Wisconsin Union-Busting: The Aftermath

The Awl' Abe Sauer has been writing some seriously good sh!t about the whole Wisconsin mess.

Here's an opener from A Blueprint for a Takeover: Wisconsin Republicans Lied While the Kochs Schemed:

The simple rhetoric of the Wisconsin budget battle is that the Democrats are just "thug" unions—and that Republicans are carrying water for wealthy corporate sleaze. It's more complicated than that. For one, several teachers' unions endorsed Wisconsin Republicans last year—unions are hardly the unthinking automatons of the left they're now depicted to be. Why would they do that? Quite simply, those Republicans looked into the face of their constituents… and lied.

He follows this up with A Guide to American Majority's Plan to Dismantle Public Schools where he discusses the astroturfing firm's efforts to bend public education to their will:

We mentioned the activist training done by American Majority, including its most recent event in Madison on March 5th. American Majority even provides "A Wisconsin School Board Primer" about what a school board is, how to run for it, and suggestions on reforming your school district. These suggestions, surprise, are carbon copies of both the education reforms introduced in Scott Walker's budget bill as well as the campaigning points for candidiates such as Sauk County Tea Party president and 2011 Baraboo school board hopeful John Meegan, who, as we pointed out, has been working closely with American Majority since last year.

The video of American Majority seminar on guerilla internet tactics is especially nice.

Here's a sample:

American Majority Instructor: So what do we do? We become digital activists. We identify the medium, we learn the medium, we manipulate the medium. It was printing presses [in the revolutionary war era] it's the internet now. That's where we influence the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. The Tea Party's got us running up the hills, American Majority is trying to give you the tools, the muskets, right? So, here's what I do: I get on Amazon, I type in "liberal books" I go through and I say 1-star, 1-star, 1-star...The flip side is you need to go to conservative, libertarian, whatever um...you need to go to their products and give them 5 stars. So, literally 80% of the books I put a star on - I don't read. So, that's how it works."

A  visual aid might be in order, here.

This is what a political movement is according to American Majority:

Note the white tablecloths

And this is what a political movement actually looks like:

And finally, Sauer gives us some great interviews in his latest post: Wisconsequences: What Happened This Week and What's Next (Up First: the Voter ID Bill) (emphasis added):

In the last few weeks as Walker has claimed that he's giving local leaders the tools they need, more and more of these leaders have come forward to declare that they did not ask for a berth as wide as Walker means to provide. Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, told the Isthmus: "We've sought significant modifications in bargaining laws, but we've never sought to eliminate collective bargaining rights." Turner reiterated that his organization, which represents nearly all 424 Wisconsin school districts, did not support eliminating collective bargaining.

The Isthmus also spoke with Dan Thompson, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, representative of nearly 600 of the state's towns, who said, "The governor gave us a great deal more flexibility than we asked for." Thompson pointed out that the bill's limitation to cost-of-living increases will cripple abilities to compete with the private sector, the exact kind of commutative equality Walker claims his bill promotes.

So, to be perfectly clear, despite how Walker's cuts and union dissolving measures are pitched as being undertaken because Wisconsin had "no choice," it was all about choice. Wisconsin looked at its budget, and it chose to make massive cuts to education. Instead of making across the board, equilateral cuts, including minor tax increases and union concessions, Walker chose to balance his entire budget on the back of education. That's it. It was a conscious decision. They should own it.

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, Republicans owned it. They owned the hell out of it.

His blow by blow account of the rushed vote is a must read.

Great stuff.