet his pants" about doing research on the Anti-Christ.

-- A clip of Richardson claiming to be an end-times prophet.

-- "I say this not just to point and shriek, but because what happens on Fox News and in conservative media really influences how American conservatives think, even when it's so unbelievably out there you can't really believe that anyone would believe it. [...]that when even the craziest reaches of right wing media talk about this stuff, conservatives listen to it."

-- Cut to a New Jersey "conservatives" poll from 2009.  Question: Do you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ?  Not sure: 17%.  Yes: 18%.

-- Fox News: effectively "Republican State Television".

-- "I am pointing this out because one of your more gullible conservative friends or relations, sometime soon, is going to come to you and tell you that the Anti-Christ is why Hosni Mubarak was a good guy and the Anti-Christ is why firefighters in your town should not have Blue Cross Blue Shield."

To quote 1984 again:

If human equality is to be forever averted--if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently--then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

Next, another request to watch Bill O'Reilly claim The Moon as existence of a supernatural, super-intelligence, super-knowable consciousness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHzhtARf8M

For anyone who fancies themselves a sapient-being capable of rational thought and discourse with other like-minded bipedal mammals,  you really must watch this.  But if you haven't that want:

A question from "David, in Beverly Hills, Florida": What do you mean when you refer to the tides when you are asked about the existence of God?  Science explains the tides... the moon's gravity pulls on the oceans.

O'Reilly, in response:

Ok, how did The Moon get there?  How did The Moon get there?  Look, you pinheads who attack me for this, you guys are just desperate.  How did the moon get there?  How did The Sun get there?  How did it get there?  Can you explain that to me?  How come we have that and Mars doesn't have it?  Venus doesn't have it.  How come?  Why not?  How did it get here?  How did that little amoeba get here, crawl out there, how did it do it?  Come on.  You have order in this universe, you have an order in the universe: tide comes in, tide goes out.  Ok, yeah, The Moon does it.  Fine, how did The Moon get there?  Who put it there?  Did it just happen? Okay, if we have existence, if we have life on Earth, how come they don't have it on the other planets?  Were we just lucky?

Well, I sure believe in God now!

...

...

Ahem.

1984, again:

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. 

Flashback to 19 July of last year.  Andrew Breitbart, a self-described Reagan conservative (founder of breitbart.com, Washington Times commentator, guest commentator across cable news, former Drudge Report editor and Arianna Huffington researcher) smears Shirley Sherrod (timeline) and Fox News spearheads the dissemination and propping up of the story.

I believe a theme is emerging.  Not that Fox News has a conservative slant.  If that's news, waking daylight is news.  No, not that Fox News has a conservative slant, but that Fox News, as Maddow stated, is Republican State Television.

Oh, hello,what's this?

“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots.  CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.

“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.

"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.

“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece.  It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous.  Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”

It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But  it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.

Fox News: artificially adding boos to Ron Paul's announced victory of this year's CPAC straw poll, using footage of a Tea Party rally to drum up attendance figures of a Michele Bachmann anti-health care rally, using 2008 campaign footage in attempt to drum up DO NOT FEED THE TROLL drawing large crowds on a book tour, their Washington manager telling reporters and producers to exclusively call the public option "'government-run health insurance' or, when brevity is a concern, 'government option,' whenever possible", presenting Vice President Biden saying "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" in March of 2009 when said clip actually came from Mr Biden in 2008 at a campaign rally quoting Senator John McCain, calling a fist bump between Barack and Michelle Obama a 'terrorist fist jab', claiming President Obama's budget was four times the size of President George W. Bush's largest, pimping false household costs by five-or-ten-fold for cap-and-trade, claiming an Obama administration 'Czar' withheld information on statutory rape, ignoring a gay-rights rally the size of a Tea Party rally they themselves backed,  hired DO NOT FEED THE TROLL, etc, etc.

You know from where:

This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.  Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.  In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.  All history was a palimpsest, scrapped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.  In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

With the ban on corporate political spending lifted, with a cable channel that pushes not a side of an argument but a distorted and twisted fiction, with a cable channel whose owner gave one million dollars to the Republican party because they "had a pro-business agenda", with public union campaign contributions having a 95/5 Democrat/Republican split, does it surprise anyone how vehement the attack is on public unions?  The battle in Wisconsin isn't about balancing budgets but the shredding of a Democratic base.

The battle in Wisconsin is blood in the water for the Republican sharks.

On nuance.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (via jsonline):

Out of respect for the institution of the Legislature and the democratic process, I am calling on Senate Democrats to show up to work today, debate legislation and cast their vote. Their actions by leaving the state and hiding from voting are disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of public employees who showed up to work today and the millions of taxpayers they represent.

Commenter Peter Rock:

The democrats are like little children that take their ball and go home when they don't get their way.

 Commenter saveusfromsocialism:

Rotten cowards these liberals and Democrats!

Thank God for Scott Walker; save our state from financial disaster and the regime of Obama and Herb Kohl; our future is at risk!

Commetner WIHoo:

What a shame that these democrats refuse to do their job. It doesn't seem right that they accept a pay check from the state and then run away when the going gets tuff.

If this bill is such a bad idea then the democrats should have no problem showing everyonoe that it is a bad idea.

Democrats: Give democracy a chance!

The above encapsulates the popular narrative thrown out and regurgitated from those on the right: that Senate Democrats are whiny, petulant, cowardly, paycheck-stealing children.

To address the claims, allow this author to propose a rhetorical situation within Any State, USA:

There exists two dominant political parties in said state: Party A and Party B.

Party A occupies the Governor's office and owns a majority of State Senators (19 to 14).

Party B does not.

Party A introduces and successfully passes legislation reducing the state's tax income by $140 million.

Party B sits in chambers, twiddling their thumbs and other appendages.

Not two months later, the state of this exercise finds itself with a budget shortfall of $137 million through the current fiscal year.  And an upcoming shortfall for the next two years projected at $3.6 billion.  The Governor then introduces a bill aimed to reduce these budget problem.

In this bill, does the Governor:

A)  Raise taxes
B)  Think better of his previous legislation.  While it won't fix this year's budget, it won't add unnecessary debt to the upcoming fiscal periods, making the eventual fix easier
C)  Blame state-employee unions

Obviously, the Governor selects 'C'.

In this bill, the Governor looks to eliminate collective bargaining for state-employee unions except for negotiations on wages.  In turn, the Governor will force state-employees to pay half their pension costs (they pay none now) and pay 12.6% of their health-care costs (twice their current obligation).  The Governor, however, does not make this demand of all state-employee unions and only demands this of those who aren't policeman, firefighters and troopers.  This, of course, has nothing to do with those unions being the only state-employee unions who supported the Governor in his election bid.

This bill will save $30 million for the state this fiscal year, and $300 million in the following two fiscal years.

This proposal makes the local newspapers on a Friday.  And on the next Thursday, the Party A Senators will look to pass said bill, having the votes necessary to do so.

What follows is an actual transcription of dialogue between the State Senators of Party A and Party B.

Senator 1A: Hey guys.

Party B Senators: Hey.

Senator 1A: Here's this bill we're passing next week.

Senator 1B: Oh?

**The Party A Senators hand out the bill**

**The Party B Senators read the bill**

Senator 1A: Do you guys have any questions?

Senator 2B: I have one.

Senator 1A: Yes?

Senator 2B: This eradication of state-employee union collective bargaining rights for matters other than wages, this is permanent?

Senator 1A: Yes.

Senator 3B: And these eradications don't apply to the state-employee unions that endorsed the Governor?

Senator 1A: That's right.

Senator 4B: For clarity's sake, you're removing the collective bargaining rights of all state-employee unions--for matters other than wages--that didn't endorse the Governor?

Seantor 1A: Yes.

Senator 5B: And you're serious about this being permanent?

Senator 1A: Yes.

Senator 6B:  A permanent solution to a temporary problem?

Senator 1A: Y-

Senator 2A: I'll take this one.

Senator 1A: Okay.

Senator 2A: Yes, it is permanent.

Senator 6B: Huh.

Senator 7B: So, okay, no more collective bargaining EVER except for wages except for the Governor's endorsers, and this only addresses $300 million out of the upcoming $3.6 billion shortfall?

Senator 2A:  Right.

Senator 8B:  And this doesn't even address a quarter of the current shortfall?

Senator 2A:  Also right.

Senator 9B:  And you're not just doing this to bust unions?

Senator 2A:  We're doing this to balance the budget.

Senator 8B:  Didn't you just say this won't balance the budget?

Senator 2A:  Right.

Senator 3A:  I feel like we're not explaining this well enough.  The benefits that state-employees make are far out of line with the current benefits their private-sector neighbors receive.  As a result of this-

Senator 10B:  But the state-employees gave up higher wages for better bene-

Senator 3A:  As a result of this disparity, we feel it is only fair for the state-employees to pay their fair share.  This isn't punitive in any way-

Senator 11B:  I would've went with 'ideologically hating unions for having the audacity to not want individual laborers tread upon in the name of profit or service', but 'punitive' works too, I guess.

Senator 3A: This isn't punitive, this is just about getting out-of-control spending under control by making things more fair for everyone.

**The Party B Senators huddle and discuss this before addressing Party A again**

Senator 1B:  We don't like this.  We don't like sacrificing more than forty years of union history and the future of these unions just to make a drop in a bucket difference in the current and upcoming shortfalls.  We would like to negotiate on this bill, maybe add a few amendments, maybe do some rewriting... just general changing of the bill to make it more palatable.  I mean, it is silly that blame is being put on state-employee unions for a problem not of their doing.

Senator 3A:  As I said before, this isn't punitive.

Senator 12B:  I'm not sure you know what 'punitive' means.

Senator 1B: That's not helping, 12B.

Senator 12B: I'm sorry.

Senator 1B:  Regardless of the bill being punitive or not, we'd like to negotiate.

Senator 1A:  No.

Senator 1B:  No?

Senator 1A:  No.

Senator 1B:  No?

Senator 1A:  No.

Senator 2B:  No?

Senator 2A:  No.

**THE NEXT WEDNESDAY, A DAY BEFORE THE VOTE IS SCHEDULED**

Senator 14B:  No?

Senator 19A:  No.

Senator 14B:  No?

Senator 19A:  Nah.

At this point, the Party B Senators meet in private to discuss options.  Knowing that 20 members of the State Senate must be present at quorum for voting, they subtract 19 from 20 and see that Party A is 1 short of being able to move on this piece of legislation on their own.

Party B Senators, against a Party A that won't negotiate or propose any new amendments or back any Party B amendments, face a dilemma.  Do they:

A)  Show up to vote, allowing a bill (which everything about and around is totalitarian in nature) to pass 19-14
B)  Answer the call to quorum but not vote, a sign-of-protest which results in the bill passing 19-0
C)  Don't show up, thereby halting the bill in its tracks in an attempt to open up some actual discourse

The Party B Senators choose 'C'.  And this makes them whiny, petulant, cowardly, paycheck-stealing children.