Marriage Equallity Gets Great Field Position On A Punt From SCOTUS

Sometimes, when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decides it really doesn't want to deal with an issue just yet, it will do what we like to call a "punt".  That is, without comment they decide to let various appellate court decisions stand.  Today, October 6th, 2014, SCOTUS did just that in regards to various marriage equality cases attempting to be reviewed by SCOTUS.

Just as we saw in several NFL games this past weekend, a punt can be a wonderful thing, for either team.  In the case of marriage equality, it is now legal for same-sex couples to get married in 24 states and the District of Columbia and in a very short time, it will be legal in 30 and Washington D.C.  That is incredible field position for advocates of marriage equality, such as myself.  In essence, to further push the football analogy, with the punt from SCOTUS, anti-marriage equality forces are stuck on their own 10 yard line with two minutes left on the clock, only one time out left , down by nine points and their quarterback is playing injured.

But, as we also saw this past weekend, the fortunes of any team can be turned around in the last two minutes.  So we need to watchful of the decision soon to come out of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which could be the first appellate decision against marriage equality.  If that is the case, SCOTUS will most likely need to take up the issue of marriage equality for a full hearing.  I just hope it doesn't come down to the that.

The Unholy Union

I think we can all agree that certain members of the "elite" are well benefited by the policies of the modern Republican Party and the current manifestation of social conservatives, the "tea party" movement.  We can also agree that the elite would like nothing better than a permanent underclass in this nation that can be used for cheap if not slave labor.  We already see the start of it with high unemployment and the refusal of companies to hire those recently unemployed.

Now the Republicans have systematically been attacking organized labor, in particular those civil service employees represented by unions.  We have seen the attacks on public sector unions in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey and Florida.  The attempts to weaken if not destroy the public sector unions is mostly allow for the privatization of services provided by the various governments.  If there are no unions to represent the workers, they can't fight against privatization.

With the unions representing civil service workers gone, the next step will be to more or less criminalize private sector unions.  This has been the dream of American corporations for over a century.  If they can break the unions by criminalizing them, then they will have removed the last impetus to wholesale slashing of wages and benefits.

But getting rid of unions isn't enough.  You need people to be truly terrified of being out of work by getting rid of the social safety net.  If there is no social safety net workers won't want to demand higher wages for fear of losing their jobs.  We already see element of this with Michigan cutting the number of weeks someone can receive unemployment benefits and Arizona looking to remove up to 300,000 people from the state's Medicare rolls.

With permanent unemployment of 20% or more and no social safety net, those who will be lucky enough to be employed will be too scared to fight for better working conditions, higher wages and benefits.  It has been a long process in the making, requiring the right economic disaster to foment the right type of fear.  The Republicans are laying the legal groundwork for the elite to have their permanent underclass.

It is an unholy union that must be stopped.  The question is: Can we stop it?

The States Didn't Win

The editorial board of the Arizona Republic would have you believe that the legislation signed into law in Wisconsin stripping public employees of their right to collective bargaining is a good thing for states.  The board claims that by removing the ability of public employees to be represented by a union to negotiate salary, benefits and working conditions, that it will miraculously allow Wisconsin to solve all of its budget issues.

If the legislation was truly about balancing the budget, then why did a Wisconsin Republican State Senator make statements that the legislation would make it tougher for President Obama to win Wisconsin in 2012.  If the legislation was about Wisconsin’s budget, then why was it rammed through the legislature outside of the budget process?

The public employees didn’t cause the budget issues in Wisconsin or the other states.  The blame rests squarely on politicians who year after year doled out tax cut after tax cut while also giving corporations more and more corporate welfare.  Public employees around the nation went year after year without raises and often saw their pay cut through forced work furloughs.  They each contributed to their retirement plans while states and other governments delayed their contributions.

The various states could easily fix their budget problems, but they don’t want to, since it involves rescinding their various tax cuts they passed in the last few years.  Tax cuts are never popular but pointing out that someone at this point in time has it just a little better than someone else normally is.  Instead of taking responsibility for the budget issues, the Republicans in Wisconsin pointed to the public employees and their unions as the problem.

No, the union busting law in Wisconsin does nothing to help it or other states deal with their budget issues, all it does was give a win to the state’s Republicans.  A win that just might be very short lived.

Why Hasn't Governor Walker Resigned?

We all know that modern day conservatives are hypocrites.  They claim that they are for government that stays out of our lives yet they fight to pass laws which restrict a woman's right to choose whether or not to keep a pregnancy through term.  They have fought to pass constitutional amendments to ban equal rights to marriage for gays and lesbians.  They claim to be for local control of schools, yet as we have seen in Arizona, the conservatives are more than willing to use the power of the legislature to reign in schools that don't meet their ideological purity.

They hate that tax payer monies might be used to provide a social safety net but have no problems with providing corporations with subsidies.  They despise that unions tend to favor liberal candidates but love that business interests tend to support conservative candidates.  Conservatives also tend to stand steadfast in the face of scandal whereas liberals tend to resign for the greater good.

Take for example Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Even when faced with a taped conversation where he believed he was speaking with David Koch and talked about collusion between the governor's office and the office of the state's attorney general to force Democratic Senators to return, he didn't resign, he doubled down and pressed on.  During that same conversation Governor Walker intimated that he had considered seeding the demonstrations with rabble rousers to make the supporters of public workers look bad.  Very possibly admitting to breaking several laws, Governor Walker doesn't seem to care and is still pushing to end collective bargaining for public employees.

Compare that to Vivian Schiller, until this morning, the CEO of NPR.  You see, James O'Keefe, the minion of Andrew Breitbart who believes himself to be an investigative journalist, did a video sting of NPR senior vice president of fund raising, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller).  In the video two people pretending to be a Muslim education fund and attempting to present NPR with a $5 million check.  Mr. Schiller made statements in the video regarding racism in the tea party movement, support for the firing of Juan Williams and that it would be better if NPR didn't have any federal funding.

The conservatives are enjoying Mr. O'Keefe's latest video escapades.  They are trumpeting that the video shows NPR's liberal bias and the need to remove all federal funding.  Mr. Schiller tendered his resignation, effective in May, last week before the video came out.  Ms. Schiller submitted her resignation this morning, effective immediately.  Though neither Ms. Schiller nor Mr. Schiller did anything wrong, they did the noble thing by resigning.  The question is, why hasn't Governor Walker done the noble thing and resigned?  What makes him so much more special than Ms. Schiller and Mr. Schiller?

The difference is that Governor Walker is a conservative.  He's living up to the hypocrisy of conservatives.