Red State vs. Blue State: AL vs. Anti-Union Andy, Round 2

I’ll post the last comment from last week as a refresher of where we left off, the rest is the middle section of our debate. We join this debate already in progress…

Brody: Tax cuts take away from the state budget. Lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations inside a state insures states won’t have the operating budget to pay teacher’s salaries. It’s a revenue problem that’s been spun into an overspending problem.

Anti-Union Andy: Lowering taxes creates growth and creates jobs—

Brody: In Thailand and China where the US jobs move to after the tax breaks

Anti-Union Andy: If taxes are too high in a state, those jobs will relocate to a state with a friendlier tax structure. You can’t raise taxes because it’s actually lowering them.

Brody: I can’t wait to hear this explained. Will this math logic make calculators explode?

Anti-Union Andy: The more you raise taxes on corporations inside a state, the more corporations will leave your state and relocate. Then you will receive no taxes from them after they’ve left.

Brody: So your answer is to lower taxes so low the state practically loses money to keep them there? Isn’t this kind of like chasing the only gold digging blonde at the bar at the expense of ignoring the just-as-hot brunette who’s just as into you?

Anti-Union Andy: That’s a really bad analogy in terms of economic theory.

Brody: Not really, Republicans think the government should chase after gold digging blondes, i.e. corporations, who just want to get rich and have a good time and will dump you the second it’s not in their economic interest, hooking up with cheap labor in Korea instead. Democrats know a long term, stable relationship with a brunette woman who loves America for its core value of equality is much better, plus there are 50 times as many brunettes.

Anti-Union Andy: No—

Brody: Yeah man, it’s a great analogy. You can quote me later if you want.

Anti-Union Andy: I don’t want. It’s clear we see the world in drastically different ways. You are entitled to your opinion but you could not be more misinformed.

Brody: Well I guess I need to spend 6 hours a day reading “Libertarian” sites that read like a call to fascism to know what’s going on in the world.

Anti-Union Andy: They are not fascist sites. They are calls to freedom from over intrusive government that—

Brody: Why do you call Governor Scott Walker a hero when I have read articles calling him a fascist, a liar, hell, everything but a horse thief?

Anti-Union Andy: I think he is a hero for conservatives who have tried to stop the waste and inefficiency of unions but have failed. He is doing something a lot of conservatives concerned with out of control spending would like to see done. He is absolutely not a fascist but sounding the first whistle of economic freedom against—

Brody: You keep bringing up spending and blah blah about economics, but that’s actually not what this is about. Wisconsin currently has no budget deficit, and the unions have said they would make the money concessions he was asking. Clearly, budget reduction is a smokescreen used to cloud the issue of union busting.

Anti-Union Andy: I do think it’s about out of control spending and employee benefits better than those in the private sector, paid for by the taxpayer. I also think it is about ending unions, which I would argue is a great thing for America.

Brody: Those benefits are not paid for by the taxpayer! They are deferred payment on a job already done. It’s not a handout from the government or like the taxpayer is personally giving them a check every week. Teacher retirement is paid for by the teachers themselves.

Anti-Union Andy: It is paid for by the taxpayer. Obviously, taxpayers pay teacher salaries.

Brody: These are government jobs, and government runs on taxes, but it is not an entirely one sided relationship. People use schools, and want well paid, qualified teachers in those schools. And Wisconsin has some of the highest test scores in the country.

Anti-Union Andy: If they’re paying teacher’s salaries, they should be allowed to say what is too much for that service. Scott Walker is trying to curb what many feel are luxurious benefit packages and retirements.

Brody: Right, Wisconsin schoolteachers are ballers for sure. I don’t know how I missed that episode of Cribs where they took us inside the home of a Milwaukee schoolteacher, and they showed off all their bling. This has nothing to do with “out of control” wages so much as Scott Walker is a pasty faced, buttoned down suburban fascist.

Anti-Union Andy: That’s outlandish and slanderous. You have no basis for saying that because he’s asking Wisconsin schoolteachers to chip in to their own retirement.

Brody: They are already chipping in! It is their damn money deferred. This bill amounts to an 8 percent pay cut for them. And I am justified to call him a fascist.

Anti-Union Andy: No, it’s completely unfounded. The definition of fascism has the state gaining greater control—

Brody: He’s gaining greater control of almost everything by destroying collective bargaining rights.

Anti-Union Andy: That’s a false—

Brody: Let me finish. He gains greater control through destroying collective bargaining rights. He’ll be able to slash wages and benefits, and this bill makes it impossible to get a raise higher than the rate of inflation. A blogger tricked him into admitting he wanted to plant fake protestors into the crowd to get unruly and make the protestors look bad. He has blocked pro-union websites from the capital’s servers. He won’t compromise with the unions whatsoever, because he wants them destroyed, not weakened. The unions are the biggest fundraisers for the Democrats who are already grossly underfunded, so it amounts to the creation of a one party system by way of economic starvation. This bill also gives him the power to cut Medicare as much as the federal government will allow, and gives him the right to privatize the state’s power plants to the Koch Brothers who are his corporate puppet masters. That’s everything, that’s being an autocrat, that’s trying to destroy the political opposition, that’s stripping away worker’s rights, and that’s bringing in select corporate interests which fascism usually does. It rounds all the bases for a fascism homerun.

Anti-Union Andy: Planting protestors is hardly fascism.

Brody: If he’s so in the right, why does he need to discredit the protestors with fakery? Why can’t the people see both sides and make up their own minds—and wait a fucking minute, that was one point I made and you said nothing about the others.

Anti-Union Andy: I think slashing Medicare and privatizing more government services like power plants is a good thing. Business can see to those things better than government can.

Brody: I think you’re trying hard not to think in a critical or deep way. I don’t think you’re offering much of a defense of this guy, because there isn’t one. He really is a fascist.

Anti-Union Andy: No, although I do think it’s very clever to paint Walker as a fascist instead of Obama as a socialist.

At this point, I wish Madea from the Tyler Perry movies were here so she could say “Oh honey, you just opened a can of worms.’”

Join us next week for round 3 of this debate, the dramatic final round that has it all…love (my defense of Obama), war (why “Libertarianism” really seems to just be a codeword for racist), hypocrisy (Tea Party vs. Wisconsin protestors) and the timeless question: Why do ultra conservatives wear bowties?