Alinsky in Madison
As a large and furious demonstration was under way outside and inside the Capitol in Madison last week, Barack Obama invited in a TV camera crew from Milwaukee and proceeded to fan the flames.
Dropping the mask of The Great Compromiser, Obama reverted to his role as South Chicago community organizer, charging Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature with an “assault on unions.”
As the late Saul Alinsky admonished in his Rules for Radicals, “the community organizer … must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.”
After Obama goaded the demonstrators, the protests swelled. All 14 Democratic state senators fled to Illinois to paralyze the upper chamber by denying it a quorum. Teachers went on strike, left kids in the classroom and came to Madison. Schools shut down.
Jesse Jackson arrived. The White House political machine went into overdrive to sustain the crowds in Madison and other capitals and use street pressure to break governments seeking to peel back the pay, perks, privileges and power of public employee unions that are the taxpayer-subsidized armies of the Democratic Party.
Marin County millionairess Nancy Pelosi, doing a poor imitation of Emma Goldman, announced, “I stand in solidarity with the Wisconsin workers fighting for their rights, especially for all the students and young people leading the charge.”
Is this not the same lady who called Tea Partiers “un-American” for “drowning out opposing views”? Is not drowning out opposing views exactly what those scores of thousands are doing in Madison, banging drums inside the state Capitol?
Some carried signs comparing Walker to Hitler, Mussolini and Mubarak. One had a placard with the face of Walker in the cross hairs of a rifle sight. Major media seemed uninterested. These signs didn’t comport with their script.
In related street action, protesters, outraged over Congress’ oversight of the D.C. budget, showed up at John Boehner’s residence on Capitol Hill to abuse the speaker at his home.
And so the great battle of this generation is engaged.
Between now and 2013, the states are facing a total budget shortfall of $175 billion. To solve it, they are taking separate paths.
Illinois voted to raise taxes by two-thirds and borrow $12 billion more, $8.5 billion of it to pay overdue bills. The Republican minority fought this approach, but was outvoted and accepted defeat.
Wisconsin, however, where Republicans captured both houses and the governor’s office in November, and which is facing a deficit of $3.6 billion over the next two years, has chosen to cut spending.
Walker and the legislature want to require state employees, except police, firemen and troopers, to contribute half of their future pension benefits and up to 12.6 percent of health care premiums.
Wisconsin state workers and teachers enjoy the most generous benefits of state employees anywhere in America. According to the MacIver Institute, the average teacher in the Milwaukee public schools earns $100,000 a year — $56,000 in pay, $44,000 in benefits — and enjoys job security.
More controversially, Walker would end collective bargaining for benefits while retaining it for salaries and wage hikes up to annual inflation. This would ease the burden on local governments and school districts faced with the same budget crisis but less able to stand up to large and powerful government unions.
Other new governors like John Kasich of Ohio are looking at the Wisconsin approach to save their states from bankruptcy. They, too, are now facing massive street protests instigated by Obama and orchestrated by his agents operating out of the DNC.
The Battle of Madison, where Obama, Pelosi, the AFL-CIO, Jackson, the teachers unions and the Alinskyite left are refusing to accept the results of the 2010 election and taking to the streets to break state governments, is shaping up as the first engagement in the Battle for America. What will be decided?
Can the states, with new governments elected by the people, roll back government to prevent a default? Or will the states be forced by street protests, work stoppages by legislators, and strikes by state employees and teachers to betray the people who elected them? Will they be forced to raise taxes ad infinitum to feed the government’s insatiable appetite for tax dollars?
In short, does democracy work anymore in America?
What Obama has done will come back to haunt him. He has encouraged if not incited an angry and alienated left that lost the country in a free election to overturn the results of that election by street protests and invasions of state capitols.
As the huge antiwar demonstrations in the 1960s broke the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and sought to break the presidency of Richard Nixon, Obama and his cohorts are out to break Wisconsin.
One hopes the people of Wisconsin will stand up to this extortion being carried on with the blessing of their own president.
Pat,your comments are spot on. Our Republic is in dire straights. The laws of economics cannot be ignored. What is happening in Madison Wisc.is a perfect example of Cultural Marxism on steroids. The political Elites have no concept of economic reality. When the dollar becomes worthless and these government employees paychecks won’t even buy a cup of coffee that is when the day of reckoning will occur. In the end the joke will be on these Union fools.
The Tea Partiers are picking the wrong fight at the wrong time. Why should public employees lose their right to collective bargaining? If the Republicans want a leg to stand on in this fight they should first reign in the Department of Homeland Security, end the unconstitutional Patriot Act and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would be a good first step in practicing what they preach. Instead they are targeting public employee union members in Wisconsin. Among these public employee union members are police officers, fire fighters and teachers. Governor Walker’s actions only serve to solidify the Democrat’s support from public employee union members and further push union members into the hands of the left. Tea Partiers have to remember that the labor movement was largely built by Irish and Italian Catholics and other Southern and Eastern European immigrants who may not have been completely laissez faire capitalists but they were most definitely held conservative ideas about the family. Yes there were some Communists involved in the labor movement there still are but the majority are just family people.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by SavinzMantra and Samuel Lenser, Colleen Wiltse. Colleen Wiltse said: Alinsky in Madison: The Battle of Madison, where Obama, Pelosi, the AFL-CIO, Jackson, the teachers unions and th… http://bit.ly/fNleYZ [...]
“…refusing to accept the results of the…election .”
Pat, doesn’t that sum up the Tea Partiers attitude vis-a-vis 2008? It sure as HELL describes the Birthers!
How sweet for the public unions to have been able in the past to elect the people who would sit across from them at the contract bargaining table. “We’ll give ‘management’ generous campaign contributions and they will give us a generous contract.” Who cares about the bottom line? Just raise taxes!
I respect Pat and usually agree with Pat but this time i vehemently disagree. The public employee fighting to keep their right to collective bargaining are not guilty of extortion. If anyones guilty of extortion its the fat cat wall street bankers that threatened to send us into a depression if the government didn’t bail them out with 750 billion of taxpayer money.
I was a public employee for the state of california and i made 17 dollars an hour when my union brothers in the private sector were making 25 to 30 dollars an hour doing the same job. Its not the public employee unions who are bankrupting the system as much as it is the private firms with public contracts that soak the taxpayer for what could be done in house for a fraction of the cost.
dont believe me look at the public contracts lockheed martin has and might i mention halliburton.
Adam Rurik wrote: “‘…refusing to accept the results of the…election .’
Pat, doesn’t that sum up the Tea Partiers attitude vis-a-vis 2008? It sure as HELL describes the Birthers!”
Maybe their attitude, but they didn’t shut down the legislative process. Obamacare did pass after all.
The Birthers want Obama to prove he is constitutionally eligible by showing his long-form hospital birth certificate with doctor’s signature, and witnesses — footprint, too, if that was done in Hawaii hospitals in 1961.
Oh, by the way, how hard would it be for Obama to provide that document? If he has one.
And, did that request for a document everybody has, stop one iota of legislative activity?
No. Adam Rurik, you’re way off base.
Pat puts it well: The Democrats and their media appologists are hypocrits.
But here’s a peace offering — Perhaps, instead of throwing gas on the fire, Obama could have called for a cooling off period for both sides.
A little Statemenship will go a long way in the right situation.
Obama blew it.
No mention here of the trickle-down approach by Walker, lowering taxes for the rich, and his corrupt relationship with the Koch empire, abetted by recent right-wing Supreme Court rulings about corporate money in politics. Balancing the budget on our police ‘heroes’ of nine and a half years ago is now conservative. The mind reels.
Pat should only write about foreign policy, as that is the only half of his brain that works… albeit very well. For the rest, let’s take ALL the money out of politics, both corporate and union. Money is not speech. Everyone can say whatever they want, but they should NOT be able to use campaign contributions to influence who gets elected, and spend money influencing elected politicians in a way average citizens cannot.
Why should public employees lose their right to collective bargaining?
Because it’s an inherently corrupt scenario, where the employees bribe the managers to give them payraises with the owner’s money. Even FDR saw this much.
If the Republicans want a leg to stand on in this fight they should first reign in the Department of Homeland Security, end the unconstitutional Patriot Act and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Uh, you do know this fight is happening at the state level. Even if Scott Walker agreed with you on every point 100%, there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it.
Pat, doesn’t that sum up the Tea Partiers attitude vis-a-vis 2008?
So the Tea Parties went out and won the 2010 election. They never effectively occupied government territory, and they sure never acted in the thuggish manner the unions have shown us in Madison, despite the MSM most fevered fantasies.
It sure as HELL describes the Birthers!
Okay, the unions in WI are the moral equivalent of the Birthers in your view. I wouldn’t go that far, but fine.
How does that help your case?
One hopes the people of Wisconsin will stand up to this extortion being carried on with the blessing of their own president.
If the Dems want to desert at the unions’ bidding, the GOP should respond by making every state they can Right to Work states.
I don’t see much difference between taxpayers bailing out Wall Street, GM or these unionized Wisconsin state employees.
Government payrolls should be slashed at every level. They;re way too big. The past few decades have transformed our “public servants” into leeches gorged on public cash. Something’s gone very wrong when a nation of our size has half a million jailers and 700,000 social workers.
The teachers unions are the biggest, the richest, the most militant and the most ideologically driven unions ever. The other government unions pale in comparison. Where they are granted substantial bargaining rights as in the Northeast and Midwest, teachers’ salaries and benefits have skyrocketed. There are many school districts in the Northeast where the starting salary is higher than the highest salary in some Southern school districts.
When teachers sit down at the “bargaining” table, they refuse to negotiate on important issues like job tenure, merit-based pay scales and work rules that protect incompetent teachers. That these issues are major obstacles to real educational reform doesn’t matter to them.
The teachers unions salary demands cannot be justified by any rational argument. They either demand a nice round figure (like 10%) or they cite a pay raise granted by a weak-kneed school board somewhere and demand the same. Issues central to industrial union contract negotiations like profitability, productivity and efficiency are foreign concepts.
The teachers unions have a huge advantage over the few real trade unions that remain: They are a labor monopoly immune to “outsourcing” and the public schools are a government-mandated monopoly presided over by school boards, which in some states have been granted unlimited powers of local taxation. Couple that with their ultimate weapon, the strike against children, and, well, you see why the teachers have done so much better than the rest of us.
Governor Walker is to be applauded for taking the unions to task. But I fear that the unions will win in the end.
I come down on the side of Governor Walker. Elections have consequences, and Walker and Wisconsin Republicans ran on this platform. This legislative bill is no surprise and is due to an election result — that’s how we do things in America.
On the other hand, citizens have the right to redress of grievance and the right to peaceably assemble. These are First Amendment rights.
Although, not the right to shut down the legislative proces by extra-legislative action, which is what the unions are up to.
Balancing of these competing interests seems in order.
An act of Statesmenship is often an act of balancing legitimate competing interests in a polarized atmosphere.
That is why I suggest, to the extent Obama should inject himself into a state-level matter, that an act of Statesmenship would be to promote a cooling off period by both sides, where protesters at the barricades can go home, children can be educated, and the business of legislating can go forward.
The public sector unions are going to have to accept that when the economy doesn’t grow, their wages can’t keep going up.
Advice for Democrats: Better get the economy growing. Green policies and other failed economic growth policies hurt their core supporters.
Advice from a winning Democrat: It’s the economy, stupid!
There’s a black man in the White House. This fact inspires 100% of the Birthers’ motivations and 99.5% those of the Tea Partiers.
How very disappointing to read this from you, Pat. Can’t you stand with working people on this one? You write that the average pay of Milwaukee teachers is $56K/yr. (Median pay
would be lower still.) Do you really think it’s $56K/yr teachers who are bankrupting state governments? Don’t you know that unions and collective bargaining helped to build the middle class in this country? Disappointed.
Can’t you stand with working people on this one?
Working people? Yeah, public employees are “working” people, it is to laugh.
They’re taking the same haircut being seen in the private sector.
Do you really think it’s $56K/yr teachers who are bankrupting state governments?
That number’s been exploded. Once you take into account the total amount of time worked and the benefits the total value lands somewhere between 70 and 80k. They’re being asked to kick in for their retirement and health insurance, something everyone else at that paygrade has to do. If the burden’s too much, then the poor suffering teachers can stop paying their extortionate union dues.
True. The President has shown the country another example of his true left wing agenda. The community organizer has slipped out for every American to view.
Has the left put all its eggs in the Madison basket? If this is truly the great battle, there must be more to come. The left is losing on points, logic and perception.
At some point the left will have to address the accounting, too. Low performance by the teachers and the idea of working till I’m seventy-five to pay their benefits are just two problems that have to be faced.
If the country is swinging back to the right, maybe the time for truth and logic is at the door.
good luck to us all
I believe in the rights of private unions, but government unions are nearly entirely an extortionist racket: give us what we want, or we will withhold essential services (although in the case of public school teachers, their “services” are no longer essential at all, and largely amount to liberal, cultural Marxist brainwashing at the expense of the 3 R’s and basic education.)
As commented above, public employee unions entering into taxpayer thieving conspiracies with corrupt politicians (we’ll vote for you, you deliver the gold-plated goods) are in no way democratic, but rather fascist. Worse, they are robbing future, unborn generations of Americans to feather their own nests, because it’s now all going on the taxpayer credit card.
Ironically, these are the same types who wail “We’re doing it for the children.”
Yes, the fascist Wall Street banksters and “national security” exploiting swindlers rob the taxpayers and future Americans at the national level as well, but all that proves is that we live in sick, cynical times, governed by an unconscionable, morally defective generation of “leaders” who have turned democracy (and the country) into a racket.
“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.”[2]
POPE LEO XIII
May 15, 1891
I am with you Peter. I’m disappointed with Pat’s stance on this too. He’s usually on the side of the working man. I don’t think this situation is any different even if the working people in question are public employees. The checkered pants country club Republicans are trying to break the unions and this time their trying to use Tea Party angst to do it. I do believe that a worker’s right to collective bargaining is a very conservative stance since labor union’s have been instrumental in bringing (and keeping) the American worker into the Middle Class.
Not that there aren’t some good comments here in favor of Walker and some of his positions but one thing I find really objectionable is his attempting to eliminate the ability of local governments (school boards for instance) to bargain for what *they* want/are willing to give to teachers.
Well, it seems to me, isn’t one of the tenets of conservatism the idea that the closer government is the better? Local governance rather than far away tyranny?
Lots of what Walker is doing has nothing to do with conservatism whatsoever and instead indisputably is just a reflection of *his* interest-groups’ preferences. And yet then conservatives such as Buchanan will turn around tomorrow in spite of this and start assailing our system otherwise in allowing far-away interest-group manipulations.
Not exactly designed to garner credibility/confidence or etc.
I have to laugh when I hear teachers referred to as “working men.” Actually, teachers would object to the term “working man” as it is not “gender-balanced.”
Teachers are professionals with bachelors degrees at the minimum. Most also have masters degrees and some even boast PhDs. They are articulate and driven. Education in general and teachers in particular have been hyped-up in recent years as essential components of the “New World Order.” This gives them a cachet that they don’t deserve.
With an average salary of $56,000 for 180 days of instruction, that works out to $311.11 per day. With 5 hours of actual classroom instruction per day, teachers make $62 plus per hour in base pay. Quite a bit more than a working stiff makes. Now comes the juicy part: fringe benefits like fully paid top notch family health, dental, vision and life insurance; 10 days of paid sick leave and 3 of paid personal days per academic year; retirement benefits of 60% of last salary plus paid insurances that fully vest after 30 years on the job, with little or no contributions from a teacher’s salary; generous maternity leave benefits and a full year of sabbatical leave at 1/2 pay plus fringes every 7 or 10 years. Through in other goodies like fully paid leave plus expenses to attend conferences and seminars for advancing their “professional growth” and re-imbursed tuition expenses and you can see why the folks who foot the bill, taxpayers and property owners in particular, are up in arms.
One quibble, Art:
They are articulate and driven.
A not insignificant number of teachers these days are actually worthless and incomprehensible.. The thing is, they’re practically unfireable, which itself is a very, very valuable benefit.
ADAM RURIK…… I guarantee if the man in the White House was Thomas Sowell,Walter Williams or Clarence Thomas 99.5% of the birthers and 100% of The Tea Party people would been inspired and motivated to have cast their votes for one of the 3 the above named people. It’s not about race. Let’s put that behind us. It’s about what you stand for.The fact is.that the 3 above named people are more black than the current resident of the White House and I would gladly support anyone of them fully.
“More black,” Jerry? Clarence Thomas, Jerrry? Why not just nominate Larry Elder, for Pete’s sake?
I was watching Beck on Fox News tonight I guess he’s got all us union guys pinned down as “COMMUNISTS” and “GOONS”. I guess that means Pope Leo XIII was a “Communist” and that all the Catholic immigrants who fought for, bled for and some died for the collective bargaining rights that American workers enjoy were “GOONS”. What a bafoon this Beck guy is. What a corporate stooge. Stay on the right side Pat. Join the American worker like you did in the fight against NAFTA and the WTO. Like you stood up for us against the Neocon war machine and the Lockheed Martin supported Patriot Act. Join the American worker. Help lead us up the hill! Grab a pitch fork and lets storm the gates together and throw the money changers out of the temple!
Adam….Its about policy and philosophy,not race.
[...] Buchanan recently opined that in siding with the unions and criticizing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Barack Obama, ever the [...]
Art, et al,
Your accurate math depicting the Teacher-Salary largess omits an even greater factor: ours is the only profession in America with NO ACCOUNTABILITY! Our increasingly failing products (student achievement) over the last two generations is exclusive to any American profession or corporation. Everyone knows that more than 50% of our students can’t read on grade level; more than 65% can’t compute; and barely 10% are college-ready. What if 50% of doctors’ patients died in their care? 50% of Ford or GM vehicles failed on the raod? How about just 5% of cars failing? Would any of these other businesses be still around? (BTW, the tests standards are set by us teachers, ourselves — unlike the road safety mandates by other govt. agencies). Yet, we instead get bonuses and raises that exceed the annual inflation rate — over the last 40 years.
But don’t worry folks: the media will never expose our scams as they need a dumbed-down populace to buy their hoodwinking! Why else the media & public support for the unions — even though the unions’ excesses are destroying the very dumbed-down public’s living standards. And futures. Ha, ha , ha! We always have the last laugh.
BTW, our union’s endorsements vaulted Clinton from “Arkansas hick in August 1992 to front-runner and then victor. Never mind the fact that Clinton, Gore, Kennedy and all our Democrat endorsees never risk their own kids in our failing public schools.
Thanks to a collusive media (that also led us to belive that the arab uprising was only a sudden, recent development), you will never know baisc truths, my fellow duped Americans.
In America, Jerry, everything is about race:: It’s your national affliction.
Buchanan extrapolates from the current events to a general sense of conclusions about state and Federal issues. Dmitry and others are going to try to politicize and demonize and demagogue the opposition …. but basic economic theory is still at play here … regardless of how it is spun.
the governor of Wisconsin is dealing with the issue that he ran on and was elected to do ….. he is being judged not by a subset of the Madison population but by the entire state on his ability to fix the current problem. He has correctly identified the issue as of benefits and the growth of state non discretionary spending (irregardless of the feelings of the collective bargainers) …. if a private company goes bankrupt collective bargaining agreements tend to get thrown out the window … in other words – debt and financial solvency eventually come home to roost and Walker knows this … while the unions may be around a long time – Walker has a finite period in office. And the state voters have to balance their own finances like anyone else. So they get it.
go ahead Dmitry and others and try to politicize it … Walker has some basic economical issues to resolve that involve revenue (taxes) and expenditures. Alinsky’s philosophy did not necessarily care or respond to the total financial situation and the economic survival of the state. Saul Alinsky was concerned with acquisition and maintenance of power. But as you know ultimately it depends on votes.
Adam….So Martin Luther King’s message is dead/
Yeah, Jerry, it is. The irony is that only ones who still nominally buy into it are conservative whites. Everyone else is playing ethnic politics.
If you want to see demagoguery just turn on fox news or these corporate stooges on the radio eho try to pass themselves off as republicans. I understand Walker has a mandate to cut spending. The unions have said they are willing to go to the bargaining table and make concessions. Walker wants more than that he wants to break the unions and the end game is to break the private sector unions with right to work legislation. This is union busting.
By the way I am a Republican (in the Websters Dictionary Sense of the Word). I believe that the Constitution of the United States is the only way to keep a pluralistic society such as ours from descending into anarchy. I am a supporter of the 2nd Amendment. I am Orthodox Christian and pro-life.
What I am not is a globalist. I am not a free trader. I am not a pure Capitalist, but neither am I a socialist or communist. I believe in private property, but am opposed to the personhood granted to international corporations.
I am pro-union and firmly support the right of all American workers to collective bargaining. I like Pat Buchanan wish to see tariffs imposed on imports and an end to NAFTA and other free trade policies that have destroyed our manufacturing base and sent good paying union jobs to southeast asia and elsewhere.
I like Ron Paul oppose an interventionist foreign policy and the unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan of the Bush administration and the conflicts in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia in the Clinton years.
Small government and fiscal responsibility does not begin with breaking public unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere. It begins with foreign policy. It begins with rolling back the American empire to become the Republic we once were. It begins with enforcing our anti-trust laws and ending corporate personhood for these international giants who buy our politicians like we buy hamburgers at McDonalds. It begins with ending the wars abroad, closing foreign bases and repealing the Patriot Act and disbanding the Department of Homeland Security. It begins with sound trade policy based on what’s good for the American people rather than what’s good for the globalists and bringing back the millions of factory jobs lost since Reagan and before. It begins with Americans reclaiming their constitutional rights and American workers refusing to allow their rights to collective bargaining be taken from them.
What does this have to do with Wisconsin. It’s simple really. Ending free trade and promoting American industry would bring factories back to Wisconsin and a healthy job market filled with union factory jobs would bolster Wisconsins economy and provide much needed revanue to the state treasury.