Recent events by extreme conservative Republican governors and Republican dominated state legislatures are passing very undemocratic laws that go beyond budget balancing, but are eliminating some democratic processes. See my prior post regarding Michigan's law that gives an appointed "emergency manager" the power to be an overlord over elected officials of any city or school district, to include dissolving that city or school district all together. All without the vote of the citizens, just the approval of the Governor.
In Wisconsin the Republicans are about to pass a law effectively terminating collective bargaining by public employees. It is not so much the argument about unions and how they may effect rapid response to state fiscal crisis, but the undemocratic process that they used to pass laws that take away worker's rights.
First one has to know that Wisconsin did not have a budget shortfall. It had a balanced budget when the newly elected governor took office in January 2011. However, He and the Republican controlled legislature immediately gave a 140 million dollar tax reduction to corporations and the very wealthy. Now he has a shortfall of the same amount, and then he wants to finance this shortfall, plus two more years of equal shortfalls with a bond that will cost the state millions more, thus the declared fiscal crisis.
In response to this manipulated budget deficit, they introduced the "Budget Repair Bill" in the Assembly (house) without proper notice to the public and the Democrats. Under great pressure, they opened the bill on the floor for debate, the Democrats kept asking for public hearings, so the Republicans created a hearing within hours and padded the "witnesses" who support the bill and when union representatives showed up to be heard, the Republicans closed the hearings and moved the bill back to the floor. The Democrats then tried to filibuster by standing and continuing to object to the sham that was being perpetrated on the process. In the wee hours in the morning, 4 AM, as some of the Democrats had stepped out to get some food, the Republicans closed the floor debate, called for a vote and with all of the Republicans now back in the chamber, passed the bill over the objection of the Democrats. It only took 4 seconds to call for the voice vote and close the vote before any of the nay votes could be taken, and the session was declared adjourned. The Republicans then stood up in unison and marched out of the chamber in single file.
Now the bill was on its way to the Senate for a vote, so all 14 Democrats left town and went to Chicago so as to deny a 3/5th quorum to consider any fiscal laws, as required by the state constitution. The senate needs at least one Democrat in the chamber when the session is called to order to have the required 3/5th present for a quorum. There are 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats and a fiscal quorum requires 20 to be present. Non fiscal items only takes 13 senators to be present for a legal quorum.
For three weeks the Democrat 14 held out and tried to negotiate with the Republican senators and governor to accept the financial concessions from the public employee's labor unions so the governor could balance the budget, but allow the unions to retain collective bargaining. But Governor Scott Walker in his daily press conferences publicly stated he would not budge on anything in the bill. He wanted his bill as is, no changes, no negotiations. But he, his staff and Republican senate leadership was giving signals to the 14 Democrats that they would consider putting a sunset period for the reduced collective bargaining and not limit on pay increases that was proposed to be limited to the rate of inflation. But all of this was a ruse to get the 14 back in the state so they could pass the original bill. The Democrats did not trust them, as it was exposed that they would lie and cheat to get their way.
A fake David Koch telephoned Governor Walker and pretended to be the billionaire who gave Walker a lot of campaign money and sent bus loads of outside supporter protesters to Madison. He stated how he was going to lie to the Democrats so they would return and then pass the bill he wants. So the Democrats responded by not returning. The caller was a liberal blogger from New York who recorded the conversation that exposed Walker as a lying and cheating politician doing the bidding for the Koch brothers, who's goal was not the budget, but eliminating the unions and the money they give to mainly Democratic candidates during election time.
BTW: during this 3 week period the Democrats were in Chicago, the Republican took over the Democrat's offices, started moving their staffs around, denying them access to the business office where the copier and fax machines are, taking the Democrats and staffs parking places away from them, stopping any public comments by turning off the legislative public response phone system and website. Closed the Capitol Building to the protesters and even some of the Democratic representatives, one being forced to the floor by a police officer when he tried to enter to go to his office. The protests were growing to over 100,000 people, with large protests in most all major cities in the state and on college campuses. All of the protester where peaceful, but shouted loudly and pounded drums to get the legislatures and governor's attention. To no avail.
Some of the Republican senators saw recall petitions with their names on them being circulated and how fast the recall organizations are obtaining signatures. There was indications 3 or 4 of them might flip and vote against the bill.
The Republican leadership then devised a plan to call for a conference committee between the Assembly leadership and the Senate leadership. Typically this process is used when there are two different bills passed by the Senate and the Assembly (house) that now have to be combined with a compromised bill that both houses can agree on. The problem with this process for this bill, is that the senate had not voted on a bill yet, so there was no officially voted on bill in the senate to take to a conference committee with the Assembly.
The conference committee was called with less than 2 hours notice to the public and the Democrats. Wisconsin state law requires 24 hours notice to the public and all members of the committee before they meet, so this was in direct violation of state law. Only under emergency situations can a committee be called under 24 hours, and must be not less than 2 hours notice. When they convened, The Republican chairman called the committee to order. Their was only one Democrat, the minority leader, able to get to the meeting in time. He immediately asked the chairman for a copy of the bill that was to be considered and he was told that it was the Assembly's prior passed bill and things had been taken out of it. He asked again for a copy and details on what THINGS were removed. The chairman closed off that objection and then allowed him to raise the point that the meeting was illegal under state law and the law was actually clarified by the Republican Attorney General in 2010 regarding the required 24 hour notice. As he was objecting and pointing out the law, the chairman closed debate and called for a vote, each Republican voted to approve the law. They closed the vote and adjourned the meeting as the lone Democrat was objecting or couldn't even vote no.
The Republican senators went directly over to the senate chambers and immediately voted to pass the law 18 to only 1 no vote, a Republican who represents a district with high union workers, all this without any Democrats; since they are all in Chicago. The bill now goes to the Assembly (house) for the final vote. I suspect that the same process will happen there by opening the bill, immediately closing any debate and calling a voice vote, closing the vote, declare the bill passed and the session adjourned. All without the Democrats being involved at all and most likely heckling the Republican's draconian actions in the chamber. I am sure that within hours the governor will sign the bill and the special session will be adjourned.
Update: the Assembly did meet Friday and pass the bill that effectively demolishes collective bargaining and establishes several other draconian laws that will have a major impact on local governments and school districts. The Governor quickly signed the legislation Saturday as the 14 Democrat Senators returned to a heroes welcome at the state capital by 100,000 protesters.
Even though the special session was called by the governor to address this "fiscal crises" that the Republicans created by lowering the Corporate tax rate and that of the very wealthy which in turn created a shortfall in projected revenue, that will compound over the next couple of years. He is also wanting to pass a bond to pay for all of the current budget expenses as well as the next two years expenses rather than using current tax revenue that is sufficient to pay for all of the budget. The cost of doing this will add hundreds of millions of dollars to the compounding bond debt to equal nearly 2 billion dollars in debt by 2014. Totally insane for a state that had no debt before the tax reduction and the proposed bond. What is interesting is that the governor did not accept from the public employees the concession they made earlier of lowering the governments portion of their pension fund and increasing the amount the employee pays for their health insurance.
Another frightening law in the bill just passed by the Republican legislature and signed into law by Gov Walker prohibits local governments and school districts from raising property taxes to offset the loss of state funds to keep their operations going. Local governments and school districts have limited resources for obtaining revenue to operate their governments and districts, those being mill levies on property, local sales taxes and revenue from the state to equalize operating revenue between the rich counties with the poor counties and school districts. Obviously if these entities are prohibited from raising needed revenue to continue their mission and the state cuts their funds dramatically, as proposed in the governor's budget proposal, then they have no choice than to law off workers, teachers, and suspend some of their services to the people. This is exactly what the term "Starve The Beast" means in the conservative lexicon. His budget cuts public education by nearly 1 billion dollars, which can only mean closing schools, laying off teachers, administrators, janitors, etc. Only the wealthy then can send their kids to private school. Thus creating an ignorant work force.
However, should the 14 Democrats return Friday or Saturday, the governor may keep the legislature in session so he can get the financial part of the bill passed, again with only Republican votes. They only need one Democrat in the chamber at the time the session is called to order and with the rule the Republicans passed, they will force law enforcement to grab one of the returning Democrats and present that person to the chamber to call a quorum by the Republicans.
In the governor's budget, it calls for privatizing state owned higher education universities and slashing so much state funding that goes to education and municipalities that they will of course go broke or lay off huge numbers of employees, as well as terminating critical services. Thus the state will step in and privatize those services taking the responsibility away from the local government, thus centralizing governance and control to the legislature and governor.
If this group sees Michigan pass their draconian "emergency manager" law, they will probably pass a similar law to speed up the take over of municipal governments by forcing them into a financial crisis that warrants appointing this overlord. Pennsylvania is also about to pass a law that will grant the Governor there to appoint an overlord of all state agencies. If this overlord does not like the ruling regarding granting permits for energy companies for mining and drilling, then he can over ride them and grant the permit at his sole discretion. Of course this individual comes from the energy industry, no conflict there.
Now in order for these extreme laws to remain on the books and go into effect, the Republican have to retain control of government at all levels. How do they do that? Simple, they make it very difficult for those who typically vote Democrat to vote at any election by requiring identification that many poor and students don't have, limiting new voter registration, prohibiting students rights to vote, and taking away payroll deduction of union dues in both private and public unions that pay for ads on TV and also denying funds for setting up telephone banks to call voters to get them registered and out to vote on election day. Which these labor unions were very good at doing. They will continue with creating as many obstacles as possible, even miss information to get the elderly confused on the date of the election, as we had seen in Florida and other states. They used robo calls to seniors telling them that the election was changed to the next day, Wednesday and not on the normal Tuesday. No charges were ever files, but it was a violation of election laws and fair play.
Now is this the democratic way of conducting the peoples business? Do they ignore the tens of thousands of protester asking the legislature and governor to not remove collective bargaining for public employees? If they are willing to not listen to the public, over 70% want to retain collective bargaining for public employees, and not include the minority party to participate in the process, then our whole concept of open and free democracy is at risk. If state legislatures start to take over local municipal governments and centralize control and power, then we have in fact lost our democracy.
There is a prophecy in the LDS faith that near the rapture, the constitution will hang by a thread. It also says that a Mormon will rise to the situation and restore the constitution. Now as you know from my prior comments that I'm not a believer in any religion, but I do accept that Joseph Smith, like many self proclaimed prophets of God, are in fact phycic and able to receive energy with impressions of event that have happened in time and will happen in future time. Therefore, I do feel that this prophecy has some validity, but may not actually include that a Mormon will restore the constitution. I feel that part was created by Smith to bolster his new religion.
There is no question should the Republican continue on the course they have set out to eliminate the working class from the political process and turning our country into a country governed by the very wealthy and corporations, we could see a revolt of the masses against these overlords.
There is only 400 people who own more than 50% of the total wealth in the nation. These people are sitting on 2 trillion dollars that they took from the middle class in the most criminal activity on Wall Street that caused the economic collapse. Think about it, these people caused the collapse, got bailed out by the tax payer and have gained trillions of dollars the past two years as the middle class has gained hardly anything, and millions of middle class are still loosing their homes and jobs. What jobs that are being created are low wage jobs with fewer benefits, if any. Look at the stock market, it is up to what is was before the collapse, how can that be when the working class is still struggling? There is obviously no shared pain during this economic recovery. The rich are enjoying the lowest tax rate ever. Corporations also are seeing the lowest tax rates ever, but most don't pay taxes anyway due to all the special deductions they get to take.
We are seeing the destruction of our government of the people, by the people and for the people. Watch the news carefully as all these Republican governors with Republican controlled legislatures pass all sorts of laws that limit democracy, accountability, and then privatizing services that were supplied by government, and being the puppet of the Koch brothers or other wealthy corporations or persons.
To stop this, we the people need to rise up and start recall movements against all these extremist politicians and get PEOPLE in government that truly want to serve the PEOPLE and not the corporations and wealthy. Only then can we save this great country. PLEASE JOIN ME IN STARTING A RECALL MOVEMENT HERE IN UTAH to get greater balance of power and governance.
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