Protests in Wisconsin Shows Peoples' Anger to Governor Walker's Budget Measures

In the past week since the fall of the Mubarak Regime in Egypt protests have been springing up against governments in the Middle East and in Wisconsin. The uprisings in Middle East come from anger of autocratic rule, but the protests in Wisconsin about state governments taking away unions to produce collective bargaining agreements.

Collective bargaining defined by the Legal Information Institute from Cornell Law School states, " Collective bargaining consists of negotiations between an employer and a group of employees so as to determine the conditions of employment. The result of collective bargaining procedures is a collective agreement. Employees are often represented in bargaining by a union or other labor organization." The benefits of this are that individual workers join together to gain a better deal, and management is able to work more efficiency by listening to one voice instead of many. Overall, a win win situation for both sides.

In times of economic prosperity, collective bargaining groups do not reap the financial compensation that is awarded to the private sector counterparts, but receive a better benefits package instead. The problem that occurs in times of hardship,the recession, groups that collectively bargain seem to have a better situation than private individuals due to the agreements made previously. A real world  example would be if someone would buy a hundred gallons of gas at 2 dollars a gallon, and could reap the 2 dollar price even if the price rose to 3 dollars a gallon. People who did not lock in the price would be upset  of the benefits received by the person who locked in the price. Now if the price went down to a dollar the person paying two dollars a gallon is still stuck with the price unless he renegotiates, and would only get it dropped to 1.50 instead of the dollar. The person with the gas contact would not have to worry about the market fluctuations, but might might not get the best deal all of the time.   In a time of economic distress and high unemployment people see Unions as a target.

Now to the issues in Wisconsin and their budget fight. The problem lies with a 137 million dollar shortfall that needs to be paid by July 1st. Governor Scott Walker's plan to cover this shortfall is to not allow collective bargaining by public unions except for pay, and that could not rise higher than the Consumer Price Index. If this arrangement would be passed by the Wisconsin State Legislature, public unions would not be able to collectively bargain for their benefit packages. Walker is quoted in an ABC News article by saying,"If we don't do this, there will be layoffs. By July 1, when the next budget starts, we'll have to have layoffs of 5,500 state workers plus a similar number of county and city workers."

The issue that arose from this is how did this 137 million dollar deficit form? Some sources argue, such as Ezra Klein from the Washington Post, that a majority of this deficit came from actions done by Walker in a Special Session of the Legislature in December.  The Wisconsin Fiscal Bureau stated that earlier estimates put the state budget at a 120 million dollars in black, until the December session with the passage of  health savings account, tax cuts for new and relocated businesses, and tax exclusion for new employees. This helped cause the 137 million dollar shortfall. According to Brian Beutler from Talking Points Memo, states it best, " public workers are being asked to pick up the tab for this agenda."

So what is being done to prevent this bill from passing? First is that the Wisconsin Democrats in the Senate have fled Wisconsin to Illinois. By doing this, the Wisconsin State Senate only has 19 members. This makes the Senate one member short from making a quorum. Without a quorum, the Wisconsin State Senate cannot take up any legislative business. Therefore the Wisconsin State Senate is suspended indefinitely, until the Democrats come back. This is a major win for opponents of the bill because when the bill passes the Wisconsin State House it cannot be taken up by the Senate.

In addition to the flight of the Senate Democrats, Union members and students from the University of Wisconsin Madison have also started protests, teach ins, and walk outs.  These protests have been very successful in the amount of people that have came to them.  The average protest numbers at the capital have ranged from 15,000 to 30,000 people and the estimate today was at 40,000 people. At first it was more Union members, but then increased with students and citizens as the week progressed. Even with all of the protesters in Madison the Police report that it has been very peaceful assembly. Teachers throughout the state have been doing their part at all academic levels. Other than protesting teachers have been informing the public of the plan and calling in sick. In Madison school had been cancelled since Tuesday due to the protests and now in Milwaukee school was cancelled today due to the absence of teachers.

The protesters have made their case clear and they are supported by various groups. The most obvious group have been key Democrats such as former Senator Russ Fiengold, Senator Dick Durbin, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama. The Superbowl Champions the Green Bay Packers have also weighed in and are supporting the protests. Other support has also came protesters in Egypt.  Overall, many different groups of people are supporting protesters.

Supporters of Walker are coming to his aid. Many political commentators such as Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, and Joe Scarborough are supporting Walker's proposal. In addition to these political commentators Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Speaker of the House John Boehner have also supported Walker's bill. Not to be outdone by protests,  Red State announced that  Andrew Breitbart  is staging a counter protest on Saturday in support of Governor Walker, and against those"union thugs and clue less college students." Unlike the current protests, which are a large majority of Wisconsinites, the proposed Brietbart/ Tea Party Patriot counter protest will look more like an astroturf protest because of the busing in of out of state protesters.

Granted now both sides by Saturday will have outside influence, and the nation has now taken notice. It will really depend on how both sides handle themselves. The pro-Union side has made overtures to Governor Walker to reach a settlement, but Walker has not responded except for staying the course. Wisconsin Union leaders have done the right thing by fighting for their rights. Governor Walker could have prevented this crisis by not allowing the tax breaks in December or meeting with leaders in January to find common ground in working on a compromise, but his brash ideology brought upon these protests and disruptions. 

Overall, the Unions are doing what they are suppose to do, protecting their workers rights. No one should complain that the protests are unnecessary. Protests are part of democracy. When the Tea Party shows up with their heroes to support Governor Walker lets hope that the peaceful protests will continue, and hope that they will not act in the way of Mubarak protesters in Egypt and cause a violent confrontation. For democracy to work the best it needs to be done in a peaceful and respectful manner, and we hope these issues are resolved peacefully and that both sides are content with the outcome.

Is the work of the Civil Rights Movement Deteriorating?

Today is Martin Luther King Day a day of remembrance of the struggles that people endured to provide civil rights to a majority of Americans. Martin Luther King Day was created in 1983 by an act of  Congress and signed by Ronald Regan on November 2, 1983. It officially became a Federal Holiday on January 20, 1986. After it became a federal holiday, it took 14 years before every state in the Union officially made it a holiday.  Most states in the transition had a holiday of remembrance on this day, but did not officially call it Martin Luther King Day.

The Civil Rights Movement was a successful in eliminating discrimination starting in schools and then moving to human rights and then voting rights promised in the 14th and 15th amendment. These were great strides in American civic culture. Now it is under attack. Many Tea Parties have tried to turn back time. Granted they have not repealed the 14th and 15th amendment, but they are taking small steps to change these rights given to all by the Civil Rights Movement.

One  example of this is happening in Wake School District in Raleigh, North Carolina. According to an article in the Washington Post , Wake School District is doing some dramatic engineering to its school selection process. The new Tea Party backed Republican School Board has decided to throw out the diversity standards to the district. What is surprising about this, is that Wake School District is a district that is known their success in integration. Wake School District had the policy of integration to  make sure that all students had an equal opportunity. This policy was enacted in 1970 for racial integration and then in 2000 they changed it from racial integration to economic integration.

Now with the change in the school board and some parents concerns, the school board is decided to remove the diversity policy.  School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta stated about the changes, "if the result is a handful of high-poverty schools, he said, perhaps that will better serve the most challenged students." The new boards idea is that students should be able to go to the schools closest to their place of residence. What happens is that students will not be integrated. Pockets of public schools in the district will be better off than others. This plan will set up separations of economic status.

Separation of economic status is violates Brown v. Education 1954. A quote from Chief Justice Warren's Majority Opinion  that  can apply to this situation:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Now white is replaced with rich and colored is replaced with poor this statement would still be true. Many studies have have shown that when students in poverty are consolidated in a school the outcome is not benefitical for the students that attend the school. It is important for intergration for the success of all students.

The importnace of  Martin Luther King Day is to remember where we came from and not to repeat it. Moves like this done by the new Wake School Board move us backwards instead of forward. The new civil right movement is not of race, but of economic status. For all of us to be the most productive in society we need to intergrate our schools for the common civic good.  On Martin Luther King Day please look at yourself and society work together to make a better country.




P.S.: So everyone remembers what King said on the Mall on Washington here is the I Have a Dream Speech.

Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream @ Yahoo! Video

Six Dead and Eighteen Shot at Arizona Democratic Congresswomen's Cracker Barrel

Today at about 10 a.m. Mountain Time in a North Tucson Safeway during Representative Gifford's Cracker barrel a gunman, Jared Loughner of Tucson, open fire on the Giffords and the crowd. In Loughner's shooting spree he killed 6 people including Federal Judge John Roll, and 18 people were wounded including Representative Giffords.  Most of the wounded are in critical condition, but hopefully they will all recover.

Now many areas of the web both sides are trying to pin the shooting on different political identities. The more Liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo have pointed out to the web and rhetoric of the shooter matches some of the rhetoric of the Tea Party. While some Conservative blogs like Red State argue that their rhetoric had nothing to do with this and that we will find out that the shooter was a leftist radical.  Both sides are trying to use this as a smear on the other side, but also giving their condolences. It is sad in America today that each side uses a tragic incident like this as political leverage against the other side.

Outlets like Fox News and Tea Party pundits like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck are the easiest to blame in this situation because their rhetoric is often includes violent language that excites people. They are not to blame for this shooting. All current signs show that they did not influence the young man that committed this crime. The problem though it has been the aim of Conservative pundits to use violent language in exciting their base. If you go to a Tea Party or watch Fox News you will see throughout the day a reference of revolutionary violence either against the 111th Congress or the Presidential administration. Television leaders like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck help stoke the conspiracy theories by playing them out or creating new ones.  When people believe in conspiracy theories, they start to morph fiction into reality.

Now Liberals are not out of the woods on this one yet. The shooters was not a Tea Party member and had a broad reading list. The overall theme of the list was anti-government not anti-Democrat or anti-President Obama. Talking Points Memo interviewed the Tucson Tea Party and their spokesperson Allyson Miller, said,"she knows the members of her tea party, who she called "reasonable individuals" closer to her age of 55 than the suspected shooter's 22." Yes the Tea Party's average age according to a February 2010 CNN Poll is closer to 55 than 22, but that does not mean the rhetoric only stays with people around the age of 55.  That is the problem today.

The rhetoric used by Politicians, Pundits, and Everyday people is to the extreme. We as Americans now do not hash our differences out now at a coffee table or at a cafe, but with loud speakers and weird signs. Both sides have started an arms race in who can go to the furthest extreme and have the most followers. This is madness. John Stewart was correct in having his Rally to Restore Sanity. By doing that he showed that their are sane people, and they want a voice in government. For us to survive as a country we need to stop the insane rhetoric and to talk to each other as human beings. We need not to call names, but buy each other coffee. If we do that we can bring back civil discourse back to the United States and accomplish something.  If we do not, we could see more of these tragic events. My suggestion to all of you is to by your political opposite a cup of coffee and find some common ground.