Largest protest yet fails to sway Wis. lawmakers

Tom Braun and Nathaniel Raghez, both of Milwaukee,  debate opposite sides of Wisconsin's proposed budget repair bill near the state Capitol in Madison AP – Tom Braun and Nathaniel Raghez, both of Milwaukee, debate opposite sides of Wisconsin's proposed budget …

MADISON, Wis. – Sometimes they cursed each other, sometimes they shook hands, sometimes they walked away from each other in disgust.

None of it — not the ear-splitting chants, the pounding drums or the back-and-forth debate between 70,000 protesters — changed the minds of Wisconsin lawmakers dug into a stalemate over Republican efforts to scrap union rights for almost all public workers.

"The people who are not around the Capitol square are with us," said Rep. Robin Vos, a Republican from Rochester and co-chair of the Legislature's budget committee. "They may have a bunch around the square, but we've got the rest on our side."

After nearly a week of political chaos in Madison, during which tens of thousands of pro-labor protesters turned the Capitol into a campsite that had started to smell like a locker room, supporters of Gov. Scott Walker came out in force Saturday.

They gathered on the muddy east lawn of the Capitol and were soon surrounded by a much larger group of union supporters who countered their chants of "Pass the bill! Pass the bill!" with chants of "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!"

"Go home!" union supporters yelled at Scott Lemke, a 46-year-old machine parts salesman from Cedarburg who wore a hard hat and carried a sign that read "If you don't like it, quit" on one side, and "If you don't like that, try you're fired" on the other.

A lone demonstrator stood between the crowds, saying nothing and holding a sign: "I'm praying that we can all respect each other. Let's try to understand each other."

The Wisconsin governor, elected in November's GOP wave that also gave control of the state Assembly and Senate to Republicans, set off the protests earlier this week by pushing ahead with a measure that would require government workers to contribute more to their health care and pension costs and largely eliminate their collective bargaining rights.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said the crowds that have gotten bigger each day have yet to win over any member of his caucus.

"What they're getting from individuals back home is stick to your guns, don't let them get to you," Fitzgerald said. "Every senator I've spoken to today is getting that back home, which is awesome. It's great to hear from people who are part of a rally ... (but) two people you meet at a fish fry or a person who comes up to you at a basketball game, those comments sink in."

Fitzgerald and other Republicans say the concessions are needed to deal with the state's projected $3.6 billion budget shortfall and to avoid layoffs of government workers. The move to restrict union rights has also taken hold in other states, including Tennessee and Indiana, where lawmakers have advanced bills to restrict bargaining for teachers' unions.

The throngs of Walker supporters who arrived in Madison on Saturday for an afternoon rally organized by Tea Party Patriots, the movement's largest umbrella group, and Americans for Prosperity, carried signs with a fresh set of messages: "Your Gravy Train Is Over ... Welcome to the Recession" and "Sorry, we're late Scott. We work for a living."

"We pay the bills!" tea party favorite Herman Cain yelled to cheers from the pro-Walker crowd. "This is why you elected Scott Walker, and he's doing his job. ... Wisconsin is broke. My question for the other side is, `What part of broke don't you understand?'"

Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate, short of the votes needed to keep Republicans from passing the so-called "budget repair" bill, fled the state on Thursday. They haven't been seen since, and said Saturday they are more resolved than ever to stay away "as long as it takes" until Walker agrees to negotiate.

"I don't think he's really thought it through, to be honest," Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach, of Middleton, said Saturday.

Democrats offered again Saturday to agree to the parts of Walker's proposal, so long as workers retain their right to negotiate with the state as a union.

Fitzgerald said that's an offer the GOP has rejected for months. The restrictions on collective bargaining rights are necessary so that local governments and the state have the flexibility needed to balance budgets after cuts Walker plans to announce next month, he said.

Walker, who was spending time with his family Saturday and didn't appear in public, also rejected the Democrats offer. His spokesman, Cullen Werwie, said the fastest way to end the stalemate was for Democrats to return and "do their jobs."

Madison police estimated that 60,000 or more people were outside the Capitol on Saturday, with up to 8,000 more inside. The normally an immaculate building had become a mess of mud-coated floors that reeked from days of protesters standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said there were no arrests or problems during Saturday's protests. "We've seen and shown the world that in Madison, Wis., we can bring people together who disagree strongly on a bill in a peaceful way," he said.

Steve Boss, 26, a refrigerator technician from Oostburg, carried a sign that read "The Protesters Are All `Sick' -- Wash your Hands," a reference to the teacher sick-outs that swelled crowds at the Capitol to 40,000 people Friday and raised the noise in its rotunda to earsplitting levels. Boss said the cuts Walker has proposed were painful but needed to fix the state's financial problems.

"It's time to address the issue. They (public workers) got to take the same cuts as everyone else," he said. "It's a fairness thing."

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes to explain public employees' absences from work. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison, said he had given out hundreds of notes. Many of the people he spoke with seemed to be suffering from stress, he said.

"What employers have a right to know is if the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off of work," Sanner said. "Employers don't have a right to know the nature of that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it's as valid as every other work note that I've written for the last 30 years."

John Black, 46, of Madison, said he came out to the rallies in order to help bridge the gap between the pro-labor protesters and Walker's supporters. He carried signs that asked for a compromise on the budget bill while a friend's son handed out purple flowers.

"We liked Scott Walker as a change agent, but he moved too quickly and because of that there's always room for compromise," Black said.

___

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer and Dinesh Ramde contributed to this report.

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67,458 Comments

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    smoke 1 minute ago Report Abuse
    Let them pass this garbage, and just recall Walker and change it back. There is no Budget crisis in Wisconsin. There was no voter fraud with Acorn, But you know that Repukes.
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    chad 1 minute ago Report Abuse
    If the government teachers want their union so badly, wouldn't a reasonable accomodation be to let them have it....but also let parents have a full voucher to send their kid wherever they want? Seems to me the problem with government unions is that they want a monopoly on the work AND a union to cut back-room deals with the politicians for featherbeds and plush pensions. That's wrong.
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    SEP 1 minute ago Report Abuse
    The truth behind behind the Capitalist State.

    The real problem folks is CAPITALISM.

    The greatest contradiction in the capitalist system is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

    The profits of the capitalist class is only the unpaid labor of the working class.

    capital = a claim on the surplus value, or profits, able to be extracted from the working class.

    The capitalists can only make a surplus from the labor they employ, variable capital. This contrasts with constant capital, the investment in machinery, buildings, raw materials and so on. This is “dead labor” which passes unchanged in the final product. With the development of technique, more and more has to be invested to exploit relatively less and less labor. Consequently in spite of the increase in labor exploitation and the increased amount, surplus value, extracted from the workers there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

    This tendency is temporarily averted by the capitalist's drive to increase their profits by squeezing the workers, by increasing productivity, by more intensive labor and getting the USA and State government to help them resist wage increases, and introduce anti-trade union laws to hamper and restrict the struggle of the workers for a better standard of living, for civilized living.

    In other words, the function of a capitalist state is to defend the wealth and power of its ruling class, the capitalist class. Foremost among them is the bankers; that is why "our" USA and every other capitalist Western "democratic" government bailed out the banksters, and that is why although both dictator Ben Ali (Tunisia) and dictator Mubarak (Egypt) were forced to flee by the revolutionary masses, their respective state’s repressive apparatus remain: the army and police plus other institutions protecting the local capitalist elites and international capital investments...

    Similarly, the mass unemployment, over the last two years, and continuing to a lesser extent even today, restored the profits of the capitalist elites, safeguarding the wealth/power of the ruling class, and meeting the qualification for an end to the recession in profits. However, at present, the use of mass unemployment to increase the profits of the capitalist elites has reached a temporary limit due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, so the (private) Federal Reserve has resorted to monetary polices to restore these profits in the guise of inflation growth.

    In other words, at present the limit for extracting surplus value, profits, by sackings, reducing wages + benefits plus sending jobs to "slave" wage China and similar countries, has been temporarily reached, so surplus value is instead extracted indirectly via inflation, aka stealth taxation.

    So, in the final analysis, it is not the case that public sector workers now get paid too much and have too generous benefits, but it is the fact that private sector workers now get paid relatively little with minimal to zero benefits while at the same time all sorts of tax decreases, shelters, and benefits go to the capitalist class to counteract the tendency of the rate of profit to fall leading to the continuing collapse of Federal, State, and local city and town tax receipts, little to no capital investments in the USA and a probable loss of American global hegemony as the reduced tax base forces the USA to, eventually, cut back on its military.

    The above is the NAKED truth behind the (USA) Capitalist State, revealed in all its decrepit, senile, and failed state. Time for something better, time for something that actually works at improving the lives of the mass of workers and people of the USA, and not just works towards making the capitalist class even richer...

    Socialist Equality Party
    www dot wsws dot org
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    Real Jill 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    Hey, Joel, good to hear from you... A voice out of your past. Like 15 yrs ago. None the less, I hope the demonstrations stay peaceful. If you want that to happen, you need to corral J.Jackson. He's trouble. Make sure nothing happens to the Capitol Bldg.
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    SEP 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    The right to a job, a livable income, health care and retirement is incompatible with a system in which the giant banks and corporations exercise a complete dictatorship over economic and political life. The capitalist system has failed and must be replaced with a new type of society based on social need, not private profit. That is the struggle for socialism.

    Besides, capitalism is BROKE because of the capitalists!

    This capitalist government has failed to develop the productive forces for more than 30 years now! Globalization started in 1972 and since then the push has been to develop the productive forces in China and similar "slave" wage countries.

    Why should the middle/working class also go broke along with them?

    All that this broken socio-economic model needs to fallover into the abyss is a little push, and down it will go like Tunisia's Ben Ali, Egypt's Mubarak, and others.

    So, if you don't want to go down with the capitalist "ship", join us and become organized.

    (Socialist Equality Party)
    www dot wsws dot org

    In capitalist economics, to be "competitive" means to make the rich and super rich even richer.

    In socialist economics, to be "competitive" means to increase the living standards of the mass of workers and people of the democratic socialist state rather than increasing the already obscenely high living standards of the capitalist elites.

    To do this, the workers must break with both the Republicans and Democrats, the two parties of Big capital. A break with the docile and corporate controlled unions might also be necesary if new leadership is not installed. However, new leadership could help restore the unions but both the Republican and Democrat parties are useless in advancing the interests of the middle/lower class.

    As socialists, we, Socialist Equality Party, if we ran this country, the USA, would bring back those jobs sent to China, and elsewhere, and get the USA up to FULL employment, with zero inflation (no Fed), in a few years, 2 to 5. In the meantime, immediate unemployment pay or part-time employment for anybody needing work, in a few months.

    To do this, we only need to take over the commanding heights of the economy, small business and small bond holders are ok and would be compensated, only the SnP 500 aristocratic executives, Wall Street, the Fed, and their henchmen are the enemy. We would bring back the capital now going overseas investing in "slave" wage China, and similar countries, and put it to work in the USA, creating jobs for Americans. This would go a LONG way towards rebuilding the middle and lower classes and promote self-sustaining economic growth which will also enable balancing the budget and eliminating the national debt etc.

    Of course, this will break the back of the global capitalist elites and super rich, the top 400 USA elites I referenced in my earlier posts and the party bosses of both the Republican and Democrat party. Breaking the backs of the 400 elites is necessary because the present course is breaking the back of the middle and lower classes...

    This can only be achieved under the control of a workers democracy, b/c only with freedom and liberty are the people able to fully express their creativity and innovation.

    (Socialist Equality Party)
    www dot wsws dot org
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    Robert 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    The noticable deifference between liberals and conservatives is I think conservatives know when they are lying
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    Don 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    this means, wisconsin law makers are NOT representing wisconsin people.
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    glucord 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    Wake up Private American workers! Instead of fighting against better wages, job security and secure retirements like those that public sector workers enjoy, why don't you rise up against billionaire CEO's who are laughing all the way to the bank with the spoils of your labor?
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    Mike Johnson 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    Like Bush did with 9-11 the Republicans are trying to use the recsion to destroy the Unions the last bastion of the middle class. Yes Union members are going to have to pay cuts and benefit cuts everyone knows that. But you have to remember when it was possible to raise a family on a one person salary the Unions accounted for sixty percent of American workers now it is twenty. But then Corporate America declared war on the middle class and shipped a lot of jobs over seas. It wasn't the Unions fault you can't beat someone who is willing to work a 12 hour shift with no bath breaks for a dollar a hour. Now the top ten percent of the country who control ninety percent of the wealth want to do a Coup Etate on the middle class by destroying the Unions. If you want to increase the middle class we need expand the Unions and crack down on "contracting" which are usually people who "own" their business but are nothing more then slaves but to dumb to realize it
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    Father Jimmy 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
    Feingold's out, and these lefties are screaming mad.
    No more slush, and give-away crap from the Fed.

    So now they've got to pay the freight a little, and their mad.
    Well too bad, folks.
    The party's over, and November said it's time to clean house a little.

    Grab a broom.
    Reply

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