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More Fallout From Gov Walker’s Overreach: Abele Defeats Stone For Milwaukee County Executive

Chris Abele – a 44-year-old philanthropist, scion of a wealthy Boston family and political neophyte – handily defeated state Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) at the polls Tuesday to become the next Milwaukee County executive.

Abele had 61% of the vote to 39% for Stone, according to unofficial results with all votes counted.

Abele said he would immediately tackle tough county problems and work cooperatively with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other leaders in the county.

“It is time for a new approach,” Abele said from his election party at the historic Pabst Brewery. “It is time to stop working apart and to start working together.”

He pointed to the undeveloped Park East property nearby as something on which the city and county needed to collaborate.

“I don’t see the mayor as a competitor,” Abele said. “I see him as a partner and a friend.”

Stone conceded the race about 10:05 p.m., promising to work with Abele to help fix the county’s problems. Stone called the campaign an amazing race run in “an unusual environment.”

Abele campaigned with $1 million of his own money as someone with fresh ideas to tackle the county’s nagging financial problems. Though light on specifics, Abele outlined an approach that emphasizes efficiency moves. He put much of his advertising firepower into trying to fuse Stone with Gov. Scott Walker and his controversial push to end most collective bargaining for public employees.

Stone said his loss “reflects the divide we have right now in Wisconsin.” He also said the big turnout in Milwaukee “was a reflection of some of the unrest we had in Madison” over Walker’s union measure.

Walker held the county executive slot for eight years before his election as governor last fall when he defeated Barrett.

Stone in his campaign faulted Abele as inexperienced and callous to everyday concerns, pointing to a long-delayed resolution of Abele’s 1996 drunken driving case, his avoidance of state income taxes and his dispute with the IRS over a $2.3 million federal tax bill.

The win gives Abele the final year left in Walker’s county term. Abele has said he plans to run for a full four-year term as executive in spring 2012.

Though a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes, Abele ran for county executive – officially a nonpartisan office – often sounding like a conservative. Like Stone, Abele vowed not to raise taxes and said he’d work hard to attract new business. Abele said he’ll push to wipe out inefficiencies and service duplications and might turn to privatizations, selling off county assets and marketing park services to the suburbs.

He also hinted at layoffs as a way to bring the county’s budget into long-term balance, promising unspecified “tough cuts.”

He said he wouldn’t be surprised “if we end up with a government that looks smaller.”

Mix into that formula Abele’s frequent assertion that he’ll serve as a cheerleader for Milwaukee, whether stalking development and jobs or demanding a fairer shake for the area when lobbying the state.

Calls for cultural change

He’s vowed to bring on a culture change in county government, where getting results is rewarded and poor performers are called on the carpet.

“The real key here is changing the way we think about stuff, changing this notion that the only solution to everything is either cutting services or raising taxes,” Abele said.

Abele has never held a government job, in contrast to Stone, who has spent the past 17 years as a state and local official. Stone derided Abele as “an amateur” whose government inexperience would hurt the county.

Abele sought to make a virtue of his clean political slate and said he would apply what he’s learned over the past 15 years in running the Argosy Foundation, a family charity, and two small businesses. Argosy and Abele personally have given heavily to arts, environmental, civic and community groups and Abele has served on many local nonprofit agency boards.

Abele’s introduction to the county’s financial concerns came as a member of the Greater Milwaukee Committee and a task force that concluded in 2006 that county government could be phased out, its services parceled out to the state, other municipalities and newly formed parks and transit districts.

As a candidate for county office, however, Abele has been more cautious. He says he’ll put his faith in detailed studies and proven practices to fix what’s wrong with the county.

Restructuring the county’s mental health programs by shifting to smaller, community-based care is something Abele has identified for change. He also wants to push for creation of a local government insurance pool as a way to trim county health care costs. He says he’ll cut back on county employees’ use of cars and cell phones and will expand energy audits of county buildings.

Stone on defensive

Stone found himself on the defensive over Walker’s collective bargaining bill since voting twice for it in February, following a three-week period in which news coverage of protests in Madison overshadowed other political news.

While often protesting critic’s claims he’d be a carbon copy of Walker, Stone said he and Walker shared a similar conservative philosophy. Stone also advocated for county policies pioneered by Walker, including ruling out tax increases, pursuing a possible long-term lease of Mitchell International Airport to a private firm and relying on business expansion to drive a county financial resurgence.

A key part of Stone’s plan to fix the county’s long-term budget shortfall was to reform employee health care with a wellness incentives and primary care available in or near county offices.

The job pays $129,114 a year. Unlike Walker, who returned up to $50,000 in salary a year during his tenure, Abele says he’ll accept the full pay.

By: Amy Hetzer and Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 6, 2011

April 6, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Waterloo: Where The GOP Sees Demons To Attack, Voters See Themselves

Wisconsin Democrats are filing recall petitions that could result in the Wisconsin Senate being controlled by Democrats. Summer 2011 will bring white-hot midterm elections and a potential Wisconsin Waterloo for the GOP that is spreading to other states and could shift the tectonic plate of American politics.

In Wisconsin, Ohio and other states a powerful backlash is brewing from giant swaths of voters who failed to turn out for Democrats or regret their votes for Republicans in 2010. They feel demonized by GOP attacks and financially threatened by GOP policies. They will be highly motivated to vote.

Wisconsin Democrats could win the three state Senate seats necessary to turn control of the Wisconsin Senate to the Dems, because voters do not want political holy wars against teachers, public workers or anyone else. They do not want fanatics in politics, fiats by government, incendiary partisanship or crusades against collective bargaining, which voters widely believe is a valued part of the American system.

Recently the Polish trade union Solidarity, one of the great voices for freedom in modern history, endorsed the Wisconsin workers and condemned the attacks on them by GOP Gov. Scott Walker. More voters agree with Solidarity than with Wisconsin Republicans.

In Ohio, the widely unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich, who was caught on tape verbally abusing a police officer who gave him a ticket, has now added both police and firefighters to the list of enemies he attacked in legislation. Most Americans view firefighters and police as heroes who risk their lives to save their neighbors, not as demons to attack or targets to have their financial security threatened.

In Washington, the GOP has added the venerable AARP to its enemies list. AARP has long represented tens of millions of seniors with honor. For Republicans to launch a Nixonian attack against them is an act of political stupidity that will not be well-received by senior voters.

Republicans wage holy war against National Public Radio, one of the fairest media in the nation, and one that provides vital service to small-town America and includes many Republicans among its fans.

Republicans threaten to shut down the government to pursue their war against Planned Parenthood, which is supported by many Republican women, while they attack a long list of programs important to mainstream American women. Many Republicans oppose efforts to achieve pay equity for women.

House Republicans even want to cut programs that help homeless veterans, cuts that Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) speak eloquently against.

The Texas GOP is likely to attempt to cheat Hispanics out of representation in Congress through a gerrymander similar to that once orchestrated by disgraced former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay. Many Republicans use tactics on immigration that are anathema to many Hispanics.

House Republicans will be widely blamed for any government shutdown or economic collapse from a failure to extend the debt ceiling if they pursue their partisan and ideological vendettas and refuse to accept 50-50 offers from Democrats.

A Wisconsin Waterloo is a real danger to Republicans. Where the GOP sees demons to attack, many voters see themselves. 

By: Brent Budowsky, The Hill, April 4, 2011

April 5, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, States, Voters, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Maine Labor History Mural, US Department of Labor: “Put It Up Or Pay Up”

If Maine Gov. Paul LePage doesn’t wish to display a mural depicting the state’s labor history, then the U.S. Department of Labor wants back the federal money used to create it.

The department said Monday that LePage violated the terms of a federal grant that paid for most of the mural’s $60,000 cost when he removed the artwork from state offices last month.

The request for reimbursement came in a letter to state labor officials from Gay Gilbert, administrator of the U.S. Labor Department’s office of unemployment insurance. The letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

Gilbert’s letter is the latest twist in a growing national dispute over LePage’s decision to remove the 36-foot mural from the state Labor Department headquarters. LePage said it was biased towards organized labor at the expense of his pro-business agenda.

The removal has prompted a federal lawsuit against LePage and two others.

The mural, in place since 2008, depicts scenes that include a paper mill strike in the town of Jay, a strike at a shoe plant in Lewiston, women shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works and former U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, a native of Maine.

Adam Fisher, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Labor, said he did not have any immediate comment on the letter.

LePage’s removal of the mural attracted attention at a time when lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states are considering measures to restrict collective bargaining by public workers. Labor advocates, artists and others say the mural depicts an important part of Maine history and belongs at the state’s Department of Labor office.

LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett said last week that the mural is in storage and awaits transfer to “a suitable venue for public display.” She did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the demand for repayment of federal funds.

The mural was created in large part with a federal grant that provided 63 percent of the cost of art work. Gilbert’s letter said the state must return 63 percent of the current fair market value of the mural, which could now be higher than the $60,000 it cost to create it.

“Alternatively, the state could again display the mural in its headquarters or in another state employment security building,” the letter said.

U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has not commented publicly on the mural dispute. Her spokesman, Carl Fillicio, said she “has monitored the situation and asked staff to look into it.”

LePage’s decision to remove the mural was prompted by an anonymous letter to the governor’s office — signed by “A Secret Admirer” — that said the mural was propaganda in line with “communist North Korea where they use these murals to brainwash the masses.”

By: Associated Press, Bangor Daily News, April 4, 2011

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, GOP, Gov Paul LePage, Ideology, Labor, Maine, Politics, Republicans, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , , | Leave a comment

From Memphis To Madison: A Dream For The Middle Class That Cannot Be Allowed To Die

“I Am a Man” read the sandwich board posters worn by public sanitation workers in Memphis. Their strike in 1968 came at a time when African American men were still called “boy” to their faces. Their fight for dignity, fair wages and the hope of a better future for their families drew the support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in that city 43 years ago today.

The critical services that public employees provided in our communities then and now range from the most humble, such as garbage collectors, to the most dangerous (police officers and firefighters) to the most profoundly influential on the lives of our children. 

Yet in state after state, the collective bargaining rights of dedicated teachers and other public employees have been denied or are in serious jeopardy just as they were in the civil rights era. The same politicians pushing these laws are attacking affirmative action, assailing voting rights and pushing laws to block any path to citizenship for millions of hardworking immigrants in this country.

King made clear connections between what he called “our glorious struggle for civil rights” and collective bargaining rights. He called the labor movement “the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress . . . [and] gave birth to . . . new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.”  

Heirs of King’s legacy who serve our communities see similarities between the struggle in Memphis then and the struggles in Madison and Columbus now.

Dian Palmer, a public health nurse in Milwaukee whose family moved to Wisconsin from Mississippi for better jobs and greater opportunity, starkly remembers the days when her family faced housing discrimination in their new home state because of the color of their skin.  

Palmer is “disgusted” by the ways that what is going on today reminds her of those times. Last month Wisconsin state legislators stripped away collective bargaining rights, wages and benefits from nurses like Palmer, teachers and other public workers and made cavalier comments about how they should all just “get over it,” she says.

Lynn Radcliffe, an administrative assistant in the Cleveland schools’ special education program, testified to Congress last month that today’s public employees are facing the same harsh treatment the Memphis sanitation workers did — “being treated as less than, disrespected and economically deprived of earning a decent wage to take care of their families.”

The powerful business interests that align today against working people hearken back to the “downtown business improvement association” that opposed justice for the striking Memphis sanitation workers. Today’s shadowy 527 groups funded by the Koch brothers and their oil conglomerate — and other bad-actor corporations and executives — would destroy our nation’s last real defense against unrestricted corporate power and Third World wages and working conditions for all. 

The Memphis city workers in 1968 tapped into the spiritual power of our common humanity — a source of power that seems to be gaining traction as people stand up for state and local workers today. A key part of King’s theology was the stranger on the Jericho road, which turned around conventional thinking about uniting with people who we perceive as not being like us.

 We saw this spirit reflected in the tens of thousands of people who rallied in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states to fight for a vibrant middle class for all workers. Protesters from all walks of life accepted King’s challenge: “The question is not, If I stop to help the [sanitation workers], what will happen to me?  The question is, If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” 

In today’s jobless recovery, people of color and women are being hit hard. As public services are cut along with collective bargaining rights, women are disproportionately among those laid off and facing income cuts.  The “underemployment” rate of discouraged and part-time workers is roughly 15 percent for whites but 25 percent for black and Hispanic workers. 

This week, at pulpits, synagogues and other locations nationwide, ordinary people will commemorate King’s death by standing together to tell the powerful interests and the politicians who carry out their wishes that enough is enough.

We are uniting to stand up for the dream of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “a tolerable life.” In today’s terms, that translates as  “a middle class life.” A path into the middle class for millions of Americans — black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American — is not a dream that we will allow to die.

By: Benjamin Todd Jealous and Mary Kay Henry, The Washington Post, April 3, 2011

April 4, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Congress, Corporations, Democracy, Equal Rights, Governors, Human Rights, Immigrants, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Middle Class, Politics, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | , , , , | Leave a comment

Women And “Husband Issues”: We Work Hard, But Who’s Complaining?

When a couple dozen brawny, uniformed and helmeted firefighters, led by a bagpipe player, marched through a crowd of pro-union protesters in Madison, Wis., last month, I knew, almost to a certainty, that Gov. Scott Walker had picked a fight with the wrong crew.

As the firemen assembled on the Statehouse steps, the swelling, boisterous crowd, which had raucously encircled and occupied the Capitol for days, pushing back against Governor Walker’s plan to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, all of a sudden slipped into silent reverence.

While the plan exempts policemen and firemen, the first responders rallied under the oldest first principle of militant unionism: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. And the presence of these mostly white, husky, mustachioed firemen — many with soot still speckling their uniforms — had highlighted a major issue that generally goes undetected by the news media when covering labor conflicts.

In short, it’s what my old union called “the Husband Issue.”

Allow me to explain.

I spent five years as an organizer, and hundreds of hours in the living rooms, at the kitchen tables and on the porches of countless low-wage nursing assistants, hospital food workers and clinical lab scientists, trying to talk them into our union.

These were almost always women. No surprise, really. Whatever growth there has been in organized labor over the last few years — and there hasn’t been much — has been primarily among service workers, that near-invisible class of underpaid workers who clean bedpans, vacuum hotel rooms and mop the floors of operating rooms. I recall one heady organizing drive in Southern California that unionized 9,000 hospital workers, and they were almost exclusively low-wage immigrant women.

Most of those I was recruiting had never been in a union before, had no relatives in unions, and were being introduced to a strange new concept, collective bargaining. For any question a woman had, whether about dues, strikes, seniority, pensions or what she had to gain from forming a union, I had an answer ready to go. (Dues give you power; strikes are rare; every one deserves to retire with dignity. You want a direct say in your wages and benefits, don’t you?).

There was one rebuff, nevertheless, against which I was utterly powerless. It had nothing to do with politics, the boss or dues. Seven simple but devastating words: “I need to ask my husband first.”

Despite the endless training we got on how to ease workers’ doubts, we could never really establish a convincing response for the Husband Issue. It would shift the dynamic so suddenly, and require treading on such volatile emotional territory, that we would often politely say goodbye and scuttle out the door.

(For the record: No man I ever spoke to said, “Excuse me, I have to check first with my wife,” before signing a union card.)

In the current storm over public employee unions rattling the Midwest, this issue of gender is usually overlooked. Women, working as state clerks, teachers and nurses, dominate the organized public sector. And just as Rust Belt Republicans have deftly exploited longstanding stereotypes about public workers as lazy, pampered and gorging themselves on the taxpayers’ teat, they have also made cynical use of gender clichés to try to keep female-dominated unions in their place.

The reality that women are increasingly the breadwinners, providing the financial stability for middle-class families through a good union job, doesn’t seem to inform the Republican state of mind. Instead, women’s income and benefits are still perceived by many as strictly supplementary to the nuclear family, if not entirely superfluous. And therefore they are a prime target for budget cuts.

In addition, pink-collar jobs already require a saint-like disposition and an overall doing-more-with-less attitude. Cutting the pensions of these female workers, freezing their wages and curtailing their rights seems, to many, one of a piece with the suffering and forbearance reserved for our mothers.

The error committed by the antiunion governors is that their attack this time around was so slashing that it cut to the very marrow of organized labor: middle-class white men who saw their futures and their rights threatened. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich even signed a law that goes so far as to prohibit policemen and firemen from negotiating over their staffing, or even the number of patrol cars and trucks at their disposal.

Police officers and firemen? Who is going to successfully argue that these guys are pampered and spoiled?

Call it what you want, and ascribe it to whatever motivation you please, but there’s just a radically different emotional atmosphere, a very divergent set of optics and ultimately an explosive political dynamic established when stoic firemen in bulky parkas and red helmets are on the picket line rather than teachers in pink T-shirts.

For better or for worse, they are still the Alpha Males of American society, our designated and respected protectors. They might be routinely taken for granted as a reliable conservative force, but someone forgot they are also still union men. These are men who recall clearly how the old-line male-dominated industrial unions — the steelworkers, autoworkers, miners and millworkers — have been whittled down or expunged. And to fiddle around with their livelihoods is like watching someone push your dad around. The reaction is an instinctive anger, horror and a sensation of the bottom falling out.

So, when those firemen took the steps of the Madison Capitol a few weeks ago, I was among those heartened and stirred. I could not resist, though, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. I fear if it had been just some state home care workers or public school kindergarten teachers up there on the steps, it would not have ignited the same public sympathy and this fight would not be taken as seriously as it is.

By: Natasha Vargus-Cooper, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 2, 2011

April 3, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Employment Descrimination, Equal Rights, Governors, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Women | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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