Wisconsin Recall 4 Republican Senators

By Brendan O’Brien

MADISON, Wisconsin | Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:44am EDT

MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) – Four more Wisconsin Republican state senators, including the Senate leader, will face recall elections this year, bringing the number of state lawmakers forced to campaign in special elections to 40 percent of the entire Senate, officials said.

The state agency that oversees elections agreed unanimously on Monday that enough valid signatures by voters were submitted to require all four senators to face recall votes.

The four lawmakers include Senate President Scott Fitzgerald, a chief architect of a law limiting union powers that was passed last year and that sparked the recall movement.

The date of the votes has not yet been set.

The decision means 13 of the state’s 33 senators will have already faced a recall vote or will soon face one since Republican Governor Scott Walker pushed the law through the legislature last March.

Nine state senators faced recall last summer, six Republicans and three Democrats. Two of the Republicans were defeated, leaving the Republicans with a thin 17 to 16 majority in the chamber. The Democrats were challenged because they opposed the union law.

The law championed by Walker stripped unions representing teachers and other state and local government workers of much bargaining power over wages and benefits. It also required public workers to pay more for health insurance and pensions. Republicans said it was needed to restore the financial health of the state.

Outraged union supporters and Democrats vowed to vote the Republicans out of office. They have collected more than one million signatures to recall Walker. They also submitted a recall petition against his lieutenant governor.

The dates for the Senate recall elections have not yet been set in part because the election agency has not completed reviewing the huge volume of signatures seeking Walker’s ouster.

The recall movement in Wisconsin has created a toxic partisanship in the state, likely to be a battleground in the 2012 presidential election.

Wisconsin voted for President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in 2008 but then elected Walker and Republican majorities of the legislature in 2010, and ousted a longtime Democratic U.S. senator.

Polls have shown a close vote in any Walker recall vote. If the signatures are verified, Democrats will still have to pick a candidate to face him. So far the best-known Democratic candidate to announce a run for governor is Douglas La Follette, a relative of well-known Wisconsin progressive “Fighting Bob” La Follette who once served at governor and U.S. senator.

(Writing by Greg McCune; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Will Dunham)

PoliticsBarack ObamaElection 2012

Organized Labor Really Does Make A Diffierece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfPJYWyyJg&feature=player_detailpage The electronic revolution has changed our world for the worst; making all things globally connected. The anti- labor free trade laws and deregulate of corporations has been an organized effort to attack labor as well as consumers. This has made it easy for huge corporations to move their plants overseas, or move them to Right-To-Work states where labor is cheap; as well as allowing the big banks to steal our homes, our invests, our pensions, our healthcare insurance, and our life savings leaving 99 percent of us financially ruined. They’re 24 states who have Right-To-Work laws their mostly in the south of the USA in small states. That number is growing through corporate political power. Many huge corporations bought their suppliers to do in-sourcing of parts and services to cut the cost of production; killing off small neighborhood businesses. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1992-07-26/news/9207240852_1_free-trade-american-jobs-free-trade-agreement
The big multi-national corporations contract its labor in non-union states for cheap wages; that’s what Right-To-Work means no labor unions they’re outlawed. As well as third world countries where life has no value and there aren’t any human right laws and the people have no voice. The people in these third world countries are worked like slaves and are they’re poorly compensated for their labor. Many transnational corporations have outsourced their consumer service jobs: like our cell phone providers, our medical records, our computers technicians, our credit history, and our credit card bill. When we’re discussing our account it’s usually with a foreigner in a foreign country where wages are extremely low, and sometimes it’s difficult to communicate with these people because they don’t speak English well. These global corporations don’t care how bad the service they provide is, or how useless the product they manufacture is; they only care about increasing profits.
These monopolies control their markets killing off the competition by getting corporate welfare from their friends in government. They destroy our environment as did British Petroleum, and The Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf-of-Mexico in April of 2010. They spilled 100s of millions of barrels of petroleum into the Gulf killing wild life, destroying the health of 10s of thousands of people, closing down 100s of local businesses, and contaminating the land for 87 consecutive days. It’s still contaminated two years later with blooms of petroleum floats around in the ocean. It’s going to take hundreds of years for the Gulf to clear up from these toxic waters filled with oil. There were 225,000 claims file against BP, and The Deepwater Horizon and they settled for 7.8 billion in this law suit, or about 27,000 per claim this was an abuse of political power. http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam
With the new anti-labor Free Trade Agreements in place local economies have become enmeshed into the global economy this is the one world order of business creating displaced workers in foreign lands many come to the USA pushing wages down. Politicians use illegal immigrants to create racial hysteria to divide and conquer the labor market such as Bill O’Reilly and Shane Hannity on Fox News promoting racial tensions the “Brown People” are taking your job. These illegal undocumented workers are peasants, the very poor, who are looking for a better life in the USA; in their respective countries they have no human rights, and they have no legal rights as citizens. In the USA they get abused by politicians, the justice system, and by the people. This is a wedge issue that global corporations use to conquer and divide the workforce creating xenophobes; when in reality this is the answer to free trade. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/look-to-europe-to-understand-why-this-u-s-recovery-is-jobless/

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