[click image].
For those of you on the feed, I got up in the middle of the night and caught this, which will sort of set the stage for you on the Wisconsin thing, and why that snippet at the image link is quite as enraging as it gets.
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Have you heard about 16.896?
The fight in Wisconsin is over Governor Walker’s 144-page Budget Repair Bill. The parts everyone is focusing on have to do with the right to collectively bargain being stripped from public sector unions (except for the unions that supported Walker running for Governor). Focusing on this misses a large part of what the bill would do. Check out this language, from the same bill:16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).
The bill would allow for the selling of state-owned heating/cooling/power plants without bids and without concern for the legally-defined public interest. This excellent catch is from Ed at ginandtacos.com ... Ed correctly notes:If this isn’t the best summary of the goals of modern conservatism, I don’t know what is. It’s like a highlight reel of all of the tomahawk dunks of neo-Gilded Age corporatism: privatization, no-bid contracts, deregulation, and naked cronyism. Extra bonus points for the explicit effort to legally redefine the term “public interest” as “whatever the energy industry lobbyists we appoint to these unelected bureaucratic positions say it is.”
In case it isn’t clear where the naked cronyism comes in, remember which large, politically active private interest loves buying up power plants and already has considerable interests in Wisconsin. Then consider their demonstrated eagerness to help Mr. Walker get elected and bus in carpetbaggers to have a sad little pro-Mubarak style “rally” in his honor. There are dots to be connected here, but doing so might not be in the public interest.
It’s important to think of this battle as a larger one over the role of the state. The attempt to break labor is part of the same continuous motion as saying that the crony, corporatist selling of state utilities to the Koch brothers and other energy interests is the new “public interest.”.
love, 99
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Will no one rid me of these meddlesome Capitalists?
ReplyDeleteThe oil speculators are at it again.
ReplyDeleteThe station where I buy most of my gas - an independent operator:
Tuesday 2/22 - regular unleaded $3.29/gallon.
This morning $3.65/gallon.
Being an independent he buys from numerous distributors and is usually the cheapest gas around, beating the ARCO station across the street. His latest shipment was up 13%, but he held his prices to an 11% increase. He is expecting the next shipment to be up another 10-15%.
That's the "beauty" of all this uprising in the ME. It gives an excuse to jack oil back up through the stratosphere. If you did not listen to the Palast interview on the Keiser Report I linked yesterday, you best get to it. HE says it. And THAT is what's up.
ReplyDeleteAnd YET we remain down. I can't believe it.
"As if buying Scott Walker’s way into the Wisconsin governor’s office weren’t enough, the Koch-funded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is running banner ads, with television and radio ads to come."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/55975/koch-brothers-funding-scott-walker-anti-union-ads/
You know, I'm glad my father isn't alive to see it. He was a master tool and die maker and the company he'd worked for forever got bought out and moved to Texas. He had to find another shop with the same union because he needed to put in three more years to get his pension. The only other shop with the right union was Koch Luggage. So he went to work there. He quit inside a few weeks, swearing they were the worst imaginable employers and he'd rather lose his pension than contribute another minute to their fortunes. He never used bad language, but he said they were the worst of the worst.
ReplyDeleteI live only a few miles from where we put the worst of the worst.
PELICAN BAY.
And that's where those miserable fucks belong.