Editor: June England’s letter is a well-written smokescreen as to what is really happening with the conservative attack on public employee unions.
She reveals her real agenda when she complains that unions give money to Democrats. It is no coincidence that Republicans have targeted every group that gives significant money to Democrats while simultaneously benefiting disproportionately from the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing unlimited corporate giving, much of it in secret, to Republicans and corporatist Democrats.
Scott Fitzgerald, Republican Senate Majority leader in Wisconsin, said “If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”
This reasoning has nothing to do with state budgets and everything to do with eliminating effective voices for alternative points of view.
Do unions sometimes abuse their power? Of course. Can England name an organization that does not sometimes do so? Certainly corporations are not innocent. Nor are public bureaucracies, political parties, the military, churches, or any other large organization. The Republican Party least of all.
But England and her allies want to deny power to working people while doing nothing, and less than nothing, to limit the power of the powerful.
Deficits exist because Republicans and conservatives set democratic decision-making aside, requiring supermajorities to address our financial problems. Founding Father James Madison opposed supermajorities because they would lead to minority rule. Madison was right, and the people who wrap themselves in our flag would do well to read him sometime.
Gus diZerega
Sebastopol
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