An Injury to All!

By PAUL MAVERICK
POLITICAL MUSCLE

I can’t stop thinking about the pro-democracy uprising in Wisconsin. The intensity of events in Madison keeps ratcheting up. Despite three weeks of massive, growing protests from Wisconsin citizens, Governor Scott Walker rammed through his anti-worker bill in a late-night session filled with suspicious legislative maneuvering. In response, the people of Wisconsin turned out at least 100,000 workers to express their fury on Saturday, March 12. For both sides of this fight – the workers who want to keep what’s theirs, and the corporate overlords who want it all – this battle is far from over.

The other day, a fellow student from CSUN engaged me in a dialogue about this, which began like so:

So many people have been asking me about this.

I’m not surprised – this is the biggest fight going on, nationwide, right now.

It’s been a touchy subject because I have a bunch of relatives that are teachers.

And you don’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them what you really think? 🙂

Union workers get a lot of benefits from taxes that most other hard-working people have to pay for themselves and especially with all the deficits, we need to take actions on actually trying to get rid of those deficits.

Which deficits are you referring to? Wisconsin was actually on track for a $120 million SURPLUS this year. In his first month in office, Walker dished out some corporate tax-breaks that gobbled up the entire surplus, and suddenly put the state into a deficit. There WAS NO DEFICIT, until he gave the money away to big business. So Walker created a “crisis,” and then “solved” that crisis by attacking middle-class workers. That doesn’t sound right to me.

As for the benefits of the union workers that other people pay for, those benefits ARE the workers’ pay. Workers gave up pay raises IN EXCHANGE FOR benefits. If you think public workers are overpaid – if you think the snow-plow drivers and public school teachers are living fat off the public purse, and they should have their paychecks cut, then let’s just come out and say that. The workers EARNED those pensions and benefits – none of that is a gift.

The second big issue here is that private sector workers have traditionally made FAR MORE than public sector workers. But as corporations have outsourced and laid off workers, and as they busted private sector unions and lowered wages, we look around the rubble of the American economy, and the only people we see who are still making decent middle class paychecks (with the benefits that are the RIGHTFUL earnings of the American middle class) are the public employees. Natually, the newly-impoverished private sector workers get jealous, and they don’t want anyone else to get something they don’t have. We should ALL be poor together, right?

Rather than turning on each other, and fighting over crumbs, why not look at the real enemy? What about the fat-cat bankers who brought the global economy to its knees with a massive criminal fraud scheme, then gobbled up trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, and continued to hand themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and executive compensation. THESE are the criminals. THESE are the thieves. The snow-plow drivers work damn hard for every dollar, and they just want to be able to care for their families.

I think this is better than layoffs and I think its fair that union workers pay for portions of their pensions and health care.

It’s also better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but not by much. Wisconsin is not broke. America is not broke. Our money has been stolen – is being stolen – by the financial elite. Remember, the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 155,000,000 Americans put together. Four hundred people on one side, and HALF THE COUNTRY on the other. Does that seem right to you? These four hundred sit back and cackle with glee as we battle each other, and ignore their colossal theft of America’s wealth.

I do not fully agree on the sharp limits in bargaining rights, however.

I do not agree AT ALL with the limits on collective bargaining. It’s a power grab, and that power belongs to the people. Funny, the “conservative” argument is usually against “big government,” but in this case they are leaving each solitary worker to sit down and bargain, individually, with the big government, over their working conditions. That’s not conservatism, at all.

But I also believe in some limitations because unions have manipulated the system to where they elect people in office in favor of themselves (which any smart group of people would do, so I don’t blame them).

I am in favor of full public financing for elections, which would remove this issue entirely. In the absence of that, however, let’s recognize the reality of campaign finance as we find it. Money pays for ads on television and radio and internet, and unions are especially good at putting members on the streets to shake hands and pass around flyers, et cetera. Still, who are the heavy hitters in this game?

Look at the 2010 election cycle, where 7 of the top 10 spenders were corporations. The other three (and by no means the top three) were unions. Two of those three were public employee unions, AFSCME and the teachers’ union.

Private sector unionization in the US is down to 6.9 percent. Corporate power has more or less destroyed private sector unions. Public sector unionization, however, stands at around 36 percent. They’re the only real unions left standing, with any influence. That’s why they are being targeted.

This brings us to what Scott Walker’s bill is really about. Remember, the unions came forward and OFFERED the monetary concessions that Walker demanded. They gave in, yet Walker kept pushing for this bill to strip away their collective bargaining rights. So if it wasn’t about the state deficit – which it CLEARLY wasn’t – then what was its true purpose?

Take away the right to bargain collectively, and you take away the unions’ reason to exist. Membership will plunge. This has been seen in Indiana, where collective bargaining was stripped away in 2005. So you torpedo the membership, and what have you done? You’ve taken away the unions as an organized opposition to corporate power. And the group that currently has 7 of the top 10 positions in the political spending race will now have 10 of the top 10 positions. They will run the table. No one will remain to stand against them.

That will be the end of the Democratic Party as it exists today. It will be the end of the worker’s voice – the people’s voice – in American politics.

That’s what this bill is really about.

That’s great for them, but it gives makes people pay more taxes to give them more benefits that many people are not able to have doing the work they are currently doing (not as a union worker).

That’s why you STRENGTHEN the unions, so more workers will benefit. For every unionized worker, a non-unionized worker gains the same benefit, because employers want to avoid their shops unionizing, so they’ll pay comparable wages and offer comparable benefits. So in the 1950s, when union membership nationwide stood at 35 percent of all workers, actually 70 percent of workers were getting paid a union wage.

What you are suggesting – weakening the unions – is a race to the bottom. Everybody loses.

For example, many union workers are able to retire at 55 because they have such high pensions, when people like my dad will not because he has to save for his own pensions, rather than have the government pay for them.

I’m guessing your dad is a private sector worker. He made that choice, at the start of his career. The private sector typically provides less generous pensions – at least nowadays, anyway, as the private sector has little by little abandoned its responsibility for its workers. Anyway, in theory at least, your dad could have GOTTEN RICH in the private sector. There’s a higher risk in the private sector, yes, and more job volatility, but there’s also a higher potential reward. That’s the carrot dangling out there… In the private sector, you can climb the corporate ladder and really HIT IT BIG!

People who chose public sector work, however, did so knowing they would NEVER get rich, they would be GIVING UP ALL CHANCE of ever getting rich, and in exchange for that, they knew they would get some job security and a decent pension. That’s the bargain. You give up a shot at the brass ring, but you gain a security blanket. Seems like a fair trade, on the whole.

If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at a couple of examples of these public worker parasites who want to retire young and grow fat off the taxpayer…

Let’s say you become a firefighter at 25. You run into burning buildings, put your life on the line for the people of your community, for THIRTY YEARS. Isn’t that long enough? And guys over 55 probably don’t have the strength and lungpower to run up and down stairs with all that equipment on. Do you want to tell me firefighters don’t earn their money? (Remember, that’s what a pension is – it’s THEIR MONEY, deferred compensation.)

Or a police officer, facing danger in crime-ridden neighborhoods and dangerous highways. You could get shot at, stabbed, beaten up, killed in a police chase. Thirty years of that life isn’t enough, to earn a decent pension? Just how hard do you want to squeeze the public worker?

My family also has $11,000 in tax raises that were just given to us a couple of days ago and with 3 kids in college, my family is taking major cuts to pay for those taxes.

If corporations paid their fair share, your family wouldn’t be feeling the squeeze. The corporate tax rate is currently 35 percent, yet Bank of America paid only 11 percent of their earnings in taxes last year. How many hundreds of millions of dollars did that single corporation rob from the public?

Quite a few large corporations are able to avoid their tax responsibilities ENTIRELY, through offshore accounts and loopholes and carve-outs and giveaways and subsidies. End corporate welfare. Make Exxon-Mobil and AT&T and Wells Fargo and General Electric PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE, instead of turning us little people against each other.

So union workers are not the only ones making sacrifices to help get rid of this deficit…

THIS IS NOT ABOUT DEFICITS. This is about grabbing power away from the people, and giving it to the corporate elite. This is about corporations gaining total ownership over our electoral system.

…although many people say they are not taxing the rich, they are and the people that aren’t in that percentile do not realize it.

Remember the “lame duck” Congress, after the 2010 election, which passed an ENORMOUS, BUDGET-BUSTING, DEFICIT-RAISING tax break for the WEALTHIEST TWO PERCENT of Americans? When will they have enough? When will they finally be satisfied?

When they have it ALL. When they have squeezed the grapefruit dry of every last drop of juice, they’ll toss the used-up rind to one side, and move on. This process is already well underway, with the MILLIONS of manufacturing jobs we lost over the past decade. Corporations don’t care about America. They are destroying our national prosperity in order to fatten their bottom line.

The wealthy and super-wealthy of this nation are grossly UNDERTAXED. During FDR’s administration, at the depths of the Great Depression, the top marginal rate was 94 percent. Look at that again – NINETY-FOUR PERCENT. During the (Republican!) Eisenhower years, it was 91 percent. During the Kennedy and Johnson years, it was 70 percent. This is how you build a nation. Highways, bridges, airports, a growing middle class. These were the BOOM YEARS, the greatest period of prosperity in American history.

Then Reagan, and later George W. Bush took their whacks at the top tax rate, and now it’s down to 35 percent. And still the rich SQUEAL that they’re being overtaxed. So Obama extends the Bush tax cuts, and talks about reducing corporate taxes even further – he’s also participating in the dismantling of our nation. And still the rich complain. The bloodsuckers want more.

In this economy, everyone is taking cuts and I think Scott Walker is one of the first who is really making the effort to do something about relieving the us of that deficit without layoffs.

Sure, he’ll relieve Wisconsin of the deficit that HE CREATED WITH CORPORATE TAX GIVEAWAYS. And he’ll do it by busting the unions, and destroying the ability of anyone to oppose him and his corporate funders.

Yes, there are deficits in states around the country. But remember WHY. Remember WHO created them. Criminal gangsters in the financial services sector. And then look at who is being asked to SUFFER and SACRIFICE in order to balance the budgets. Teachers. Firefighters. Police officers. Snowplow drivers. Does this seem right to you?

So this again, is a tough subject for me to talk about, especially since I’m on both sides that are affected by it.

Somehow, oil billionaires like the Koch brothers, who donated heavily to Scott Walker’s campaign, have convinced you that THEIR interests and YOUR interests are the same. They aren’t. Not even close. Your interests and mine are MUCH closer to – the same as, in fact – the working people of Wisconsin, and Indiana, and Michigan, and Ohio, and Illinois, and New Jersey, and the next state where the super-wealthy roll out their attack on American families…

My opinion is from my basic knowledge of the bill that I’ve read in news articles, just so you know where my knowledge is coming from.

Should we be surprised when the corporate press presents a corporate-friendly version of events?