Live Reporting from the Wisconsin Protests

The Republican Agenda

● Abolish Labor Unions – Below are the work force conditions set by the unions. Without the unions, corporations are free to alter or abolish set conditions as they see fit.
– Collective Bargaining Rights: Bargaining covers hours, wages, benefits, working conditions, and the rules of the workplace.
– 5 Day Work Week: weekends/2 days off
– 8 hour work day
– 40 hour work week
– Workmen’s compensation
– Unemployment compensation
– Workers protection in the work place
– Sick leave
– Vacation pay
– Maternity leave
● Abolish The Teachers Union [American Federation of Teachers] – Fights for the rights of teachers and higher education employees, who negotiate to protect the efficacy of education caused by random cuts imposed by protectors of tax rates.
● Raise Education Tuition – A proper education becomes harder to achieve. An unintelligent mind is an easily manipulated one.
● Abolish Minimum Wage – Control payroll wages; corporations set the minimum hourly wage.
● Abolish or Privatize Social Security – If this is abolished, no more safety net for the disabled or elderly. If privatized the corporations will control it.
● Raise The Retirement Age – Work until you perish.
● Abolish Pensions – No more retirement security.
● Abolish Child Labor Laws – Corporations decide the age at which one can work.
● Abolish or Defund Health Care [Medicare & Medicaid] – Remove affordable health care.
● Abolish Planned Parenthood – Remove abortion rights, with no exception for rape, incest, or life of the mother, and deny access to birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and other lifesaving care.
● Abolish Consumer Food Protections – Corporations remove government oversight on the foods we eat.
● Deport American Born Children Of Illegal Aliens – Remove the democratic minority vote. It is unconstitutional to deport an American born child.
● Alter The Constitution So That American Born Children Of Illegal Aliens can be deported – Remove the democratic minority vote.
● Abolish NAACP – Remove the Democratic minority vote.
● Defund NPR [National Public Radio] – Silence the public voice.
● Defund PBS [Public Broadcasting System] – Silence the public voice. PBS is the home of Sesame Street.
● Abolish EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] – Protects the public health & environment from unrestricted corporate control.
● Abolish The Green Movement – Stop funding for new energy technologies that would break our dependence on big oil.
● Discredit Climate Change – Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, Republicans in conjunction with Fox News have worked tirelessly to denounce and misinterpret the facts surrounding the severity of growing worldwide climatic events. Climate change has now begun effecting food & commodities pricing around the world. Evidence for climate change is mocked and cast aside by big oil corporations, their lobbyists, and special interest groups, who together with Fox News, seek to curtail the facts in order to maintain corporate and monetary control.

There is a war going on that you may have felt but not heard about, a war on the poor and Middle Class. With the country sprinting to the right, the far right, and the Republicans attempting to carry out there 30 year long agenda, the very foundation of the country is at stake. Republican administrations since Reagan have fought to increase the growing division between the Middle Class, and their Upper Class minority counterparts.

To make matters worse, the 2010 Citizens United landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court stating that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment has placed our electoral process in jeopardy. It means that corporations, which overwhelmingly support and fund the conservative agenda, are allowed to fund their chosen candidates without limit. This was a great victory for the Republicans, and a fatal blow to the Democratic Party, as well as the American people. It’s not that buying elections is anything new, it’s that never being able to even hear the other side is. With unlimited moneys at their disposal the GOP can drown out and silence the opposing side.

Obstacles to the GOP agenda still remain; obstacles that could cause the GOP agenda to be undermined; obstacles that threaten what they now believe is their God given right to govern, and those obstacles are the above cited targets. Abolish them and nothing will be strong enough to oppose them.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was one of those obstacles effectively abolished by the Republicans. ACORN was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low-and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and a living wage that enabled an individual to afford basic necessities, and other social issues.

In 2009, selectively edited videos were released by two conservative activists (posing as a pimp and prostitute) using a hidden camera to elicit damaging responses from low-level ACORN employees that appeared to advise them on how to hide prostitution activities and avoid taxes.

The GOP & Fox News relentlessly targeted ACORN, using these cleverly edited videos to create a nationwide controversy in order to discredit, defund, and ultimately in 2010, take down ACORN.

The truth concerning the videos were eventually brought to light but uncovered too late. The resulting loss of funding from government and private donors has forced ACORN to close their doors effectively silencing the poor and minority vote.

ACORN had worked to support strict state laws against corporate predatory lending practices, organized against foreclosure rescue scams, and steered borrowers toward loan counseling. ACORN and its affiliates advocated for affordable housing by urging the development, rehabilitation, and establishment of housing trust funds at the local, state, and federal levels.

ACORN had aided thousands of poor and low income families, but because they frequently endorsed Democratic candidates and helped with voter registration, they became a conservative target.

The Republican strategy is a simple one, a tried-and-true tactic reminiscent of every authoritarian state’s rise to power throughout history. Position the players, begin a propaganda campaign, create a fiscal crisis that forces intense pressures upon the masses, inject controversy that draws battle lines dividing its citizens, foment anarchy, and with expediency drive forth, passing sweeping legislation in the name of correcting the problems that they themselves created. The outcome of this strategy then diverts all the wealth and power to the upper ruling class. Same old, same old, but for some reason we always forget.

The current propaganda arm of the Republican agenda is the GOP/Fox News Machine. Their constant incessant fear mongering, half truths, carefully crafted spin, and disdain for everything democratic worked so smoothly in the 2010 General Election that most of the US voted Republican.

Although the current Republican agenda has been around since Reagan, the Republicans no longer feel the need to hide it. Attacks on Democratic issues began the moment they took office. The Labor Unions, Planned Parenthood, Social Security, health care, as well as funding for the poor are but a few Democratic targets the Republicans are tirelessly working to abolish.

The Republican’s are not the good guys. They have conspired with billionaires and corporations to shift all wealth and power to the upper class. What has stood in the way of their objective is the Democratic Party. Although the Democratic Party is not perfect, they do tend to fight for the American poor and middle class people; even while the Republicans are off concerning themselves with corporate interests, seizing and maintaining power, acquiring vast wealth for their corporate masters, and launching the latest war.

What we’re witnessing now is the implementation of a well thought out intensely coordinated Republican attack on the Democratic Party. Take the Democratic Party down, and the poor and middle class people fall with them. That’s why the Unions are under attack. Abolish them, as well as every low income and minority organization whose vote supports the Democrats, and Republicans and their rich backers gain total control. Generation after generation would then be living under a one party corporate state with a ruling body having total control over every aspect of their lives. Generations would be subject to a government beholden to the multi-national corporations of which their only loyalty and consideration would be to their shareholders. Eventually we will become China; which is what the corporations wanted in the first place; a ruling class riding high on the backs of low wage workers.

This war between classes is an ideological one that will break the country’s back. What’s at stake now is everything; everything that the working class has worked so hard to gain for the American people over the last hundred years. It is the dismantling of the New Deal, and it begs the question of whether or not there will even be a middle class in the near future if the Republicans are successful in their attempt to usurp power.

The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. That’s not just a cliché, it’s a fact. Wages are falling behind inflation, social mobility is at an all-time low, and a chasm between the haves-and-have-nots has become wider than at any point in our history. We must stand now while we still have the ground, and the voice to do so.

While the rest of the world fights for individual human rights, Republicans seek to curtail the rights we here in America have fought so hard to achieve.

This is why your vote matters. Pay attention. Learn the facts on both sides. Get involved, because what’s at stake is your future.

One last thing: ask yourself this question. Why have the Republicans asked the Poor & Middle Class to sacrifice so much while the top 1% hasn’t been asked to sacrifice anything?

Wake up America and pass this on to everyone.

"Since Tuesday, February 15, tens of thousands of Wisconsin residents have been flooding the State Capitol in Madison in protest of Governor Walker's proposed budget "repair" bill that would end 50 years of collective bargaining for Wisconsin workers."

As a proud member of the TAA-Teaching Assistants' Association of UW-Madison, I would like to enter a correction to the preceding statement and opening statement on this page. The protest began MONDAY February 14 when the TAA lead students and other supporters to the office of the governor. Since then we have maintained the occupation of the Capitol bldg with the support of other unions, businesses and concerned citizens. Here is a video of the first action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-iRipbtjks

Please correct this oversight. The TAA lead the way, initiating the first steps in this revolution on
February 14, 2011

Proper acknowledgement is due. Thank you.

Angela M. Wellman
TAA member, UW-Madison

The protesters need to go after the root of the issue in WI, like elsewhere in this country - corporations. In WI, it's the Koch brothers that are at the root cause of this. The governor is just a puppet of the Koch's.

We are watching you all from here in DC, where the Tea Party wants to throw half of our Section 8 tenants out of their homes with Federal budget cuts.

Like here in DC, you are fighting Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is reported to have gotten a tax break larger than the entire Wisconsin budget deficit, meaning this is a "war of choice" for the governor and the Tea Party.

All eyes are on Wisconsin right now, just as all eyes are on Bahrain and Libya in the wake of the Egyptian People's Victory. This is the "People's Super Bowl" except for one thing: It is the beginning, not the end of the season.

If you all can follow Green Bay's example and sack the Tea Party in Wisconsin, all those who push austerity will be put on notice that they cannot try this without paying a price. You may even prevent a Federal government shutdown that would stop Social Security checks and Medicare checks from going out!