What Wisconsin Didn't Elect

Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/us/22koch.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24

Koch heads David and Charles: Who's in their wallets?

David Koch (AP)                                                                  Charles Koch (AP)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker complained the other day about people from other states joining rallies of demonstrators in Madison who oppose Walker's consolidation-of-power and union-busting bill, saying these "outsiders" should stay out of Wisconsin's business.

Yet, I have heard not a word of protest out of him about outsiders, like multi-billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, neither of whom live in Wisconsin and whose Koch Industries is based in Kansas, who poured mega-bucks in campaign contributions to get him elected Wisconsin governor, and are funding pro-Walker demonstrations in Wisconsin, Wisconsin union-busting efforts, and tea party and other partisan organizations that are active in Wisconsin politics.

I am truly conservative when it comes to what's good for one goose should be equally applied to another.

Where Has All The Money Gone?

You might ask what this has to do with being truly conservative.

Maybe nothing, but I've got to ask anyway.

Where has all the money gone?

Cities are broke.

Counties are broke.

States are broke.

People are broke.

Corporations are ... oh.

Corporations are flush with money.

Corporations are enjoying record profits.

This, as the rest of the country tries to claw back from the worst recession we have suffered through since the Great Depression.

Maybe that's where all the money has gone.

Maybe that's is why everyone else is broke.

New York Times columnist David Brooks said the other day to, "Make Everybody Hurt."

I agree, should that become necessary. But it might not be.

First, let's exempt those who are already hurting.

Let's start inflicting pain at the top.

Let's start with the CEOs whose corporations are rolling in dough and whose bonuses suffered no recession. Here are bonuses gifted to the top three CEOs in 2010, a decidedly bad economic year for the rest of the U.S.

     1.  H.J. Heinz top exec William R. Johnson, $8.6 million. That's just his bonus, and it's 17.6% higher than the year before. His total income for last year? More than $882 million.

     2.  Oracle CEO Lawrence J. Ellison, $6.5 million, up nearly 80%.

     3.  Cisco CEO John T. Chambers, $4.6 million, up 126%.

Let's start with Messers Johnson, Ellison, Chambers and their fellow elites in the country's top 1% income bracket who got their Bush tax cuts extended.

Let's start with the hedge-fund billionaires -- the top 13 of whom earned an average of $1 BILLION each last year -- but get to claim their income as capital gains. I say "get to" because the capital-gains tax rate is 15% rate, instead of in the top income bracket at 35%.

Taxing their intake as regular income within the same income tax rate structure as the rest of us, would create enough revenue to pay for 300,000 teachers. Three-hundred thousand! Maybe forcing those in the top income tax to actually pay income taxes instead of a 20% lower capital gains tax would mean classroom-sizes in Detroit could be reduced from the 62 students necessary because the education budget there has been decimated. Maybe then Detroit teachers could get back to actually teaching and helping kids learn instead of just being adult supervisors in holding pens for adolescents.

American capitalism advocates say, hey, the rich have earned it. Maybe so. But that shouldn't give them special privileges and special ways that enable their money to be taxed at a lower rate than the income of the rest of us get.

Here are some more stats:

     *  The income of the richest 5% in 1979 was 10 times of that of the poorest 20% (US News and World Report, Feb. 21, 2000)

     *  Twenty years later that gap had grown to 19 times.

     *  In 1992, income of top executives of the largest US companies was about 100 times more than that of their workers

     *  In 2000 -- just 8 years later -- that difference had grown to 475 times more.

     *  Income of the richest 20% in Silicon Valley grew 29% during the 1990s while income of the poorest 20% fell, with those at the lowest level earning 10% less than they had a decade earlier.

That begs the question: What happened between 1990 and now that accounts for such astounding financial gains for the very rich, while the fortunes of the not-so-filthy rich and middle- and lower-income groups stagnated or fell? Did the mega rich work harder? Work longer hours? Get second jobs? Or, perhaps, were laws changed to their economic advantage?

I know even mentioning such things evokes cries from the priviledged elite that the have-nots and have-not-so-muches are engaging in "class warfare" on the rich.

I posit that class warfare began long before this, and it was declared and is being waged by the rich on the rest of us. How else can such fast-tracked disparities be explained?

The simple fact is that with more and more of the nation's money being concentrated among a very small percentage of the population, that makes a few people richer and richer and everyone else broke. People who are broke don't have anything to spend on the goods and services that fuel a robust middle class.

The mega-rich just buy another exotic island resort or salt their gains in off-shore tax shelters and Swiss banks. Not one drip from Ronald Reaganesque trickle-down policies trickles down to anyone else.

So instead of "making everybody hurt" -- especially those who already are hurting -- let's start by equalizing the playing field in this country that prides itself on a Declaration of Independence that proclaims that we are all created equal. Maybe then it wouldn't be necessary to make anyone hurt.

A friend who read this post alerted me to the charts at the bottom of this article that shows very graphically where the money has gone:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110223/ts_yblog_thelookout/separate-but-unequal-charts-show-growing-rich-poor-gap

Robert Reich concurs! =>
http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/5133-how-democrats-can-become-relevant-again

"Democrats have become irrelevant. If they want to be relevant again they have to connect the dots: The explosion of income and wealth among America's super-rich, the dramatic drop in their tax rates, the consequential devastating budget squeezes in Washington and in state capitals, and the slashing of public services for the middle class and the poor."

Walker Riding a Koch Brothers Wisconsin Monopoly?

I keep hearing that Wisconsin Gov. Walker's agenda with his "budget recovery" bill isn't about money, it's about power. That might be, but if this article, "The Kock Brothers' End Game in Wisconsin  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/947947/-The-Koch-Brothers-End-Game-in-Wisconsin, is correct (despite the snarky rhetoric), Wisconsinites have a whole lot more to worry about than public service workers losing bargaining rights and nonpublic-sector residents thinking public employees are getting a free ride.

It might be a good idea for everyone, not just Walker's political foes/critics/watchdogs, to keep an eye on Walker's moves to sell off state utilities, plants and other assets.

Could it be that this is what the real power play is all about, the supposedly "conservative" Gov. Scott Walker very liberally turning over Wisconsin's assets to someone who absolutely does not have us and our state's best interest in mind?

Here's the section of Walker's "budget repair" bill that would enable him to do that:

State of Wisconsin
SENATE BILL 11
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/data/JR1SB-11.pdf
Google Quick View of PDF:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:X1ujH_yii54J:legis.wisconsin.gov/JR1SB-11.pdf+http://legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/data/JR1SB-11.pdf&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg_-8S4nJy1wdVtSXPifvtqoK0qYIX3QIlLBjfmF3DCStDLLkW4SyU2nE7ZzbcH6-6Kr68EcaJtVBPJnjeNmoHSilshxOmaS4zX-1DSEWe8YK-_sK-Rc1k9fkZMe8PUnd3uEJRi&sig=AHIEtbRM0fgayS-yCr_rhGR0bo_RNfSGuQ
Bottom of Page 23:

SECTION 44. 16.896 of the statutes is created to read:
16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the
department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may
contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without
solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best
interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or
certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to
purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is
considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification
of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Here's a list of Koch properties/subsidiaries/operations already in Wisconsin:
http://www.kochind.com/factsSheets/WisconsinFacts.aspx

• # Flint Hills Resources, LLC, through its subsidiaries, is a leading refining and chemicals company. Its subsidiaries market products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, olefins, polymers and intermediate chemicals, as well as base oils and asphalt. A subsidiary distributes refined fuel through its strategically located pipelines and terminals in Junction City, Waupun, Madison and Milwaukee. Another subsidiary manufactures asphalt that is distributed to terminals in Green Bay and Stevens Point.
• # Koch Pipeline Company, L.P. operates a pipeline system that crosses Wisconsin, part of the nearly 4,000 miles of pipelines owned or operated by the company.
• # The C. Reiss Coal Company is a leading supplier of coal used to generate power. The company has locations in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland and Sheboygan. 

Walker's actions could end up giving the Koch brothers a ownership of resources, distribution and generation of energy monopoly in Wisconsin.

How "conservative" is that?

What Wisconsin Elected, Part 3

Rachel Maddow ties recently elected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to disgraced defense contractor Wackenhut, caught in a disgusting scandal on the job in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Walker's attempts to contract out courthouse security guard duty, with convicted felon in charge, and the waste of nearly $500,000 of taxpayer money in the process. Here's a link to Maddow's clip. (Sorry for the brief ad that proceeds it.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#41710135

I'm way too conservative to think this very liberal waste of tax dollars is good for the people of Wisconsin.

Weak Tea

Most news reports of Saturday's rally in Madison, Wisconsin, put the number of Gov. Scott Walker's anti-labor bill protesters at several times (one said possibly as much as 10 times) greater than tea party/Walker supporters.

Some people I know who attended the rally that day said they saw very few Walker supporters compared to pro-union demonstrators. Milwaukee public radio said a small group of anti-demonstrator demonstrators (translation: pro-Walkerites) chanting slogans was surrounded by a large circle of pro-union demonstators that was 10 people deep.

But you would never have known that from Milwaukee's newspaper on Sunday. Anyone looking at that paper would have been led to believe that it was pretty much of a draw, a stand off between evenly matched sides.

In fact, the inch-tall banner headline on Page 1 called it just that: "STANDOFF ON SQUARE". Two photographs of equal size were lined up side-by-side beneath that headline. One shows Walker supporters, the other union supporters. At first glance, the crowds look to be about the same size. But they weren't. The pro-Walker photo is a closer shot than the pro-union picture, so the people appear larger and more individual, and also so the group might look larger than it really is. Also signs obscure the back edge of the group, so it isn't possible to see how far back it goes.

The Page 1 story continues on Page 20 where a large photograph at the top depicts a line of police officers facing a group of Walker supporters holding professionally made signs. On the other side of the officers is a lone union supporter holding a handmade sign.

In a smaller photo beneath that picture is a woman standing alone and holding a handmade sign that says, "Silent Vigil for Workers' Rights."

In other words, the photos show what looks like many Walker supporters, but only two union supporters who are seen separately in different pictures.

That makes an impression, however subliminally, that Walker supporters outnumbered union supporters and that they were more well organized because of the quality of their signs. The rest of Page 20 is all text, except for a small map of Madison's Capitol Square.

The facing page is a full photo spread. No text, just pictures with captions. The two largest and another smaller one, dominate the center of the page and are unmistakably of Walker supporters. Huge signs say, "Support Walker," "Thank you God for Scott" (their incorrect punctuation, not mine), "Vote for Freedom, sponsored by: Mayville T.E.A. Party" and "I Stand with Walker and Wynn" (whoever that is). The caption says a sign holder at the edge of the smaller photo is a union supporter, but the sign is unreadable. Two small photos at the top and bottom of the page appear to be neutral, although a caption says one is of pro-union demonstrators. The only photo that can be easily and clearly identified as showing union supporters is the smallest at the very bottom of the page. 

Aside from a Page 1 subhead mentioning the "larger union crowd," little is said until the jump on Page 20 about crowd sizes or the lopsidedness of the huge pro-union crowd compared to the 1,000-to-4,000 tea party/Walkerite estimate in other news reports. In the second column near the bottom of Page 20 is a single sentence that says, "The number of protesters opposed to Walker's bill, however, outnumbered by far the groups representing tea party organizations and other groups backing the governor."

The pro-Walker picture on Page 1 includes five readable pro-Walker signs--all but one professionally made--and a billowing American flag in the background. In the pro-union photo, one and part of another sign are visible, both handmade. No flags in sight. Again, subliminal impressions.

So were there no flags among the pro-union demonstrators? Well, there sure were when I was there on Friday, all over the place, large and small, and hard to miss by anyone taking pictures or not. And contrary to the dominance of handmade pro-union signs in the photos Milwaukee editors selected to publish in their paper, most of the union-supporter signs I saw on Friday were professionally made.

The Milwaukee paper did report that pro-union rallies had been going on at the capitol all week, so perhaps its editors thought the news was that the tea party had finally shown up. But after tea partiers overflowing and disrupting town halls across the country during the 2009 summer of healthcare reform, and turning out in numbers large enough to determine many 2010 mid-term elections, it seems to me that the real news on Saturday was the pitifully weak tea party and Walker supporter turnout in Madison.

So what does any of this have to do with being truly conservative? Well, as a former newspaper journalist, I consider myself truly conservative about the news media being objective and not misrepresenting the reality of an event or going overboard in trying to "balance" something that isn't balanced at all.

No Firearms Allowed

A Facebook friend asked if I saw any "open carry" folks at the Madison rally when I attended on Friday.

Here's my answer:

"No, but interestingly, I saw a photo of a sign yesterday (Saturday) -- when tp demonstrators were expected to show up -- taped to capitol doors saying no firearms allowed inside and citing the state law making it illegal to take firearms into government buildings. (Link to the photo at the bottom of this post.) I went through those doors several times on Friday  -- when no tpers were there or expected in any large numbers or organized fashion -- and saw no such signs. So, interesting, because apparently state officials didn't seem to think there was any need for such a notice until faced with the prospect of tpers showing up. Also, isn't it ironic that the very bodies/officials that enact and uphold laws allowing people to carry guns in public make and uphold laws that don't allow guns around themselves."

If it's OK to carry guns around the rest of us, why isn't it OK to carry guns around those who say it's OK to carry guns around the rest of us? Or are those who say it's OK afraid that The People bearing arms might form a militia against them? If so, aren't government buildings the very places such a militia should be allowed to bear arms? And isn't barring firearms from government buildings, in the view of those who cite the Second Amendment as giving Americans the right to keep and bear arms in public, unconstitutional, in that the Second Amendments says this right "shall not be infringed"?

"Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Isn't not letting people bear their Arms in government buildings infringing on their Second Amendment rights?

But then, I'm way too truly conservative to think that it's OK for anyone to willynilly be allowed to carry guns around -- concealed or not -- in public place and around kids, old folks or anyone just going about their daily business.

Something else I find not only ironic, but hypocritical or at best inconsistent, is that former vice presidential candidate and half-term Alaska governor who hailed working-class people as "real Americans" and who ran on a platform of keeping government out of people's business is now denouncing those very people, her version of "real Americans" -- teachers, nurses, tradesmen -- you know, the Joe the plumbers of the Midwest -- and saluting a government that's sticking its nose in their business and infringing on their rights. Go figure.

http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/photos/116530718.html#id_46804418

At the Rally

I am somewhere in this crowd:
http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/photos/116479938.html#id_46774588

Yep, I was one of 60,000 or so who went to the "kill the bill" rally in Madison, WI, on Friday, and I was so impressed.

The "captain" of the bus I rode on from Milwaukee to Madison prepped us with a little speech that included instructions on how to conduct ourselves. No hostility, no name calling, no incivility. Be peaceful, be respectful and clean up after ourselves. She told us the capitol police wouldn't allow "sticks" or backpacks inside the building, so to leave them outside. The no backpacks I got, but no sticks? I didn't understand that until someone else asked. We could take signs inside the capitol, but only if they we're not attached to sticks. Oh.

Well, I didn't have sign, attached to a stick or otherwise. I just had me. I don't have union affiliation or any specific dog in this fight. But I do support those who do and that's mainly because I am so truly conservative.

I'm way too conservative to think it's OK for goverment to tell its workers that there's no money for pay increases like private sector workers got for years, so to compenstate, their benefits contributions would remain low, and then renig when the folks in charge have maxed out the credit card on other expenditures. And that's on top of the equivilent of a pay cut for at least two years, thanks to furlough days they were forced to take off without pay every month.

Even worse is government intrusion into telling employees they can have no say in their work situation. Yet, that's what Wisconsin's supposed "small-government" administration and legislative majority are doing with what is being called a "Budget Recovery" bill.  Nevermind that workers being able to negotiate for safe working conditions and humane treatment have nothing to do with a governor needing to balance his budget.

While I was cheering and clapping with demonstrators in the capitol rotunda on Friday, I was thinking about my recently retired sister-in-law who was an elementary school teacher in that great right-to-work (NOT) state of Virginia.

Contrary to popular belief that teachers work only nine months a year and six hours a day, my sister-in-law, like the vast majority of her colleagues, worked through much of the summer vacation while the kids were off. And during the school year, her work day began before the kids arrived and ended long after the official school day was over. She got half-an-hour for lunch, which she often really didn't get because the noon hour was often when parents wanted to meet with her about their children. She got no bathroom breaks, so had to make mutual arrangements with other teachers to watch her class--in addition to their own--so she could go to the restroom. And, like so many other teachers I know, she spent a not insignificant amount of money on supplies, often essential supplies, that the school either couldn't or wouldn't provide.

Then I started thinking about the child-labor laws and unsafe conditions in which people worked before unions came along and began to negotiate with employers and lobby Congress for safer and more humane conditions and realized that I'm much too conservative for employers -- public or private -- to be able to so liberally exploit their workers.

Then came the disturbing news on Friday that Wisconsin Gov. Walker was apparently using the ruse that he's facing a budget crisis to justify his draconian "Budget Repair" proposal. Last month, Wisconsin's equivalent of the feds' non-partisan Congressional Budget Office had projected a budget surplus for this year. I say "had" because that projected surplus has been gobbled up by tax breaks and other gifts Walker has bestowed on the business community on the premise that doing so would generate jobs.

I covered just how likely that is to happen in a previous blog post, titled "What Wisconsin Elected 2."

So back to Friday's rally. While there, I heard talk that tea partiers would be showing up on Saturday. So the word went around that instead of trying to take them on, kill-the-billers should try to engage them and chat them up. Bill opponents might not win any tea partiers over, but they could at least show that they can be civil and friendly.

From what I heard today, that seemed to be working.

A REAL Fiscally Conservative Budget Proposal

Perhaps its supporters haven't noticed, but since the 112th Congress took office last month, it has engaged in a bait-(promise to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs)and-switch tactic that has included misreading the U.S. Constitution, two members being AWOL at the House's swearing in ceremony, all things abortion, reality-evading redifinition of rape and, especially, spending). Maybe that's to hide the fact that it has done zip on the jobs, jobs, jobs front.

So Congress's lazer been the focus has shifted almost entirely to spending. Cut this, eliminate that, screw everyone except themselves.

Needless to say, this body has less credibility than Lucy holding a football. So, here's a very brief primer on how they can gain at least a little credibilty:

Start with yourself. Yes, members of Congress. You set an example.

Now that you have been elected/re-elected, you are now part of the government that Ronald Reagan said is the problem.

So you can take a truly conservative approach to start setting things right.

1.   Introduce and vote for a bill to cut your and all members of Congress pay back to 1990 levels.

2.   Introduce and vote for a bill to cut the size of your staff at least by half.

3.   Introduce and vote for a bill to end all government-funded Congressional travel except for one weekly round trip between a member of Congress's district and Washington, D.C.

4.   Introduce and vote for a bill to eliminate your government-funded healthcare.  (Yes, you will have to buy your own private coverage, but that will have two positive benefits: One, put you in the same fix as the people you work for and, two, greatly please one of your biggest campaign funders -- the insurance industry.)

5.   Introduce and vote for emergency legislation to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, including you, that will become effective immediately.

Granted all but ending number 5 don't even qualify as small potatoes when it comes to reducing the deficit. So here are a few other measures that will really make a huge difference and, in fact, might actually move the budget from the red territory it's been in since GWBush got a hold of it back to being in the black, like WJClinton left it.

1.   Introduce and vote for legislation to end U.S. funding of other countries' defense by closing U.S. bases in other countries, except South Korea, which we are obligated by treaty to defend from North Korean aggression.

It is time to be truly conservative and take care of ourselves and end the very liberal government spending on defending countries, like Germany, Japan, Italy, and others, that are capable of taking care of themselves.

Last Protection Standing

The headline reads "Clean Air Under Siege" and the article lists all kinds of ways Congress has and still are making sure air pollution continues unabated in the U.S. -- and, of course, the rest of the world given that air doesn't respect national borders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/opinion/06sun1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211

The first thing that came to my mind, though, is that all the poor children and grandchildren these pols bleat about being saddled with the country's national debt won't even be able to afford gas masks needed to breathe, thanks to these same pols' efforts to ensure that the air will be so foul said children and grandchildren won't be able to breathe it.

I'm way too conservative about the health, safety and lives of this nation's children and grandchildren to think the current Congress's liberal policies that will continue and even escalate the fouling of air, water and the overall environment are a good idea. They certainly aren't in the best interests of The People -- the real, honest-to-god breathing, eating, voting people. Not the incorporated SCOTUS-created paper variety.

What Wisconsin Elected, Part 2

Hot on the heels of the very generous corporate-friendly lawsuit-limitations legislation that flew through Wisconsin's now-Republican-controlled Legislature and was even more quickly signed by the new GOP governor, the state's new Republican triumvirate has enacted another law that gives tax breaks to companies that "create" jobs in Wisconsin. This law gives companies thousands of dollars in tax deductions for each job they create.

 

Aside from why avowed small-government/free-market advocates would get their pro-small government involved in private-enterprise matters such as this, I wondered what kinds of safe guards this law might contain that would prevent some enterprising company or companies from engaging in a grab-the-tax-breaks-and-run scheme. So, when I learned that this bill was whip-lashing through the Legislature, I contacted the senator who represents my district to ask that he try to protect Wisconsin taxpayers who get stuck with the bill for these tax breaks by including some taxpayer safe guards. Some of the conditions I hoped the law would contain are: 

 

--  In order to receive the deduction, a company would be required to guarantee that the newly created job is permanent -- or at least that it exist for some specified time, such as two years or longer. If the job is eliminated, merged with another position or disappears by any other means before the specified time limit, the employer not only loses the deduction, but must repay the state whatever deduction it received for creating the job.

 

--  Only full-time jobs with benefits would qualify for a deduction. No part-time jobs would qualify.

 

--  The job must exist in the state of Wisconsin and employ a Wisconsin resident. No outsourced jobs or positions created by a Wisconsin employer that are based in other states (i.e. director of sales for the western United States who is based in or has an office in Phoenix or any city other than a Wisconsin city) qualify.

 

-- The employer must be based in -- that is, have its primary operational and administrative headquarters -- Wisconsin. No Old Dominion Energy Corporation of Virginia that opens an office in Wisconsin as part of an expansion plan, or that gets a post office box in Wisconsin as a ruse that it is based in Wisconsin.

 

One more provision I would love for the bill to have contained is that whenever a company eliminates a job in Wisconsin, it loses a tax credit equal to a deduction it would get for creating a job.

 

 "Create jobs" is certainly the catch phase du jour. Many politicians who ran for office last November expounded at length about how, if elected, they will create jobs. At the same time, these "small-government" advocates say governments shouldn't be in the business of creating jobs, or that government can't create jobs at all. I get vertigo trying to follow such double-speak.

 

Wisconsin's new Republican governor says the state is now open for business -- and he even spent Wisconsin taxpayer money to erect signs at Wisconsin state lines saying so. What he really means and what those signs should say is that Wisconsin is open season on the people of Wisconsin, the regular folks who don't have the mega-bucks clout that the well-heeled corporate "people" do to buy laws that result in little to no accountability, that will shift even more taxpayer dollars into corporate coffers, and leave increasingly disenfranchised individuals with fewer and fewer options for redress when harmed. 

 

These laws -- the lawsuit-limiting law and the create-a-job-tax-break law -- are two great examples of how Alice-in-Wonderland the English language in the U.S. has become when it comes to the terms "conservative" and "liberal." "Conservative" in today's parlance is really uber-liberal, particularly in the context of Republican-created laws that favor corporations over real people. You know, The People who are mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

 

http://www.anatomyofatrial.com/

 

What Wisconsin Elected

People who are called conservatives these days say they want smaller government and for government to keep its nose out of people's lives.

But that sure doesn't appear to be what's happening in red Wisconsin—red, because Republicans won the governorship and both houses of the Legislature in November.

One of the first laws this triumvirate enacted is actually a huge poke of the government's nose into Wisconsinites' lives. This law restricts individuals' rights to sue, and limits the amount of damages juries can award people who have been harmed. The law not only raises the bar on lawsuit eligibility, it caps punitive damages at $200,000 or double the amount of compensatory damages, whichever is greater, and keeps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases involving nursing homes from exceeding $750,000. It further prohibits nursing home-abuse reports to be used as evidence in civil and in criminal cases!

First, in the corporate world that kind of money doesn't even rise to the level of chump change. To large, profitable companies, $200,000 has about the same value as a penny laying in the street that nobody even bothers to pick it up.

More importantly, though, what is government—a Republican-controlled government at that—doing meddling in people's (and I'm talking about actual human beings who walk, talk, breathe, eat and vote) business, people's own personal business of deciding whether or not they should be able to file a lawsuit? And what is Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled "small" government doing meddling in juries' decisions on what award they (juries) think best fits the harm and/or the negligence or intent of the culprit, or whether or not it's imperative to teach a lesson or send a message to an irresponsible company?

Doesn't such a law violate the U.S. Constitution's separation of powers in that it says the legislative and executive branches can usurp the judicial branch's responsibility? Whatever happened to judges deciding the merits of a case and juries determining what the economic punishment should be?

Proponents of this law say it will curb frivolous lawsuits. But judges have long had authority to dismiss a case on the grounds that it is frivolous.

No, this sure sounds like a nanny government to me, a government in which the governor and legislators are saying they know better than judges and juries, so have to take over the judicial branch and their job for them.

The idea behind this law, as I understand it, is to create a more business-friendly environment. But at what cost? Individuals’ rights? That seems like a pretty liberal (as in generous) policy toward businesses. And very parsimonious and callous policy toward individuals.

And what kind of rap on the knuckles is a $200,000 judgment against a company that puts profits above individuals' health, lives and safety? Shouldn't negligent and/or malevolent corporate decision makers get whacked in a way that really gets their attention?

That’s what a jury decided to do in 1999 when it levied a $4.9 billion judgment against General Motors because four children were severely burned in a car fire that was caused by a known faulty design? One of those children in the Malibu accident, by the way, lost part of one hand and bore grotesque scars over much of the rest of her body, including her face, that were almost unbearable to look at when she attended the trial, which took place several years and 70 surgeries after the accident.

Key to the jury's decision was that the gas tank in the 1979 Malibu in which the victims were riding was mounted behind the rear axle so close to the rear bumper that it was more vulnerable to exploding in a rear-end collision than if it had been positioned in front of the axle. Trial testimony and a smoking-gun internal memo indicated GM officials decided against a safer design that would have cost less than $20 per car more, because, they thought, it would be cheaper to settle any lawsuits that might arise from exploding gas tanks.

The jury said the judgment was intended to do two things: One was to make it so large, it would get GM's attention so that GM wouldn’t just chalk up it up to the cost of doing business. The second was to say that a company making such a cynical, calculated decision that knowingly put the cost of human life at less than $20 a car was not acceptable. The judge in that case reduced the jury's award to $1.2 billion and GM's appeal requested a further reduction, but the judgment sure did get the corporate world's attention.

A friend told me he thinks a $4.9 billion judgment is outrageous. Perhaps, unless it was his child or grandchild who was injured so grievously, had to endure years of unimaginable pain and nearly 100 surgeries, and suffer permanent grotesque disfigurement that was caused by a callously greedy corporation that not only knew about the risky design, but might have been able to prevent it with a $20 fix.

Product-liability jury awards like that in the GM case are an extreme rarity, yet they are trotted out like fairytale boogie-men in order to get laws passed that leave corporations unaccountable, strip power from the third branch of government and rob individuals of their rights, not the least of which is the right to seek redress.

And corporate execs' response to such cases is to fight all the harder—not for consumer safety—but for so-called "tort reform." As Wisconsin's new law proves, the corporate world is winning. That, I believe, is what last November's election was really about.

So, just what did Wisconsin elect in November?

In this case, Wisconsin elected corporate profits over the health, safety and lives of its children—and adults. Because now, if a child or an adult in Wisconsin is permanently disfigured and/or disabled, that child, adult and their families' redress will be the corporate-world equivalent of that penny laying on the street that's not worth anyone's while to pick up.

I'm way too conservative to favor a law as business-liberal as that is a good thing for the people of Wisconsin.

www.anatomyofatrial.com