Author’s note:
I was there last night and the scene was incredible. Within an hour after the bill was passed, there were hundreds gathering. In another hour, thousands. Eventually the Capitol police relented and let people in the building…but only after a few climbed through windows and opened other doors. There were no arrests that have been announced…yet. For hours people chanted, “This is what democracy looks like!” And cars circling the Capitol honked their horns in cadence with the chant. I am beginning to believe this is WAY bigger than Wisconsin.
Keep in mind that everything Hitler did followed the letter of the law, but that did not make it right. The WI Senate did NOT have a quorum and that means that the people of Wisconsin have grounds to refuse to accept this vote or the state government that uses such dirty tricks to defy the expressed will of the people.
Excerpt:
The bill passed at around 6 p.m. on March 9, 2011 in Madison, Wisconsin. In a modern version of the town hall criers that announced the “British are coming” back in the 1700’s, the blogs, emails and social networking sites of Wisconsin citizens who have subscribed to information regarding the ongoing labor protests lit up: “Head to the Capitol, NOW!”
By 7 p.m. there were hundreds of people around the Capitol building chanting, “This is our house, let us in!” By 8 p.m. several hundred were inside the building and thousands were outside. The signs that had been taken down earlier in the week reappeared on the walls. By 9 p.m. the building was packed, with many outside still waiting to get in. (See slideshow).
The measure approved 18-1 Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker. The bill will now go to the state assembly for a vote at 11 a.m. Thursday.
Wisconsin Republicans separated the part of the bill that strips public workers of nearly all collective bargaining (CB) rights and passed it in a sort of “end around” the 14 democrats that have been holding up the vote on the “budget repair bill.”
Because the union provision was part of a budget bill involving expenditures, Republicans in the Senate needed at least 20 senators present for a quorum to vote on the bill. By declaring that the part of the bill that addresses CB and worker contributions does not involve expenditures, it was able to be voted on and passed in a separate bill without the presence of the 14 Democrats that are absent.
This procedure raises ideological questions and legal issues. Firstly, if stripping public workers of most of their collective bargaining rights is not a fiscal issue, then why was it part of a “budget repair bill” in the first place? If making most CB illegal is not part of the fiscal budget, then it may be what public workers have said about it from day one – a direct attack on their unions.
State Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald may have provided insight into one ulterior motive behind this bill in an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. According to Think Progress, Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement. Specifically, he said that the destruction of unions will make it “much more difficult” for President Obama to win reelection in Wisconsin (see video):
If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.
The legal issues that the passing of this bill raises may be even more complex and are almost sure to end up being decided in court.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, attorney Robert Dreps, an expert in media and political law, said exceptions can be made if notice is “impossible or impractical. It raises a lot of serious questions,” he said. “I don’t think they can satisfy the standard for giving such short notice for that committee meeting.”
That is the near-term legal challenge – how the bill got passed. It was done in a way that may have violated open meetings laws, by not allowing 24 hours notice for a public meeting of the conference committee.
Enough speculation and back to reality. The people of Wisconsin are fired up about this issue, as was clearly seen at the Capitol last night and will be in days to come. It has become much larger than a state budget issue, because it epitomizes the struggle that the working class in America is facing after 30 years of assaults by the wealthy elite and the politicians they have bought. The people of Wisconsin are saying, “enough!”
Michael Moore, in his speech last weekend at the Capitol (see video in linked article) said, “Madison is only the beginning…The rich have overplayed their hand…There was no revolt, until now here in Wisconsin.”
Right now the powers that be may be winning the battle in Wisconsin, but the war is far from over.
Read more, get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Wisconsinites flood Capitol after part of Walker’s bill is passed
Total access: Using the other 90% of our brains
For years, scientists such as Albert Einstein and William James have been telling us that we human beings only use 10% of our brain capacity. Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could use the other 90%? Can you imagine all the great ideas that we might be able to come up with?
Great literature — we’d all become Shakespeares!
Great art — I wanna be Michelangelo!
Great science — Einsteins on every corner, they’d run out of Nobel Prizes!
Great music — your child would truly be baby Mozart.
Great humanitarians — would you rather be Buddha or Jesus?
Or perhaps the opposite might happen and we’d end up with more Hitlers, Stalins, Atilla the Huns and Dick Cheneys. Oh crap.
But how do you go about accessing the other 90% of your brain? Meditation? Dreaming? Hitting the books? LSD? Peyote?
At one point in time way back in the 1960s, I ate some mescaline down at Big Sur — and it was immediately revealed to me that NATURE is the most important thing in the world. According to Mescalito, living within the context of trees and grass and mountain vistas and fresh air offers the most meaning to the human brain that there is. As the day wore on, however, both Mescalito and I began to think that perhaps pancakes were the most important thing.
But taking mescaline didn’t make me a genius either. Don’t try it at home.
“Go to college! That will make you smarter!” my mother always told me — back during a time when women were just supposed to stay home and play-act at being June Cleaver. So I went off to college. Got a masters degree too. But did that make me a genius? I wish. And it didn’t make any of those Yale and Harvard graduates who run the Federal Reserve into geniuses either. It just made them better crooks and liars and helped them to figure out new and better ways to keep their butts out of jail.
In these crucial times, it is so very important for the human race to use more of its brain capacity and to evolve. We have been basically thinking like cavemen for all too long. For instance, take the situation in Libya. When confronted with a desire on the part of his people to obtain more democratic institutions, Muammar Gaddafi responded exactly like the most primitive caveman might have. He started killing people, his people.
And what has been America’s answer to problems in Afghanistan, Tripoli. Washington, Wall Street and Wisconsin? Pissing contests that involve violence and threats. That’s not evolution or wisdom. That’s Neanderthal.
But perhaps the next generation will do better than our generation has done. To paraphrase one of my favorite bumper stickers which now reads, “Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!” — maybe if we want and nurture and protect and love the next generation instead of just stealing its future, perhaps we can also get more geniuses as well as just more whirled peas.
Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who was given a rather strange research opportunity: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — all shut down one by one. Then she worked really hard to get all of her brain functions back. Maybe we can learn something from what happened to her and build on her experiences as well. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
I’ve also heard that art, music and other forms of creativity can also expand our brains — and make us better at math too. According to an article in the Harvard Educational Review by Eric Jensen, “Research from the studies discussed in [Arts With the Brain in Mind] and the experience of countless classroom educators support the view that visual arts have strong positive cognitive, emotional, social, collaborative, and neurological effects.”
And, given all this well-researched information, what are the powers-that-be in America doing with it right now? They’re making major cuts to funding for our art museums, school music programs and literature grants in order to have more Moolah to invest in their bloody, useless, uncivilized and paleolithic wars. Good thinking? Hardly.
Eating healthy stuff is supposed to be good for your brain too. Nothing processed. No sugar. No artificial sweeteners. Breast-feed your kids. That kind of stuff. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-cake-blues-back-before-there.html
And while looking for ways to get a spacecraft to the moon, one NASA scientist used to deliberately work himself to exhaustion, fall asleep, dream about the answers to his problems, wake up suddenly, and have his wife hurriedly write down what he had learned from his dream before the solutions were forgotten.
But I don’t have a wife — so no deep thinking or going to the moon for me. I’m screwed.
PS: Speaking of music, I just starred — well, sort of — in a new punk-rock music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2be3NBB2I