Wisconsin: Reverse Cloward-Piven

10Mar/111

Wisconsin: Reverse Cloward-Piven

In one of last night's posts, I mentioned that Idaho, Ohio and possibly Iowa are among the states joining Wisconsin in passing legislation limiting the public unions' privileges to collectively bargain. Typically, given who their fellow travelers are, they've come out with a lot of nonsense about how this is a human rights issue. Anything leftists advocate is somehow a human rights issue, and they'll advance any kind of convoluted pseudo-logic to try to make their case.

Right below, Enoch's got some observations, and while I don't disagree with him, it's certainly not time to get too carried away: there are going to be court challenges, and lots of screaming, and goons threatening and probably even resorting to violence--because to them, that's what democracy looks like. Here's Dem State Senator Spencer Coggs demagoguing about "stolen democracy."

When the Assembly tries to convene at the Capitol today to ratify this bill, now it's passed the Senate, you can expect a pretty ugly scene. And when you do (and considering all the violent rhetoric that's been spewed by unions and their supporters in the past 12 hours or so), keep in mind this scene:

Having "rammed through" legislation that many legislators did not bother to read, and told American's that it had to be passed so that they could find out that was in it, Nancy Pelosi and her gavel decided provocatively to pass through "Teabaggers" assembled on Capitol Hill to oppose the HCR monstrosity. The idea was to create an ugly scene that would discredit the protesters, and although there were thousands of cameras covering the event, none managed to record the spitting or racism that was claimed by some of the black people in Pelosi's entourage, even when Andrew Breitbart offered $10k for that evidence.

You may compare and contrast at your leisure with what transpires today.

For so long, WEAC (in particular) has had such success in getting its way that the runaway Democrat Senators were apparently confident, while harping on the idea of negotiation, that negotiation meant that they weren't going to have to concede anything. Now they are shocked! shocked! to discover that there was an end to the other side's patience. But while the unions (including such folks as the AFL-CIO and SEIU, whose issues are different, since they represent non-governmental employees, no matter how they try to frame the issues as identical) staked everything on Wisconsin, Idaho, Ohio and Iowa were going ahead with similar legislation. Ohio has more electoral votes than Wisconsin, but the focus on Wisconsin was driven by the idea that if they could be rolled back there, they were vulnerable everywhere--along, of course, with the view of Chicago pols that Wisconsin is properly part of Greater "Chicagoland."

So, as I discussed with Jim Nolte last night on Twitter, the combined effect of the various proposals before the various state legislatures, whether concerted or not, was in effect a Cloward-Piven strategy of overloading the system. In practice, the strategy has been used, for example, by ACORN and other political groups overwhelming state elections officials with voting registrations, many or most of which have been faked, in order to sow confusion about results and bring them to Democrat Secretaries of State and before courts, where they are almost always decided in Democrats' favor. Or, to use another metaphor, Scott Walker used a rope-a-dope strategy.

What you will see today is a variety of secular religious fervor. It's the same kind of fervor that drove Soviet Marxism, which had its own etiology and its own anagogical millennium. This is brought into focus by a case decided in Canada a couple of days ago.

A labor relations board in Canada has granted an Adventist worker the right to not join a union because of her religious beliefs, raising questions about whether religion should trump labor laws.

The Saskatchewan Labor Relations Board ruled last month (Feb.) in favor of an unnamed 24-year-old woman who argued that her Seventh-day Adventist beliefs forbid her from joining trade unions, allowing her the right to opt out.

However, she will still be subject to any collective bargaining agreements, and her union dues will be collected but diverted to charity.

Freedom of religion can still trump unionism in Canada, apparently, so long as your dues are paid to charity (whether chosen by the board or the woman, the article does not say). Considering the accommodations that are made for Muslims in Canada, this was a shrewd decision.

Where there is freedom of association, there must also be freedom of dissociation. We draw the line at membership in the state, of course, though even there there are provisions for conscientious objection in the matter of military service. Many of the same people who regard this provision as exceedingly important (as I, too, do) nevertheless think that you should have the "right" to be forced into a union via Card Check legislation, willy nilly, and that hospitals, regardless of their religious affiliations, should be required to provide abortions within the legal limits. So, it is conscience for me, but not for thee. Why? Because I am enlightened, and you are trapped in delusion.

If you don't believe my analysis of the religious aspect, you can go here, or check out the Wisconsin AFL-CIO's Twitter stream here. As I've said many times, the puzzlement regarding Obama's religious convictions comes from their not being "religious," strictly speaking.

State Rep. Nick Milroy is the Democratic state representative from Wisconsin’s 73rd assembly district. He was on America’s Radio News with anchors Chris Salcedo and Lori Lundin. Salcedo pointed out that union membership was split by their votes in 2010, 49% for Democrats and 47% for Republicans, nearly an even split. But unions donated 93% of their total contributions to Democrats in 2010, and 7% to Republicans or others. The question was asked if the assemblyman could understand why Republicans were not in favor of having tax payer funded dues go to fund Democrat campaigns? The assemblyman contended that public employees can opt out of the unions. But when pressed about how even those that opt out must pay union dues, the assemblyman suggested that those people that didn’t want to be part of a union could find other work.

There shall be no establishment of religion, unless it's collectivist.