Wisconsin's Maximum Governor had a little fireside monologue.
If he had actually answered questions, here's how it might have gone.
Nonexistent Questioner: Governor, why do you need to use destroy the public service unions?
Maximum Governor: Be fair -- I'm only destroying the unions that didn't vote for me.
Nonexistent Questioner: OK, Governor, why do you need to destroy the public service unions that didn't vote for you?
Maximum Governor: Because we have a deficit.
Nonexistent Questioner: But don't we have a deficit largely because the first thing you did when you took office was to push through massive tax cuts?
Maximum Governor: And your point?
Nonexistent Questioner: So if deficits are the problem...and tax cuts caused them...why not just put taxes back to where they were.
Maximum Governor: Clearly you do not understand arithmetic. Once rich people's taxes are cut, they can never, ever, ever,ever be raised again under any circumstances. This is called "shared sacrifice".
Nonexistent Questioner: Says who?
Maximum Governor: Says the Koch Brothers.
Nonexistent Questioner: Who are they?
Maximum Governor: Billionaire crackpot industrialists. From the family that bankrolled the John Birch Society and a hundred other fascist front groups. Think Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche from "Trading Places"
but richer and more soul-dead.
Nonexistent Questioner: And why does their opinion matter?
Maximum Governor: They gave me lots and lots of money.
Nonexistent Questioner: What do your supporters think of that?
Maximum Governor: My supporters think whatever Rush Limbaugh tells them to think.
Nonexistent Questioner: Oh. So why will destroying the public service unions who didn't vote for you solve your deficit problem?
Maximum Governor: Because unions that didn't vote for me are run by monsters who will never, ever, ever give me what I asked for.
Nonexistent Questioner: But that's just a lie. They just gave you everything you asked for.
Maximum Governor: It is not a lie, because...because while it may be true that unions did just give me everything I asked for now and it may be true that their imaginary uncooperativeness was the sole rationale I gave for destroying them, at some point in the future they might not give me what I want, which is why they must be destroyed right now.
Nonexistent Questioner: I see.
Maximum Governor: It's like "The Terminator". If I don't kill Sarah Conor now, she will one day give birth to Cesar Chavez III who will oppose me.
Nonexistent Questioner: Uh huh.
Maximum Governor: Then I would lose and the Koch Brothers would stop giving me money and maybe seal me in an oil drum and drop me in the ocean.
Nonexistent Questioner: Uh huh.
Maximum Governor: So you can see that, while what I have said so far might be considered by some in the Gotcha Media to be great, big, filthy lies, it is possible that someday what I said might happen, in which case I would have been telling the truth retroactively.
Nonexistent Questioner: So what you are saying is that we need to invade now, because we cannot wait for the final proof -- the the smoking gun that could come in the form of a better dental plan for Wisconsin teachers at some point in the future?
Maximum Governor: Exactly.
Nonexistent Questioner: Thank you for your time, Governor.
Maximum Governor: You betcha!
26 comments:
The domestic version of the "Bush Doctrine" or preventative destruction of political opponents.
It had been given less camouflaged names in the past.
John Puma
Well damn the Man for breaking a union that should never have existed in the first place. Don't be such a fucking commie, drifty. Even your Most Merciful Savior in Heaven, FDR knew public sector unions were bullshit.
Real tough work, that lazy ass white collar government stuff, isn't it?
Three Points about the Buffalo Beast Item
Look, they had the headline for this that summarizes everything about Walker that anyone will ever need to know. It's going to be the man's epitaph. "Koch Whore".
Sez it all. Nuff said. You don't bury a headline like that.
Second, it's too good to be true. Things that are too good to be true usually aren't.
Thirdly, it's legally and ethically dodgy to record a phone conversation without all parties' permission.
Fourthly, if it's true despite being too good to be true, where do I contribute to their legal defense fund? I believe that even coke whores have rights, but Koch whores? Screw 'em.
@ Paul K...I've been a public sector employee for 34 years, and yes it can be tough. Especially dealing with assholes like you on a regular basis. I continue to do it with a smile though, because I beleive public service to be an honourable profession.
Damn! The buffalo beast link is already dead; can someone summarize it or provide a cached copy? Looks like the Kock suckers' lawyers already got there. They have been working on developing first strike media technology; looks like they've gotten faster on the draw.
I looked around, and Salon has the Buffalo Beast tapes up, plus Walker's office just admitted that Walker indeed took that call. Heh.
@double nickel...i have nothing against public sector workers in general, other than the fact that in professions other than the military, teaching, firefighting and law enforcement, the government is where people go to work when they've lost their drive to be successful at things and just want to get by...i simply find it nonsensical that there should be a union for any of them, particularly the white collar professions...who are we kidding here? this isn't Jurgis wasting away physically under abhorrent conditions in the meat packing plants, it's teachers working 9 months a year in pleasant conditions for good pay and amazing benefits that nobody in the private sector gets anything close to...besides, everyone on the Left is putting this like they're losing some amazing god-given right...it's not a right to collectively bargain...CBA's are something that the boss concedes to when it's in the greater good of the organization as a whole to succeed, which at this point for Wisconsin, it is not...and they are retaining the ability to collectively bargain on salary, which means that instead of whining about it, they could easily come back next year and say they need higher salaries, collectively, to compensate for what they have to put into their own healthcare and retirements, which coincidentally, are also income tax write-offs, so they'd be breaking even...nobody is really losing anything here...from a benefits standpoint, they're being brought closer, though not quite all the way, to where pretty much all white collar private sector workers are, contributing to their own retirements, and with something like an 80/20 split on health insurance premiums
Drifty,
How about putting up some high-res versions of your talented Photoshops of dufus Walker? Something that would print out nicely on A or even B size paper. I'll take it with me to Madison (been there three days, will return), and I think other protesters would appreciate/use it as well.
Post-mortems
The Beast tapes have been confirmed, by Walker's office, as genuine.
Walker is done. You can survive stupidity as a politician. Examples too numerous to cite. You can survive evident criminality. Ditto on citations. But you can't survive being simply ridiculous. The Koch Whore is done.
Which leaves me with two regrets.
The phrase "Koch Whore" was not my invention. Another shot at immortality lost. This whole business is a wrap, in the archives, and I'm not the one who put the body in the morgue. Damn!
We don't have better adversaries. How can we get any momentum behind a serious political movement in this country if the opposition is such a pack of drooling half-wits? Well, at least their front men are drooling half-wits. But that means our front men can't be any better than cautious do-nothings.
Their side gets together the Seven Most Evil Men in the Kingdom, as in the last episode of Black Adder, and our side assembles the Seven Blandest Men in the Kingdom, and thus they fight it out to no end, ever, for all eternity, it's beginning to seem.
@ Paul K..thanks for confirming that you're an asshole.
@double nickel...thanks for confirming you're a drooling leftist lemming...not that i'd expect much else from driftglass's readers...even if i might expect more out of him
Thirdly, it's legally and ethically dodgy to record a phone conversation without all parties' permission.
tell it to Breitbart.
.i simply find it nonsensical that there should be a union for any of them, particularly the white collar professions
This is nonsensical. why not unions?
It used to be that white collar professionals were protected by demand for their services; good working conditions and wages were necessary to attract decent employees. But In our new, exciting Republican Wage-slave economy, employers are perfectly happy to hold people hostage to employment and most especially, health care.
Unions created the middle class. And that aggravates the Koch brothers no end.
Hopefully Paul K. has a lucid explanation as to why so many of those coddled, privileged publc-sector workers now make LESS than their private-sector counterparts. Plainly the ones who make more must be EVIL, because good worker-drones love making shit pay & having no job security or benefits! Losing gains that others fought & even died for? It's what the Founding Fathers would've wanted! Overtime? Weekends? Sick pay? MARXISM!!!1111!!!! Also, the "leftist lemmings" aren't the ones who take a "Let's Destroy Nature Now, Before Armageddon Comes" approach to stewardship of the commons - that's about as lemming-like as it gets. Your Kool-Aid: it includes a special secret ingredient.
Walker getting punked? Actually, I think they blew it - that was a golden opportunity to get him to say something legally actionable, & they screwed the pooch talking about how hot Mika Brzezinski is?
Breitbart's minions & their many copycats have been giving a free public workshop in how to ruin your opponents for more than a year now, with some real scalps to show for it. Seems like every time someone does the same to some GOP satrap, it's in the form of a harmless & forgettable prank like this one. If the right can do it with heavily-edited bullshit, surely Reality-PAC can do it with the cold hard ugly truth ... it's way past time for the American left to put down the pearls, back away from the hugbox & re-learn how to fight to win.
tl;dr - Too many drum-circles, not enough felony convictions.
The Koch Whore is done.
Only if he resigns. Wisconsin doesn't allow a recall until the turd has been in office one year. Although nascent efforts are underway.
I confess I will have no regrets to seeing him leave, even if I preferred he follow in Tommy Thompson's footsteps: installation into Washington Republican role, where his incompetence is all too apparent. Instead, he will likely move into the Koch Bro machine where he will be compensated far above his skills, and have ample opportunity to browbeat underlings.
amazing benefits that nobody in the private sector gets anything close to
It's funny how this is seen as a slam on unions, rather than a failing of non-unionized employment.
@ Paul K...Oops..you did it again.
" Instead, he will likely move into the Koch Bro machine where he will be compensated far above his skills"
I wouldn't bet on that.
The taped conversation makes several things about Walker's relationship with the Koch Brs quite clear.
For one thing, Walker has never been allowed to talk to David Koch. He spends 20 minutes talking to the Beast guy, and has no clue there's anything wrong.
More significantly, Walker acts like he's been granted a huge favor to be allowed 20 minutes of David Koch's time.
These people are not buddies, and we know that in part because Walker is so thrilled to be treated by the fake Koch as if they were buddies.
And not only is there no history of buddiehood -- either because they haven't really been working together and the donations were just routine for these guys, or because Walker is such a low level operative of the Kochs' -- Walker has not done the Koch interests any favors in his littel talk with the pseudo-Koch. It's one thing to reward an underling for taking a hit for the team, but quite another to reward him for screwing one up for the team. Especially when givng that reward will just tend to reinforce the narrative that Walker was working for them.
Lastly, look at this purely from the point of view of David Koch's offended vanity. Some low-level knob like Walker, whom Koch has wisely never deigned to talk to, treats someone that he is convinced is Koch as if he were one of his fellow knobs.
You just can't get good -- or respectful -- help anymore.
If our side is wise, we'll let Walker keep his state trooper security detail as part fo the resignation deal. We don't want the Koch security people terminating him and making it look like the work of "union thugs".
Paul K said "...it's teachers working 9 months a year in pleasant conditions..."
Yep. Pleasant conditions. 25-30 kids an hour each day in a room with no windows with intermittent heat/air, especially at the change in season; outdated equipment; kids that come to school sick; high stakes tests; being shit on (I mean advised) by asshats (I mean concerned citizens) like you; chalk dust; white board markers; poor lighting. Yep conditions are perfect.
I'd agree that I only work for 9 months of the year. Can I remind you that I plan and grade on my own time (also on the weekends) bringing my weekly hourly work time to somewhere in the area of 70-80 hours a week. So if I spread that over the entire 52 week year (with no time off ever) I would put in about 48 to 55 hours a week. Sounds like a great job for $70K a year...oh wait, it will take me 25 years to reach that pay.
Couple that with the fact I'll take a month in the summer to take a required class (on my own dime) as well as run classes for other dedicated teachers--correction--brothers and sisters.
Teachers unions, while we fight for better pay for teachers, also fight for better conditions for students, better teaching materials, better administrators and school board officials. All of this in addition to trying to provide a quality education for students.
The job is so difficult and stressful that more than 50% of teachers don't make it past the first 5 years. But you're right, screw it, get rid of unions so that you can pay teachers $8 an hour to balance the budget.
I love the work that I do and I do my job well. But try to tie me to my job by my love of it and I'll walk and many of my counterparts will do the same thing. Guess what? We are good at other things. Private sector beware. Teachers will take your jobs.
PK opines: "other than the fact that in professions other than the military, teaching, firefighting and law enforcement, the government is where people go to work when they've lost their drive to be successful at things and just want to get by."
Well our aspiring sycophant Gov Muammar Walker certainly proves that point.
@Anonymous/ 7:45 PM: Yes indeed. I wonder how many people in Wisconsin who voted for Walker know that he nearly destoroyed Milwaukee County's finances during his term as County Executive? It's asshats such as him that keep me holding my nose while filling in the arrow for the Democratic candidate on election day despite having lost a fuck-ton of respect for the party of the Clintons and Barack Obama.
@jim WSJ does a good enough job of discussing whether the public sector makes less or not I think...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576149941061124736.html
...and Biggs clarifies nicely a bit more in a blog post...
http://blog.american.com/?p=27543
bottom line, it requires more examination...to your other thoughts, I seriously doubt anybody died fighting for higher white collar public sector pay or benefits along the way...though given the way the thugs in madison are behaving, maybe somebody opposed to them has died along the way...
I'm working up more intelligent and less-flame-war-ish content to respond to CC and zombie, which I'll post later
given the way the thugs in madison are behaving
Oh, you mean like getting down on their knees and cleaning the statehouse floor? Christ, what an asshole you are.
If you think white-collar workers deserve equivalent benefits to what public-sector workers are getting, you have the right to unionise yourself and agitate for better benefits. Whining that "other people's lives suck, so yours should too" isn't exactly a convincing argument for most people.
I'm Canadian and I love my public servants. Those people work hard for what they get; unlike the coked-out idiot frat boys who seem to control Bay Street and half the professions.
Damn you, Interrobang! You beat me to the punch! Oh well, here's further proof that our right-wing troll needs to pull his head out of Rush Limbaugh's rectum.
I don't know if Paul K. will actually be back, but if so, I hope he reads this.
This is without a doubt one of the best blog posts I've ever seen! I've added you to my bloglist....
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