It just never ends, does it?

Now, rich corporate CEO’s are all a-flutter over *gasp* paying workers a fair wage. In Gov. Doyle’s budget, a new provision requires companies that receive help from the state to pay their workers the prevailing wage.

J. Michael Mooney,  chairman of the MLG group, an investment and real estate developer, called the idea of a paying a decent wage to workers “economic suicide.” A quick look at MLG’s Real Estate Investment website shows they have a portfolio value of $330 million. They have a “presence” in four states: Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota and Texas. The “Executive Board” of MLG is a bunch of rich white guys. I guess the diversity policy at MLG only applies to what label designer suit each white male board member wears. Excuse me if I don’t sympathize with this pompous Uncle Money Bags.  

“This would be a bad idea in good times,” Mooney also says. So when the economy is down, not the right time for fair pay. And when the economy is up isn’t good either. I’m still trying to figure out when would be a good time for Mr. Mooney to share some of his wealth with his workers…yeah not finding one. This guy and the corporatists at WMC will NEVER find time for fairness.

But I guess there’s a part of me that expects it from these top 2%-ers. Paying their workers a fair wage would mean less money in their pockets, and while it certainly is greedy, self-serving, and un-American,  it’s the standard of these flag-waving, chest-bumping robber barons. After all, this is the same crowd that cheered while President Bush cut taxes for the rich in a time of war! Guys like Mooney and WMC don’t want to pay their fair share to support the troops, and they don’t want to pay their fair share to the workers.  They never have, and if they had their way, they never would.
 
If you can’t pay a prevailing wage in Wisconsin to your employees then you shouldn’t be in business. There, I said it. Go. Leave. Get out already. Take WMC with you. Then finally the real people of Wisconsin might get a break from the never-ending crying and bitching and moaning from greedy businesses who don’t give a shit about workers. Workers are the ones who make you rich! We’re the ones who buy your goods. We’re the ones that labor endlessly, and whose efforts these corporatists so willingly exploit. It’s the workers who toil away for whatever scraps they can grab from the owners who hoard their wealth.

There are lots of companies out there who would gladly take help from the state AND pay their workers fairly. If Mooney doesn’t want help from the taxpayers, he can stick it. Don’t take the money then. That leaves more room for the kind of companies we want here in Wisconsin: profitable companies that care about community, the environment, and paying their workers fairly.

WMC is always against corporations paying their fair share in taxes. Now, they’re using the economic downturn to try and frighten all of us into laying down while WMC rams its radical pro-corporate agenda down our throats.

In a new radio ad out this week, WMC is subjecting  hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin citizens who are paying their fair share to their audio propaganda sledgehammer. It seems the bottom dwellers at WMC are doing their darndest to capitalize on the fear many of us are feeling about the economy.Here's a sampling of the radio ad script:

“More than $200 million in new taxes on employers.
In a recession? That’s going to make things worse.
Wisconsin will be less competitive.
Our families will have fewer jos.
{With fewer jobs, our communities have fewer resources for schools, and parks, and
roads.}
When business taxes go up, businesses may not move here.”

Scared yet? Don't worry, the horror show continues.

In all the hubbub surrounding the landing of Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, there's one consistent and serious omission in nearly all of the reporting: U.S. Airways pilot Chelsea Sullenberger is union-trained.

For all of the attacks unions have sustained over the years from the rabid right, the benefits unions have brought to ALL of us--the 40-hour work week, child labor laws, and now union training (among many, many others) too often go overlooked.

Despite all of the great advances we've acheived thanks to the labor movement, right-wing crazies like Rush Limbaugh and our "representatives," both state and federal who so blindly follow him have been scape-goating organized wokers for years. 

It's time we all recognize the good unions do for us--bring back a "labor" section in the paper already!--and cheer these heroes for what they are: union-trained heroes. 

(Note: So yinz know, this guy's from dahn nere in Pittsburgh, n'nat.)

With so much going on at the national and state levels, one question progressives may still be asking themselves: Do I support the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Arizona Cardinals in Sunday's Super Bowl?

Consider:

Barely twenty-four hours into his first day as the nation’s 44th President, Barack Obama made it clear that he is not going to tolerate business as usual in the nation’s capital.

Obama’s first act in office placed a freeze on the salaries of top White House aides and to implement new limits on lobbyists working with the Obama administration.

The salary freeze affects those top White House aides making over $100,000 a year, demonstrating a clear break from the disastrous Bush administration by proving that Obama really can talk the talk and walk the walk. “Families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington,” Obama said addressing the press this morning. Finally—a leader who’s REALLY in touch with the difficulties regular Americans are struggling with.

More importantly however, was Obama’s action to limit the influence of lobbyists in the Oval Office. Obama’s first executive order bans aides to the Obama administration who leave his staff to turn around and lobby the government. No more revolving door to K Street. Going even further, Obama also banned those staffers already hired from working on issues they had previously lobbied on, or to lobby government agencies they previously worked to influence. Even FURTHER, Obama banned all lobbyists from giving gifts of any size to those working in his administration.

Thank. God (if s/he/it exists). Perhaps now, regular folks won’t be shuttered out of a government that supposed to be by us, for us. Obama wasn’t messing around—he’s been waiting in the wings, forced to watch the lamest duck we’ve ever had twiddle his thumbs while the proverbial plane was crashing into the mountain. Now, with Obama at the rudder, it’s clear that simply doing nothing and maintaining the status quo is simply not tolerated. Thank. God.

 

A story in the Capital Times today details the recent programming changes and the resulting listener uproar on the Mic, 92.1 FM, Madison’s only progressive talk station.

As 2008 ticked over into 2009, the Mic, rather quietly, announced that popular daytime show ‘The Thom Hartmann Program’ was going to be replaced by evangelical money-help host Dave Ramsey—the same Dave Ramsey who hosts a similar financial show on the Fox Business Channel. (I’ll leave my comments about having a right-wing, bible-thumping Fox mouthpiece on my progressive talk station for another post….)

However, the change won’t last. Ramsey is moving to the morning slot and Thom Hartmann is moving back to the 2-5p slot on the Mic.

As an avid Mic listener—the OWN office radio is tuned to the Mic at some point every day—I certainly welcome the change back to Hartmann. But the change and change back really drive home the danger of media consolidation that we’ve all grown accustomed to.

$288,460.50

That’s the amount of money the listed members of the board of directors at the oft-called non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance have donated to Republicans and conservative candidates since 1991.
    
Did they donate to Democrats and liberals? Yes. A whopping $25,475.

To sum: 92% to conservatives. Eight percent to liberals.

In the Thursday morning report, WisPolitics ran a piece on a study from the California-based Reason Foundation that called the benefits of the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line as “not credible.”

One might ask, what is this Reason Foundation? Who’s behind the curtain, pulling the strings? And why exactly do WE care? We live here after all. They’re in California. What do they have to say that could add anything to a debate here in Wisconsin?

Well, a quick visit to the Reason Foundation website sure reveals a lot. First, like many conservo-mouthpieces, they breathlessly espouse the value of Friedman’s unrestrained free market. And according to the website, they support the “rule of law,” whatever that means. Pretty clear where these guys are coming from. Government? Bad. Unfettered capitalism gone wild, no matter what the human cost? A-OK.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Digging a little deeper, we find the true impetus behind the Reason Foundation’s attack on commuter rail: they’ve got oil on their brains and in their veins.

There’s been a noticeable silence on the part of the right wing Wisconsin blog community about the vanished postings of the previously-oft frothing Jo Egelhoff, who regularly peppered liberals and pro-family economic and social policies on her FoxPolitics.net blog-n-site.

For a walk down memory lane, you can visit One Wisconsin Now’s http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/page/content/foxpoliticsrevealed/ to see all of her gems of yester-month. And if you can’t stand reading them, by all means, check out our new web ad “Say It Ain’t So, Jo.”

Rep. Steve Nass has won.

A report by the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance says Wisconsin had the lowest increase in higher education funding of any state in the country over the past five years -- save for Michigan, which actually cut higher education.

JB Van Hollen, the Republican Attorney General who also coincidentally serves as the co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign, was on Wisconsin Public Radio today talking about his partisan lawsuit to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in predominately Wisconsin's cities.

Over and over again Van Hollen referred those opposing his partisan lawsuit, such as the non-partisan League of Women Voters, the Governmental Accountability Board and its six retired judges, as well as disability and voter rights groups as his "opponents."

How comical is that the Wisconsin representative to the so-called “Palin Truth Squad” is Margaret Farrow?

The “Squad” presumably will criticize anyone who brings up Sarah Palin’s ethics scandal, truth bending, right-wing extremism and revisionist history. Or those who point out that Palin refuses to talk to reporters and won’t answer questions.