WASHINGTON — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) criticized public-sector unions on Sunday, saying they should be eliminated entirely.
“There’s, I think, a fundamental problem with government becoming its own special interest group,” he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “Ultimately, there is not really bargaining in those situations because government sits on both sides of the table.”
Wallace then asked whether Daniels would like to see public-sector unions disappear entirely.
“I think government works better without them, I really do,” Daniels replied.
Our failure to stop Scott Walker in Wisconsin is going to have national implications for the labor movement and Democratic politics. The short-sighted DPW and national party who failed to engage early and strong will ultimately be their undoing.
The wave’s a-comin’ now…
Yup. Walker is now the first governor to survive a recall attempt. The aftershocks will be quick to follow. Daniels is a domino. Stufenplan, Stufenplan, step by step…
Will the DNC deconstruct Daniels’s argument and properly reconstruct it? I think I might just hold my breath for a little while and see what happens. Not.
The implications of this loaded argument are staggering. Much to unravel. But, then, if there’s no reason to unravel it, then why nose in on a state’s business, eh? Ain’t that so?
Walker and the GOP in general saw a real issue with unions and public unions in particular. They have been building public opinion against them for years, but only because the issue grew teeth in the sixties. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Now, hopefully unions will realize global scope and bring offers instead of wants to whatever table they may find. Indeed they may have to rebuild the tables.
Public unions should be explaining that a big reason why they exist is to guarantee independence from political hackery, and keep the top priority to be serving the public, not the politicians.
This is why Progressives put in the civil service system over 125 years ago, because the spoils system was corrupt and inefficient. What Daniels and Walker want is to appoint more people like Brian Deschane into public service so they can screw it up beyond recognition, and then sell it off to their cronies.
I don’t count on the Dems making this argument, so we’ll have to come forcefully and do it ourselves. People may not like what public unions have in terms of benefits (it’s misguided, but that jealous thought is there), but they HATE incomptence and corruption. And that’s what we’ll get a whole lot more of if we get rid of public sectors .
I think I posted this Klavan video before, useful to post again given what Daniels has to say. Good source for the twisted discourse that enveloped Wisconsin last year. Integral to the subversion. If you’re unfamiliar with Andrew Klavan, he’s pretty innocuous – degrades Hollywood for its “Liberal bias” and all he really wants to do is transform American culture so it is more reflective of Conservative values and so creative expression adheres more closely to….reality. He sends willies up the spine if you listen to him enough – Die Brucke and Kirchner come to mind and the marking of degenerates (artists) in Nazi Germany.
At any rate, here’s the problem with public sector unions. Klavan makes it very easy to understand, Pay very close attention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su4PwZCWUdg
More on Klavan and more: He is affiliated with Pajamas Media (PJ Media). In a remarkable, but fortuitous coincidence PJ Media sprang into existence in early 2011. Just in time to feature three keynote speakers at the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit – Joe Hicks, Bill Whittle, and yes… Andrew Klavan. Their segment outlined the Tea Party’s 40 year plan for transforming every aspect of American culture so it would be cleansed of anything remotely Liberal or Progressive. (The TP, by the way, is aggressively branding this plan as Grass Roots at its core).
As it happens, PJ Media is an outgrowth of PJTV which was launched at the 2008 Republican Convention. PJTV describes itself as center-right (Hah!) and proudly boasts that it has been covering the Tea Party movement since its inception. The little touch of irony here is that PJ Media wasn’t in the press box at the TP summit. They were featured speakers with a featured agenda.
Disclaimer: Neither PJTV nor PJ Media has any affiliation with PJYoursTruly.
Oh yes, its founder and CEO Roger L. Simon, the disaffected Hollywood insider, at one point served on the Board of Directors at the Writers Guild of America – that’s guild, of course. That info came from PJ Media – one can only assume that it was Writers Guild West – but that might sound too provincial in a bio. Anyway, the Writer’s Guild enters into…. oddly enough…. Collective Bargaining Agreements with signatory companies on behalf of its members. What a pip!
Still, at the current stage it is only public sector unions that are struggling for their right to exist. The next stage will target private sector unions. The public sector itself must be eliminated first, though. Then the private sector will have complete hegemony and abolishing private sector unions will be a trifling matter. Then all will be well: no unions of any kind to interfere with the manifest destiny of heroic capitalism.
Some sidenotes:
Bill Whittle – I call him Whittlin’ Bill or The Whittler. He stands out for his incomprehensible historical revisionism, he’s virulently Anti-Progressive, and once described Thaddeus McCotter as “… the smartest man in congress.” He’s super subversive – much of the toxicity employed by Tea Party propaganda Whittle whittles away by ascribing those techniques to the Left. He’s also the selectively creative poo-pooer: while rationally drawing attention to “Leftist propaganda” he urges that drawing parallels to Nazi Germany would be inappropriate, thereby defusing that inevitable criticism by the Left.
Whittlin’ Bill is all over the “independent media” scene. Some of it (like PJ Media) appears to be a paid subscription business model. So archived material is available only to paid subscribers (yeah, uh, isn’t that the model popping up in the “lamestream media?”) Sadly, that means if you’re not a paid subscriber you won’t be able to watch the Whittler’s Breitbart tribute video,:“My Friend Andrew.” And who wouldn’t want to be a paid subscriber when the rest of the media world is teeming with lies?
Whittlin’ Bill also pops up on an absurd little blog called “The Absurd Report… chasing liberals like villagers after Frankenstein.” Its most recent subversions are a clip from the film “The Dictator” and a header that reads: “‘The Dictator: Left Wing American Humor or Subtle Jab at Liberalism?” It’s part of the ongoing pseudo-criticism that maintains everything vapid in American culture is attributable to and identifiably Leftist influence, and evidence that Americans are ripe for taking the culture back to where it belongs.
Below that is the quote of the day: “I’m sure glad the unions spent all that money for this big public effort to reaffirm what a great governor [Scott] Walker is.” – humorist Frank J. Fleming. Conservative humor.
Below that is an “article” by T. Scott: “Something about pots and kettles” – not my capitalization, by the way – it is the original. In “pots and kettles” Scott explains that venture capitalists are “…as American as baseball and apple pie.” They are “people with a dream and the ability to see the dream become real.” Then, via a defense of Bain, “…where Mr. Romney was once involved…”, Scott describes how venture capitalists are job creators and how America was built by risk taking venture capitalists. The spirit of venture capitalism is the American spirit and the only American spirit. So:
“When your Democrat friends slander venture capitalists, they are casting aspersions on the single factor that has made America a world leader in innovation.”
The “article” is a subtle Romney pitch.
But it’s the concluding segue-way that’s my favorite and in the manner of Whittlin’ Bill. This is T. Scott’s concluding segueway:
“We left Europe some 700 years ago. We came to America to experience freedom..”
Also at the Absurd Report are a number of posts framing the recall and post-recall in Wisconsin. A number of Absurd Report postings put quite a few comments on this blog into perspective. Like this little shorty: “Progressivism: An Adolescent Ideology.” This one reinforces the reality meme again – “Progressives see people as they want them to be. Conservatives see them as they are.” Lovely linearity there. If you ever wondered how this viciously dismissive “grow up” meme entered our discourse – know this: It’s part of the radical right propaganda package. You may be familiar with its application to public unions and public employees.
At “The Absurd” you will also find an attack line that will be filtering down the pipe much more vigorously in Wisconsin: pitting firefighters against police officers.
The layers of yuck are unbelievably thick but all the yuck layers have their own echoing symmetry about them – they’re all revolving around the same orbit.
Don’t think there weren’t union members voting for Walker.
38% of them apparently. They do Jay Gould proud!