Category: Class War

Smell the freedom

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Republicans believe in only two rights: the right to be humble, and the right to be grateful!

On Wednesday night, Republicans in Wisconsin’s state senate rammed through a retooled version of Governor Scott Walker’s controversial “budget repair bill” with the 14 senate Democrats still in hiding in Illinois. The senate bill eliminates collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, a provision that has labor leaders and protesters up in arms. But there’s another explosive provision in the bill that’s received little attention: The bill authorizes state officials to fire any state employee who joins a strike, walk-out, sit-in, or coordinated effort to call in sick.

According to an analysis (PDF) of the Senate bill by Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), the legislation gives state officials the power to fire workers during a “state of emergency” declared by the governor under several conditions. If a state employee misses three working days without an approved leave of absence, that’s grounds for being fired. State workers can also be dumped if, according to the LFB’s analysis, they participate in a “strike, work stoppage, sit-down, stay-in, slowdown, or other concerted activities to interrupt the operations or services of state government, including mass resignations or sick calls.”

Rerun

~ susie

We can’t have job-killing regulation! Instead, we get people-killing pollution:

HINKLEY, Calif. – At the end of “Erin Brockovich,” a housewife sick from toxic chromium weeps with joy as she’s handed her portion of a historic $333 million settlement between residents of this small desert town and the utility that poisoned their drinking water.

In real life, that woman is Roberta Walker. She still lives in Hinkley, using her share to buy a new home in what she thought would be a safe four-mile distance from the toxic plume of chromium.

Earlier this year, she and other residents learned that the pollution, which Pacific Gas & Electric was required to clean up, was once again moving and had seeped into their groundwater.

Now, Brockovich has returned to the town that made her famous and is once again rallying residents, sampling the water, and at a water board meeting on Wednesday, her associate is expected to announce that the contamination may be worse than the utility says.

For Walker and others involved in the original case, these developments are like stepping back in time and are a haunting reminder that a landmark lawsuit and a blockbuster movie are no guarantee of safety.
“We didn’t bring a giant to its knees, all we did was wake it up,” Walker said. “This is not happening again — I can’t believe it.”

PA fighting back

~ susie

I love this:

HARRISBURG – A three-story brownstone where former Gov. Tom Ridge has offices for his lobbying firm became ground zero Wednesday in the fight over Pennsylvania’s proposed new budget.
About 250 advocates from organized labor, environmental groups, and social services carried out a surprise ambush on Ridge’s firm, which represents companies drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale. They delivered this message: If the proposed budget will slice education funding, then it should also make big drilling companies pay taxes on the natural gas they extract.

Clutching signs and chanting slogans, most of the activists swarmed into the Ridge Policy Group, just a block from the Capitol, shortly after 2 p.m. They poured through the unlocked doors and began packing rooms on the first and second floors, demanding that someone from the lobbying firm come speak to them.

With their stomping feet causing the floorboards to creak and groan – and likely breaking fire codes – they finally got the attention of Mark Campbell, a partner in the firm and Ridge’s onetime chief of staff. He talked briefly to organizers and promised to tell his clients that activists wanted to speak with them.

“We’ll be back,” the activists warned as the group finally left about 15 minutes later with chants of “No Free Pass for Oil and Gas.” They left a mock invoice for the millions in taxes they say could have been collected from an extraction tax.

Can we leave now?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Please?

The majority of American soldiers undergoing amputation for war wounds last fall lost more than one limb, according to data presented Tuesday to the Defense Health Board, a committee of experts that advises the Defense Department on medical matters.

Military officials had previously released data showing that amputations, and especially multiple-limb losses, increased last year. The information presented to the 20-member board is the first evidence that the steepest increase occurred over the last four months of the year.

In other news, Dennis Kucinich introduces a resolution to end the war…

Whores

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Actually, that’s an insult to whores:

On the heels of their 18-1, Democratic Senator-free vote to roll back collective bargaining rights for thousands of state workers, Republican leaders of the Wisconsin state Senate will head to a high-price fundraiser in their honor in DC.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel key players in the Wisconsin GOP will gather at the downtown DC headquarters of lobbying firm BGR Group March 16 for an event that donors “are asked to give at least $1,000 to the state Republican Party’s federal account” to attend.

It takes $1,000 to get you in the door, but “sponsors” are asked to pony up $2,500 and “hosts” 5,000.