The right has to stoop to imposters to try and paint unions as violent

The right is spinning out of control trying to paint your neighbors, friends and relatives as “union thugs” simply because they are standing up for their civil right of collective bargaining.

The massive crowds protesting the right's assault on public sector unions have been peaceful, and it is driving the right crazy that no one is buying their lie that they are violent. The leading rightwing blog in Michigan is going berserk trying to portray firefighters, police officers and teachers as “animals. In fact, a few Michigan teabaggers have been at the protests trying to provoke a confrontation so they can get it on tap to try and make the claim that they are violent. Kind of like what went on from the regime in Egypt.

It has been driving them crazy that they have not been able to elicit a violent response, so now they are trying to plant imposters to incite a riot. Extremist Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said he considered planting some “troublemakers” into the huge crowd of pro-worker protestors that have flooded into Madison. The only thing that stopped him was that he was afraid it might force him to bow to the majority of people who support collective bargaining rights, not that it would endanger people.

But Walker and teabagger Republican Grand Traverse County Commissioner Jason Gillman are not the only Republicans who feel that way.

Republican Johnson County, Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos Lam resigned last week after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism traced an e-mail he sent to Walker urging him to fake an attack to make it look like the pro-union protested had did it to in order for Walker to gain sympathy.

The e-mail was one of the tens of thousands of e-mails released in an open-records settlement the Walker administration reached with a local paper and the Associated Press after Walker lied and said he had thousands of emails supporting his union busting attempt.

“I've been involved in GOP politics here in Indiana for 18 years, and I think that the situation in WI presents a good opportunity for what's called a "false flag" operation,” Lam wrote. “ If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the public unions.”

When confronted with the evidence, Lam initially lied and said he had not sent the e-mail, claiming that he had been the victim of identity theft before he confessed.

This is not the first Indiana Republican thug to lose his job for advocating violence against peaceful, working class citizens. Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox lost his job after tweeting that the protesters should be dealt with using “live ammunition,” following that up with “against thugs physically threatening legally-elected state legislators & governor? You’re damn right I advocate deadly force.”

Tell me again who the thugs are?

Some idiot over at the Detroit News even went so far as to compare working people that are our friends, neighbors and family with the murderous, Detroit prohibition-era Purple Gang because they support those who support them. If you want to know why newspapers are barely surviving, you just need to know that this guy is what passes as an editor today.

This idiot named Jeffrey Hadden is comparing a legal boycott with murder and vandalism.

Please.

County commissioner calls teachers, police officers and firefighters animals

There is no doubt that the latest round of union-busting by Republicans is about politics because union, workers and the middle class tend to support Democrat, but the hate coming from the right is just amazing.

Only in their world are teachers, police officers and firefighters thugs and animals, but that’s what at least one elected Republican thinks. Pro-worker rallies were held all over the country in support of Wisconsin public employees on Saturday, and more than a thousand people showed up in Lansing.

But this is what teabagger Republican Grand Traverse County Commissioner Jason Gillman thinks of teachers, state employees, police officers and firefighters.

“For my part, I am convinced many of the labor union members that go to these rallies are little more than animals,” he said on the leading rightwing blog “RightMichigan.”

This is an elected official.

Remember that when they use police officers and firefighters as props at press conferences; it appears they are only standing next to these “animals” for political purposes.

Unlike in Wisconsin where the conservative, billionaire Koch brothers are busing in tea baggers, only a few are showing up in Lansing despite attempts to get more to try and get a confrontation on tape. It’s kind of like in Egypt where pro- Mubarak demonstrators tried to incite violence so they could say to the world that the pro-democracy demonstrators there were violent.

But only a handful of teabaggers like Gillman showed up in Lansing, but with so many pro-union people they managed to get an entire 31 seconds of a confrontation on tape from a rally that lasted more than three hours. We only see 31 seconds where a guy gave Gillman the finger and told him to fuck off. Nothing before or nothing after.

Democrats stayed away from teabagger “rallies” that were initially organized and promoted by the most extreme rightwing and anti-government groups out there that include militias, secessionists and neo-Nazi white supremacist groups, and they are financed by cash laden Washington, D.C. lobbying firms and people like the Koch brothers. Make no mistake about it, the attack on unions is to kill Democratic supporters and teabaggers showing up at pro-union rallies is to provoke a confrontation.
Among the many attacks I have endured from anonymous right-wingers on this blog includes the talking point that “elections have consequences.” At no time, that I recall, did a Republican take the position that they were going to take away collective bargaining rights. That they were going to push right to work for less was a given, but it’s not the same.

It’s absurd that workers should give up a civil right they fought and died for, for many years just because of a wave election. Perhaps the greatest civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, died supporting striking workers. The final campaign of King’s life was in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.

Sanitation workers went on strike for pay and working conditions after two workers had been crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered in a rainstorm. As the strike lengthened, King agreed to lend his support to the sanitation workers, spoke at a rally in Memphis March 18, and promised to lead the large march and work stoppage planned for later in the month. He was in town for that march when he was assassinated.