Even though it was a prank phone call, I think we learned a lot by being able to listen in to Minnesota's Governor Scott Walker talking to the man he thought was his puppet-master. After all, how often is it we get to eavesdrop on a call from the impersonator of David Koch, the multibillionaire oil guy who, with his brother, has funded much of the right wing's battle plan? FBI, maybe; ordinary folks, nah!
Two things in particular were revealing. The first was the tone of the conversation. It was clearly puppet-master talking to puppet. And then there was the glee with which the puppet seemed to jump out of the phone to accept the puppet-master's gracious invitation: "Once you crush these bastards I'll fly you out to Cali and show you a real good time!"
By the time that conversation took place, the public sector unions had already agreed to meet the governor's financial demands -- but it was clear he was out to take no prisoners. Give up your collective bargaining rights or else!
The trouble with the governor, and with far too many elected officials, is that they weren't paying attention when American history was being taught to them in grade school. Or they are memory-challenged. Or they just don't give a damn and want to obliterate their country's history and substitute their own.
What American history tells us is that without unions, the captains of industry would have rolled over working people like a Thompson CAT. Without unions, we would never have had a middle class in America. And without a middle class, who would have campaigned so tirelessly for so long for better schools, better teachers, better health care, better everything.
When conservatives talk about "family values," isn't this what they should be talking about?
The past half-century has witnessed the sharp decline in organized labor, with corporate ownership-management waging an unrelenting campaign to convince working Americans that they'd do so much better if American industry could be more competitive with the rest if the world, and that wouldn't ever happen if unions were dictating outrageously exorbitant wages and benefits.
Dictating? Maybe Governor Scott Walker doesn't understand all this, but it was Collective Bargaining that was responsible for wage and benefit restraints from both unions and ownership. Among other benefits, collective bargaining prevented countless strikes.
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