This is not a political website. It is a news site, but it is not hard core, extremely relevant to your life news site. I’m aware that our specialty is to focus on diversion, past times and entertainment. But what’s going on in Madison, Wisconsin right now is SO BIG it transcends everything American, and it affects all the games we love.
Collective bargaining may not be the sexiest topic to read about, but disputes of this nature may prevent us from even having a NFL and NBA season next year. So it is something we should all be paying attention to. If the middle class weren’t endangered enough already, the elites of this nation are trying to render it extinct; in order to grab more money and power for themselves.
And in the process start America down a path that would take our already canyonlike gap between rich and poor, and extend it to a level you only see in third world banana republics.
By Paul M. Banks
Here’s the gist of it from CNN Politics and Citizens for a Legitimate Government:
The Wisconsin state Assembly passed a Republican bill Friday that strips most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, but the fight over the bill seems far from over. It still has to pass the state Senate, which could prove to be a more contentious battle. Fourteen Democratic senators have fled to neighboring Illinois to prevent a quorum from voting on the issue, and they remained absent early Friday.
Thousands have protested the legislation in recent days
The confrontation reached a fever pitch after Walker was recorded during a prank phone call discussing the idea of duping absentee Democrats by luring them back to “talk, not negotiate,” allow them to recess and then have the 19 Republican senators declare a quorum.
Hopefully this situation resolves itself, because this is exactly how revolutions and civil wars begin. And it’s happening right in the back yard of the Wisconsin Badgers, a team we cover regularly. And the story will play itself out (partially anyway) in Illinois, where this site is founded. We’ll have more on the prank phone call in a subsequent post.
In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from a must-read New York Times column from Paul Krugman:
The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,” which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.
Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.
What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net. He is also a regular contributor to the Tribune’s Chicago Now network, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker Network, and Fox Sports.com
He does a weekly radio segment on Chicagoland Sports Radio.com and Cleveland.com
You can follow him on Twitter @thesportsbank