Get ready. In the next few days, alas, all eyes will be on Wisconsin once again, as the state legislature — no doubt with the Walker campaign's permission and encouragement — takes up right-to-screw-workers legislation. If you have any doubt that this is part of a well-orchestrated script, you don't know Mr. Walker.
As he has rolled himself out onto the national scene in the last few weeks, Walker has made his early blunders and mis-steps. But he is counting on the demonstrators in Madison to get him back in his zone, feeding his contrived narrative of victimization and resentment. And Fox News I'm sure already has its graphics and outraged anchors primed and ready to go.
One thing that the national media have failed to do thus far is rip away the curtain that hides the puppet-masters. Everyone has learned and lamented the role of the Koch Brothers, but the toxic influence of the Bradley Foundation continues to go unreported (well, mostly) and under-appreciated. If you live outside Wisconsin, and find yourself wondering, where do they get these guys? Reince Pribus? Paul Ryan? Scott Walker? You can thank the money that flowed from the Allen-Bradley Company (now Rockwell Automation) into the Bradley Foundation.
Back in 2011, the New York Times published a solid background article, "Wisconsin's Legacy of Labor Battles." From that article:
In her book, “Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950,” Professor Feurer recounts how companies in the electrical industry in St. Louis started a network known as the Metal Trades Association in the first part of the 20th century to fight union organizing. The association had been alarmed by union protests that erupted violently with the Haymarket Square riot in 1886 and the demands for an eight-hour day, which started with the 1894 Pullman strike in Illinois — an early effort by Eugene V. Debs, the former Indiana legislator and future Socialist Party candidate for president.
“That left a legacy of the 1930s and ’40s for employers to form deep right-wing networks,” Professor Feurer said.
That network, she argues, was the precursor to the Midwestern groups that have now been assisting the fight against the unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana: the Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, and Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kan. David H. and Charles G. Koch, the billionaire brothers behind the energy and manufacturing conglomerate that bears their name, have been large donors to Mr. Walker in Wisconsin, as has their advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, which first opened an office in Wisconsin in 2005.
The news stories and headlines in the next few days will no doubt focus on what happens outside the state capitol. I hope that at least a few in the media will focus on what has been going on for generations behind the curtain.
One Wisconsin Now has just posted a helpful piece: One Wisconsin Now Research Reveals Gov. Walker Campaign Co-Chair as Major Financier of Propaganda Campaign Paving Way for Wrong For Wisconsin Right to Work Law
Here's a bit:
According to One Wisconsin Now’s review of federal tax records, the Bradley Foundation doled out over $8 million in 2012 and 2013, the latest years for which information available, to support the operations of a web of nearly three dozen groups promoting right to work laws and radical privatization policies that empower the wealthy and corporate CEOs at the expense of the middle class. The Bradley Foundation, having nearly half a billion dollars in assets, regularly hands out $30-40 million a year, making it perhaps the largest right wing funding foundation in America.
Groups operating in Wisconsin, including the MacIver Institute, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Media Trackers and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation, took in excess of $2.9 million.
Groups operating in other Midwestern states and nationally benefitted from Grebe and the Bradley Foundation’s largesse. Right-wing policy shops, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network, took in over $200,000 in 2011 and 2012. Nearly $500,000 went to the virulently anti-organized labor Center for Union Facts and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund.
This is important, folks. We can predictably play into the hands of Walker and his masters, helping them to shift attention away from Walker's own hubris, bullying, and criminality. Or we can play it smart, speaking directly to those whom Walker has worked long and hard and successfully to
divide and conquer. (See also
this excellent summary from the Center for Media and Democracy.) Let us show we have learned something since the uprising in 2010. And let us help our fellow citizens to learn about the puppet-masters.