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Walker’s Agenda: Strip Labor And The Left Of Their Rights

liberalsarecool:

How Wisconsin rollbacked the rights of workers:

“The real culprit was an obscure state campaign finance law that allowed Walker, the incumbent, to raise unlimited money while recall petitions were processed…. Barrett’s donations were term-limited…. But the most important point: …

The policy of defunding the left … was the entire point of Scott Walker’s agenda. And it was successful when he signed Act 10, the anti-worker law, last year…. As a result, labor couldn’t keep up with outside spending to compensate for the massive loophole-induced funding lead Walker had. Walker divided and conquered….

This becomes a downward spiral; labor cannot get back their rights, workers see no reason to keep paying dues for nothing, and the organization fades away.”

The labor movement represents one of the only remaining checks on corporate power, in the fight for economic justice. Tellingly, Union density has declined from 33% in the 1960s to 8% today.

After defunding the left, after defunding the checks on conservative power through Act 10, Walker already won the war before the recall vote even happened.

Wisconsin is a wake-up call for Dems, labor, and the left about the true nature of the new, post-Citizens United political landscape

Scott Walker’s victory in tonight’s (last night’s) recall battle is a major wake-up call for the left, Democrats, and unions about the true nature of the new, post-Citizens United political landscape, and it should force a major reckoning among liberals and Democrats about what this means for the future.

There’s no sugarcoating what this loss means for organized labor. Unions invested heavily in this battle in order to make an example of Walker. The goal was to show that Republican governors who attempt to roll back organizing rights will pay the ultimate political price. That effort failed, and the failure will have major repercussions for labor groups as they gear up for future fights over bargaining rights in states.

But Walker’s win also has major implications for Democratic elected officials across the country. It shows with crystal clarity that Republicans may very well be able to successfully use the new, post-Citizens United landscape to weaken the opposition in a structural way, and to eliminate major sources of support for that opposition.

“This has enormous implications for Democratic elected officials everywhere,” Andy Stern, the former president of SEIU and now a senior fellow at Columbia University, tells me. “Under the guise of acting to restore balance, [the right] is dramatically decreasing the amount of resources public unions have to participate in the political process.”

Indeed, one way of thinking about tonight’s results is that they say at least as much about Citizens United, and the ways it has empowered opponents of organized labor, as they do about the very real decline of union power. An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that Walker outraised his vanquished opponent Tom Barrett by nearly eight to one, and that outside groups supporting Walker vastly outspent unions, thanks to Citizens United.

Unions and Dems had hoped that grassroots organizing would be enough to offset that spending advantage, and they did in fact mount a huge effort along those lines. The labor-backed We Are Wisconsin signed up 50,000 volunteers in the last 96 hours, a volunteer army that knocked on 1.5 million doors throughout the state. It wasn’t nearly enough.

“It’s pretty clear that the voices of ordinary citizens are at permanent risk of being drowned out by uninhibited corporate spending,” said Michelle Ringuette, an official with the American Federation of Teachers.

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How Republicans Are Preventing Thousands Of Wisconsin Students From Voting Today

MADISON, Wisconsin — Voter ID will not be in effect for today’s recall vote in Wisconsin, but that won’t stop last year’s anti-voter bill from disenfranchising thousands of students across the state.

A year ago, Wisconsin Republicans pushed through Assembly Bill 7, which enacted one of the worst forms of voter ID in the nation. Since then, two state judges have blocked voter ID from taking effect because the Wisconsin state Constitution guarantees that “[e]very United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district,” regardless of whether or not they have an ID.

However, a little-noticed provision in AB 7 will likely prevent thousands of college students from voting in today’s recall election.

Section 12 of the new law increases the time period a citizen must live in one location in order to register there from 10 days to 28 days. Though seemingly innocuous, the problem is that the five largest colleges in Wisconsin — University of Wisconsin-Madison (40,000 students), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (27,500 students), Marquette University (11,500 students), University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (11,500 students), and University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (11,000 students) — all had their graduations either the weekend of May 12 or the weekend of May 19, 24 days and 17 days ago, respectively.

Therefore, any student at these schools who registered to vote at school but is now home for the summer will not be permitted to update their registration at their parents’ house because they will have been home for less than 28 days.

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Judges appointed by Reagan and Bush shoot down Wisconsin GOP redistricting.

Wisconsin lawmakers will have to redraw voting maps for two districts in Milwaukee because their first attempt unfairly weakened Latino voting power, a panel of federal judges ruled Thursday.

The maps changed voting boundaries throughout the state, were drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature last year and signed into law by Gov. Scott Walker in August.

The three-judge panel found that the maps unfairly hurt Latino voters in two south side Milwaukee districts by diluting their voting power.

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