Scott Walker Goes To Hell and the Fights That Shouldn't Be Picked

Here's a Canadian political story that my American friends might find interesting.

Back in the fall of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government had won another minority as the economy was collapsing worldwide. Harper was pretty damned pleased with himself, despite the fact that he only managed to barely beat a guy who couldn't speak English without giving everyone a bad case of the giggles. That being the case, he did what Harper is regularly expected to do: He went in for the kill, and he fucked it up majestically.

Canadian prime ministers have the ability to introduce something called an economic statement whenever they want. They're supposed to serve as a mini-budget, but they're mostly political tricks, and patently fucking worthless ones at that. Anyhow, Harper sent his jabbering dupe of a finance minister out to announce that the government intended to end the taxpayer subsidies to political parties that replaced corporate and union donations. The Tories get shitloads of money in small donations from everyday hillbillies, so who gave a shit?

Well, the opposition Liberals and the New Democratic Party did. They had come to rely on those subsidies and wouldn't survive without them. Remember how I said that the Conservatives had only managed to win a minority in that fall's election? This is where that becomes important. The Grits and the NDP decided to form a coalition, which would have been supported by the Bloc Quebecois and would have constituted a majority of Parliament, effectively throwing Harper and his shitheel party out of power.

Harper responded to this the way he usually does, by becoming a blubbering little pussy, putting on that stupid fucking blue sweater vest of his, and begging for his life. After a very long and very uncomfortable meeting with the Governor General, Harper was allowed to essentially suspend Parliament for a couple of months, just like Idi Amin would have done it. Then he sat around and watched the contemptible Liberals commit suicide in public, just like they always do.

There's a lot that Wisconsin's new Republican governor, Scott Walker, could learn from that story, but won't because he doesn't seem all that bright. Chief among those lessons is that just because you can do something, even if you believe it's right, doesn't mean that you should, particularly if it's going to cause you all kinds of pain and not accomplish what you say it will.

Harper's threat to cut the subsidy to political parties wouldn't have done a lick of fucking good for the economy in the wake of the greatest financial catastrophe in eighty years, just like Walker's ending of most collective bargaining for public employees isn't going to "repair" Wisconsin's budget woes. The unions already agreed to give Walker all of the cuts that he was asking for. And if there's such a massive goddamned emergency, he wouldn't have also passed $130 million in tax cuts that he can't afford.

What it does do is gut the Democratic Party. Here's how it works: If unions can't collectively bargain, then there's very little point in public employees paying dues to them. Without mandatory dues, the unions effectively cease to exist and can't make political contributions to Democrats, who shortly thereafter follow the unions into the abyss. It's actually pretty neat when you think about it. In fact, the Republicans are so proud of themselves that some Wisconsin GOP nobody was actually dumb enough to go out in public and say what this was really about just yesterday.

Like Harper, Walker dressed a political trick up as budget measure. But there's a difference between the two. Stephen Harper used parliamentary tactics to ensure his survival that are unavailable to Walker. More importantly, Harper begun the crisis looking like a loser who came out on top. The opposite could very well be true in Wisconsin. It's entirely possible that he'll have won the battle and still lose the war.

Before I continue, I should point out a couple of things. I don't have much use for public service unions and would be much happier if they didn't exist. I'm also not a particularly big fan of the Democratic Party. And there few things that I admire as deeply as political dirty tricks. When they're clever, few things on earth as are as beautiful to watch.

What I do have massive problems with are lying and blatant fucking hypocrisy. Scott Walker and his GOP toadies pretty much everywhere are guilty of both.

Since I've already addressed the lying, let's move right to the hypocrisy.

Another thing that happened in the fall of '08 is that the U.S government gave investment banks untold trillions of dollars to protect them from the consequences of their own boundless stupidity. However, in the spring of 2009, those same banks - along with the bankrupt insurance titan AIG - started handing out jaw-droppingly large bonuses to the very people who so gloriously fucked everything up the previous year. The resulting public outrage was as awesome as it was predictable.

But Republicans everywhere responded by saying "Oh no, you don't understand. Contracts are sacred! If they're not actually mentioned in the Bible, they fucking well should be!" And you know what? I agreed with them. In public and everything! As much as I hated seeing taxpayer money being doled out as demonstrably unearned bonuses to those craven cocksucker bankers, a contract is a contract, and you can't maintain a civil society if they're violated willy-nilly based on nothing more than the political mood of slack-jawed retards who are equally upset that the wrong person won American Idol.

The only problem is that I didn't hear much of that from the dishonest pricks who are now fitting Governor Walker for a fucking cape. Remember, the Wisconsin public service not only surrendered benefits that they won, they had their rights stripped from them in the middle of their contract period. But there hasn't been a friggin' word about "the sanctity of a contract" in the last few weeks from Walker or any of his sycophants. Interesting how that works, ain't it?

There was an old video clip shown at the very end of The Daily Show Thursday night that I had completely forgotten about. It was about thirty years old, and showed an nice elderly man in an opened-necked shirt, speaking in front of the Statue of Liberty. People sure seemed to like him and the things he had to say.

Among the things he said was this: "These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. The values that have inspired other dissidents under Communist domination. They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."

The nice man I saw on TV last night is pictured on the left. His name was Ronald Reagan and he said the above on Labor Day, 1980. Like Scott Walker, Republicans adore the man, despite the fact that they've forgotten everything that he ever said, did or stood for.



Oh, and that wasn't the only time he said it.



I expect that you'll be seeing those clips a lot in the coming weeks and months. That's because Governor Walker has put a giant bullseye on his ass and on the ass of Republicans nationwide. He has made himself the number one target of every union on the planet, and if they can't recall him (and I suspect that they'll be able to), they'll liquidate every Republican in the state of Wisconsin.

Remember, the unions have billions of dollars between them and the Citizens United decision in the Supreme Court made it possible for them to use as much of it as they want against whoever they want, wherever they want to in the country. This isn't going to be like union involvement in most campaigns, partly because of Citizens United and partly because the they're going to see this as a fight for their very survival, which is smart because it is.

I'm going to completely ignore the national Democrats in this. But rest assured, the DNC is going to spend whatever time and energy is necessary recruiting the best candidates possible.

I'm actually shocked about how this is playing out, both in Wisconsin and nationally. Walker's approval numbers at home have dropped nine points, from 52% to 43%, which is impressive when you consider that no one even knew who the fucking guy was three weeks ago. The really surprising poll was one that showed that something like 60% of Americans supported collective bargaining rights, despite the fact that only about 15% of Americans belong to a union.

I'm not here to defend public sector unions. As I mentioned earlier, I don't like them. But I do like politics, and this is a battle that the GOP was born to lose. After three weeks of this nonsense and Fox News devoting itself to little else, the numbers aren't shifting in the right direction for the Republicans. And after coverage this intense that has lasted this long, you can safely say that they probably won't.

And the national unions haven't even begun to dump virtually unlimited money into organizing recalls, campaigns and outright political assassinations in a serious way yet. One way or another, the streets of Wisconsin are going to be running red with the blood of the dreams of politicians soon, maybe as early as this summer. And none of it had to happen. This is what happens when blind ideology trumps common sense, which is happening more and more frequently lately.

Remember that story I told you about Stephen Harper at the beginning of this little tirade? Well, Harper survived, but he didn't win. The subsidies that precipitated that constitutional crisis are still there. In the end, he saw his political life flash before his eyes and got absolutely nothing for his trouble.

There are just some fights that you're better off not picking.