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Let’s play masters & servant:
Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose bill to kill collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions has caused an uproar among state employees, might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch are conservative titans of industry who have infamously used their vast wealth to undermine President Obama and fight legislation they detest, such as the cap-and-trade climate bill, the health care reform act, and the economic stimulus package. For years, the billionaires have made extensive political donations to Republican candidates across the country and have provided millions of dollars to astroturf right-wing organizations. Koch Industries’ political action committee has doled out more than $2.6 million to candidates. And one prominent beneficiary of the Koch brothers’ largess is Scott Walker.
According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker’s gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign’s second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch’s PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker’s opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.
You will notice I didn’t call him a Nazi. The Nazi’s were much more transparent about their motives…
Bonus: Speaking of those who can be bought cheaply, I could write a post that would cause Glenn Greenwald to comment “too long…didn’t read” about this latest offering from McMegan, however I expect great things when SOT & Tom Levenson to take it on because it is such a target rich environment. Having said that, I thought this line was too good to risk being lost in the sands of time. Quoth the McMegan:
One of the prime attractions of a career in K-12 teaching is that you can almost never be fired…
Which is similar to a desire to become the business and economics editor for The Atlantic, where the ability to use the word “monopsony” in a sentence obviates a need to understand the basic principles of math.
Or, as McMegan might put it: Fucking decimal points. How do they work?
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It looks like “Boardwalk Empire” style corruption to me.
I just actually perused the comments at the Atlantic and basically it boils down to “Reagan should just fire their asses” using different words. It’s as if the hairy knuckles are in their brains.
Like if you taught a bunch of union-busting goons to use two-dollar words and type.
Two of the great myths of our time, that Tea Baggers aren’t essentially just right wing Republicans, and that Libertarians aren’t essentially just Tea Baggers.
Forgive me, but in Arizona, where we have had rather a lot of experience with the breed, we know that this year’s ‘Teabagger’ is last century’s John Bircher. They are not pleasant and they have never been harmless. They are poisonous.
McArdle should stick to what she knows – sea salt and kitchen gadgetry.
It’s getting a lot easier to fire a teacher nowadays. A lot of districts are moving to the “one-year contract” model. If a teacher isn’t doing the job, they just aren’t renewed.
“One of the prime attractions of a career in K-12 teaching is that you can almost never be fired.”
Ah, spoken like someone who doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Inept teachers often even fire themselves after their first year or two in the trenches,when outdoor work such as trash collecting begins to look like a better career option. That said, teachers can be fired at any time. The only requirement being that the administrator doing the firing has to show cause. And, contrary to what some parents believe, the teaching of evolution in a biology class is not sufficient cause.
When my wife started teaching in Florida, her assistant principal tried to put the fear into the new teachers by pointing out that they could be fired at any time, for any reason — and that before they’re tenured, the school doesn’t even have to have a reason.
My wife’s response was, “that means we can also quit any time we want to, right?”
Just to underline what shouldn’t need underlining, one of the most risible aspects of this statement is the part in bold, the right wing fantasy of T-Bone eating bucks and welfare queens going into K12 teaching because it’s so lucrative and such a great dodge from actually working, and the supposed security is just “one of” the many glamorous attractions of such work.
Like the Wall Street trader who claims “We’ll come take your jobs if we lose ours”. Right. In my case of course to become a professional musician you’ll need ten to fifteen years of practicing 9 hours a day, starting at the age of 11 in my case but hey, go for it, then of course all of the years of doing gigs for free or practically for free, tips and beer if you’re lucky, then eventually low paying gigs before after many years of honing your chops and your art and gaining a reputation you can maybe work in recording and films and touring and so on, in other words something that all done together resembles a half-decent living, keeping in mind that the vast majority don’t ever get that far, either from lack of talent or lack of the patience and penchant for self-abuse and years of horrible gigs and non-stop practice and devotion that it requires. Of course you’ll be just entering the last stage as an “up and coming 50 year old” adding that barrier to the remote chances of success but hey, other than that, you should just glide right into my job in no time.
“We sometimes hold off getting up to pee if we’re in the middle of trading”, Christ Almighty.
You have no idea. None.
Hey Bircher Boys! What do you think it looks like when you get one of your payrolled politicians to use military force against filing clerks and meter maids?
Bircher Brothers gotta get their dollar’s worth?
McArdle should stick to what she knows – sea salt and kitchen gadgetry.
Except that she knows jack about salt or kitchen gadgetry, either. For example, “Pink Himalayan Salt” is just a marketing label for a product having little to do with the actual Himalayas, and her recommendation of an EGG SEPARATOR, for pity’s sake, AND one of the more awkward models, is evidence of total dimwittedness in regard to genuinely useful gadgetry.
The Koch boys’ daddy, Fred, in fact helped found the Birchers.
Geez, someone tell Megan that one doesn’t need to buy an egg separator. It comes with the egg, and is called a “shell”. Even I, clumsy kitchen operator, know how to use a damned egg shell to strain off the egg white.
No kidding. I know someone who was a talented classical bassist who was actually told by an orchestral pro to not bother pursuing it: While he was talented, he had to have to want it above all else, and be willing to fight the thousand other kids who were more talented and who had rich parents backing them.
Meanwhile, I’m not seeing many Wall Street execs applying for teaching jobs.
I think in Megan’s case she probably does need one. Just another example of the mad skills we have come to expect from her.
Not long ago we joked about how Bush and the GOP wanted to drag the country back to 1889. Guess what–it wasn’t a joke. Walker and the rest of these people really do want to drag the country back that far. Back to when “the coloreds” knew their place and behaved with proper deference and respect; back to when women were second-class citizens at best who did little more than housework and childbearing; back to when being poor was a crime punishable by even more extreme poverty; back to when the wealthy and the corporations were laws unto themselves.
All the gadgets are perhaps an attempt to ameliorate the problems caused by things like using 200 eggs instead of 2 when following recipes, which lets face it must wreak havoc in the kitchen.
The anti-union Repukes are always saying, “If you don’t like your work conditions, then quit.” Yet mysteriously I fail to see any of them flocking to K-12 teaching, which by their account is fabulously lucrative and easy work that anyone with “common sense” could do.
If you think that all that is needed is to throw out all those liberal touchy-feely educational theories and go straight for that old-timey corporal punishment (despite what the parents might want or say), that’s pretty much all that’s needed.
I’ve been at the WI state capitol for the last 5 days. I run my own business a block from there and have been heading over during lunches and at the end of the days. The whole week has been unbelievable, and as you would expect, the national media isn’t doing it justice.
Today especially – the billionaire backed republican rally was so full of FAIL, I almost started to feel sorry for them. Almost.
It truly was laughable how small and insignificant the ‘baggers were. Official estimates are saying 70,000 just today alone, and I’d be shocked if the Koch Klan topped 1,000. So imagine my surprise when just checking in now to see how it’s being covered, and the AP article that seems to be all over the place online, focuses almost exclusively on the counter-protesters. I know we’re all aware of this thing they always do, but it’s extra disconcerting when you experience the deception so directly.
Whatever…It’s really incredible what’s happening here, and I’m very proud of how my fellow labor backers handled themselves going face-to-face with the crazies and being very respectful and staying on message, and not taking the bait. There are even volunteer groups forming each night to go around the grounds and cleaning up. Various unions are stationed around the grounds with grills set up and giving food and water for free. I’ve talked to some restaurant and bar owners around the square, and they’re saying this week will make their entire year, and having to place several orders a day with suppliers just to keep up (one is a friend and he’s ordering massive amounts from local farmers…they’re not sure if they’ll be able to meet demand if this keeps up). He also said many are placing large orders and asking them to pass it all out for free to protesters. It’s really great to see.
I haven’t seen any of this mentioned in any article I’ve read yet. Solidarity! Also. Too.
I hope you will have time to write up your first hand experience at MyFDL in a diary. It would be very helpful to have this report somewhere in addition to a comment on Tbogg’s site. Please?
What Teddy said, Workinit. Tell your friends to stop by FDL’s MyFDL section (http://my.firedoglake.com/) and sign up (it’s free!) so they can tell the stories the corporate GOP/Media Complex won’t.
Yeah, I was there about 11:30 to maybe 1:30 or so and I would be surprised if there were more than 200 teabaggers there. The pro-union people were shoulder to shoulder filling the streets around the capital. I imagine Fox is reporting 80-100,000 teabaggers though. It’s nice to see liberals standing up for themselves for a change!!
From Mother Jones’ Twitter account:
The only obnoxious people I encountered were teabaggers.
Yeah. It’s obvious that Breitbart et al wanted to start a fight but were scared to death when they actually realized what that would entail, so they high-tailed it out of there once the national TV crews stopped filming them.
Meanwhile, the Goopers in the Assembly tried to pull a fast one, and failed: http://theuptake.org/2011/02/19/wisconsin-gop-tries-illegal-tactics-to-pass-anti-union-bill/
I was less than civil here.
Thanks. probably won’t be able to do more than an occasional comment any time soon, but feel free to spread around whatever I wrote. I looked around a little this morning at coverage, and saw a perfect wrap up here in a really great diary at Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/20/947392/-Madison-Observations
Best thing I’ve read yet about it all. I know the business community around the square pretty well, and will keep asking around about the impacts for them, since it doesn’t seem like there is much coverage of that aspect.
TBogg, I might not have come up with something great, but I hope to make up for that in volumn. And it’s no surprise to see that the Koches gave money to Walker–they are doing that a lot.
So great to hear from you there on the ground!
Some regulars here called a pizza place and ordered pizzas for the protesters yesterday.
Love your “slant” on things.
Would be great ifyou found time to diary, if not, keep posting when you can. Thanks!
One of the prime attractions of being a conservative hack is that they’ll always be a think tank willing to give you a paycheck to write utter crap.
That’s a lot of money to suck floppy wrinkled rich man brother dick. Hey when you’re scum looking to be dressed pretty and paraded on the streets guess those are your only options.