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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

NYC Educator: Wisconsin--Not the End Game#wiunion #weac

NYC Educator: Wisconsin--Not the End Game

Wisconsin--Not the End Game

Being middle class, or maintaining a middle class for our children, will be a tough battle, even if Wisconsin's corporate puppet Governor Scott Walker gets his comeuppance. (Wakening voices in our country suggest it's coming.) Still, you'll hear a lot of arguments from reasonable-looking shills like NY Times columnist David Brooks--here's how it goes--private workers need a defense against bosses who want to maximize profits. Public workers, he suggests, have no such need.

This is utter nonsense. Politicians like Walker indulge in Shock Doctrine. Walker not only took advantage of a crisis, but actually created it by initiating a tax break that caused the shortfall he claims, with a straight face, he must eliminate collective bargaining in order to close. He's also heavily financed by New York's Koch brothers, a fact even the staid New York Times editorial board arose from its slumber to note this morning.

Brooks speaks softly, wears a tie, but gives the appearance of reason by deliberately withholding vital info from his readers. He fails to acknowledge, for example, the tax breaks that created the crisis, and fails to note that the legislation not only cripples unions, but also allows Walker to sell public utilities via handy no-bid contracts. There's also implicit criticism there, more explicit elsewhere, that because folks like Walker are democratically elected, they're somehow beyond reproach. This is the same canard Bloomberg trotted out when he complained