Monthly Archives: February 2011

Wisconsin Police Union Press Release: We Will Not Close the Capitol

HEAD OF POLICE UNION ASKS GOVERNOR TO KEEP CAPITOL OPEN AND ANNOUNCES LAW ENFORCEMENT SLEEPOVER

MADISON—Following action by lawmakers to approve a rule change that clears
the way for closing down the State Capitol and ejecting the people protesting
Governor Walker’s bill to curtail union activity, the head of the Wisconsin
Professional Police Association called on the governor today to keep the capitol
building open and allow the peaceful protesters to remain.

AlterNet: Rupert Murdoch and David Koch Collude Against Wisconsin Workers

While Fox News feeds its rabble the anti-union line, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal columnists front for Koch's Americans for Prosperity and coddle elite investors.

Rupert MurdocjFebruary 25, 2011- In the week-long battle taking place in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, you'd expect Fox News to be doing what it's done: misreporting the story, mistakenly characterizing a poll supporting public workers to mean its opposite, featuring Glenn Beck painting the protests of union workers as something cooked up by Stalinists. And you might be tempted to think, well, that's just Fox playing to its base of frightened Tea Partiers who prefer a fact-free zone to the more challenging territory of actual news, where the answers are never pat, and the world is a bit more complicated than it seems in the realm of Fox Nation.

You might think it's all about what brings in the advertising dollars for Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Fox's parent company, News Corporation. But it runs much deeper than that, involving key players at the Wall Street Journal, News Corp.'s crown jewel. The informal partnership between billionaire David Koch, whose campaign dollars and astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity, have fomented the Wisconsin crisis, and billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is profoundly ideological — the ideology being the exponential enrichment of the two men's heirs, all dressed up in the language of libertarianism and free enterprise. Together with his brother, Charles — also a big donor to right-wing causes -David Koch runs Koch Industries, the conglomerate that sprang from the oil and gas company founded by his father.

CBS News: Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker gets support from possible GOP presidential candidates

February 24, 2011- As the conflict in Wisconsin shifts from a battle over budget deficits into an ideological debate, some high-profile Republicans — potential presidential contenders — are lining up behind Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Walker spurred massive protests in his state earlier this month with a "budget repair bill" that proposes scaling back public workers' benefits, as well as their collective bargaining rights, among other things. The dramatic showdown continues in the state, even though public sector unions have agreed to scale back their benefits for the sake of deficit reduction.

Separate but unequal: Charts show growing rich-poor gap

-By Zachary Roth

February 23, 2011- The Great Recession and the slump that followed have triggered a jobs crisis that's been making headlines since before President Obama was in office, and that will likely be with us for years. But the American economy is also plagued by a less-noted, but just as serious, problem: Simply put, over the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm.

Gradual developments like this don't typically lend themselves to news coverage. But Mother Jones magazine has crunched the data on inequality, and put together a group of stunning new charts. Taken together, they offer a dramatic visual illustration of who's doing well and who's doing badly in modern America.

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