I wrote yesterday about the conservative attempt to destroy private sector unions in Indiana. Union members and others in Indiana of course plan to resist this effort. But, as we’ve seen in state after state, small government conservatives (and the wealthy libertarians who fund them) instituted new rules yesterday to limit public access to public property:
Want to take an issue to the Indiana General Assembly when lawmakers return to work today? Get in line. Literally. Under new policies announced by the state, access will be limited to about 3,000 people.
And members of the general public will have to enter only through the east entrance — except for all the people who don’t. Those folks include not just government employees, but lobbyists, reporters, anyone attending a special event such as a school tour or today’s prayer day, anyone with an appointment or court hearing, and anyone whom a legislator has told State Police to let in, such as people the lawmaker wants to testify for a bill.
In a testy news conference Tuesday to try to quell mounting questions about the policy, three state officials — Department of Administration Commissioner Robert Wynkoop, State Fire Marshal James Greeson and State Police Capt. David Bursten — repeatedly said the new rules are about public safety, not denying public access to their elected officials, state courts and legislative process.
“Believe me,” Greeson said, “that is the furthest thing I want to do, is limit access to this building. But you do have to maintain public safety.”
Critics, though, say it is aimed at one thing: Stifling the labor union protests that filled the Statehouse last year and are expected to be even more clamorous this session as the legislature debates the so-called “right to work” issue.
Of course the new rules are aimed at stifling labor union protests. Walker put new rules on in Wisconsin, Kasich actually locked citizens out of the statehouse in Ohio, and now Mitch Daniels seeks to limit public access.
Here’s a helpful primer on the three GOP frontrunner positions on collective bargaining and federal protections for workers.
Santorum, who represents the religious base of the GOP, is lock-step anti-US labor, but he believes US workers should subsidize union organizing efforts in Iran. Romney says whatever he’s told to say depending on which state he happens to be standing in. When he was in Ohio, he was anti-union. I don’t know what he says when he’s standing in Michigan or Indiana. Paul, as the GOP’s libertarian, believes most federal protections for working people are unconstitutional. He does, however, support passage of a federal law protecting managers and owners from unions, with his enthusiastic promotion of a federal “right to work” law.
We know the conservative-libertarian candidate views on unions, but It would be great if we could get these three men to weigh in with an opinion on the hasty rule changes designed to limit or quash dissent that we’ve seen in Wisconsin, Ohio and now Indiana. These rule changes are designed to protect legislators and governors from the people in these states. Why do conservative leaders require new protections from peaceful protesters? Why all the new rules? Shouldn’t people in Indiana know conservatives are trying to drive down their wages?
What would have been the conservative and media response had President Obama, Democratic Congressional leaders or local authorities rushed through rule changes to limit or discourage peaceful protests during those few months in 2009 when members of the GOP base rebranded themselves as “The Tea Party” and organized public events protesting access to health care for poor people?
I don’t know if conservatives will succeed in their efforts to drive down wages in Indiana with passage of this law, but, based on events in Wisconsin and Ohio, I’m confident they’ll fail in their frantic, shameful efforts to limit political speech, and political accountability for their actions.
Update: Rules are political disaster for them, Daniels folds, old rules restored, they all run away from/deny backing rule changes.
GregB
Under the tea-bag banner of freedom and liberty the GOP politicians are restricting the peoples’ rights to assemble and protest and none of their dildonic supporters finds this cognitively dissonant.
God what a pack of shitheels.
kay
@GregB:
It reads like it’s playing horribly, politically. The sponsor of the union-busting legislation sounds like a politician who realizes he made a terrible marketing error.
They exempted paid lobbyists from the new rules.
Beautiful. Smart move, Republicans :)
The Moar You Know
Some democracy, where we’ve gone to locking citizens out of the statehouse.
No wonder the rest of the world now just points and laughs when we lecture them about human rights.
PeakVT
It seems Daniels has folded already (via).
Valdivia
Thanks Kay, good to keep track of everything that is happening in Indiana.
BGinCHI
Great post, kay. Keep it up. These fuckers need scrutiny.
catclub
Will democratic reps be making (looooong) lists of union members to be allowed in under their permission? I would be concentrating on that for the moment.
Kay
@PeakVT:
Thanks! I updated.
ornerycurmudgeon
Much appreciated, Kay … I hope you’re right that Republicans actually do pay some kind of political price.
Thanks for keeping this in the spotlight.
kay
@Valdivia:
….is back!
I’m glad you’re commenting again.
The Moar You Know
Well, that was quick.
Says a lot about the currently serving folks in Indiana that they’d even think they could try such a stunt, though.
Aardvark Cheeselog
I just have to say thumbs-up for “right-to-work” in scare quotes, so seldom does that little bit of Newspeak ever get pointed out for what it is.
kay
@The Moar You Know:
I’m pleased, because Daniels is a really slick pol. Kasich tries stupid shit like this, not Daniels. Blunder!
It will only serve to rile up the protestors. I think Ohio protests really took off when dumb-ass locked them out of the statehouse.
Veritas
Perry is STAYING IN!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71079.html
This will help Romney a GREAT deal in South Carolina. The opponents of Romney remain too divided to stop him!
PeakVT
Looks like the Indiana SOS fight has taken a new turn.
kay
@PeakVT:
I actually agree with the judge. He has no idea how the criminal case is going to go, and we should all probably want to avoid chaos in the election/voting areas. He can’t put one in only to have him taken out a few months later.
Valdivia
@kay:
Thank you Kay! I am always reading just had to step away from commenting for a while. Now that we’re back on election mode I’ll be here more often! :)
catclub
@PeakVT: “White has said the allegations ignored a complicated personal life in which he was trying to raise his 10-year-old son, plan his second marriage and campaign for statewide office.”
In other words, they were true.
kay
@Veritas:
Oh, I don’t know, Veritas. I don’t feel all that divided :)
We’re going to use the Romney clip where he backed (the hated!) Issue Two in Ohio. It’s a great clip.
PeakVT
@kay: I have no opinion on the legal proceedings, but I’m always pleased to see “Republican = voter fraud” in the news.
Zifnab
“Man, we’re so unpopular that there are thousands of people willing to take time out of their days just to show up at the Capital and tell us they hate us. What do we do, Governor?”
“Perhaps wear earmuffs, so you don’t have to listen to them.”
“But… aren’t they all going to vote us out of office come 2012?”
“Yeah, we’re getting rid of voting in 2012. Too much fraud.”
Yutsano
Remember Kay: conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. Indiana is just next on the list.
debbie
Literally. Ohio Senate President Niehaus accused union “thugs” of literally shitting in the State House when they were protesting the SB5 hearings. He never retracted this statement, even though the State Highway Patrol said it had occurred in an area that was not accessible to the protesters and it had happened in the past and was found to have been by a homeless person.
Barry
@catclub: Nice point – get a few hundred thousand names.
AA+ Bonds
Great video of the Teamsters “swarming” the IN statehouse (their term)
Barry
@The Moar You Know: “Says a lot about the currently serving folks in Indiana that they’d even think they could try such a stunt, though.”
Keep pushing until you don’t get away with it – your only limits are your power vs. others’.
Steve
Let’s think about this for a moment. The dreaded “closed shop,” which is illegal everywhere under the Taft-Hartley Act, is a voluntary agreement between an employer and a union where the employer agrees to hire only union members.
Right-to-work laws ban the “agency shop,” which is also a voluntary agreement where the employer agrees to hire only union members or people who, although they don’t want to join the union, agree to pay a fee for union representation.
So let’s ask this basic question. What business does a libertarian, particularly one as extreme as Ron Paul, have supporting these laws that restrict the freedom of an employer and his employees to enter into contracts?
In Ron Paul’s world, employers don’t have to hire black people if they don’t want to. They don’t have to hire women if they don’t want to. And if they want their employees to work 18-hour days for sub-minimum wage under unsafe conditions, that’s between them and their employees. According to libertarian dogma, government has no place telling an employer who it can or can’t hire, or what terms of employment it can propose; those who don’t like the deal are free to go elsewhere.
But the ONE thing employers absolutely, positively cannot do is decide that they will only hire union members. If they want to hire only white people, that’s totally fine. But if they want to hire only union members, the government needs to step in and prevent it.
This obviously makes not a lick of sense, but that’s libertarians for you.
DanielX
@The Moar You Know: Says even more about what they really think of those whom they supposedly serve. I have to admit, though, that I detect the fine political hand of Their Man Mitch at work – that was one of the fastest walkbacks I’ve ever seen.
It does give rise to an unlikely but appealing mental picture of Mitch sputtering with rage: “All right, fess up, and I mean NOW. Which one of you swinging dicks told me this was a good idea? If I don’t hear a confession in the next thirty seconds, every one of you fuckwits is going to be inspecting industrial livestock waste lagoons for the next six months starting tomorrow. Check in from the Motel 6 in Loogootee when you get a chance…”
Unlikely but appealing, as Mitch Daniels is about as likely to sputter with rage or any other emotion as I am to vote for Mike Pence (R-Wingnuttia) for Guv next time around.
RalfW
Liberty for lightbulbs!
The Gulag for the rest of you rabble.
kay
Steve, Ron Paul is a tool.
He likes and promotes plenty of federal legislation that benefits business interests or the religious Right, yet he gets all legalistic on black people at lunch counters.
Sullivan’s an idiot.
He doesn’t understand process or history in this country, and he hasn’t read Ron Paul’s actual work.
He’s lazy. It’s a shame he’s permitted to weigh in on things he knows nothing about.
PeakVT
@kay: Not knowing things is a requirement for professional pundits, AFAICT. (Krugman is professional professor; punditry is a renumerative hobby for him.)
Steve
@kay: Okay, Ron Paul is a tool. But find me ANY libertarian who makes the libertarian argument for unions!
Frankly, in the liberal utopia there probably wouldn’t be any unions because government would mandate living wages, safe work conditions, generous benefits, and all that from the top down. In the real world, unions are the market-based method of getting to those same results. But nobody on the right gives unions the slightest credit for being anything other than an arm of Communism.
Less Popular Tim
@kay:
Well, that is the American Way. It’s probably why he came over here, in fact. “Give me your blowhards, your boors, your ignorant masses yearning to blog free…”
Benjamin Franklin
Kay;
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….You are the substantive poster.
Some want to have non-confrontational conversations.
Thanks for not pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Benjamin Franklin
Yeah. First, they deny entry into the discussion, then they employ Pinkertons to break up the organization, then we win.
(paraprhased; Mohandas Ghandi_
binzinerator
“When U Cant tell the truth…Lock the Doors” — sticky note stuck to one of the locked Wisconsin Capitol building doors, March 1, 2011.
Walker didn’t just change rules, he also locked citizens out of their own capitol building. IMHO this got on the wrong side of a lot of people, people who hitherto didn’t know what to make of the whole protest walker thing.
Apparently locking citizens out of their own government buildings must be a standard tactic of these Midwestern “Conservative” govs.
binzinerator
@Benjamin Franklin: Just have to add, I Heart Kay 2!
Kay, when your done kicking assholes’ ass that deserves some ass kicking in Ohio, can you come to Madtown on your sabatical or whatever weekend you have to spare and do the same here?
Doing what you do — the grassroots and state level stuff and the organizing — is serious ass kicking. Never can have too much of that stuff, not with an ass like walker.
binzinerator
@binz
If I remember Right, kay is something like a public defender, but in family services sort of thing. IOW, all of the money and none of the glory. “sabatical” was my attempt at snark. Note to self: leave snark to those who know how. Of which there is no shortage on this blog.
PWL
I love the way the Repubs, who are ALWAYS braying about how they’re for “liberty,” and for “getting government off our backs,” are quick to adopt heavy-handed authoritarian methods when the ordinary person demands a chance to speak on their own behalf.