The Daily Call
A daily digest of news regarding the
Wisconsin Democracy crisis
Walker’s crazy reverse train robbery
Gov. Bonehead’s Actions to Cost
Wisconsin Taxpayers $69 Million
Remember when Gov. Scott Walker snuffed out the federal funding for high-speed train service in Wisconsin. Gov. Bonehead claimed his bold action would save Wisconsin tax payers millions in unnecessary train costs.
Well, not so fast, Gov. IQ. The financial cost of this supposed fiscal conservative just keeps ratcheting up every day:
And fact 41: It’s about to get worse
40 Facts That Prove The Working Class
Is Being Systematically Wiped Out
By Michael Snyder
BusinessInsider.com (7/14/11)
Without an abundance of good jobs, the middle class in the United States is going to shrivel up and die. Right now, rampant unemployment is absolutely killing communities all over America.
Hopelessness and poverty are exploding and many are now wondering if we are actually witnessing the slow death of the middle class. There simply are not nearly enough "good jobs" to go around anymore, and even many in the mainstream media are referring to this as a "long-term structural problem" with the economy.
The only thing that most working class Americans have to offer in the marketplace is their labor. If nobody will hire them they do not have any other ways to provide for their families. Well, there is a problem.
Today wealth has become incredibly centralized. The big corporations and the big banks dominate everything. Thanks to incredible advances in technology and thanks to the globalization of our economic system, the people with all the money don't have to hire as many ordinary Americans anymore. They can hire all the labor they want on the other side of the globe for a fraction of the cost. So the rich don't really have that much use for the working class in America anymore. The only thing of value that the working class had to offer has now been tremendously devalued. The wealthy don't have to pay a lot for physical labor anymore.
Thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas and they aren't coming back. The big corporations are thriving while tens of millions of ordinary Americans are deeply suffering. Almost all of the wealth being produced by our economy is going to a very centralized group of people at the very top of the food chain. The rich are getting richer and the working class is being systematically wiped out.
So the fact that we are facing rampant unemployment that never seems to go away should not be a surprise to anyone …
A Look at Turnout in Wisconsin
Recalls: How High Will it go?
By Craig Gilbert
Journal Sentinel (7/20/11)
One of the great mysteries going into next month’s big recall battles is the size and composition of the electorate.
How many people will vote? And who will those voters be?
A special election in a legislative district in the dead of summer with nothing else on the ballot doesn’t normally draw great throngs of ordinary Americans to the polls.
But this is hyper-mobilized, ultra-polarized Wisconsin, where the bonfire of political rage (or if you prefer, the torch of civic engagement) burns bright.
There are very concrete factors driving turnout. The GOP’s undivided control of state government is at stake. Wisconsinites have a sense they’re on a national stage. Most of these nine districts are awash in money, ads, mail and get-out-the-vote efforts.
And for months now voters here have been sending every possible signal that they’re politically engaged.
Turnout was 50% higher than normal in the April 5 Supreme Court race.
And turnout in the recall primaries held here over the past two Tuesdays was “amazingly high” given the nature of those elections, says University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin ...
As President and ‘Gang of Six’ work on debt ceiling deal
The Drunk Kids at the Other End of the
House Are Cooking Metal in the Microwave
House Republicans, with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) leading the charge, pooh-pooh any risks or serious consequences of the United States defaulting on the national debt by not raising the debt ceiling have become the new poster kids of crazy.
Rachel Maddow puts it all in perspective. Damn, this woman is just so smart:
Need for campaign finance reform greater than ever
Feingold Still Fights for Reform
By Eliza Newelin Carney
Roll Call (7/20/11)
On the eve of an election that will be marked by record spending and newly relaxed rules, campaign finance reform champion and ex-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said the laws he helped write are still standing — but just barely.
As the co-author, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), of the landmark 2002 ban on unlimited soft money donations, Feingold has emerged as the reform movement’s leading architect and spokesman. In an interview with Roll Call, he voiced confidence that the ban on large, unlimited campaign contributions remains
essentially intact, but he warned that the wall between politicians and unregulated money is thinning.
“Almost nothing of our election laws is still standing,” said Feingold, who now heads the political action committee Progressives United. The PAC’s mission is to counter and eventually reverse the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which overturned the long-standing ban on corporate and union spending for independent campaign activities.
That ruling also threw out one part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law: the requirement that outside groups use only hard (regulated) money when they run issue ads that picture or name a candidate in the runup to an election.
But Citizens United did nothing to change the McCain-Feingold law’s centerpiece, namely the ban on soft money fundraising by party leaders and politicians. Plenty of rules have been rolled back, Feingold said, but candidates, party leaders and federal officials may still not solicit unlimited corporate and union donations for the parties, as they did before 2002…
(Authorized and paid for by Mark L. Taylor, Genoa, WI., and not a campaign committee.)
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