Wisconsin Update (March 11/11)

Mike Elk, who along with Mother Jones has been providing great coverage of events in Wisconsin, has some details on the 'Move Your Money' campaign.

M&I Bank is the largest bank in Wisconsin, and was the recipient of $1.7 billion in TARP bailout money from the federal government. The bundled contributions from M&I executives were Walker’s second largest source of campaign funds. According to records provided by the Sunlight Foundation, executives at M&I Bank gave $46,308 to Walker’s campaign. And now, a group of local unions in Wisconsin have threatened to pull their money from M&I Bank unless it denounces Scott Walker’s attack on workers’ rights.

“Walker and his henchmen in the GOP have chosen to ignore the people of Wisconsin, but we all know now that they will listen to their big money donors,” says factory worker David Goodspeed, union member of Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 565."This is an opportunity for donors like M&I to be good corporate citizens and do what’s right for the citizens who bailed them out.”

Firefighters said they withdrew $182,000 (or $192,000 -- number varies) from the bank yesterday and are encouraging others to do the same.

When I blogged on this yesterday, I was wrong. The Bank of Montreal doesn't own M&I yet.

A senior union researcher estimates that unions have at least $1 billion invested in M&I Bank, mostly through pension funds. Discussions are going on at the highest levels of the labor movement about how exactly to leverage this financial clout in the political debate in Wisconsin. Since the Bank of Montreal is in process of purchasing M&I Bank, US unions have reached out to the Canadian Labour Congress to urge their involvement in a disinvestment campaign.

Some photos of the demonstration outside the bank here.

Scott Wanker signed the illegally passed union-busting bill this morning in private, but will hold a public ceremonial signing this afternoon, I guess, to rub salt in the wounds of working people.

Having lost this battle, activists are now concentrating on recalling ReThug senators.

The process isn't easy and only two pols have been successfully recalled in state history. There's a formula for how many signatures required depending on the last vote.

Signature gathering is a laborious and costly process that challenges even the best organizations. And, you can be assured that Republicans will try to disqualify as many of the petition signers as possible -- meaning that recall advocates will need well in excess of 15,000 [for each pol] just to be safe.

But, Democrats insist they are well on their way -- having already collected 15 percent of the signatures they needed over the weekend. Liberal groups say that have raised close to $2 million dollars in support.

There's an online poll there at WaPo and currently 71% think the recall will succeed.

Meanwhile, in case anyone still had a lingering doubt about what this bill is really meant to do, a dim-witted ReThug spilled the beans on live telly.

In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly moments ago, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), one of Walker’s closest allies in the legislature, confirmed the true political motive of Walker’s anti-union push.

Here's what the ijit said (video at the link):

FITZGERALD: Well if they flip the state senate, which is obviously their goal with eight recalls going on right now, they can take control of the labor unions. If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

It's a two-fer! Reduce the power of unions for your political masters AND your corporate masters. Win-win.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow, another rally will be held. And the farmers are coming! On their tractors! They're calling it Tractorcade.

The hardy tweeps of Wisconsin are joking about the weather forecast for tomorrow. It's going to be warm! 40 degrees F! That's about 4.5 in celsius.

Tractorcade is slated to start at 11 a.m. (Central). I'll look for and post a live feed. The main rally is later but I don't want to miss the farmers.

Organizers are hoping for the biggest rally yet -- at least 100,000 people.

Wisconsin: A Canadian Connection

Well, well, well. That evil bank, M&I, that was Scott Walker's second-biggest donor and is today the target of mass withdrawals started by firefighters is owned by the Bank of Montreal.

Anybody with a BeeMo account feeling solidarity with Wisconsin workers?


(Sadly, I bank elsewhere.)

Wisconsin Update (March 10/11)

Apparently M & I Bank is a big supporter of Scott Walker. The firefighters just marched to the Capitol again. Guy got on what they're calling the 'People's Mike' and said that they'd made a short stop on the way. They stopped at the bank and withdrew $182,000.

Bank run!

The Pizza Revolution

Again, I'm transfixed by a revolution being tweeted, only this one isn't in North Africa or the Middle East.

It's in Wisconsin.

Here's some background by Joshua Holland.

What's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then "signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit."

Walker then used the deficit he'd created as the justification for assaulting his state's public employees. He used a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described the organization in a 2005 article as "the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money." Similar laws are on the table in Ohio and Indiana.

Walker's bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear -- before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state's employees' unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn't have that power).

In short, Walker is union-busting.

And looky at whose behest. The über-evil Koch brothers who have a lot at stake in the state as well as an irrepressible urge to harm people. (Mother Jones has been all over this story and has a reporter on the ground, tweeting like mad.)

There have been growing protests. People have been peacefully occupying the state capital building all week. DJ! reported on the arrival of the firefighters -- exempt from this legislation, by the way -- a few days ago.

Then 'The Mubarak of the Middle West' made a bad situation worse. He went on CNN and claimed he had received 19,000 emails from the quiet majority -- where have we heard that before? --backing his position.

He also got his TeaBagging buddies to organize a counter-demo. The Teabaggers were bussed in and held their rally yesterday. The most generous estimate of the number was 1,000 people, described as all white. One tweep reported that s/he was standing 20 feet from their bleating bullhorn and couldn't hear any of it over the real protesters' noise.

But the good, progressive people of Wisconsin weren't having any of this crap. Yesterday, they turned out for what can only be described as a MASSIVE demonstration. Teachers, nurses, snow-plow drivers, students, firefighters. Working people. Ordinary people.

Numbers were bouncing around yesterday, but today there seems to be a consensus on 80,000.

And it was a party. The signs were hilarious. (My fave: 'If you can read this, thank a teacher'.)

And, not surprisingly, spelled correctly. Unlike this classic from the Tea Baggers. It reads: 'Your fired!'

A protester in Egypt's Tahrir Square sent his message of support: 'Egypt supports Wisconsin. One World. One Pain'.

Protesters were angry, but also good humoured.

Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association, which has been a high-profile participant in the demonstrations, surveyed the crowd while recounting Walker’s boast about the 19,000 e-mails.

“I think I have 19,000 people behind me,” said Mitchell.

Pointing to one edge of the massive audience arrayed before him, he said: “And 20,000 there.”

He pointed to the other edge of the crowd: “And 20,000 there.”

Finally, he pointed down State Street, the thoroughfare that stretches from the Capitol to the University of Wisconsin campus, which was packed with students who have backed the unions: “And 20,000 there.”

On Twitter, Tea Baggers were spreading lies about violence, doctors signing sick notes for protesters, homeless from Chicago bussed in (the 'outsiders' dictators love to invent), and so on.

Today, the City of Madison issued a statement, saying that there had been not one single arrest and thanking the people for their good order. It included this:

As previously indicated, the goal of law enforcement has been to provide a safe environment for democracy to take place. That goal has been realized for yet another day.

(If that statement were a brick, I'd throw it through Toronto Chief Bill Blair's window.)

So, the pundits are punditting: Will this movement of real, working Americans take fire as in North Africa and the Middle East? In Ohio or Indiana, maybe, where similar legislation is pending.

Obviously, I dunno about that, but it certainly captured the imaginations of a helluva lot of Americans, Canadians, and at least one Egyptian.

For me, the most heart-warming part was this. Someone had tweeted that two restaurants -- one a pizza place -- had been delivering food to the protesters occupying the legislature. The phone number of the pizza place was posted. People from around the country and at least three other countries, Canada among them, ordered and paid for $2,500 worth of pizza to be delivered.

People power! Solidarity! Social media! Pizza!

All great and important and exhilarating.

But the most important part is that the Tea Baggers are totally exposed for what they are: bigoted idiots in thrall to evil billionaires who pay them to protest FOR government, specifically for Republican government, AGAINST working people. They can never be taken seriously -- if they ever were -- again.

Iran: A Nation of Bloggers

I don't pretend to know much about what's going on in Iran but I'm finding it rivetting. Andrew Sullivan is doing a fabulous job of blogging on it.

I found this vid there.

IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.

Sullivan also reports that blogs and websites all over the world are going green in solidarity. Even the BBC.

I'm the resident TechnoDolt here and I believe the least technodoltish among us, deBeauxOs, is in a light-blogging phase. So while we are kind of green here at DJ! already, I'm not going to try to go greener in case I blow something up. dBO would not be amused.

ADDED: Pop over to Antonia's to see a mordant cartoon.