Where are the anti-worker politicians today?

No surprise here. Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is spending his Labor Day at home. "Home" is the Governor's Mansion. But Walker had better keep the blinds drawn, because a "Recall Walker" protest flotilla is planned for the lake right outside the house.

Anti-worker extremists Wisconsin state Sen. Pam Galloway and U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy will be marching in the Wausau Labor Day parade after all. Protesters will be turning their backs on them as they pass by.

All the Republican presidential candidates who think workers make too much money will be taking refuge in South Carolina, one of the most anti-union states in the country. We wonder if Michele Bachmann will repeat her proposal to eliminate corporate taxes altogether.

It seems most of the Governors Gone Wild are hiding out, but we can't be sure. We can find hide nor hair of corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. No idea where Maine's wingnut Gov. Paul LePage is, either. We're quite certain that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett won't be at the Pittsburgh March for Jobs, because he wasn't invited.

Florida Gov. Pink Slip Rick Scott will be showing his face at the Orlando Labor Day picnic. We suspect protesters will hand him some of their trademark pink slips.

(Teamster President Hoffa, along with President Obama, will be marching in the Detroit Labor Day parade.)

Here's a great suggestion from WNYC's blog:

Labor Day has transformed into (a day that's) ... Not about the history of labor, respect for union or an opportunity to affirm our commitment to fundamental worker rights, just a chance for some family-friendly fun.

That family-friendly fun, by the way, is made possible by child labor laws, weekends and minimum wage - all progress that was championed by labor unions. But you won't hear about that on Monday, politicians will be too busy discussing how to get government out of the way of Big Business and regular Americans will be too preoccupied worrying about their economic future.

But if you can give a few minutes of your vacation day to remember the history of the occasion - a battle to improve the lives of the American worker that continues to today - there's a question you can and should ask every official and candidate: "If you want to march with us, why won't you stand with us?"

Today's Teamster News 09.03.11

Dick Meister: Busting the union busters, a labor day lament  San Francisco Chronicle   ...This is not a very happy Labor Day for labor, considering the continued heavy attacks on public employee unions, which have become the vanguard of organized labor...
Republican lawmakers mull Labor Day participation  Associated Press   ...State Sen. Pam Galloway says she's attending a parade even though she knows some people won't be happy to see her. Other Republicans are staying away. Walker plans to spend Monday with his family...
The Bachmann wing  Politico   ...Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra, fresh off endorsements from Iowa Rep. Steve King, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, seeks to associate himself with Michele Bachmann...
State spends $80k on renovations for Gov. Rick Scott's office  Miami Herald   ...Scott said, "It's a normal process they go through where DMS does this..."
Republican Party leader in NH calls it quits  Boston Globe   ...Embattled New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Jack Kimball resigned last night, ending a bitter internal battle that pitted Tea Party activists against long-time Republicans...
Deal could make it easier for farmworkers to organize  Los Angeles Times   ...A bill stemming from an agreement between advocates and Gov. Jerry Brown would let a state board certify a union if it finds a grower has acted illegally to affect the outcome of a labor election...

Whoa! Bachman would lower minimum wage to cost of overseas labor

Why not just repeal the 13th amendment while you're at it (that's the one that abolishes slavery)?

Here's the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Friday she wouldn't rule out changes to the federal minimum wage as a way to lower the cost of doing business and lure corporations back to the United States.

The Minnesota congresswoman told supporters at a packed sandwich shop that the corporate income tax needs to be reduced because companies are moving to other countries to save money. She was later asked by a reporter whether changes to the minimum wage should also be considered to balance the cost of labor here and overseas.

"I'm not married to anything. I'm not saying that's where I'm going to go," she said.

That's rich, coming from someone who spent $4,700 on her hair and makeup in less than six weeks after she declared she was running for president.

Look, there's only one reason someone like Michele Bachmann can even consider running for president: she's carrying water for extremist billionaires who would just love to pay their workers pennies an hour. Like the Koch brothers.  Reports Mother Jones,

In late May, KochPAC, as Koch Industries' PAC is known, donated $10,000 in one day to Bachmann-linked committees—$5,000 to her 2012 congressional re-election committee and $5,000 to her political action committee, MICHELE PAC... The two checks weren't KochPAC's first contributions to Bachmann. According to federal campaign records, the committee has given $25,000 to the Minnesota congresswoman since 2006, excluding the May donation.

Bachmann actually signed a nutty pledge in Iowa that says African-Americans were better off under slavery than they are under President Obama. So, well, maybe she will decide to advocate repeal of the 13th amendment. If we all worked for free, then we'd have full employment.

Bachmann maxes out on Koch $

No surprise there.

The presidential contender (very hard to type those words) raised $4.2 million over the past three months.

Thanks to Talking Points Memo, we learn,

Among the donors offering the maximum contribution: Koch Industries' Political Action Committee, who pledged $5,000 to her campaign. Koch PAC has also donated to Bachmann's own political action committee as well as her Congressional campaign.

Just what we need, more Koch whores running things.

Nobody coming to this Tea Party

A Tea Party convention scheduled for September in Kansas City has been canceled due to lack of interest. Roll Call has the story:

Organizers of the Freedom Jamboree announced Wednesday that they have canceled the tea party convention planned for this fall, citing low registration.

They had hoped the event would serve as a stage for Republican presidential candidates to court the conservative movement, and two — Koch whore Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) — had already confirmed they would attend.

The weekend of reflection and strategizing was scheduled for Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in Kansas City, Kan., and included a straw poll. Twenty-one local tea party groups started it with the intent to reclaim the movement from national umbrella groups and offer an alternative to the annual fall tea party rally on the National Mall.

"National umbrella groups" is code for the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and the corporate-funded FreedomWorks.

It's too bad, really. We can sympathize with some of the real Tea Partiers' agenda. Their opposition to job-killing trade deals is a case in point. The Kochs and the corporations sure can't get behind that.

And here's a related question: What if they made a movie about Sarah Palin and no one came to see it? An Atlantic Monthly writer went to the premier in Orange County, Calif.:

It isn't strictly accurate to say that I sat through the whole movie alone. Just as the previews started, two young women walked in giggling together and took seats three rows behind me.

ALEC: The puppeteer controlling Bachmann & Palin

It's called the American Legislative Exchange Council, but we prefer to think of it as Aristocrats Lambasting Employed Citizens.

It's a secret organization that aims to let corporations loot the government and turn working families into serfs. ALEC hosts secret meetings in which corporate executives and lawmakers cook up model legislation that is then inflicted on the public. In These Times calls it

...a legislative roach motel controlled by corporations, special interest groups and right-wing think tanks.

Earlier this year, one of those roaches crawled out of ALEC and became Scott Walker's bill destroying collective bargainnig rights for government workers.

News articles are starting to appear about ALEC since a new website, http://www.alecexposed.com/ has posted something like 800 leaked documents.

According to In These Times

An exhaustive analysis of thousands of pages of documents obtained through public records requests from six states, as well as tax filings, lobby reports, legislative drafts and court records, reveal that these suddenly popular anti-public employee bills, while taking different forms from state to state, were indeed disseminated as "model legislation" by ALEC.

Not coincidentally, bills similar to those in Florida and Wisconsin have been introduced in Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Vermont.

Here's a great piece at Crooks & Liars, which reports,

They approved legislation for tort reform, block grant funding for Medicaid, and selling insurance across state lines. You recognize these policies as the current conservative platform, I'm sure. However, what's new about this is that the platform was dictated, agreed to, drafted and disseminated by a small group of corporations, right-wing supporting think tanks and their conservative legislative partners and we can finally prove it....

This is why, by the way, idiots like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann can actually run for office and get serious support. They're just the marionettes behind the real policymakers, just like Governor Bighair in Texas and Governor Gollum in Florida.

People for the American Way lists some of ALEC's major donors. The list won't surprise you one little bit:

Exxon Mobil, the Scaife family (Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation), the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation), Charles Koch (Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation), the Bradley family (The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and the Olin family (John M. Olin Foundation). These organizations consistently finance right-wing think tanks and political groups.

Michele Bachmann hearts the Koch bros.

A lot of Teamsters don't like Michele Bachmann. We know that because thousands of Teamsters booed the mention of the presidential wannabe's name at the 28th Convention. They also cheered and applauded when our sister Robin Kohl from Local 638 in Minneapolis walked up to the microphone on the floor and gave Bachmann what for.

Here's what Kohl had to say:

I’m from the state of Minnesota where Michele Bachmann lives.

(Chorus of boos)

I’ve never met her personally, but in case she’s watching — and she’s probably not because she’s a little too arrogant to give a damn but, Michelle, as I said, “Nice to meet you. My name is Robin Kohl and I’m from Minnesota.

Since you have the audacity to run for president and insult all these hard-working people in America, I just want to say one thing to you.

You better put your tea cup down and buck up. And on second thought, you better go to Wal-Mart and buy a whole case of lipstick, because when we stand together, you’re going to need it when we tell you — you’re going to need it to cover the size lips you’re going to need when we tell you to kiss our collective hard-working union, middle-class ass.

(You can watch it on the YouTube clip above, starting at 6:00.)

Bachmann, on her presidential campaign website, says she represents her constituents. It's important, though, to understand who her constituents are. They're the Koch brothers, the financial services industry and the corporations.

She has received $25,000 from Koch Industries.

And take a look at her campaign finance report:

• $19,950 from Target, the union-busting retail chain.
• $15,500 from Deloitte, a financial services firm that settled accounting fraud charges a few years ago for $50 million.
• $11,150 from Ernst and Young, the accounting firm being sued for lying about Lehman Bros.' financial condition, which led to Lehman's collapse, which led to the global financial crisis, which caused the bank bailout and the recession.
• $10,000 from the American Bankers Association (they're NOT your friend).
• $10,000 from Citizens United, the "nonprofit" that successfully overturned federal campaign finance law so that corporations are now allowed to give unlimited amounts of secret money to help political candidates like Michele Bachmann.

Yup, she's a true Tea Partier -- a fraudulent populist who supports the authoritarian, extremist corporate agenda of the Koch brothers. Don't let her fool you.

Results Bachmann FB page flash mob

Well, thousands of comments have been posted on Michele Bachmann's FB page this afternoon as a result of a virtual flash mob. We're not sure about the usefulness of this kind of online activism -- maybe it kept Bachmann's staff busy deleting critical posts instead of raising money from anti-worker donors like the Koch brothers.

Here's an example of how it worked:
Bachman (or probably a staff member) posts,

On behalf of my entire family, I would like to extend my sincere condolences to the Ford family on this sad occasion. May God give them comfort at this time as we all remember the many accomplishments of Betty Ford.

Then (presumably) flash mobster Larry Yoshida posts

you're not fooling anyone. given your knowledge of history, you probably think she's Henry Ford's wife

Here are some other comments:

Myron J. Martin Lowering corporate taxes will create jobs??? How??? People have to be buying their products first...and some corporations didn't even pay taxes last year

  
Connor Crozier DISLIKE DISLIKE DISLIKE DISLIKE

Paul Michael Taylor Michelle heard creating jobs is a "no-brainer", so she promptly replied, "Then I'm your Gal!"

Meh...

Flash mob today on Michele Bachmann FB page

We're not exactly pleased that Michele Bachmann said she "hopes" unemployment stays high to improve her chances of winning the presidency of the United States.  According to The Examiner,

In an interview, Bachmann is asked about the dismal June jobs report from the Labor Department. The host asked Bachmann, “Does it strike you that as unemployment goes up, your chances of winning office also go up?” Bachmann responded by saying, “Well that could be. Again, I hope so.” ... A higher unemployment would likely help her defeating President Obama in the general election, but many might consider it callous for her to acknowledge that possibility in public or to “hope” for higher unemployment numbers.  (Ya think?)

This afternoon, there will be a flash mob on Bachmann's Facebook page at 2 pm Central Time. It aims to replicate the recent flash mob on wine connoisseur Paul Ryan's Facebook page, depicted in the youtube video above. 

Already, more than 600 people have signed up on the Protest Michelle Bachmann FB Flash Mob - 2pm CDT Facebook page, which offers instruction on how to participate.