I have landed on a few conservative mailing lists -- I think I signed a petition just so I’d get some of the scoop from time time. At least they waste a stamp on me. So, although I wasn't surprised to get the letter, but I was impressed that Governor Walker and is friends are worried enough to be reaching to the big moneybags of South Dakota like me for help with his impending recall.
The letter drips with victim language (who says only the left can play the persecution card), (deft) projection, and (masterfully done) misdirection. Walker claims again that his attack on unions is to save the state budget (false), but somehow knowing that we all know he’s lying, he quickly pivots, and probes for any conservative erogenous zones:
Big Unions | President Obama’s Political Machine (1) | MoveOn.org | George Soros’ (2) attack organizations | Ultra Left Wing Elites from Hollywood and Manhattan | Thousands of Big Labor protesters bused in from Chicago and Las Vegas (3)
(1) The President’s team has kept the upper hand over Walker by masterfully saying and doing absolutely nothing in support of the workers and voters of Wisconsin.
(2) Very impressive that they got the apostrophe right I’d say
(3) Chicago, I get that... (in 1956 maybe) ... but ...
Las Vegas? I thought the Sin City rank-and-file were Ron Paul types!
If you have the stomach for it, the letter (with its carefully cropped and enhanced pictures the Madison protests) was posted and very well dissected by Amanda Terkel on HuffPo back in January. Nothing new here really.
But this warning totally got my attention:
Mark my words, if they [“Big Labor Bosses” -- Boss Tweed reborn in Oshkosh?] barge and bully to their way here, your state’s next.
OMG -- South Dakota is next?
Next? We could only wish.
First of all South Dakota has been a so-called "right-to-work" state since 1946.
We’ve had a one-party government (House, Senate, Governor) in South Dakota since 1980. Over that time, our Republican Legislature has used each Census to effectively disenfranchise the urban and Native vote to consolidate their hold on state government, which (unsurprisingly) has gradually become more and more right-wing, anti-worker, anti-education, and anti-woman over the last thirty years. Our legislature has twice passed draconian abortion bans (not restrictions, bans -- both fortunately repealed by referendum), passed one of the most extreme anti-gay-relationship constitutional amendments in the Nation, and you probably heard about the silly stuff like promoting education of our students about astrological causes of global warming and mandatory handgun ownership (yes, really).
State per-student support and teacher salaries have been near dead last (often behind all 49 states and sometimes a few territories as well) for years. It got so bad the legislature had to forge a funding formula in 1998 (probably to try to show the Feds they were trying). Of course they abandoned the formula when times got tough in 2010. (Most local districts with a tax base have opted out of the formula, effectively conceding the Legislature will never fulfill their (state) constitutional obligation to their students. [Communists.])
Wages and workers rights are so depressed that the general population has been convinced to support the end of teacher tenure, even if "tenure" means (as it does here) that after a few years in, you cannot be fired without cause. Knowing this, the Governor put forward ALEC’s most recent model legislation to kick around teachers this winter, and it passed here easily as HB 1234 a few weeks ago.
Even Republicans that have any sense of public service have had a hard time in this environment, and some state legislators have been primaried for the crime of making sense. To add to the fun, the last three redistricting exercises have had the unintended consequence of pitting rural areas against urban areas, which just adds to the fun in Pierre these days -- though most of the silly legislation that results is a distraction from the fact that the cronyism in this state makes Louisiana look progressive, and Fitzwalkerstan look like Athens in comparison to what we see in how our state government "functions."
We could use a little revolution here, but it will be a long time coming I'm afraid.