Beach Peanuts

Rick Scott, Florida Senate Pushing Bill That Will Allow Secret Privatization Of Agencies, Prisons

A Florida Senate rules committee is meeting to consider a bill that will allow the lawmakers to secretly privatize programs and services, and in this case it privatizing prisons and what the Florida AFL-CIO equates to union busting:

The Florida Legislature is back at its’ old games and putting you and your family’s safety at risk. Two bills, SB 7170 and SB 7172, are being rushed through by Governor Rick Scott and the Legislative leadership in an attempt to silence Floridians’ right to participate in Democracy.

These bills will:

• Eliminate thousands of jobs
• Risk public safety by turning over prison security to the lowest bidder
• Eliminate accountability for prison administration

SB 7170 will:

• Allow the Legislature to privatize any state service with no substantive review
• Eliminate any transparency from the process, allowing Legislative leaders to auction off Florida with no deliberation, cost benefit analysis or public input

The big out-of-state special interests who are pushing these bills gave huge campaign contributions to politicians and their allies in Tallahassee. This is a clear attempt by the Legislature to return the favor by putting your family’s safety at risk so private contractors can make huge profits off of your tax dollars.

The bill essentially means that an agency would not have to report its privatization of a program or service until after the contract is signed.

 

Wisconsin Collects Over One Million SIgnatures To Recall Gov. Walker

Democrats needed 540,208 signatures on petitions to force a recall of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, but today they got that and more.

Over one million signatures!

It's the next step in the effort to recall the Koch friendly governor, who stripped collective bargaining rights for unions, slashed education from his budget, brought about huge job losses and pushed through a strict voter suppression, voter ID law among other things. (Sound a bit familiar Florida?)

From TPM:

Wisconsin Democrats announced Tuesday that they have collected over a million signatures to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker — nearly twice the 540,208 signatures, or 25 percent of the total votes in the previous election for governor, needed to trigger a new election.

The petitions are being submitted today to the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections. This will in turn set off a lengthy review process by state officials, before an election can go forward later in the year. But given the very large number of signatures that are well beyond the already high threshold, and the state’s recent history of recalls in the state Senate, it seems a safe bet that an election will occur.

The Dems are also submitting separate petitions for: Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (845,000 signatures, showing some amount of drop-off from the Walker papers, but still well above the same 540,208 threshold); State Sen. Pam Galloway; State Sen. Terry Moulton; State Sen. Van Wanggaard; and state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (who was not originally a top target of the state party, but against whom the local Walker-recall organizers took the extra initiative).

In their announcement, the party boasted of numerous measurements of the total collection of petitions: That they number 300,000 pages, weighing a total of 3,000 pounds — or two Holstein milk cows, in this dairy-producing state.

You can read the entire article here.

It's too bad the same can't happen in Florida. I don't know about you, but I have governor recall envy.

"American Exceptionalism?" U.S. Weakest Worker Protections Among Rich Nations

Republicans love to wax so eloquently about "American Exceptionalism" and give glowing speeches on prosperity in America. Often they tie those beatitudes to what they call the "job creators," those enormous corporations who must be spared contributing their fair share of taxes at all costs, lest Armageddon will ensue....or something. They value those big corporations (or should I say "people") so much, naturally because they roll out the big bucks come election time. We've been told the big lie for over a decade now that in order to create jobs, those poor corporations just can't "afford" to go without those tax cuts. It's the only way! Otherwise how can they possibly create all those jobs?

Well, they don't, and here's just one facet of "American Exceptionalism" the GOP-Tea Party will never speak about.

From the AFL-CIONowBlog:

A new international comparison makes it clear just how weak  protections are for working people in the United States. University of Missouri-St. Louis associate professor Kenneth Thomas reviewed numbers from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found that in 21 categories, U.S. workers are more vulnerable than workers in any [OECD] members (rich industrialized democracies) or even the so-called growing BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China…to being fired unfairly, to not getting severance pay, to getting the least notice on mass layoffs or being fired, to being stuck on a mouse wheel of temporary positions.

Thomas also compared the United States labor protections with those in Estonia, Indonesia and South Africa for good measure. The result, in every case, Thomas says on his blog Middle Class Political Economist, is that not only is the United States in last place, it isn’t even close.

We're exceptional, all right.

Yet the Republicans, should they seize control of the Senate, and even the White House in part through more union busting and vote suppression as a result in the next election, they're poised to make America even more "exceptional" with permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest among us, along with those "Corporate Persons" who create more layoffs than they create actual jobs. The same corporations that line their pockets with undisclosed dollars thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling.

Yet they seek to project accusations of "class warfare" on Democrats? It would seem that class warfare is the larger part of the entire Republican-Tea Party platform.

Welcome to the Republican's "exceptional" race to the bottom.

Winner Takes All, Literally

This video from the  Transport Workers Union of America looks perfectly believable to many of us living in Florida, who are literally the losers either way. Texas too for that matter.

Sorry people.

No pie for you.