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You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / Outside Agitators!

Outside Agitators!

by Tim F|  February 22, 20119:25 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes

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Being a Republican, Scott Walker could try to make a dime out of his latest gambit to downplay the rabble occupying his Capitol building, but then Hosni Mubarak would ask for royalties.

Seriously, the point is not that anyone will sic secret police on the AFL-CIO. The point is that stupid people with power react to popular resistance in a limited number of ways. Smart ones co-opt credible opposition groups with tit-for-tat patronage and play the opposition against each other, like Walker tried to do when he exempted emergency workers and police. Mediocre leaders blame everything on some outside boogeyman. Awful ones strap a bomb to their chest, metaphorically speaking, and threaten to take out as many people as possible if can’t have their way. Normally that happens just before they lose.

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Reader Interactions

88Comments

  1. 1.

    Ana Gama

    February 22, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    Little Hosni Walker is looking a little lonely out on that perch he wandered onto.

  2. 2.

    cat48

    February 22, 2011 at 9:31 pm

    Yep, Hosni looking for the straps for the bomb now! It’s for the 1500 employees he wants to take out on Monday.

    OT Looks like RAHHHHHHM is the new Mayor of Chitown. He has 55% of the vote with 88% reporting. Good for him.

  3. 3.

    El Cid

    February 22, 2011 at 9:32 pm

    __

    Normally that happens just before they lose.

    Did we skip the ‘then they laugh at you’ stage, and go straight to ‘then they fight you’? Or am I mixing up my Dialectical Mahatmaghandianism?

  4. 4.

    General Stuck

    February 22, 2011 at 9:33 pm

    Walker is no Arthur Jensen. He could be Captain, with a little work.

  5. 5.

    parsimon

    February 22, 2011 at 9:33 pm

    Has this been brought to this blog’s attention?

    Walker signs a bill requiring a supermajority vote to pass tax increases.

    Perhaps it’s been mentioned here already.

  6. 6.

    KG

    February 22, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    I have a proposal… we give them Mississippi, Alabama, half the Florida panhandle to form their own country (I first considered giving them part of Tennessee, but, Memphis). Anyone who wants to go live in a Galtian paradise can move there. Anyone who is currently there and wants out, we can do a straight trade of living quarters. I’m also willing to discuss letting Texas go

  7. 7.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    February 22, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    @El Cid: Did we skip the ‘then they laugh at you’ stage

    Ordinarily, I’d say yes, but that only applies to people who are capable of laughter (or indeed any emotion other than vein-popping anger.)

  8. 8.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    February 22, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    The point is that stupid people with power react to popular resistance in a limited number of ways. Smart ones co-opt credible opposition groups with tit-for-tat patronage and play the opposition against each other

    I assume here Smart = Not Completely Stupid.

    Or does it mean it was a smart move but Walker was too stupid to pull it off?

  9. 9.

    cat48

    February 22, 2011 at 9:36 pm

    I’ve been laughing at him since his Morning Joe interview this a.m. Tough interview he wasn’t prepared for the questions and being interrupted when he started filibustering. Not like the fluffy Fox interviews where he was just a hard working white man doing God’s work being attacked by the Kenyan in the WH.

  10. 10.

    lllphd

    February 22, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    looks like whacko walker’s upgraded his metaphorical status from Mubarak to Gadhafi.

    And, they’re in sync!

    i hereby solemnly vow to personally campaign for this tool’s recall come january.
    FEINGOLD FOR GUV!!

  11. 11.

    AliceBlue

    February 22, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    At this time, I’d like to thank Governor Wanker for stealing and then shitting all over the term “fireside chat.”

  12. 12.

    Delia

    February 22, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    Has Walker blamed Code Pink yet? I’m sure they must be undermining his authority in very serious ways.

  13. 13.

    Elia

    February 22, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    Just wrote a post of my own saying basically the same thing.

    It can’t be good for him that basically everyone who pays attention to the news is going to make the same connection.

    Just a hunch.

  14. 14.

    Jim C.

    February 22, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    parsimon:

    What’s the vote required to overturn that 2/3rd requirement for tax increases? Is it simple majority?

    If so, then it is a pretty straightforward fix. Pass a bill rescinding the 2/3rd requirement for any tax increase, and then pass the tax increase if needed to balance the books.

    If, on the other hand, rescinding the 2/3rd requirement itself requires a 2/3rd requirement….

  15. 15.

    lllphd

    February 22, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    @KG:
    oh god, please! somebody take texas, OUT!

    except austin. austin is super cool. but a frikkin’ oasis in hell, it is.

  16. 16.

    General Stuck

    February 22, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    Guess that’ll teach the wingnut to mess with mother nature and bargaining rights of unions.

    Governating is Hard. Just ask The Wasilla Wingnut

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 22, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    RAHM-bo wins with 55 percent! Nice job.

    Out of respect, maybe John should take down the “I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog” rotating tag. Or not.

    ETA: late to the party. And in any case, O/T.

  18. 18.

    Pooh

    February 22, 2011 at 9:41 pm

    @Jim C.: Not being an expert on the Wisconsin constitution, but I imagine any such provision would be deemed unconstitutional.

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    February 22, 2011 at 9:42 pm

    @cat48: Looks like it. According to the Trib, Gary Chico has conceded.

    dms

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    February 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm

    those ‘ outside agitators’. ….where have I heard THAT before?

  21. 21.

    parsimon

    February 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm

    @Jim C.: Right, and I don’t know. It may be fixable. It’s worth shining a light on that legislation in any case, certainly.

  22. 22.

    Ana Gama

    February 22, 2011 at 9:43 pm

    Let us not forget:

    If you make $250k or more, you are not rich, and therefore, it is totally unreasonable to ask you for a modest increase in taxes to help with the deficit.

    But if you make $40-$60k as a nurse or a teacher, you are way overcompensated and need to take a pay cut to help out.

  23. 23.

    Madeline

    February 22, 2011 at 9:44 pm

    I ran into a neighbor who works for the state at lunch today and she was crying over all the hateful words being tossed at state workers. Tensions are running high at UW hospital, where a friend who is a nurse reports confusion and people at each other’s throats. More tears. And these are 50+ year old women.

    I am very, very sad for Wisconsin.

  24. 24.

    Sly

    February 22, 2011 at 9:44 pm

    The SCFL, covering nearly 100 unions and 45,000 employees in southern Wisconsin, has endorsed a general strike if the budget bill passes.

    I’m more interested to see if they could actually pull such a feat off. The United States hasn’t seen a general strike, if memory serves, since Oakland in 1946, when a department store owner used his connections with the city government to bring in the police to break a picket line:

    More than 130,000 union members walked off their jobs to protest the anti-union actions of the police and Oakland’s city council, and thousands more honored their picket lines. Official support was voiced by community organizations throughout the county.
    __
    In Oakland, Piedmont, Emeryville, Berkeley, Alameda, San Leandro and Hayward it was the same. For nearly three days, beginning December 3, no buses ran, no streetcars, no taxis. The Bay Bridge was jammed as never before.
    __
    Construction projects shut down. The shipyards were idle. Most gas stations were closed, most grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and bars, most movie theaters. Newspapers ceased publication, even Knowland’s Oakland Tribune. Teamster pickets kept trucks carrying anything but food from entering the county.

    Silly serfs. “Going Galt” is only for your social betters.

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    February 22, 2011 at 9:45 pm

    @rikyrah: I noticed that the agitators in question are supposed to have come from “Nevada, Chicago, and elsewhere”. Odd choice of places, those. Is he trying to blame Harry Reid and Barack Obama?

    dms

  26. 26.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    February 22, 2011 at 9:45 pm

    His threats to the Democrats in Wisconsin, reminds me of Sgt Barnes holding the gun to the head of a young Vietnamese girl in Platoon.

    A coc a dau VC!!!!!

  27. 27.

    joe from Lowell

    February 22, 2011 at 9:46 pm

    Gotta love the text of the crawl in that still shot TPM used.

    “LIBYAN LEADER COL. GHADAFI ON POLITICAL UNREST IN HIS COUNTRY”

  28. 28.

    joe from Lowell

    February 22, 2011 at 9:49 pm

    @cat48: Srsly. Who gets pwned by Mike Barnacle?

    Come on, man!

  29. 29.

    Corner Stone

    February 22, 2011 at 9:50 pm

    @KG: I’m willing to kick you in the balls, if that helps the discussions.

  30. 30.

    General Stuck

    February 22, 2011 at 9:52 pm

    @Madeline:

    I am very, very sad for Wisconsin.

    Political division lingers in every state, of one kind or another. All it takes is a demagogue with power to let loose those dogs of hatred. I expect pretty soon, WI, will not be alone. There is a barely concealed revolution on and the instigators are very serious. The kind of serious as from cornered animals.

  31. 31.

    Doug Hill

    February 22, 2011 at 9:52 pm

    I like this post, because it gives a pretext for another fundraising pitch — that’s outside agitation!

  32. 32.

    Suffern ACE

    February 22, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    @Madeline: My father has gotten a few calls from two people irate about the teachers and his own pension. He retired 15 years ago. Like he was being selfish for taking the pension after 35 years of teaching.

  33. 33.

    The Dangerman

    February 22, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    @lllphd:

    except austin. austin is super cool. but a frikkin’ oasis in hell, it is.

    I say we build a wall around it and keep it. Change the name to Berlin, perhaps.

    Edit: I’d toss in South Carolina, but think of the golf courses.

  34. 34.

    shortstop

    February 22, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    Hmmmm, I referred to myself as an outside agitator the other day because I thought it was a nice nod to yesteryear. Kind of like when we used to call people (for example, friends who are indifferent to baseball) “communists” as a joke 10 years ago, because a decade ago it was a campily retro insult and we had no idea that when a black man got elected president, it would come out of storage with a vengeance.

    There is no epithet so lamely anachronistic that the right won’t revive it and use it with great earnestness.

  35. 35.

    PopeRatzy

    February 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    I am feeling left out, here on the sane side of the country, the left of course, we haven’t had much more than the twitterings of the stupid. Of course it is a lot warmer here so cooler heads may not prevail in the long run.

  36. 36.

    Loneoak

    February 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    @parsimon:

    Yeah, that supermajority tax vote thingy sure has worked out well here in CA. Because at least 1/3 of every state legislature is going to be Club for Growthy, that means you end up doing your budgeting through Constitutional amendment. Pretty much the dumbest possible form of government.

  37. 37.

    Pooh

    February 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    @Suffern ACE: Wait, he’s being harassed for having the indecency of holding his employer to the terms of the contract under which he worked?

  38. 38.

    KG

    February 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    @Corner Stone: oh, that’s right, you’re in Texas… but I’m sure you could work out a trade with someone in someplace nice, like Southern California.

  39. 39.

    Madeline

    February 22, 2011 at 10:00 pm

    @General Stuck:I know. These women aren’t terribly political and it’s like somebody has punched them in the gut and they don’t know why. They’re getting a crash course in politics right now.

  40. 40.

    Tim F.

    February 22, 2011 at 10:02 pm

    @Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: The smart ones succeed. Walker tried and fell on his face.

  41. 41.

    Royston Vasey

    February 22, 2011 at 10:02 pm

    @cat48: ooooo, who gets to shower with him?

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    February 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm

    @KG: The PRK?? Hell no!
    I also love how people keep praising Austin as some bastion of beloved liberalness.
    It’s a beautiful place but I don’t think many here who keep repeating those lines have any understanding of what the actual scenario is.
    When was the last time Austin elected Annise Parker?

  43. 43.

    KG

    February 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm

    @General Stuck: Is this really the worst we’ve been since Reconstruction? I remember reading somewhere along the way that post-Nixon there was talk of a constitutional convention/amendment to move to a parliamentary system because “no one could be president anymore.”

  44. 44.

    KG

    February 22, 2011 at 10:06 pm

    @Corner Stone: well, I was going to suggest somewhere like Long Beach or San Diego, but if you’re looking for something more like Texas, there’s always the Inland Empire (I kid, I kid… mostly)

  45. 45.

    jl

    February 22, 2011 at 10:09 pm

    Let us hope this liar Walker is a failed authoritarian, not a successful one.

    For those independents, middle class regular people, fence sitters, disappointed middle class tighty whiteys, who have ears, let them hear. The corporate authoritarians are coming for everyone who has a nickle that can be filched. Anyone who does not bow down is insulted and reviled, refudiated, repudiated, renounced, rejected smeared, attacked. No matter who you are.

    Ask not for whom Walker’s bell tolls, my friends, it tolls for thee (sooner or later, if you still have dime left).

    Edit: But Walker is following a proud U.S. tradition, or at least trying to import it a couple of hundred miles north.

  46. 46.

    martha

    February 22, 2011 at 10:13 pm

    @joe from Lowell: I witnessed it too. Walker…er Wanker…er Talker (as my brother in law calls him) blew off his question with a quick lie. Barnacle was like “REALLY?”. It was fun to watch.

  47. 47.

    FoxinSocks

    February 22, 2011 at 10:14 pm

    As I was saying elsewhere, I think Scott Walker’s next strategy will be to start threatening kittens. “Every day the Wisconsin Dems refuse to return to the state, God will strike a kitten dead. Starting with little Snowflake over here!” (camera pans to a sweet, innocent kitten)

    It’s either that or taking a kindergarten teacher and dangling her over shark-infested waters. “If the Dems refuse to give in to my demands, I’ll have no choice but to let this poor teacher go. And when I say ‘let go’, I mean that literally.”

  48. 48.

    martha

    February 22, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    @Loneoak: Which is why Walker and his cronies did it. Dumb. But it makes them feel good because now it’s even harder to raise those evil taxes.

  49. 49.

    General Stuck

    February 22, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    @KG:

    Is this really the worst we’ve been since Reconstruction? I remember reading somewhere along the way that post-Nixon there was talk of a constitutional convention/amendment to move to a parliamentary system because “no one could be president anymore.”

    Here is my sense of it all. On the surface, it is not worse than other periods, like the sixties and Nixon, where there was incredible daily tumult. Today is peaceful compared to that. And I never had the sense during those times of a failsafe point toward no return from disaster, like I have now.

    two things are different this time, imo.

    The first is what we have talked about many times here, and the general threat to white supremacy and white governance given unstoppable demographic pressures on the GOP that represents the white majority, for the most part. And there is no solution to this threat these people feel that is democratic and the order that creates.

    The second is a perfect storm of sorts, resulting from institutionalized laisez fair economic policies over the past thirty years, and the oncoming train of baby boomer retirement, and a health care system that will not likely support the strain, and a whole host of other malfunctions from greed and a completely mendacious republican party that is now run by resentful southerners, being wielded by plutocrats like a blunt instrument on the opposition and republic and constitution.

    There are probly other reasons why this time it is different, like distance in time from something like a WW2 that brought and kept us together from a shared emergency. Anything else is more than I want to think about right now.

  50. 50.

    martha

    February 22, 2011 at 10:19 pm

    @Madeline: And this is exactly why I, a non-union business owner, am against Walker’s idiotic move. (Well, and his policies too, but that’s another discussion.) All he has done is demonize and divide real people who do the hard work in our state. I wish I knew the breakdown of women to men, because I’m guessing when you add the teachers + nurses + all the clerical workers (more typically jobs held by women) together with the rest of the other job types covered, it’s probably more women he’s trashing than the men. Just inexcusable.

  51. 51.

    Pooh

    February 22, 2011 at 10:27 pm

    @General Stuck:

    There are probly other reasons why this time it is different, like distance in time from something like a WW2 that brought and kept us together from a shared emergency. Anything else is more than I want to think about right now.

    Allow me to quote one of my favorite blog posts of all time, Publius on “George Bush and the Age of Irony”:

    Ironically enough, I think Bush had the opportunity to completely change the Seinfeld worldview in the aftermath of 9/11. To me, 9/11 had precisely the opposite effect on liberals and intellectuals than World War I. World War I destroyed a world of abstractions and replaced it with a deep skepticism and cynicism from which the West has never recovered. 9/11, by contrast, almost did the opposite. It almost replaced a deeply skeptical and cynical worldview with one in which abstractions were rehabilitated.
    ..
    For instance, I found the idea of “patriotism” more compelling in the months after 9/11 than at any other time of my post-Republican life. Same deal with the ideas of duty and sacrifice. For a brief window of time, these concepts became vital again. Before Iraq, I think liberal intellectuals were in the process of forming and believing in new, intellectually-compelling versions of patriotism – a New Patriotism, based not on mindless nationalism but a shared sense of collectiveness and interdependence inspired by an external threat. It was a remarkable time – I’m glad I got to experience it.
    ..
    But now it’s gone. And I suspect it won’t come back again in my lifetime. And that’s because Bush pissed it away and exploited it to go fight his war. That was his original sin and that’s the root of why people hate him. He betrayed our unity, and exploited our national tragedy for political purposes (he did it again last night, but no one really cares anymore).
    ..
    But he could have been great. More critically, he could have attracted a lot of young liberals for whom 9/11 was a formative event. He – a Republican – had a chance to create a New American Patriotism, one that was compelling to cynical Seinfeld liberals who were in deep introspection and were willing to give earnestness a second chance in the aftermath of the tragedy. In short, he had an opportunity to free us from the Tyranny of Irony. He could have given us something to truly believe in and get behind.
    ..
    But he blew it, just like he blows everything else. What he has done is reaffirmed why we must remain ironic, even though we’re exhausted by irony. Bush has used these abstract concepts to support a political agenda and a war of choice that many of us see as wrong and potentially catastrophic. In a world where abstract notions of “freedom” and “patriotism” are used to support things like the Iraq War or torture, what choice do you have but irony and detachment from the concepts that make these things possible? Rejecting these simplified abstractions is not an exercise in immorality or amorality anymore, but one of conscious rejection, and even morality. That’s why you can’t expect us to get behind Bush’s call for patriotism and freedom – he has shown again and again that his purpose for using these concepts is to further a polarizing political agenda. You may agree with that agenda, but don’t insult my intelligence by challenging my lack of enthusiasm for Bush’s abstractions as being insufficiently patriotic or supportive of freedom. Consider me twice shy.

    We HAD such an opportunity to really “share sacrifice” and we got “elections have consequences”.

  52. 52.

    ppcli

    February 22, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    @Sly:
    Most of the labour law I learned in the Socialist Hellscape Where the Living Envy the Dead north of the border, where things like general strikes are in principle legal. But it was my impression that a strike like the one of 1946 would violate the Taft-Hartley act of 1947. Am I wrong about that.

  53. 53.

    Scott

    February 22, 2011 at 10:31 pm

    The thing I’m worried about is that I don’t think Walker will back down, and I do think he’ll fire 10,000 people just for the hell of it.

    Yeah, it’ll all but guarantee that he’ll be recalled next January, but that’s 11 months away, and he’ll have all the time he wants to wreck things up.

  54. 54.

    mr. whipple

    February 22, 2011 at 10:32 pm

    RAHM-bo wins with 55 percent! Nice job.

    Think Firebaglake will put up an Act Blue page for him?

  55. 55.

    General Stuck

    February 22, 2011 at 10:39 pm

    @Pooh:

    We HAD such an opportunity to really “share sacrifice” and we got “elections have consequences”.

    One of the best points made ever on this blog. Epic fork in the road, and we took the road to Idiotville.

  56. 56.

    jwb

    February 22, 2011 at 10:40 pm

    @Scott: The bigger question is whether the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature will go along. At a certain point they will have to decide if they are going to ride the bomb down with him.

  57. 57.

    RalfW

    February 22, 2011 at 10:43 pm

    Holy crap, Wisconsin is f*@ked. Walker just signed A.B. 5 which will require a 2/3 supermajority to increase any revenues. Tax cuts? Simple majority, tax increases, a near-impossible 2/3 vote. California has this supermajority provision, and is virtually ungovernable. No hyperbole here: this is a massive disaster.
    (H/T Digby)

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    February 22, 2011 at 10:44 pm

    @Madeline: Jesus, anybody who thinks nurses are overpaid has never been in a hospital, either as a patient or visiting someone they care about. Fuckers.

  59. 59.

    Sly

    February 22, 2011 at 10:45 pm

    @MayorEmanuel: “The big plan for tonight: We’ve got a champaign fountain from the top of the ballroom to the stage. I’m going to fucking ride down it.”

  60. 60.

    Corner Stone

    February 22, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    @mr. whipple: Why would they waste their time?
    First of all, fuck Rahmikins. Second, he wins the vote today and he’s a shoo-in.

  61. 61.

    jwb

    February 22, 2011 at 10:46 pm

    @RalfW: I can’t imagine that the bill could have been passed this quickly in any form that would not allow it to be repealed by a simple majority.

  62. 62.

    beltane

    February 22, 2011 at 10:55 pm

    @RalfW: The GOP elephant is an amazing beast that gobbles up taxpayer money and shits out bankruptcy and poverty. Wonderful creature.

  63. 63.

    ppcli

    February 22, 2011 at 10:57 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cut nurses’ pay any farther and Wisconsin will learn a harsh lesson about the magic of the marketplace. Back in the days when there were fewer occupations available to women, hospitals could get away with paying salaries that were preposterous for someone with the training and skill that a nurse requires. Those days are long gone, and there has been a nurse shortage for many years as a result.

    I’m sure the hospitals in Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan’s upper peninsula will be happy to offer decent salaries to Wisconsin nurses.

    I hope Walker doesn’t mind emptying his own bedpans if he gets sick.

  64. 64.

    Scott Alloway

    February 22, 2011 at 10:57 pm

    Tom Paxton, but I remember the Mitchell Trio singing it circa 1965. Them damned outside agitators still at it 45 years later. Sad how the Southern Strategy difted north.

    We didn’t know said the congregation,
    Singing a hymn in a church of white.
    The Press was full lf lies about us,
    Preacher told us we were right.
    The outside agitators came.
    They burned some churches and put the blame,
    On decent southern people’s names,
    To set our colored people aflame.
    And maybe some of our boys got hot,
    And a couple of niggers and reds got shot,
    They should have stayed where they belong,
    And preacher would’ve told us if we’d done wrong.

  65. 65.

    Madeline

    February 22, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: While they’re getting hit with some huge health insurance increases – that are somewhat mystifying, to tell you the truth – the primary worry seems to be whether they’ll be losing workplace safety negotiating rights, which is a patient care issue for them. The number of cases/beds/patients a nurse handles during a shift is a workplace safety issue that they now negotiate. They’re quite scared about this one.

  66. 66.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    February 22, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    It is at times like these that I turn to the Gospel of Berke Breathed for comfort:

    Union busting,
    Profit lusting,
    Little Pintos,
    All combusting.
    Apple pie and Diet Coke-a.
    Dat’s what is my Iacocca!

  67. 67.

    Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)

    February 22, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    @General Stuck: I think you have a significant insight here. The nearly imperceptible musk of cornered animals is in the air, but most people don’t recognize it for what it is, and are thus unafraid.

  68. 68.

    Dennis SGMM

    February 22, 2011 at 11:27 pm

    @Madeline:
    The nurse/patient ratio has a been a big negotiating point for nurses here in CA. Some hospitals keep trying to lower the ratio and the nurses continually fight them on it.

    Considering that we pay roughly twice as, per capita, than the other industrialized nation for health care it seems odd that they’d try to cheap out on this fundamental aspect of patient care.

  69. 69.

    cyd

    February 22, 2011 at 11:28 pm

    I, for one, am looking forward to the appearance of the camel cavalry.

  70. 70.

    jl

    February 22, 2011 at 11:40 pm

    @RalfW:

    “Walker just signed A.B. 5 which will require a 2/3 supermajority to increase any revenues.”

    Congratulations. What he did was really dumb. California, here they come!

  71. 71.

    Mike in NC

    February 22, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    RAHHHHHHM is the new Mayor of Chitown.

    Oh great. Can’t wait to hear the whining from my Republican friends along the shore of Lake Michigan. Pussies.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 22, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    @jl: It is not the same as California. It is a simple law, one that can be repealed. California’s 2/3 requirement was a ballot initiative and cannot be as simply undone. Let’s not be Chicken Littles here; it is a stupid and damaging law, but that is it.

  73. 73.

    jl

    February 22, 2011 at 11:55 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: You are correct. I didn’t think it through. It was a case of misery looking for company on my part.

  74. 74.

    Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)

    February 22, 2011 at 11:58 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: That was my thought – it’s major league stupid, but cooler heads can repeal it after Gov Wanker Walker is the former (recalled)Gov W.
    But CA’s is not so simple. Those pesky facts and details, again.

  75. 75.

    Ash Can

    February 23, 2011 at 12:01 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Whew! Glad to hear that.

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 23, 2011 at 12:05 am

    @jl: Walker and his wrecking crew are doing their level best to bring in every fuck-up from every other state. Luckily for us Badgers, their level best isn’t particularly good.

  77. 77.

    mclaren

    February 23, 2011 at 12:17 am

    @General Stuck:

    That “perfect storm” stuff is true, but you’re not thinking big enough. Capitalism as a system is breaking down. I mean kaput. Totally. What’s happening is that worldwide, wages are drifting down to a level slightly above what can support the poorest several billion people on the planet who are willing to work in slave-labor factories because the alternative is harvesting scrap cardboard in the garbage dumps outside Mexico City or Mumbai or Lahore.

    Under these circumstances, the rich in any country no longer have any connection to their societies. They make money by offshoring and outsourcing every job that doesn’t call for a hands-on service to the poorest people in the third world. At the same time, computer programs and robots are rapidly replacing almost all the high-skill high-paying white collars jobs in the developed world — this is going on right now, and it’s accelerating. You’re already seeing radiologists in India reading X-rays for hospitals in Massachusetts and robotic prostate surgery machines replacing doctors. American corporations are now using medical tourism to slash their health benefit costs. How long before America (and every other developed country) has nothing left but dog groomers and xerox clerks and cops?

    When all the high-wage high-skill jobs are finally offshored, neither America nor any other first-world country will be able to afford its lifestyle. Because it’ll have no economy left. Baumol’s Cost Disease is eating capitalism alive, and there’s no cure for it.

    The end result is that 80% of the population in America is going to have to live like the workers in Mumbai or Lahore or Mexico City if they want to compete economically — in huts with dirt floors and no running water and no toilets and no electrity. If you think that’s going to happen without seeing massive general strikes throughout America and a callout of police goons the like of which no one has seen since Ford’s thugs beat Walter Reuther with axe handles at the River Rouge strike in 1937, you’re dreaming.

    Ultimately, technology has become so productive that capitalism has broken down. Every year, each new company makes more money per workers, requiring fewer workers and making the company owners increasingly super-rich. Facebook is a classic example of this kind of company — the founder gets rich, there are only a couple hundred employees, and while the company generates enormous wealth, it doesn’t raise the living standard of anyone except the one guy at the top.

    That’s not a sustainable model for an economy. We’re heading toward a Russia-type situation where seven or ten oligarchs will own everything in America and everyone else will be a peasant unable to afford food or pay the electric bill.

    The logic solution to this kind of massive dysfuction is to abandon capitalism. Communism is unworkable, and socialism is just capitalism with some band-aids on it, so socialism isn’t useful either. What we need to start doing is to radically rethink our society so that we can have a prosperous world without economic growth. We need to start doing things like eliminating profit from most of our society.

    Psychology experiments have shown that money is a poor motivator. Most people work for entirely different reasons. You actually get lower productivity when you set up economic incentives because workers spend more time and energy trying to knife each other in the back than trying to do their jobs better.

    Behavioral studies have shown that introducing money into groups of monkeys creates enormous pathologies. Formerly peaceful tribes of monkeys will start killing each other and prostituting themselves, the entire monkey tribe breaks down and starts destroying itself. We need to start eliminating money from society and we damn sure have to get rid of economic growth, otherwise our planet will choke and die.

    Capitalism never really worked. It was deeply pathological for the first 100 years, when gin vendors hauled carts through the streets of London so the population could drink themselves to death after they got through working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. When the Communist revolution threatened the wealth factory owners, capitalism briefly became milder and less brutal. Then, in 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union yanked the moderator rods out of capitalism and it went back to being the savagely cannibalistic unliveable system it was before.

    Right now, my sense is that capitalism is dead. Even if we wanted to continue it, we can’t — scientists says that if we keep going this way, within 50 years we’ll have fished all the sea life out of the oceans. Global warming is roasting the planet. We can’t keep going this way.

    Time for something different, some other way of organizing society than capitalism, something without profit and without pollution and without economic growth. We don’t know what that something is, but we damn sure know we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing since 1798. The planet won’t survive.

  78. 78.

    Chuck Butcher

    February 23, 2011 at 12:42 am

    @mclaren:
    Oh let’s back the train up a tad. When money is simply a method of exchange replacing barter of actual goods it simplifies and streamlines the situation.

    You need a roof, I am a roofer. Somebody wants something in exchange for their shingles and I want something in exchange for putting them on. You’re a paper pusher and I have no use for your goods and neither does my supplier and he doesn’t need my services. Everybody trades money because it supposedly represents goods.

    You can complain that money isn’t that anymore and it is fairly simple to look at this version of managed capitalism as failing in its fundamentals. We do all kind of stupid things in service of magic like free market and free trade and treatment of investments. This is a gun we loaded and pointed at our own heads in service to myths which isn’t a validation of your point.

  79. 79.

    AnotherBruce

    February 23, 2011 at 1:02 am

    Considering that we pay roughly twice as, per capita, than the other industrialized nation for health care it seems odd that they’d try to cheap out on this fundamental aspect of patient care.

    No it makes perfect sense from a profit/loss standpoint. Profit being defined in monetary terms and loss being defined in life/limb/monetary terms.

  80. 80.

    asiangrrlMN

    February 23, 2011 at 1:08 am

    @Royston Vasey: ME! Ahem.

    You know what I discovered about Walker today? He looks a lot like Ratface Pawlenty, which brings back some very unhappy memories.

  81. 81.

    RalfW

    February 23, 2011 at 1:09 am

    @Pooh:

    we’re exhausted by irony

    Which is why I think Wisconsin may be resonating. It’s a moment in which irony fails to provide the balm we so often seek in our hipster distancing. I don’t have cable, so haven’t seen Jon Stewart lately, but I hear he’s not hitting a good note on WI…maybe because iron isn’t the answer to the level of despair that years of 10% unemployment and decades of declining middle class wages, benefits and job security have wrought.

    Or, whatever, y’know.

  82. 82.

    RalfW

    February 23, 2011 at 1:18 am

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes it is a simple law, but passing any tax increase is virtually always quite difficult. If it wasn’t, we’d not be in this mess, given that our actual federal taxation is at a multi-decade low point as a percent of GDP.
    So, if the WI legislature has to first pass a repeal of the supermajority law and then enact a tax increase, it’ll be double-whammied by the Repubs.
    Now, I hope that the GOP will have kneecapped itself shortly by massive overreach, but I ain’t holdin my breath on that one. So this law is not nearly as bad as CA, but it’s a significant additional hurdle, and being “not as bad as CA” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement now is it?

  83. 83.

    cthulhu

    February 23, 2011 at 1:50 am

    @Chuck Butcher: While I am not as compelled by the rest of mclaren argument, I completely agree that the preference on growth (rather than, say, sustainable income) as a marker of capitalistic success is quite problematic and headed for a fall as “free” (rather than fair) trade continues to expand.

  84. 84.

    Phil Perspective

    February 23, 2011 at 2:01 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Why? What’s even funnier is that Michelle Malkin got into a Twitter spat with the fake Rahm Emanuel Twitter account.

  85. 85.

    Pooh

    February 23, 2011 at 2:06 am

    @RalfW: That sounds like a plausible reading of why Stewart is flailing. Though he can (and has done) also do earnest very well, but this is hard situation to explain if a pithy way. Basically it seems like people just sort of “get” it in a way as simple as this: changing the rules in the middle of the game is cheating. And, at it’s most simplistic, that’s what Walker is trying to do.

  86. 86.

    Jebediah

    February 23, 2011 at 2:27 am

    OT
    I didn’t see a current open thread.
    I just saw that Shawna Ford was sentenced to death for murdering Raul and Brisenia Flores.

  87. 87.

    urbanmeemaw

    February 23, 2011 at 5:08 am

    @Delia:
    Or ACORN.

  88. 88.

    Omnes Omnibus

    February 23, 2011 at 8:22 am

    @RalfW:

    So this law is not nearly as bad as CA, but it’s a significant additional hurdle, and being “not as bad as CA” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement now is it?

    That is probably why I also said it was a “stupid and damaging law.” Nuance and context are fun.

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