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Aware that there would be a loud outcry if he proposed legislation to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights, Walker inserted a provision in his budget stripping workers of their right to bargain. By including it in the budget, he bypassed all hearings or opportunity for public comment, and is pushing the Wisconsin legislature to vote on it as early as next week.

Under Walker's immediate plan, all collective bargaining rights would be removed for state and local public employees starting July 1, except when it comes to wages. But any salary increase they seek could be no more than the consumer price index, unless voters in the affected jurisdiction approved a higher raise.

Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the next contract is settled. Public employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues.

The proposal would effectively remove unions' right to negotiate in any meaningful way. Local law enforcement and fire employees, as well as state troopers and inspectors would be exempt.

Walker's plan also calls for state employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to their pensions starting April 1. They would have to contribute at least 12.6 percent toward their health care. Those two items would generate $30 million by July 1 and roughly $300 million over the next two years when combined with the other concessions.

Walker insisted he was not targeting public employees and that his primary concern was balancing the budget. His bill also calls for selling off state heating plants to save money and refinancing state debt to save $165 million in the fiscal year that ends June 30.

As you might imagine, an action like this might trigger a strike, or at least, the threat of one. No worries, because Walker is ready to call out the National Guard if such a thing happens.

Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond if there is any unrest among state employees in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights.

Walker said Friday that he hasn't called the Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any problems.

Walker says he has every confidence that state employees will continue to show up for work and do their jobs. But he says he's been working on contingency plans for months just in case they don't.

Russ Feingold has a thing or two to say about Walker's unilateral attempt to strip workers of their rights:

Governor Walker’s request to the State Legislature to eliminate nearly all of the collective-bargaining rights for thousands of Wisconsin workers is big government at its worst. No private employer can do what the governor proposes, nor should it. For decades, Wisconsin has protected the rights of workers to collectively bargain with their employer on wages, benefits, workplace rules, and many other aspects of their employment. The governor is wrong to suggest that public workers are responsible for the state’s budget woes, and he is wrong to use that bogus excuse to strip them of rights that millions of other American workers have.

And I'd go one step further and say he has no right to threaten law-abiding citizens exercising their right to assembly and free speech by bringing in the National Guard. What does he think that will accomplish? Does he expect to have guardsmen pick up the garbage, man state services' switchboards?

The last time the National Guard was called in for used violence in connection with labor disputes was 1968, during the Memphis sanitation strike. Are we now going back to those days? Again?

The Republican Governors' Association spent over $5 million to get Walker elected. They're not shy about it -- it's right on their "congratulations, Scott Walker" page.

The Republican Governors Association congratulates Governor-elect Scott Walker on his election as governor of Wisconsin. Scott Walker succeeds Democratic governor Jim Doyle. The Republican Governors Association was a key investor in Scott Walker’s victory spending a total of $5 million.

What they don't mention is that the RGA has its own branch in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's state disclosure laws are not all that transparent, so reporting is sketchy. But millions went through that RGA branch. Millions, donated by Koch Industries, Texas builder Bob Perry, Target Enterprises, and many other corporate interests. Some of that money stayed in Wisconsin. Some went to other candidates in other states, laundered through an opaque reporting system in Wisconsin.

All of that money was spent with the goal of breaking unions, promoting corporate profits, and creating a permanent underclass to serve their wealthy overlords.

Now Walker has the resources of the National Guard and the mind of a dictator. Is that really what the people of Wisconsin thought they were getting when they voted for him?

A while ago, during a conference at the Army's war college, Prof Andrew Bacevich made a comment that the United States had a greater national security interest in the drug wars south of the border than in Afghanistan. He probably got a lot of criticism for that statement, but was he wrong? I don't think so. This AP article talks about the bullets that are flying over the river into El Paso.

At least eight bullets have been fired into El Paso in the last few weeks from the rising violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, one of the world's most dangerous places. And all American police can do is shrug because they cannot legally intervene in a war in another country. The best they can do is warn people to stay inside.

"There's really not a lot you can do right now," El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. "Those gun battles are breaking out everywhere, and some are breaking out right along the border."

Police say the rounds were not intentionally fired into the U.S. But wildly aimed gunfire has become common in Juarez, a sprawling city of shanty neighborhoods that once boomed with manufacturing plants. It's ground zero in Mexico's relentless drug war.

There is an amusing side to this story (in a twisted kind of way). Of all people, Governor Rick "Let Us Secede From the Union" Perry is losing his cool and is calling for the federales to come save him from the border war. He thinks that there are bombs going off in El Paso (actually not happening). Again, back to the AP article:

And Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement demanding more security.

"It's time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a significant force of personnel and resources to the border to protect our homeland," Perry said.

Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman, said the governor believes that more security - in the form of federal agents and even troops - could all but shut down the border to smuggling and help put Mexico's warring cartels out of business.

No, it's not that simple, Gov. Perry. You don't get to bad-mouth the federal government only when it's politically convenient. You don't get to refuse federal stimulus funds and make wild statements about "state rights" and then turtle up when the shots start firing. As governor, you have the ability to move National Guard troops down to the border - go do it. Send some Tea Party militias and Minutemen people, too. Make sure they're well-armed - well, I guess you don't need to do that, they already are. So where are your balls, big man? Are you running a self-sufficient Republic or is Texas actually part of the Union?

Just another example of Republican governors who can't stop running to the federal treasury while badmouthing the current administration's attempts to govern. Same shit, different day.

The Flawed Report on Dan Rather

By James C. Goodale

(Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School, is the former Vice Chairman and General Counsel of The New York Times and represented the newspaper in the Pentagon Papers case. He is Host/Producer of the TV program The Digital Age. An earlier version of the article in this issue appeared in the New York Law Journal. (April 2005)
Report of the Independent Review Panel on the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday Segment "For the Record" Concerning President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service...read on

Inside Politics:

Woodruff: As we reported a little while ago in our blog segment, the Internet is abuzz with reaction to comments by New York Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey. The congressman over the weekend shared his views about the now disputed CBS News report about President Bush's Air National Guard service. Representative Maurice Hinchey is with me now, he joins us from Albany, New York.

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REP. MAURICE HINCHEY (D), NEW YORK: And then the issue of the CBS Dan Rather event came up, and I said that there were false documents or documents which were falsified and presented as being accurate and there was a question as to where those documents came from. And in the context of the discussion I suggested that -- my theory was that I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the White House political operation, headed up by Karl Rove.

More from Digby: It's Irresponsible Not To As Peggy Noonan so memorably wrote about the "little Elian" drama:

Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Michele Malkin on Hinchey here. LGF here

BY THEIR WORKS, YE SHALL KNOW THEM

Change the channel. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops

I wish I could be my usual smartass self, but when I read things like this and this, I just want to cry - or scream. Juan Cole:

Az-Zaman reports that telephone calls with residents of Mosul reveal that the guerrillas who took control of the city's streets the day before yesterday have burned all the police stations in the city and have released from jails all the criminals that had been incarcerated in them. In the center of Mosul, eyewitnesses said, the offices of government service agencies and economic targets had been set ablaze. A number of shops were attacked and/or looted.

Armed men roamed the streets and manned checkpoints between city quarters. Mosque preachers called on Mosul residents to flood into the streets to protect their quarters and government offices and shops. The main streets seemed deserted. American troops had withdrawn from the center of the city, but maintained control of bridges.

All signs of Iraqi national guardsmen and police had disappeared. The police chief of Ninevah province resigned (other reports say he was fired by the Allawi government).

US military spokesmen denied that guerrillas were in control of the city, and maintained that US troops and Iraqi national guardsmen continued to advance into it. US warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected safe houses of the guerrillas. Guerrillas had killed one American serviceman in Mosul on Thursday.

MF

CBS) Wed., Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. ET/PT
Correspondent Dan Rather talks exclusively to former Texas House Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, a Democrat, about the role Barnes says he played in getting President George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard -- and why he now regrets it.

Bush fell short on duty at Guard

Records show pledges unmet

By The Globe Spotlight Team | September 8, 2004

In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records,

White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

WASHINGTON - Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush (news - web sites)'s Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.

For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.

No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.

Ah yes, do we have issues still The American Street

WASHINGTON — In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi looters loaded powerful explosives into pickup trucks and drove the material off the Al Qaqaa ammunition site, according to a group of U.S. Army reservists and National Guardsmen who said they witnessed the looting.

The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft because they were outnumbered by looters. Soldiers from one unit — the 317th Support Center based in Wiesbaden, Germany — said they sent a message to commanders in Baghdad requesting help to secure the site but received no reply.

Despite the protective shield of limited morality that the Fifty-One-Percenters used to maintain their denial of reality on Election Day, the truth will keep thwapping them in the head for weeks to come.

I’m looking forward to:

1) More details of the lousy troop support from the CiC.

2) More photos and statistics of the country we’re destroying to save it for a semblance of patriarchal strong-man democracy.

3) An end to the 15 month coverup of the Valerie Plame outing.

4) The rest of the Abu Ghraib picture show that’s being hidden.

5) Oil at $62-$63/bbl, within 7 months.

6) More intel insiders exposing the stuff Porter Goss is now covering up.

7) Any evidence at all that our hundred billion dollar Homeland Security Agency can deliver anything useful besides their stupid Crayola Alerts.

I’m not looking forward to:

8) The denial that will come when global terrorists attack again, that Bush bears any responsibility for at least two coordinated attacks on American soil. The other 42 presidents don’t bear that on their records. But I believe Bush will. And I believe the Fifty-One percenters will deceive themselves and say “God did this because some terrified teenager refused to carry her baby to term. God bless George Bush.”

Then they’ll demand that we nuke half the world as payback agains all the heathens.

I never would have dreamed that last one up on my own. God spoke to me and told me this was coming. He said: “Beware the False Prophet Number Forty Three; he shall surely lead the sheep to their slaughter.”

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(video from Heather's post at Video Cafe)

A gay National Guard platoon leader - an Arab linguist who has already served one tour in Iraq - was canned after coming out on the Rachel Maddow show this week. I think it's worth mentioning that the military has already adjusted its rules enough to allow felons convicted of violent crimes to join the military, but for some reason, gay people are just too icky to serve and you know how President Obama hates to upset anyone:

MADDOW: You knew there was a very good possibility that by coming out publicly on this show, you would get kicked out of the military.

But I have to ask what your reaction was when you actually got the letter this week.

CHOI: Well, when I got the letter, I was extremely angry. I was angry -- I mean, the letter is basically saying bottom line, Lieutenant Dan Choi, you're fired. You're a West Point graduate, you're fired. You're an Arabic linguist, you're fired. You deployed to Iraq, you're willing to deploy again, doesn't matter. Because you're gay, that's enough grounds to kick you out.

But the biggest thing that I'm angry about is what it says about my unit. It says that my unit suffered negative good order -- negative actions -- good order and discipline suffered. That's a big insult to my unit.

I mean, all the insult that the letter can do, to say that I'm worthy of being fired, you know, that's nothing comparing to saying that my unit is not professional enough, that my unit does not deserve to have a leader that is willing to deploy, that has skills to contribute.

MADDOW: In terms of the good order and discipline allegation, what has been the reaction that you got from your fellow troops, from your unit after you told them that you are gay? Was there upset, was there discord? Were there any negative consequences to your ability to function as a group?

CHOI: Two weeks after I appeared on the show, we had National Guard training. Basically, we went to marksmanship qualification. We shot our rifles. And I was leading some of the training as officer in charge, telling them to cease fire or fire, and I thought, for four days, nobody was saying anything, so maybe they don't watch TV or maybe they don't read the "Army Times." But at the end of the training, so many people came up to me, my peers, my subordinates, people that outranked me, folks that have been in the Army -- and this is an infantry unit, infantry men that -- coming up to me and saying, hey, sir, hey, Lieutenant Choi, we know, and we don't care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team. And what leaders do, they look to see how can they make the best team before they go to war.

That's what they care about.

MADDOW: Dan, what recourse do you have? Do you plan to challenge this?

CHOI: Well, the letter says that I can basically do a couple of things. I can resign right now and get an honorable discharge, or I can fight it.

I intend fully to fight it tooth and nail. I believe that "don't ask, don't tell" is wrong, and what we really need to be encouraging soldiers to do is to don't lie, don't hide, don't discriminate, and don't weaken the military. That's what we need to be promoting.

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