Round One: The People’s Grassroots Recall Crusade versus Boatloads of BLOATED BIZ BUCKS

A disquieting thrill/chill is running up and down the Citizens United cabal's spine. Imagine the single most expensive single state legislator race/ election in the nation's entire history-over$ 9 million spent just to attempt to retain/unseat a single TeaPublican in Wisconsin!

With the dirty work of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) just breaking on the national consciousness, with the $40 billions' Brothers Koch schemes and "walk-all-over-you" hobnail boot prints smearing the hallways and in-and-out of legislators offices in Madison, the "We are One" people's crusade winning 2 of 6 recalls against Republicans - in solid, rock-ribbed Republican districts - is an electrifying near miss. It's a shot across the bow of the TeaPublican's pirate frigates chartered to make confiscatory runs on: local control, public service and collective bargaining.

Spending a reported total approaching $40 million dollars in last night's Wisconsin Recall Races to save TeaPubicans ensconced in their HISTORICALLY BULLET PROOF/ GOP STATE LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS (backed by mindboggling outside influences and juice) is utter insanity. Who says that money isn't the lubricant of all politics? Who can say that there isn't a MAJOR, MAJOR EFFORT AFOOT IN THE COUNTRY - A VERY DANGEROUS, AGGRESSIVE CORPORATACY/CONSERVATIVE COUP-which fuels such citizen recall efforts?

As such, THIS COUP D'ETAT IS DESIGNED AND INTENDED TO GO FAR BEYOND THE FABLED REAGAN REVOLUTION. It 's designed and determined to remake the entire economic and political landscape of America-one state legislature at a time. It intends to become-the new order. Wisconsin is but the beginning. We are seeing their MARCH OF MADNESS sweep other states.

Whatever you thought you knew about America; it's supremacy, it's stability, it's sustainability, its promise and dream, is entirely on the line. Not one aspect of public life is exempt from these profit-takers, the privatizers, the rampant profitization of government via the rancorous and Corporatist networks. Democracy be damned.

BIG BIZ has spoken. We have the BIG BUCKS to do whatever it needs to do to forward their agenda. STEP ASIDE... BUSINESS-CONTORLED DEMOCRACY IS PROPOGANDIZED AS THE NEW NORMAL!

One man, one vote has been the pervious standard. Now elections are most like stockholder meetings; the more one holds in terms of money, economic, and corporate control, the more votes one gets to cast to achieve the desired outcome.

Incumbent Wisconsin State Senator Alberta Darling won in her contested recall race. She was forced to defend her close relationship and support for Gov. Scott Walker's radical putsch. However this anecdote from the Wisconsin source (The Whitefish Bay Patch) yields an important swing voter insight:

"At the Cahill Park polling center in Whitefish Bay, Jane Collins said she voted for Darling in the past election, but on Tuesday, she voted for Pasch.

"'When Darling seemed to fall in lock step with Walker's agenda, I just decided that she no longer is looking out for the individuals. She is looking out for the party. It's very disappointing'," she said. 'You can go to the parade and wave and shake hands all you want, but it doesn't mean you are listening to the people.'"

On the larger stage the underlying "lie" festering in Walker's Wisconsin is exposed thus:

"Whatever happens tonight in Wisconsin, it has been a constant of this fight that Republicans have consistently falsified the reason labor and Dems have waged this battle so bitterly. They have steadily downplayed the most extreme union-busting aspect of Scott Walker's proposals, and have falsely asserted throughout that Dems and labor only made this stand because Walker asked public employees to cough up health and pension benefits."

So it's fitting that as the recall elections hit their climax, THE LEADER OF THE NATIONAL GOP REPEATED THIS LIE IN THE MOST HILARIOUSLY BLATANT WAY yet.

Here's RNC chair Reince Priebus on CNN this afternoon:

"ANCHOR: Is there buyers' remorse in your home state of Wisconsin with Republican/Tea Party policy making?

"PRIEBUS: No. I don't think there's any buyers' remorse at all. You have a leader in Scott Walker who asked state employees to pay just a little bit more in pension and healthcare benefits, which was about half of what the rest of the state pays in those benefits. And that's all he did. Now, in reaction to that, the public employee unions took $25 million, they put together a petition drive, and now they're dumping millions of dollars on television trying to recall the senators for trying to balance a state budget. It's the same type of tough choice that is were made in Wisconsin that the Republicans are trying to present to Americans in Washington.

"This is a completely false rendering of what actually happened. In reality, THE PROTESTS FROM DEMOCRATS WERE PROMPTED BY SCOTT WALKER'S PROPOSAL TO STRIP PUBLIC EMPLOYEES OF THEIR BARGAINING RIGHTS, protests that were later sustained by the deep cuts in his budget, leading to the recall drive. Priebus doesn't even mention the collective bargaining piece of the story, only citing the demand for pension and health concessions as the reason for the entire standoff. In the real world, of course, labor unions actually agreed to those concessions, yet WALKER PRESSED AHEAD WITH HIS UNION-BUSTING PROPOSAL ANYWAY, WHICH IS WHAT PROMPTED THE WHOLE BATTLE." 

(emphasis added) 

Source: "Wisconsin recall fight ends where it began: With a Big Lie", Greg Sargent in the Washington Post.

The recall movement is not out of the larger political/coup game. If, according to the senior seer, Bill Ballenger, just one successful recall in Michigan could stall and obfuscate the Snyder schemes; Just think what these two successful recalls in Wisconsin mean to those who are ardently working to save community and democracy from the Koch/A.L.E.C/ corporate usurpers!

There's much more Recall Action on tap!


Original Post.

Exclusion versus Egalitarianism: Big Money, Corporations, and an 'arcane' system of 'citizen' legislatures.

Is there room left for 'Mr. Smith' who goes to Lansing?

"Suppose that there is someone out there with the soul of Abraham Lincoln reincarnated, but as poor as Lincoln was at the outset of his career. Suppose some wealthy patron saw his own convictions better advanced by this younger man. Something very like this launched the careers of Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Surely, we do not want to exclude the very rich from presidential politics, but neither do we want them to constitute a unique political class." 

-- Conservative Harry V. Jaffa in Why Special Interests (And the Constitution) Are Good For You

Jaffa goes on to line out the class warfare such as is now infecting Michigan politics:

"What about those infamous 'special interests'?

"Do not those who invest in candidates and parties expect a return on their investments? (We know Betsy Prince DeVos does. She bluntly told us so).

"Do not lobbyists spend untold millions shaping the laws in their own private interests? (These questions are perfectly appropriate).

"What is amazing is that today no one seems aware that they were the subject of the most profound consideration by those who framed, and those who ratified, the Constitution. The Constitution is indeed, in large part an answer to these questions, an answer of which our present politicians seem largely ignorant."

"In the famous 10th Federalist, James Madison framed the problem of dealing with 'FACTIONS,' a word which was a virtual synonym for what we call 'SPECIAL INTERESTS."
 {Parenthesized notes added}

This well-know conservative scholar goes on to point out that "factions" are a natural result of liberty and equality-in light of the constitution. Professor Harry Jaffa explains:

"According to James Madison, however, faction is an inevitable by product of liberty, and to try to cure the evils of faction by abolishing liberty would be a 'remedy' 'worse than the disease'

"Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, than it "would be to wish the annihilation of air.' 'The latent causes of faction,' writes Madison, 'are sown in the nature of man.'"

"But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a monied interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests form the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government."

Jaffa would be loud proud of Michigan. Here we have honed the "spirit of party and faction" to a blazing, tempered, razor's edge.

The beguiled TeaPublicans have sought to give themselves and their very well-heeled and influential elites, both in-state (and even more pointedly, outstate), great advantage by attempting to take down any opposing organization via crude legislation and unbending obstructionism. Unions and other citizen groups are a distinct and dangerous impediment to this KOCH BROTHERS kind of corporatist free reign, intent upon shaping all aspects of government to serve and enrich themselves and their first love, business.

The Faux Populist Tea Party: Koch Industry/Corporate Sockpuppets
Crying "freedom, freedom, freedom" the Corporatocracy, pushing its secretly developed and BIG money-backed A.L.E.C/ prepackaged legislation (via the Koch Brothers/Karl Rove's militant hayseed foot soldiers) has co-opted many citizens for corporate benefiting purposes . "

Replete with sharp pitch forks-loud disruptive voices and vicious signs this raw element is on a jag. Honest compromise and/or cooperation are anathema in this rowdy crowd.

The Teapartisans have hijacked the Michigan GOP and the state legislature. TP'ers have put Michigan in a choke hold which is detrimental to the very survivability of a middle class and the state's workers. 

LAZY-BRAINLESS LAWMAKING
We now have a NO-BRAIN SUPER LEGISLATIVE MAJORITY which simply funnels corporate-designed, corporate-benefiting legislation right from the CEO's into law. No need for lobbyists, the A.L.E.C. members are the LOBBYISTS facilitating directly the introduction (some cases feature word-by-word copy from an A.L.EC. prepared "Model") and fast-track passage of legislation produced by and designed to directly benefit a long list of SUPER SPECIAL CORPORATE dominate members of the AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL via the A.L.E.C. direct pipeline from the board room to the citizens' living room and pocketbook.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson revealed how he moved A.L.E.C. models he got at A.L.E.C. conclaves as "models" directly into Wisconsin law:

"I always found new ideas and then I'd take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that it's mine."

Likewise Koch Bros and A.L.E.C "models" are CONTINUOUSLY being inserted into Michigan Law by willing members. No straightforward place is left for Mr. Smith who goes to Lansing!


More on ALEC in Michigan can be found here and here.

Original Post.

Snyder’s Going for the Ignoramus Title: Worse Than, More Disliked Than Engler

Michigan GOP'ers have seen the scope of the Koch Bros. attempted legislative coup that has swept the country and are beginning to distance themselves from both the Koch Brothers and the self-determined Nerd, Rick Snyder and his authoritarian CEO anti-public interest mindset; they do this purely out of political self-interest and a delayed, but growing sense of deep concern for the common people of their state.

Snyder is being taken down; note the following:

1) Approval rating dropping like a boulder: Snyder's approval may sink lower than that old pro-pol John Mathais Engler, who sunk to below 20% in public support, but Engler was a pro, he had the savvy and the backing to regain the upper hand due largely his superior cunning, strong arm political practices of the kind Snyder totally lacks.

2) Pushing ALEC "handout" legislation to appease the Koch Bros. et. al. has put Snyder in a very ugly national light and perspective. The precious Michigan Environment and natural assets are beset with undercutting legislative rollbacks which serve best the short-term interests of polluters, plunderers, and corporate developers.

3) Unable to speak in public places without protests or citizens with strong complaints, Snyder has cut himself off from the state's "work-a-day" citizens.

4) Snyder lost his ability to politically defend his huge business bailout; using school and retiree resources directly funneled to corporate buddies. There's no salable rationale for his BILLION PLUS GIFT TO BUSINESSES. Repeatedly asked to provide estimates of jobs that will yield from his radical tax shaft & shift, neither Snyder or Calley can give credible answers.

5) Snyder gained an enduring reputation as a CHAINSAW BANANA REPUBLIC STRONGMAN with his near dictatorial powers labeled "Emergency Financial Managers" over and against local affairs of government, even ejecting the voters and officeholders from their constitutional rights to elect and hold office.

6) Outsourcing the heavy burden of axing jobs, benefits, and programs on struggling local units. CEO Snyder is forcing the pain and disruption, and the failure down on the local communities, using the power of BIG LANSING GOVERNMENT.
7) Purposefully cutting schools and universities (20%), ENDANGERS THOSE REMAINING COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO ARE ATTEMPTING TO STUDY FOR A PRODUCTIVE CAREER IN MICHIGAN. These cuts most likely become part of a huge student loan payback schedule that saddle new professionals for near a lifetime.

8) Taxing elders, ESPECIALLY WIDOWS, out of their homes, BY CUTTING ELDER HOMESTEAD PROPERTY TAX RELIEF; MANY SENIORS WILL BE PUT ON THE EDGE OF FORECLOSURE.

9) Making the retirees and seniors consider moving to a "pension friendly" state; RETIREES ARE AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF CONSUMER REVENUE AND SERVICES.

10) Under the thumb of hardened Englerites and tyrannical Koch organized Tea Party operatives; Snyder is displaying "stubborn" resistance to compromise or collaboration, and certainly excludes Democrat participation on any bi-partisan basis; with the exception of Michael Flanagan and Andy Dillon; two very curious bureaucratic holdovers.

11) RAISING TAXES IN DIRECT OPPOSITION TO A LARGE GROUP OF TEA PARTY ADVOCATES who oppose new and higher taxes will undermine Snyder's appeal to rogue elements in Michigan and engender the hateful vengeance of no-new-taxes Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich.

12) FORCING 800,000 POOR MICHIGANDERS TO SUFFER AND GO WITHOUT from cut-off assistance in these hard times is unconscionable.

13) Gambling that no one cares if businesses get a "big gift" of 1.8 billion in tax breaks and relief: a gigantic business bailout. More and More citizens see the rank unfairness of this plot.

14) THE MACKINAC CENTER HAS BEEN GIVEN HUGE NATIONAL NEGATIVE MEDIA ATTENTION, for the first time. Now people everywhere know who the elites are who back this negativist anti-union, pro-privatizing/tax piracy propaganda mill. They are: Charles Koch, Amway, Wal-mart/Waltons, Elsa Prince Foundation, Heritage Foundation, and others. A COMPLETE LIST IS NOT AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, It's a Mackinac Center SECRET. Transparency and full disclosure, no way!

15) FRITTERED AWAY IS THE ALL-IMPORTANT VOTER SUPPORT of cross-over Democrats, Independents, and Moderate Republicans; Snyder has no middle ground support left. Where's Snyder's base? Snyder is going to re-invent Michigan ex nihilo?

16) The newer members of the Legislature who came to Lansing to become personally involved and included in the decisions, as they thought their election entitled them to have a part, are being sidelined. THE CLEVER USE OF THE OMNIBUS STRUCTURE FOR BILL INTRODUCTION AND PASSAGE LARGELY SHUTS THEM OUT of the process. The new members are disturbed by the manner in which the Snyder Team is gunning legislation through; without time for the newer members to have meaningful input and voice.

17) The radical cut back of UNEMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE; WHEN OVER 300,000 WILLING WORKERS ARE WITHOUT JOBS AND MANY ARE TOTALLY RUNNING OUT OF RESOURCES TO LIVE AND MAKE BILL PAYMENTS is dastardly cruel. The Snyder lead GOP majorities in the Legislature are about to enact the most stingy and least supportive unemployment package in the nation.

Inside sources report: Michigan's hardheaded Nerd, Snyder, gives no any hint of mitigation or personal compromise from his original budget and legislative agenda; instead offers a "cold shoulder and is still pursuing full-bore his pension tax, despite limited support in the Senate GOP caucus." Snyder's Engler holdovers have collapsed in their attempts to talk political sense to the Nerd.

Legislative Republicans are growingly aware they have a giant problem with their back home voters. They have seen the massive blowbacks in Wisconsin and other places. There is a growing sense of creeping panic!

Michigan's Teapublicans are aware that Ohio Republicans are walking-back some of the harshest of the A.L.E.C.- fill in the blank, corporate pandering legislation that Ohio GOP'ers are caught up in.

Michigan GOP'ers have seen the scope of the Koch Bros. backed and heavily funded, attempt at legislative coup that has swept the country. GOP Legislators are beginning to distance themselves from both the Koch Brothers' American Legislative Exchange Council "carry out" bill making and the self-determined Nerd, Rick Snyder. Tough "Nerd" Rick with his authoritarian, anti-public interest, pro-business first, CEO mindset; has copped an attitude which is poisoning Michigan's entire political system.

Rick Snyder is well on the way to the ignominious title: WORSE THAN ENGLER.

Original Post.

Prominent Democrats Profit from Snyder Led Teapublican “Disaster Capitalism”

Why are Snyder led Teapublicans so intent on generously enriching and empowering 3 major Granholm Democrats with local/public tax money? Andy Dillon, Michael P. Flanagan, and Henry B. Cooney, Plunkett/Cooney?

Insults go way beyond bifurcated politics. EFM's can be made emergency ready (with a full quiver of dictatorial powers of life and death over a governmental unit and total discretion over labor and employee rights) in two days, read 20 hrs training, and some spotty follow-up.

Based on the need to know and understand the local problems, accounting, special situations, and find workable solutions this, by itself, ridiculously inadequate training is especially specious and absurd. And over 200 apply? Dozens are already in the training mill, enrolling at a bargain price of $175 each.

The qualifications for public administrators, city managers, department head, and school administrators are highly trained and the standards for their positions; these requirements have been steadily increasing and tightening for decades. And soon a crop of neophyte walk-ons is going to take over in the heat of the coming "Snyder induced financial crisis meltdowns"? This is unbelievable and well beyond nuts!

Now a hoard of would-be, wannabe so called "Emergency Finance Managers"( is being run through a boot camp training mill run by Andy Dillon) makes a complete mockery of prior standards. The direct and drastic outcomes for the failing and failed units, forced to further fail by Dillon and Snyder, will drastically impact the necessary services of the individual taxpayers in ways that will be highly destructive and ruinously failed.

Have we gone this far into "planned failure." Why?

Why would Teapublicans be at all interested in a program (EFM) directly benefiting , granting huge new and undemocratic powers (DetNews: The law authorizes emergency managers to cancel contracts, dismiss officials, and dissolve elected councils and boards in communities and school districts that are operating at a deficit.), and financially enriching Granholm Era Democrats: Andy Dillon, Michael Flannigan, and Henry Cooney CEO of super legal beagles at Pluckett & Cooney-all major players previously in Democrat politics?


Original Post.

Honest Abel “AWOL” in Michigan just as in Wisconsin

Response to  "AWOL [Wisconsin] Dems defy ballot box" by Nolan Finley in the Detroit News February 27, 2011.

Nolan Finley may have attended an underfunded school, or have been AWOL when his history teacher covered the wonderful career of that saint of saints in American esteem and honor: Abe Lincoln.

If Nolan knew more about Abe and Lincoln's legislative career; Finley would not make such a dreadful, embarrassing mis-under-estimation of the power of "taking a walk" on hamfisted, dirty politics for high moral purpose.

Nolan chides and digs Wisconsin Democratic Senators:

"American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters." ("AWOL Dems defy ballot box", Nolan Finley, Detroit News, 2.27.11)

The thrust of Finely's opine:

"Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box - namely, the right to control policymaking."

However, Nolan's history is a bit shallow: The Wisconsin State Senators act; "Their choice of refuge is eminently appropriate, for Abraham Lincoln himself famously tried to deny his political opponents quorum through a very unorthodox method of departure in 1840." As so well put by History News Network staffers.

Whoa! Let's go back to class, Nolan:

"Ward Hill Lamon was Lincoln's friend in Illinois, and served as Marshal of the District of Columbia during the administration of President Lincoln. When the state bank was threatened in the Illinois legislature, the Whigs came to its defence (sic) by absenting themselves to prevent a quorum, leaving just Lincoln and one other behind to call ayes and noes. When the Sergeant-at-Arms rounded up some Whigs, the dedicated Lincoln jumped out a window in a failed attempt to thwart a quorum."
-- Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1872, pp. 216-8

Now, you know.

Can you emulate "Honest" Abe and retract your condemnation?

Original Post.