"... during the Act 10 protests, betraying a campaign promise to 'put on a comfortable pair of walking shoes myself' and 'march on that picket line with you' if collective bargaining rights were ever under attack. (Vice President Biden did not go to Wisconsin either.) Outrage over Act 10 prompted an effort to recall Mr. Walker that garnered nearly a million signatures and forced him to face a new election in 2012. But Mr. Obama deliberately avoided campaigning with Tom Barrett, the governor’s Democratic opponent. 'This is a gubernatorial race with a guy who was recalled and a challenger trying to get him out of office,' Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign spokeswoman, told NBC News. 'It has nothing to do with President Obama.' The fallout from the financial crisis, and Mr. Obama’s tepid economic response to it, helped enable the Tea Party backlash, allowing the movement’s funders to realize long-held ambitions of weakening the labor movement and the public sector under the guise of austerity. That effort was made easier by the Democrats’ embrace of their framing. A few months before Mr. Walker announced Act 10, his predecessor, Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, bragged that he made steeper cuts to size of the state employee work force than any governor in Wisconsin’s history. Mr. Obama, too, championed public austerity, imposing a two-year wage freeze for federal workers just after the 2010 election...."
From a NYT op-ed titled "Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Paved the Way for Donald Trump’s America."
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5 comments:
Carolita writes:
""Mr. Obama, too, championed public austerity, imposing a two-year wage freeze for federal workers just after the 2010 election...."
"NYTimes, do tell us about Obama's Austerity, yeah.
"Hilarious to see that framing when one considers that between Obama's 2009 inauguration & the 2010 election, the P-O-R Pelosi-Obama-Reid Administration poured gagillions into government paid union worker coffers. I remember my bitterness that Pelosi had kept Bush from passing any actual budgets for a few years, but in 2009 -- in the middle of that historic financial downturn mind you -- passed a Titanic Spender that not only granted federal workers a 2.2% pay hike, but made it retroactive, backpay reaching 2 years back."
Robert Cook writes:
"For all the spittle and paranoid rhetoric expended by those who imagined Barack Obama as a socialist intent upon turning the USA into the USSA, he was, in fact, a great friend to the Republicans and their agenda. He continued the illegal wars of Bush and Cheney, he gave them a pass on their torture regime and expanded the use of drone bombers to murder people on the ground, (joining them in the annals of US war criminals), he pursued Edward Snowden for his heroic revelation of the government's crimes of illegal surveillance of the American people, and he beguiled the Democrats into a state of stuporous self-satisfaction that "all was well" with Beneficent Barry in office. BO deserves a medal of merit for his masterful performance, governing as an enthusiastic factotum to and brutal enforcer for the rapacious powers that be, while flim flammng is base throughout his eight years in office and beyond, even up to this very day."
Robert writes:
"I am unconvinced by the NYT claim that Scott Walker's comparison between the Act 10 protest and Trump's insurrection riot was in any way "specious."
"The Wisconsin State Journal points out that former Madison Chief of Police Charles Tubbs said that out of 1.5 million people protesting Act 10 over 37 days, there were only 16 arrests. Admittedly, some protesters were forcibly removed from the Wisconsin Capitol, in one instance by state troopers.
"This peaceable law enforcement approach could be attributed to the "Wisconsin Nice" mythic but nice is rarely granted to be a part of the Scott Walker era."
Chris writes:
"Collective bargaining benefits the collective. Those outside the collective, not so much. As I remember, Walker’s ‘attack’ on collective bargaining was to make membership in the collective voluntary, not compulsory, and for that he reaped the whirlwind. I remember reading about it all on Althouse. Those protests looked pretty insurrectiony to me."
MikeR writes:
"@Robert Cook "he was, in fact, a great friend to the Republicans and their agenda. He continued the illegal wars of Bush and Cheney, he gave them a pass on their torture regime and expanded the use of drone bombers to murder people on the ground,"
"I am not sure what gives Robert Cook the idea that military murders is "Republican". Which Democrats does he have in mind that didn't do these things?
"I'm guessing from his words that he is a really big fan of Donald Trump, who is the first President in recent memory to even question the needs for Forever Wars. He even set it up for Joe Biden to leave Afghanistan."
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