Kochs Everywhere: Union-Busting Bill Introduced In Alaska

[revolutionnow45]

JUNEAU-- Collective bargaining rights would be restricted for many Alaska public employees under a bill introduced Monday by a state lawmaker.

Rep. Carl Gatto, R-Palmer, said the bill is similar to one passed recently in Wisconsin and is aimed at keeping the state on sound financial footing. It keeps intact bargaining rights for wages but strips them for such things as health and retirement benefits. The measure exempts police, firefighters and emergency medical technicians, who Gatto says cannot strike.

He likened his bill to the Legislature's doing away with a defined benefits program for workers and replacing it with a defined contribution system.

http://www.adn.com/2011/03/21/1768124/bill-would-restrict-public-employee.html



What the fuck is going on in this country?! Who do these Nazis think they are?

Koch controls Alaskan politicians. He owns one of the refineries that is gouging Alaskans at the pump. He must own the governor who is also a former lobbyest for conoco philips.

At the same time they cannot afford to pay public teachers what they were promised, the governor wants to give 2 billion to oil companies in tax breaks. Companies already making record profits.

The same assholes want to spend 30 million on a tourist display in Vegas and just gave themselves a raise.

This is totally out of control.
These fascists are getting really brazen! :grr:

more
Kochs Everywhere: Union-Busting Bill Introduced In Alaska
http://wonkette.com/441022/kochs-everywhere-union-busting-bill-introduced-in-alaska

[highplainsdem]

1. This is from ALEC again - I could guess that even before finding a blog post linking Gatto and ALEC.

ALEC = American Legislative Exchange Council. Here's a link to my most general topic about them:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x591230

The Wisconsin legislation Gatto said his bill is similar to was based on ALEC's model legislation, and Gatto also used some typical ALEC terminology there, from ALEC's ""State Budget Reform Toolkit" -- which I posted a separate topic about, linking to the PDF file with the publication:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x658572

This sentence of the article you quoted was really a giveaway:

He likened his bill to the Legislature's doing away with a defined benefits program for workers and replacing it with a defined contribution system.

The "Reform State Pensions" section of the "toolkit" says that the "crisis in the states" is partly because of "costly pension and health benefits provided in defined-benefits plans" and it recommends "forming a defined-contribution system."

ALEC put out a press release about another publication of theirs on this subject, too, and it's in this reply in my general topic about ALEC:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x591230#637294

As I said in the subject line, I found a blog post linking Gatto to ALEC:

http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2011/02/alecs-clinton-woods-helping-legislators.html

Thursday, February 24, 2011
ALEC's Clinton Woods Helping Legislators Fight Obamacare, the EPA, and Other Conservative Nightmares


Like lots of other people, I looked into room 106 of the Capitol because it was lunch time and someone had provided free sandwiches, potato chips, fruit, and cookies to attract legislators and staffers to their talk. I had no idea who was talking. The bins were full. You can see that lots of folks made off with sandwiches. But only a few stayed. I got a sandwich for a nearby staffer, but there was nothing vegie, and I had brought my own, so I only took a banana for me.

It turned out to be the American Legislative Exchange Council - an organization I hadn't heard of. A young man named Clinton Woods was recruiting people for this organization which is a smaller competitor of two other organizations state legislators traditionally belong to:

-snip-

I noticed Rep. Carl Gatto there. He reported last year getting $2249.68 to attend a Heartland Institute conference in New York on International Climate Change. Heartland doesn't believe much in Climate Change and pushes market solutions in any case. Also present were Reps. Keller and Tammie Wilson and Sen. Dyson.

Their brochures made their position on the political spectrum fairly clear. This is not a neutral better government organization. It's an anti-government organization.

-snip-

The blogger has a picture of some of the ALEC materials there, including the State Budget Reform Toolkit.

The update at the end of the blog post refers to a Daily Kos diary that's also linked to in my long topic on Alec, in a reply posted by the diarist:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x591230#613085

[revolutionnow45]

2. The Koch Family: A Legacy Of Hate

And where did Fred Koch get these ideas?

Information connecting Ilse Koch (nee Kohler) is hard to find. It’s mainly fragments, pieces of information that connect the American and German Kochs and this connection gives a clear image of the sentiment behind the Tea Party and conservative American politics since the 1950s. Where is the connection between the German Koch’s and Fred Koch? Besides evidence the American Koch was related to Ilse’s family, Erich Koch, a high level Nazi official in charge of Prussia, invites Fred Koch to sell his oil in Nazi Germany when he is banned from doing business in the US. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Erich Koch and Fred expand the oil empire to the Soviet Union. Erich Koch had been in charge of Prussia for Hitler so his ties to the Soviet Union ran deep. A few years later the Soviets took Fred Koch’s oil and prosecuted Erich for war crimes. Fred Koch returned to the US, became a FLAMING anti-communist, and was allowed to do business in the States again. Fred Koch admired Mussolini’s tactics against Communism, and it is when he embraces this sort of thinking that he becomes a staunch opponent of civil rights.

Ilse and her husband Karl were tried by the SS before the war ended, accused of corruption. Karl Otto Koch was tried and sentenced to death in Nazi Germany, for incitement to murder and embezzlement. He was executed by firing quad on April 5th, 1945. After the war, Ilse was arrested in the German American Zone, tried in front of a tribunal and sentenced. Ilse committed suicide by hanging herself, in prison, in 1967. She was the only woman to be found guilty of war crimes in World War II.

I am including some more specific information about certain members of the Koch-Kohler family, for clarification and to give further evidence of the generations of hate within the Koch family.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/03/11/the-koch-family-a-legacy-of-hate-part-one/

[OHdem10]

3. Thanks for posting this. Koch Stores, Union Busting and what

is going on in the states are the most important
news stories except for Libya and Japan.

The Net must keep these stories alive.

[revolutionnow45]

5. Thanks for the kick

I think we are being "shocked and awed" with all this stuff at the same time for a reason.

[revolutionnow45]

4. kick

:kick:

[highplainsdem]

6. K&R. Did you see my reply about the role of ALEC in this? The Kochs help fund ALEC,

but lots of corporations are involved in what ALEC is doing. As my general topic on ALEC says, this is the vast rightwing corporate conspiracy. ALEC seems to be the main way corporations -- many of them besides Koch Industries -- get conservative legislators to introduce the bills they want. The Kochs are important -- I don't want to downplay that -- but they're not all-important, and it would be a mistake to focus on them so much we lose sight of what else is going on, or think this is all handled personally by the Kochs and their people. This corporate influence is much more organized and widespread.

I was really pleased that the blogger whose site I linked to actually got a pic of the ALEC material that state representative was echoing after the meeting with an ALEC rep in the state capitol where that pic was taken.

And I added the blog post and the newspaper article about the legislation to my long topic on ALEC, the one I linked to above.

[revolutionnow45]

8. very interesting

thanks for the kicks

[highplainsdem]

7. kick

[roguevalley]

9. from what I read in the Anchorage Daily News, the leadership is

not pleased by this and there is only four weeks left. No one really believes there is time for this. Fuckers.

[revolutionnow45]

10. it is important to know that they are even suggesting this

I thought they would wait a couple of years until they had looted the state. Right now Alaska has plenty of money, but with their attempt to give 2 billion to the oil companies every year in tax breaks and tap into the savings, I thought they would slowly bleed the state then propose this.

But apparently Koch brothers don't have long to live so they are pulling out the big guns attacking all states at once.


I think they have overplayed their hand, and this will hopefully wake everyone up and make Alaskans start paying attention to the corrupt bastards club that obviously was not held accountable at all!

[roguevalley]

11. I work parttime in a hardware and fastener store and the people

who come in are not for the most part happy about the breaks to drilling. I've heard grumbling. We also have the problem of the location of our capital. We have the largest capital in America in sheer land size but it is located in the panhandle and we either have to fly or boat in. You can't drive to it. To protest it would be extremely expensive and logistically terrible. The leadership of the goofass that suggested this is not happy to hear it. I think they get what happened in Wisconsin.