Across the US, GOP Lawmakers Build States of Denial

Good read by Michael Winship at Truthout. Some quotes from Ann Richards and Molly Ivins as well.

As noted by Tim Storey, senior fellow of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), since the midterm elections, "There are now more Republican state legislators (3,941) than at any point since they held 4,001 seats after the 1928 election.... Twenty-two state legislative chambers changed majority control in the 2010 election cycle - all in the direction of the GOP." Many of the newly elected members were endorsed by Tea Party organizations or have rushed to embrace the Tea Party's inchoate, right-wing agenda as a means to safeguard re-election.

According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), legislators in at least 11 states, including Minnesota, Ohio, New Hampshire and Missouri, are proposing antiunion laws that would cut pay and lower standards of living for workers. The labor organization claims, "Instead of creating jobs and solving the problems of middle-class working families, some state politicians are ... saying 'Thank you' to the corporate CEOs who financed their 2010 election victories by pushing legislation to cut good jobs, lower wages, threaten job safety and weaken unions." (Full disclosure: I am the president of a union affiliated with the AFL-CIO, albeit a small one that neither endorses candidates nor has a political action committee.)

This push has come to a head most dramatically in Wisconsin, where, in the name of austerity, newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker is attempting to stamp out public workers' collective bargaining rights. His attack on the unions - including a threat to call out the National Guard - has been met by outrage and a mass exodus of Democratic legislators out of the state, thus denying Republicans a quorum at the Wisconsin Senate in Madison. (You may recall that Democrats in Texas pulled a similar ploy in 1979 and 2003 by hiding or going on the lam to nearby states, including Oklahoma and New Mexico. This prompted New Mexico's then-attorney general Patricia Madrid, a Democrat, to announce: "I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy.")

All these Repug state legislatures have slammed any progress made over the last 100 years into reverse and are now backing at high speed against the flow of traffic by looking in the rear view mirror. There's no 'if' that there will be a crash.