Thursday, April 30, 2020

GOP legislators 'working on' Covid-19 plan: Don't forget Act 10, & '18 lame-duck 'plans'

Your warning lights should be flashing bright red, Bucky:

Because we're told that GOP leaders, along with WI's big-business-without-any-worker-representation' special interests are working on a plan to roll out should they when the State Supreme Court lets them wrest control of the government's emergency powers from Gov. Evers.

You can bet the plan is already sitting on secret servers within a keystroke of the leaders computers to further empower businesses to dismiss workers who resist a quick return to workplaces reopened even before Trump's corporately-obeisant White House says its safe.

Or that the sickness and death data trends justice, as Urban Milwaukee's Bruce Thompson demonstrates.

The GOP-run legislature already passed one bill that denied some EMT's an easy path to Covid-19 treatment and compensation after the heavyweight WMC got GOP legislator to add the anti-worker to a bill distributing emergency federal dollars.

Why not some additional restrictions, or new limitations on workers' comp?

You have to assume business interests and GOP ideologues are going to 'plan' for additional financial and managerial restrictions on public employees even if that steps on the Governor's prerogatives - - about which Fitzgerald and Vos could not care about any less.

Because they've been working to diminish, disrespect and otherwise undermine and ignore Evers since he had the temerity to oust Walker from the Governor-for-Life lock on the office which Republicans assumed was his by right.

We've seen what happens in Wisconsin when Walkerite corporatist tools get together privately and make 'plans.'

Remember when:

* Walker sprung Act 10, calling his secretly-drafted radical rewrite of public employee rights, wages, benefit funding and 50 years of state history and law merely "modest, modest requests."

* Ditto for the secretly-crafted GOP gerrymander that continues to overly-populate the Legislature with rightwing Republicans who are only too happy to pretend they are entitled to that representation with all the power it delivers.

* Not to mention the 2018 lame-duck package of bills Republicans had ready to roll out and over the incoming Democratic Governor and Attorney General Kaul.



We've seen this movie before. It only ends well for the GOP.

Nothing comes from quietly-crafted Republican legislative measures except fewer dollars and rights in the hands of working people and greater powers accumulated by GOP legislators to serve their donors and partisan advantages.

3 comments:

Mary Kay said...

I learned a long time ago that a prophet faces the signs of the present with the wisdom from history. I hope the anger expressed by WI voters & poll workers who risked their lives to save some democracy is clear in the minds of WI Supreme Court as they ponder their futures in what is required to be a nonpartisan body.

Mitch said...

Before the Supreme Court votes to override the Governor's orders to protect us from the pandemic, I hope Justice Roggensack remembers that she's 79 years old and high-risk for COVID-19, and that Evers can appoint her replacement without seeking approval from the Legislature.

Anonymous said...

Recall Roggensack.