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.

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.