Scott Walker = Diet Koch

When I set up this little blog, I did it through Google's Blogger. I'd used the platform before, and liked it. And the platform they have now is even better; it makes putting together a very functional, information-rich website very easy. So, as a way of saying "thank you" for making the platform available for free, I put several of Google's AdSense ads on the site in the right column. While I don't expect to make any money myself (I do this blog just because I like doing it), I figured if anyone is moved to click on the links to earn Google some bucks, so much the better.

BUT - The ads are context-sensitive. And I wrote a piece this morning criticizing Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin as being a union-busting thug. So the ad that pops up, of course admonishes us to "Stand With Walker"!

Please don't click on this effing ad.

It will take you to a website run by "Americans For Prosperity". Remember, any time you see an organization with a flag-waving, rosy-cheeked, apple-pie-and-baseball name like that, it's going to be run by Republicans. Specifically, Republicans who are trying to take your freedoms away. In this case, your right to collective bargaining (whether you're working for a government or for a private corporation).

So who are the thugs running Americans For Prosperity? David and Charles Koch, the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers, multi-billionaires who essentially own the Republican Party, basically own Scott Walker, as well.

According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Walker's gubernatorial campaign received $43,000 from the Koch Industries PAC during the 2010 election. That donation was his campaign's second-highest, behind $43,125 in contributions from housing and realtor groups in Wisconsin. The Koch's PAC also helped Walker via a familiar and much-used politicial maneuver designed to allow donors to skirt campaign finance limits. The PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn spent $65,000 on independent expenditures to support Walker. The RGA also spent a whopping $3.4 million on TV ads and mailers attacking Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Walker ended up beating Barrett by 5 points. The Koch money, no doubt, helped greatly.

. . .

Walker's plan to eviscerate collective bargaining rights for public employees is right out of the Koch brothers' playbook. Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions. Several of these groups have urged the eradication of these unions. The Kochs also invited Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union outfit, to a June 2010 confab in Aspen, Colorado; Mix said in a recent interview that he supports Governor Walker's collective-bargaining bill. In Wisconsin, this conservative, anti-union view is being placed into action by lawmakers in sync with the deep-pocketed donors who helped them obtain power.

Think about that. It used to be that corporate managers would hire union-busting thugs to mix it up in the streets with organizers. Now, corporate empire chieftains hire Governors and members of a state legislature as union-busting thugs - they just use laws instead of lead pipes these days.

This isn't the first time the Koch Brothers have twisted and interfered in Wisconsin politics to suit themselves. Voter caging and voter suppression efforts in Wisconsin leading up to the 2010 election were organized and funded by the Koch Brothers:

Last week, we [People for the American Way] wrote about a voter suppression plan concocted by GOP and Tea Party-affiliated groups in Wisconsin meant to keep young and minority voters from the polls this November.

Think Progress dug further into the issue, and traced much of the plan—both the sinking of a proposed Wisconsin law that would have prevented voter caging efforts like this, and the coordinated caging effort itself—back to the network of the billionaire Koch brothers, who have provided the money behind much of the Tea Party movement. (The Kochs are also the main funder of Americans For Prosperity, one of the groups cited in the voter caging plan.)

And it's only just begun with the Koch Brothers - they plan on singlehandedly dumping $88 million into the 20102 campaign to get what they want. It's not hard to imagine how dirty that campaign is going to get, with Koch money funding race-baiting TeaBaggers and multi-state voter suppression campaigns.

In short, the Koch Brothers are profoundly anti-democratic, anti-democracy, and, based on their actions, profoundly anti-American.

Some idiots (*cough* Larry Kudlow *cough*) call the protesters "anti-democracy" for protesting, instead of lying down and accepting the emasculation of their unions (and, by extension, themselves) simply because Republicans happened to win the last election. By that yardstick, the tea Party was profoundly anti-democratic from its inception until the 2010 elections, because Democrats, and Barack Obama, had won so handily in 2008.

But people standing up for their rights against the powerful, and their stooges in the Wisconsin legislature and governor's office, is profoundly democratic. It is the essence of a people gathering to express its will.

So don't click on that ad on the right side of my blog. Google won't miss the two cents that click will earn them, and we'll all sleep better at night.