The Dirtiest Photo Yet: Randy Hopper's 'Brett Favre' Moment

And you thought the Brett Favre and Jesse James photos were bad... here you can see Senator Randy Hopper (gulp!) wearing the shirt of the same union he just voted to destroy. Smile when you drop the ax!

Do you think he has knives in his hands twisting in the backs of these union members?

Scott Walker is a Socialist (in Reverse)

"Typically, socialism is concerned with both the social and economic system in a country. Property and wealth are shared, and their distribution are subject to the control of the people, who exert equal control of the government. The community or state owns all the things used for work production, called the means of production, and thus may also decide what is produced and how to distribute as evenly as possible the moneys paid for things produced."  Link here.

Governor Scott Walker is a reverse socialist. Socialism can be denied as taking from the status quo (right now, in America, the rich) and giving to everyone. It involves leveling the playing field, using the community resources for the entire community. What Gov. Walker and the new far-right of the Republican party want to do is take from those who have fought for, bargained for, or asked for and been given and bring them down to 'the rest of us.'

The collective bargaining agreement that was made between the State of Wisconsin and its public workers unions were negotiated agreements. It was an agreement, signed and certified. Governor Walker simply wants to take away their gains.

He is like a kid in high school who comes home from school complaining that everyone else has a car. Rather than working for his own car (dealing with a public sector job where you are vilified), negotiating his own price (collective bargaining) and pay his own auto loan ($100,000+ in education loans for a $25,000 a year job), Scotty wants to slash the tires on everyone else's car.

There is a simple solution to the idea that the public workers get too much through their collective bargaining, join a union. If everyone made as much as (people claim) public sector workers make, then we would be able to eliminate the deficit through an increase in tax revenues.

The next argument is that this would be bad for business. A couple of things to note: 1) In a down economy, thousands of companies are posting record profits (including Walker's paymasters, the Koch Brothers). 2) Most of the world is unionized (and the parts that aren't are starting to - notice the workers' rights movements in China and India).

By Governor Walker's logic, the next bill will be to restrict Wisconsin wages to $2,200 a year, the average wage in Shanghai in 2009. We must be competitive after all.

The American Way is not to take from those who have so they don't have any more. It is to try to give more opportunity to earn to everyone.

Isn't that the American Dream, the hope of every Horatio Alger, Jr. reader?

The sneaky part of this movement by the governor and other far-right Republicans is that the want to do it the old-fashioned way, on the backs of the working man and woman. Any student of history knows that that is how most of the great wealth was made in America prior to the idyllic 1950's (when America had the highest percentage of unionized workers).

Stay tuned for an observation of the abuses of the unions and where they went wrong.



Governor Walker's Budget Repair Bill: Items a Reading

In the bill:

"16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b). "

No bids on multimillion dollar power and energy plants! Does this concern anyone else?

Is this truly fiscal responsibilityresponsiblity or is this cronyism to the Koch brothers and their energy company (Walker's 4th largest contributor)?