It was to be published today, and take effect tomorrow. The Secretary of State held off publishing the law till the last minute, and somebody sued him in time (unlike the Governor, and the various legislators, he does not have immunity). An odd case, really, someone doing everything they possibly can to get sued. LaFollette seems to have been SofS forever: today is the finest moment in his career. Thanks, Doug. Story here.
From the category archives:
US Politics
Speaks for itself.
A few photos shot with my phone from the “demonstration outside the Wisconsin GOP fundraiser”:http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/as-wisconsin-sens-head-for-dc-labor-brings-the-war-to-them.php?ref=fpblg this evening.
(via First Draft — thanks mds). Just to note, he’s been appearing here for a long time. Update: see also Nichols and BusinessWeek.
I forgot to say that the temperature barely rose above freezing on Saturday. More coverage, by popular demand, soon.
I apologise to everyone for taking up so much space here. I’ve kept going in part because I know there are still people who are looking here for news and discussion and impressions. And because, although at some level it seems parochial, this has been the most remarkable political movement I’ve witnessed close-to (and that included the 1984-5 Miners Strike and the peace movement in the early 80’s which was my first experience of a mass movement), and by far the biggest thing of its kind that I’ve known about in the US since moving here a quarter of a century ago. Unless something surprising happens, I’ll slow down from hereon, with maybe a couple of posts in the future giving more impressions and analysis, and maybe suggestions about where the movement could go.
But for the moment, there is one urgent thing. Several plans seem to have been made for events at the Capitol tomorrow. This is a sign of the lack of coordination among the diverse leaderships of a more or less spontaneous uprising. The time that most people are quoting is 11 a.m. I urge readers who can make it to get there, and those who cannot to encourage others to do so. The Bill is passed, and there is no point trying to kill it now. The key is a massive show of strength — not to show the Republicans what they will be up against in the coming year or so, but to show our quieter supporters throughout the state that we are strong and this is just the beginning of a much less spectacular and sexy movement that can reach far beyond the capitol into the cities, towns, and villages of Wisconsin, in which they can play a part with assurance that their efforts have a real prospect of success.
(from WisconsinEye, which is distinctly less user friendly than youtube).
Listen to the background noise.
The announcement that military show trials are to recommence at Guantanamo Bay, combined with the brutal and vindictive treatment of Bradley Manning, make it clear that, as regards willing to suppress basic human and civil rights in the name of security, there is no fundamental difference between the Obama and Bush Administrations. The first obvious question is, why? The second is, how to respond?
We’re close to the three week mark here, so I thought I’d provide an update and ask for some help. Over the past week the authorities have restricted access to the Capitol, and there is no question that this has combined with the cold weather to diminish the size of the protests, though not by much (our 4 year old is sufficiently recalcitrant that not being able to take some warmth in the Capitol means that my wife and I tend to go separately, rather than together). Earlier this week live ammunition was found in the Capitol, providing a pretext for the use of metal detectors. It is a sign of the esteem in which the police are held that I have heard no-one here suggest that the police planted the ammunition – everyone thinks it was a right-winger and that the police will make a good-faith effort to expose who did it. Assembly Democrats with ground floor offices responded by holding office hours outside in the cold — desks were being hauled back and forth through mercifully large windows. The Republicans put out a hilarious estimate of $6.5 million for cleaning up the Capitol (getting the adhesive off the walls) which the press pretty quickly ridiculed and was then reduced to $450,000 — after which skilled members of the relevant trade union offered to volunteer their services to do the cleanup (I imagine we’ll be setting up a fund soon for reseeding the mudbaths which which were once the lawns surrounding the building).
One Republican senator, Dale Schultz, after extensive consultation in his district, has announced that he will vote against the collective bargaining provisions of the budget repair bill, and the polls are consistently looking worse for Walker and the Republicans — and recall efforts are gradually being coordinated reasonably effectively. It takes two more Republicans to flip, and there are rumours that one might be flipping soon (but there are lots of rumours, put about by each side to demoralize the other).
The Wisconsin 14 are still solid. It is clear that there is considerable variation in their commitment – some would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of their lives their if that’s what it would take, whereas others (eg some with young children) are, understandably, really feeling the strain. They have lost their parking spots, are being fined $100 per day for every day they are not in the Capitol while the Senate is in session, have had their paychecks withheld till they pick them up in person, and the Republicans have passed a statute requiring that they all be arrested “with or without force” (a statute that is almost certainly illegal). So here’s the request for help. I’m told this is the most effective page through which to contribute to their campaign coffers, which money they can use to support living expenses etc. [1] (In discussing whether to post this my wife said “you’re not going to help fund-raise for the Democratic Party are you?” so I checked to ensure this would go direct to specific campaign funds — good grief, even I’m breaking my rule of only contributing to the best Democrat in the State now).
Michael Moore below the fold:
Extraordinary. (From Paul Krugman via Dan Hausman).
And I’d refer Fox news to this, which actually did happen in a warm place.
A very nice piece by long standing CT friend Christopher Phelps in the Chronicle (SM and I have known him for about 50 years between us), about the Wisconsin movement. An excerpt:
The crowds in red, as in the old Bangles song, are walking like an Egyptian. But they are also engaging in something we haven’t seen on this scale in a very long time: a dignified outpouring of a whole American community on behalf of labor. The events of late February are a striking example of what the English labor historian E.P. Thompson called “customs in common,” the web of shared traditions whose violation can propel people into the streets.
Custom in this case is the Wisconsin Idea, a notion that sometimes refers to the relationship between university and state but has a richer and more resonant history tracing to the state’s pioneering Progressive tradition. Its personification was the Republican Robert M. La Follette, who served as congressman, governor, and senator between the 1880s and 1920s. Through direct primaries, voter recall, civil-service standards, corporate taxation, regulation, and expert policy counsel from university scholars (rather than, say, corporate lobbyists)—a set of reforms together known as the Wisconsin Idea—La Follette sought to deal with what he called “the problems of vast financial power in private hands” on behalf of “the common man—the worker, the farmer.”
It has been a very long time since a Republican senator from Wisconsin has said, as did La Follette, “The only salvation for the Republican Party lies in purging itself wholly from the influence of financial interests.” But Madison is a capital city filled with public employees who take pride in the knowledge that Wisconsin was, in 1959, the first state to recognize public workers’ collective-bargaining rights. The Wisconsin Idea—a classroom staple of the very schoolteachers whose labor rights are now threatened—has been given new life by the multitudes chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”
I was unaware of Phelps’ use of the Wisconsin Idea until I read this piece — on my end of State Street a different version, which concerns the value of the University to the State and its population, tends to prevail, but the version Phelps adopts is, in fact, another version with real currency, that I didn’t know. A small irony for me is that the person who first introduced me to the idea of the University version of the Wisconsin Idea, when he was a student in a political philosophy class — and went to great lengths to convince me I should start really learning a lot about education policy issues so that I could make some sort of practical contribution — is now one of the Democratic Assembly members leading the movement (and moment), and totally committed to the version of the idea that Phelps cites. Reading Phelps’ piece reminded me how much I owe to Cory Mason — I must thank him when he gets some time to relax. (By the way, he has a narrow majority, so if your name is not Koch, he’ll probably welcome donations, if you can figure out where to send them).
An aside: I came home from delivering the boy to preschool this morning and found the signs my middle one and her best friend made at my wife’s crisis committee meeting last night. “Soccer Rocks! So Do Unions!”, “We Want Unions!” etc. Can you imagine a city in the US in 2011 in which hundreds of 10-year-olds are making signs like those? It is surreal.
Michael Froomkin writes letters.
Just sent this to the Washington Post’s Ombudsman:
Today’s lead editorial on the Al-Kidd v. Ashcroft case blindly repeats a piece of government propaganda that has been decisively falsified in the court proceedings of that very case.
“High Court Should Overturn Kidd v. Ashcroft” begins like this:
ABDULLAH AL-KIDD was arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003 after purchasing a one-way, first-class ticket to Saudi Arabia.
In fact, testimony and subpoenaed airline records establish that Al-Kidd had a round-trip coach ticket. The government’s false statement — originally made to the court to justify arresting him — misled the court and it is this very pattern of government misrepresentations that played a significant role in the judicial turn against immunity which the Post (in my opinion wrongly) critiques. The Post’s error is no mere detail but serves as means of obfuscating — avoiding — the central facts that undermine the argument the Post wishes to make.
I guess if you use fake facts it’s easier to write editorials in favor of unlimited and un-accountable state power to detain US citizens (AP: “Over the next 16 days he would be strip-searched repeatedly, left naked in a jail cell and shower for more than 90 minutes in view of other men and women, routinely transported in handcuffs and leg irons, and kept with people who had been convicted of violent crimes. On a long trip between jails, a federal marshal refused to unlock al-Kidd’s chains so he could use the bathroom.”).
No mere factual correction can fix this problem since that would fail to make clear that the factual change undercuts the entire logic of the editorial, but I have never yet seen a correction which makes such an admission, and don’t have much hope here.
The question for you, though, is this: how could the Post allow someone to write an editorial on such an important matter who isn’t even aware of one of the better-known facts of the case? And who doesn’t then check the facts. … the accurate facts were and are no secret: it almost takes work to avoid them.
I can’t say that this is particularly surprising. The editorial board of the _Washington Post_ is a disgrace. It’s the major reason I stopped my subscription some years ago, despite liking some people who write for the newspaper. When the senior editors of the newspaper repeatedly tell lies to their readers, some “obviously self-serving”:https://crookedtimber.org/2010/08/24/synergies/, others, like this, in pursuit of a sinister and insane national security agenda, it tends to corrode one’s trust in the institution.
The shutdown of the US government has been deferred for two weeks, as a result of a Republican proposal which gives them $4 billion of facesaving but uncontroversial cuts (some already proposed by Obama, the rest unspent money set aside for possible earmarks, which they have already decided not to include in the Budget). This is a pretty big backdown, given the kind of rhetoric being thrown around after last year’s recapture of the House, suggesting positive eagerness for a shutdown. Among the factors contributing to the backdown, I think the vigorous resistance being mounted in Wisconsin, and the significant public sympathy it is attracting, would have to be the most important. Secondary, but also important is Obama’s bounceback in the polls. The bounce has been modest but surprising given the continued weakness of the economy. If the shutdown is blamed on the Reps[1], and the economy is recovering by 2012, their chances of victory don’t look so good.
That said, on past form, the odds have to favor an ultimate capitulation by the Dems. Given their relative strength, and the extreme demands of the Rep leadership (let alone the Tea Party), a pre-emptive capitulation sufficient to avert a shutdown looks unlikely. At the other end of the probability distribution, the chance that, in the context of an extended shutdown, the Reps might buckle as they did in 1995 looks more promising than before.
fn1. As Frank Rich points out, there is a compelling logic to blaming the Republicans for a shutdown, namely that the Republicans would clearly like to shut down the (non-military bits of the) Federal government, whereas the Dems would not.
fn1. And, as Frank Rich observes, it
Megan McArdle quotes James Joyner on player compensation, in sports, and draws a moral concerning unions. Let me summarize Joyner’s argument, which is pretty generic and familiar in broad outline: major league baseball, the NBA, and the NFL have different systems of caps and regulations limiting pay and restricting free agency. Plausibly, the system that is best for fans, overall, the NFL system, is worst for some players. (Joyner actually says ‘horribly unfair to the players’. We shall consider this sweeping thesis about social justice.) The NFL is not a free-market-style competition between autonomous business units but a profit-sharing cartel organized to ensure rough competitive equality between teams. Winning teams cannot just convert victory into extra profit and plow that back in, investing in team quality to entrench their winning position, which would be less exciting for fans. See also: major league baseball. The NBA is intermediate: you have salary caps, but players have more free agency. As a result, cities that are nice places to live in if you are really rich have an advantage. They have an informal way round the cap, in effect. Which is, again, good for (some) players, but not for fans overall.
McArdle doesn’t provide a link to the Joyner piece, but here it is. The title: “athletes are ruining sports!” The conclusion: “The bottom line is that players are human beings, who ought to have the right to take their talents to South Beach — or wherever they’re wanted. Just like fans can do.” This is, as Joyner is clearly aware, a bit of a paradox: athletes are making the game worse and they ought to have the right to do so. The ‘cure’ – namely, restrictions on pay and mobility – is ‘worse than the disease’, because it is manifestly grossly unjust.
McArdle seems inclined to draw the opposite conclusion: since the game is better if players are restricted in their bargaining power, and since the point is a good game, the proper, market-minded conclusion to draw is that employee bargaining power should, in principle, be restricted to ensure it does not conflict with productivity-minded management decisions. [click to continue…]