As tens of thousands of Wisconsinites rallied in Madison for a mass signing of petitions to recall anti-labor Governor Scott Walker Saturday, it was announced that the drive had collected 105,000 signatures in its first four days.

By the end of the weekend, that number will go substantially higher, say organizers of Saturday’s rally, which marshalls estimated drew 40,000. (Early in the day, as the crowd was building, Capitol Police confirmed that roughly 30,000 were present and the numbers grew as units of firefighters, teachers and state, county and municipal employees poured into the Capitol Square from the edges of Madison’s downtown.)


Protestors at the recall Walker rally at the State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin Nov. 19, 2011. (Photo/Andy Manis) When the rally was done, activists with United Wisconsin, the group that is coordinating the recall drive, displayed tall piles of newly signed petitions. “After they’ve counted all the new petitions that have been gathered in Madison and across the state,” said former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, “they’ll be well on their way to 200,000.”

The labor, farm and community activists who organized the effort have sixty days to collect 540,000 signatures—25 percent of the electorate in the last gubernatorial election—to force the governor and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch to face the voters in a recall election. Organizers hope to turn in more than 700,000 signatures, in order to thwart challenges that will be posed by a multimillion-dollar effort paid for by the billionaire Koch brothers and other anti-labor zealots from across the country who have financed Walker’s campaigns.

The governor and his allies have not missed any openings to try to block the recall. The Koch brothers are already paying for pro-Walker television ads put together by their Americans for Prosperity group, and the governor’s campaign is spending heavily on its own ads—$300,000 since last Monday. (There are estimates that spending on Walker’s behalf will exceed $50 million.) Republican legislators have moved to give the governor veto power over election rules. And the Republican Party of Wisconsin has organized a campaign to intimidate recall petitioners with a website that urges party minions to “monitor” and challenge nurses, teachers and small-business owners who seek signatures. In some cases, Walker backers have grabbed petitions and ripped them up.

But there was no evidence Saturday or Sunday that any of the governor’s attempt’s to protect his political career were working.

It was not just that thousands were signing recall petitions on the Capitol Square in Madison.

They were doing it in all seventy-two Wisconsin counties.

The movement to recall Governor Scott Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch is just that: a movement. It extends across the state, to every county, to every city, village and town.

As the November 15 starting date when the movement would begin gathering petitions to recall Walker and Kleefisch approached, training sessions for petition circulators were being held in the most Republican counties of the state. More than thirty offices opened and were staffed by volunteers in communities such as Elkhorn in traditionally conservative Walworth County, where a “midnight madness” party was held last Tuesday so that petitions could be signed the minute it was possible to do so.

In the rural Lafayette County community of Darlington, local recall coordinator Kate Bausch said folks had been gearing up to recall Walker since last February, when Walker proposed to strip state, county and municipal employees and teachers of their collective bargaining rights.

The political process is sick with spin and deception. But the biggest lie of the past year has been the suggestion, peddled primarily by Walker but also by the most disingenuous of his supporters, that anger with the governor has been confined to the liberal precincts of Madison or the Democratic neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

The truth is that with his assault on collective bargaining rights, the civil service system, local democracy, school funding and public services, Walker battered every town, village, city and county in Wisconsin. And with ethical scandals that are now swirling around him—following the September FBI raid on the home of his top political appointee and the revelation that his press secretary and one of his top fund raisers had requested immunity in a “John Doe” probe of political corruption—Walker has earned the scorn even of those Wisconsinites who will never think of themselves as liberals or Democrats.

The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch, who had served as a willing rubber-stamp for the governor, is big. The grassroots energy across the state, the size of the crowd at Saturday’s rally, the number of signatures already collected: all of these confirm the historic scope and reach of the recall drive.

The movement to displace Walker and Kleefisch is broad-based. Trainings have taken place in every corner of the state. There are local committees, groups and activist circles in all of Wisconsin’s seventy-two counties. The recall movement takes in Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, independents and, yes, Republicans. That’s because Wisconsin’s instinct for fairness is stronger than the penchant for partisanship, as state Senator Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, confirmed when he refused to go along with efforts by Walker’s legislative stooges to rig the recall process.

The response of Walker and Kleefisch partisans to Schultz’s show of independence was bitter and destructive. Schultz’s office in the Capitol was egged in an act of vandalism that—had it been directed at a Walker ally—would have brought cries of complaint from conservative talk-radio hosts and the Koch brothers–funded Tea Party project. But the recall movement in not prone toward that sort of whining.

Rooted as it is in the values and ideals of Wisconsin, the recall movement is genuine and determined. It has put pettiness aside and focused on the work at hand: removing a governor who has harmed the state economically, ethically and morally—and a lieutenant governor who has rejected her oath to defend the constitution and the best interests of Wisconsin.

From Kenosha in the southeast to Superior in the northwest, from the inner-city wards of Milwaukee to the crossroads towns of Marathon County, Wisconsinites are rising to the call of democracy and honest governance. They are signing petitions, circulating petitions, filing petitions and defending petitions against bogus challenges from lawyers who are paid for by the out-of-state billionaires who are funding the Walker-Kleefisch campaign. And when the petitioning is done, when the recall election is scheduled, they will mount the greatest grassroots campaign Wisconsin has seen in a century—not just to remove Walker and Kleefisch but to renew the democratic ideals of a great state that has been temporarily misled.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/21-2

Any of those Koch brother tea party rallys ever get this big?

No I can't say they did. Then again the tea party rallies weren't funded by the Kock brothers. Unlike the recall events are funded by national unions and union workers are bussed in from around the country.

And you wonder why there are less and less Jobs?

The Right to Work is the Right to Be Free

In 28 out of 50 American states, you can be denied a job if you refuse to join a labor union and share a portion of your salary with your union bosses. Only 22 states currently have what are known as “right to work” laws which protect hard working Americans from rapacious unions.

If a person cannot work, they cannot feed themselves and their family members. These 28 states have no protection for Americans who want to work, but are morally opposed to labor unions and to having their wages subject to legalized extortion.

Legislators in several states are currently working to pass right to work laws to protect American workers. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina introduced the National Right to Work Act on Tuesday. This act would protect Americans from any state against predatory union practices.

Senator DeMint stated “No American should be forced to join a union and pay dues to get a job in this country. Many Americans are already struggling just to put food on the table, and they shouldn’t have to fear losing their jobs or face discrimination if they don’t want to join a union. Forced-unionism shields unions from member accountability and has a detrimental effect on the economy.”

Co-sponsors of the National Right to Work Act are Tom Coburn (R-OK), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), James Risch (R-ID), Pat Toomey (R-PA) and David Vitter (R-LA).


What today's Unions practice is Extortion,no matter how you cut it!

Of course greedy big business hates unions we should all work for as little as possible.

well,you keep the Unions,and the Far East will keep your Jobs!
Fair Exchange!

Realy? I have allmost twenty years in the same facility a pension, cadilac medical, a good hourly rate holidays off with pay and four weeks vacation, so far so good.

Collective Bargaining Is Not A Right

Conn Carroll

March 1, 2011 at 4:00 pm



The New York Times has a story out today purporting to show that “Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector Unions.” But this poll is completely worthless. To understand why just look at the question they used to justify their headline:

Collective bargaining refers to negotiations between an employer and a labor union’s members to determine the conditions of employment. Some states are trying to take away some collective bargaining rights of public employee unions. Do you favor or oppose taking away some collective bargaining rights of the unions?

Unsurprisingly, 60% of Americans told The New York Times they did not want to take away the rights of other Americans. Problem is collective bargaining is not a right. It is a privilege.

There is a big difference between rights and privileges. Americans have the right to vote. The state, barring a felony conviction, cannot take that right away. Driving, on the other hand, is privilege. The state can refuse you the privilege of driving for a myriad of reasons including failure to pass a test showing you know the rules of the road or failing to purchase auto insurance.

Similarly the freedom of association is a right shared by all Americans and protected by the First Amendment. In contrast, collective bargaining is a special power occasionally granted to some unions. In upholding North Carolina’s ban on government union collective bargaining, a federal court wrote in Atkins vs. City of Charlotte: “All citizens have the right to associate in groups to advocate their special interests to the government. It is something entirely different to grant any one interest group special status and access to the decision making process.”

Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) budget bill in Wisconsin in no way infringes on any Americans’ right to associate and lobby government. What it does do is allow Wisconsin employees to choose not to join a union and keep their job at the same time. It also forces the government unions in Wisconsin to collect their own union dues instead of using the power of the state to withhold them directly from employee paychecks.

Now there is a question you’ll never see in a New York Times poll: “Do you favor forcing all state employees to join a union and empowering government unions to take union dues directly from employee paychecks?”


http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/01/collective-bargaining-is-not-a-right/?utm_source=YOUTUBE&utm_medium=VIDEO&utm_campaign=YOUTUBEVIDEOS

Violence,Coercion and Blackmail by the Unions doesn't make it right!

News Flash.

It wasnt the unions that broke the economy.
It wasnt public employees
It wasnt raising the minimum wage
It wasnt food stamps.


It was the greedy 1%

Who used communist labor in China to gut US manufactureing and break the middle class so they could create their two class utopia

Rich and the poor who serve them.

How could anyone cheerlead for this?

Have you no shame?