Under the guise of “budget crisis” measures, anti-worker legislation is popping up all over the country. But this mean-spirited move shows the arrogant contempt with which Republicans hold workers:
Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine’s labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor.
[…]Acting labor chief Laura Boyett emailed staff Tuesday about the mural’s pending removal, as well as another administration directive to rename several department conference rooms that carry the names of pro-labor icons such as Cesar Chavez.
According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed “one-sided decor” not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.
Umm… Removing a mural and renaming conference rooms is going to fix Maine’s budget problems?
Pure and simple…this is another salvo in the Republican War on Workers™.
The mural was erected in 2008 following a jury selection by the Maine Arts Commission and a $60,000 federal grant. Judy Taylor, the artist from Seal Cove, said Tuesday that her piece was never meant to be political, simply a depiction of Maine’s labor history.
Why are Republicans threatened by Maine’s history? Let’s examine the threat. From the web site of the artist, here is a selection of captions from the eleven mural panels:
1. The Apprentice: Here, a Cobbler trains his young Apprentice. In the background, are scenes from that era.
Oooooh…cobbler apprentice. Scary. (And, Donald Trump…this doesn’t look good for your presidential aspirations…)
2. Lost Childhood: Child labor was common in Maine. They frequently performed dangerous tasks for long hours.
That is offensive to LePage, who is trying to roll back child labor laws:
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Debra Plowman (R) and “backed by” LePage would roll back the state’s child labor laws…. Her original bill would have removed all protections on the number of hours 16 and 17 year olds could work during the school week, and allow them to work until 11 PM.
[…]In response to opposition from labor and education groups, Plowman revised her bill to cap hours at 32 per week….
3. The Textile Workers: Young women were often sent to the mills by their families, who could not, or would not support them.
Clearly, this is offensive for the same reason as the previous panel. A young woman’s place is in the sweatshop.
4. The Secret Ballot: For the first time, workers were allowed to vote anonymously in 1891.
Yeah…Women’s suffrage still gets under their skin.
“Wait. What? Vote?!? We thought ‘suffrage’ meant something else.”
5. First Labor’s Day: In 1884, Maine celebrated it’s first “Labor’s Day”, a day for the workers to celebrate.
This factoid, no doubt, is a great stain on the psyche of Maine Republicans.
6. The Woods Workers: A member of the IWW or “Wobblies” tries to organize the Maine woodsmen.
History lesson be damned…I’m pretty sure Republicans consider the word “organize” a vulgar obscenity.
7. The 1937 Strike: Scenes from an unsuccessful strike attempt to create better conditions for women workers.
Ewwww…”strike”? “better conditions for women workers?” For the G.O.P., the vulgarity of it all must trump any potential historical interest.
8. Francis Perkins: FDR’s Labor Secretary, and untiring labor activist, a Maine Labor icon.
You can imagine how a mural of the first woman appointed to a Presidential Cabinet could induce in Republicans indigestion, foaming at the mouth, and the heartache of psoriasis.
9. Rosie the Riveter: Maine’s version of WWII women workers participated as ship-builders.
You see…in the eyes of the wingnuts, Rosie the Riveter is the kind of uncomfortable situation that leads to Rachael Maddow.
Hey…you know another leader who took down art that he found threatening?
Hitler.
Didn’t Johnny Ashcroft have a bunch of classic art covered up at the DOJ?
These guys are going to get bounced hard and fast. Too bad most of the people the Dems have to replace them aren’t that fantastic either.
“Hey…you know another leader who took down art that he found threatening? Hitler.”
You forgot to mention Stalin. He censored art, too. What a trio — Hitler, Stalin, LePage.
In neighboring New Hampshire, Republicans are trying to strip voting rights from college students because, in the words of the Republican House Speaker, college students don’t have good “judgment” because they tend to vote “liberal.”
Yes, the people of NH have always had good judgment.
The best line from HBO’s Triangle fire special was, if you want to see the effects of deregulation, just look at the bodies of the Triangle workers on the sidewalks.
sore losers…again
You where doing real good until you grounded the ship on Godwin’s law.
If I compare Hitler to Hitler — do I automatically lose the argument?
@7
I thought that was an attempt at humor and preemptive Godwin’s lawing.
6
We’ll see, dumbfuck. You twits have way overreached in places like Wisconsin and Maine. I’m glad you have. We’ll get to read about you in history books, rather than the op-ed pages, in my lifetime.
@6
Nah, laughing all the way to the bank. These guys are going to fall hard and fast.
sore losers…again
Sure. But of course FDR was a traitor, and the right (from monarchists to National Review) whined like little spoiled brats about it incessantly for nearly 50 years after the New Deal was started….and most of you still do (Amity Shlaes, which see)
You fucks invented whining. You’ve perfected it as high art.
If some rich shit like Malcolm Forbes weeping about paying a few more bucks in taxes isn’t whining, well, I don’t know what is.
Conservatives have no shame. They are assholes.
My favorite is some rich fuck farmer in the midwest weeping about standing tall “for individualism, liberty, and being a self made man” only to find out later that he inherited the farm from his parents free and clear and gets hundreds of thousands in farm subsidies to boot.
Brings a tear to me eye it does.
@14
A good chunk of midwestern farms aren’t farms in the sense that we normally think of them. Hiring someone to drive a tractor over your land (land you might not even live on) a couple times a year hardly counts as farming.
I’ve got a couple of relatives in Iowa and Wisconsin that have small (40 acre or so) diversified farms, truck gardens, corn pigs, some eggs. That’s real farming. Not only do they not get anything from the government, the government rules work against them. The Obama folks are the first people in the White House in quite a long time that are working to change that.
I should also note that my relatives have to have jobs off the farms to help pay the bills. That’s some long hours they put in.
Oops, that should be corn, pigs. Not sure what a corn pig is.
An ADM or Cargill Executive.
@17
You nailed it!
That’s a whole lot of crap you are writing here…and ….at 3:59 pm…aren’t you supposed to work for the UW ? I mean…just saying (as Goldy used to say)…are my tax dollars really support this activity ?
Just wondering.
@10
LOL proud communist.,…you all said that same shit 4 years ago…..where did it get ya?
question: how come all the “tax us more” people arent writing bonus check to washington DC and Olympia?
I never seem to get an answer to that question.
kicking farmers in the teeth is one reason why the urban progressives will never be in charge for very long.
the urban progressives keep forgetting where their food and electricity comes from…..go ahead, bring your mountain bike onto my property – I got a surprise for ya.
Dutch @ 19,
“are my tax dollars really support this activity ?”
It’s spring break, ya fucking dipshit!
@23
The urban progressives aren’t kicking farmers in the teeth, they’re the ones willing to pay the kind of prices real farmers like the ones I talked about @15 have to charge for the food they produce.
I never seem to get an answer to that question.
Then why do you keep asking it?
@24
really? it was just last week that the rabbit was telling us a local candidate was “evil”, simply for the fact he was a diary farmer. the rabbit admitted he knew nothing about the candidate, other than the fact he was a diary farmer, and that fact alone was enough to brand him as evil……
I know rabbit is a fruitcake, but I doubt he is alone in his opinion.
@25
because you keep asking me to hand over my money….
@ 27
You want to live in this society? Then you pony up your fair share to support enforcing the laws.
Anyone making over $10,000,000 a year should be paying 90% of that income in taxes. To their states, and to the Federal government. You cannot complain about your tax burden being too high, when you allow the wealthiest to run roughshod over the workers, while paying no taxes in support of the society that enabled their wealth.
You cannot “drown the Government in a bathtub” without eliminating the Constitution, and therefore the rule of law.
How much are the renaming and the removal of the mural going to cost?
It’s not just painting over it and changing a few nameplates, it’s changing guidebooks and anything that mentions the old conference room names or the mural.
That can work into a lot of money. How much you want to bet that some Republican cronies get the contracts?
Let’s see, the republicans got rid of public artwork because it wasn’t pro business enough.
Let’s extrapolate….
They will pull books and authors from the public library because they are not pro business enough.
They will block websites from the public library because they are not pro business enough.
They will change the curriculum in the public schools because it’s are not pro business enough.
Who needs public art anyway. All public spaces should be painted with the cheapest gray primer available and that’s that. Art is not for the public, a bunch of lazy shiftless leeches. Art is for the rich who earned it.
If the public wants art in public spaces, they need to beg a Medici like patron or a corporation to bestow it to them.
I have answered that queston, several times on this forum, in response to posters like you. I guess I will have to repeat it once again.
We don’t send voluntary checks to the government because we aren’t idiots. We know perfectly well that as soon as the government starts receiving enough voluntary checks to make an impact, you, or people very much like you, will argue that since the government is now bringing in all this extra money, taxes should be cut even more, so that you will pay even less and we would have to contribute even more. Your goal of getting free public services will eventually be reached when we completely subsidize all the public services you receive, and you have to pay nothing.
@28
90% tax rate…your f-ing nuts.
paying a fair share is one thing..but that is downright theft.
how about everyone pay the same percentage…now that sounds fair to me.
@32
LMFAO….and I bet you take every single tax deduction you can get too.
hypcrites…
OK smartguy…what’s YOUR number?
tax everyone at 25% and call it good.
as long as everyone pays the same percentage.
Saw this on Maddow (was it?) last night. The continuous Reagan Revolution taken to its absurdly logical conclusion, becoming a parody of itself.
That was the rate it was under Ike Eisenhower.
What a dirty f’ing hippie he was.
So a 30k / year Nurses Assistant pays the same rate as a Hedge Fund operator.
Were you a high school dropout or something?
The 400 richest families in the country paid an average of 17%. WAY TOO LOW…
The rate should be high enough to put the country on a sound financial footing and should be sustained to the point where the middle class’ standard of living is improving (it’s been flat for over 30 years) – then at that point the middle class can contribute more to their own set of entitlements..
The rich since before Reagan have had their low tax rates financed by borrowing. This was supposed to lead to sustainable prosperity. How’s it worked out so far?
LePage didn’t fail an art exam. Maine voters failed an IQ test when they elected him.
Thanks HA for this story. LePage makes my blog’s Douchebag of the Day.
The next year looks like it’s going to provide a lot of comedic relief. After all, look who’s running for President under the GOP banner! Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty (sp?), etc. Not to mention undeclared candidates like Sarah Palin!
2012 Elections: Republican Anxiety Building Over Crop Of Candidates
The same article pointed out a recent PEW poll, which asked about Obama’s chances against a generic Republican candidate. Obama was ahead 47% to 37% against the generic Republican candidate – the same rating Bush II had before his successful re-electin campaign, which benefited from the surge of patriotic support post 9/11, Afganistan, and during the initial weeks of the Iraq war.
Speaking of Newt Gingrich, his flip-flop on Libya is getting some airplay. Somebody tell him that this isn’t 1994 anymore – everybody’s got a video camera, and your inconsistent comments are going to be preserved and widely broadcast via You Tube.
Last Week:
But this week:
Newt Gingrich’s Sudden About-Face on US Intervention in Libya
Which brings us to this Presidential Portrait of Gingrich, which helpfully includes captioning:
Newt Gingrich
41
Wow, even by Newtie standards, that is a monumental flip-flop. What it shows is that the GOP has no principles; its leaders simply must criticize Obama, no matter what he does. It is fun to watch the righties sweat about Libya. They don’t know what to do given their support of Bush’s military adventures, other than to reflexively bash Obama.
I, like most of the original Founding Fathers, believe that the architecture of public buildings itself should be grand, reflecting the civic pride in it’s public works and inspiring the public and inspirational in nature.
But alas, over the past fifty years or so our budget cuts have resulted in public buildings throughout the country which are little more than cracker boxes built to house cubicles and computers. Even our courtrooms, which once were designed to represent both the power of the public and the goal or justice and equality, now look like little better than the counter-waiting area at a fast food restaurant.
I still can’t get over how the old Seattle Public Safety building (just north of the King County Courthouse) was built from a design for a building in Florida, in order to save money on architect’s fees. Of course, it was never well suited to the site, quickly became overcrowded, and was notoriously ineffient with respect to energy use in the winter.
# 42: And don’t forget, this flip-flop is actually a flip-flop of his position in 2004, when Ginrich criticized John Kerry for switching positions on the Iraq war, and said that “A person can’t flip-flop and be commander-in-chief”.
Maybe he will now claim that his flip-flop was caused by overwork and patriotism, and since he’s already been forgiven by Jesus for this we can’t bring up a discussion of his positions a week ago.
Of course, he might have thought that since he was speeking to different audiences (Fox News in the first instance, and the “Today” show in the second), that nobody would notice he had said something different just a week earlier. That’s a problem which is catching quite a few of the older politicians, who are used to crafting their remarks for a specific audience, being fairly confident that their comments would never be heard by the next audience down the road. But that hasn’t been true for a while now, and Gingrich should know that. Or perhaps since he’s been out of politics for most of the past ten years, that lesson has just slipped past him.
At this point, I don’t know which would be better for us: having Newt, Trump, or Palin as the GOP nominee. With respect to pointing out their failings, it’s a target-rich environment – the biggest problem is deciding how to decide which ones to emphasize the most.
Did anybody catch Lewis Black’s comments this week on Donald Trump running for President? It had me in stiches. One of his best lines was about how he’s the perfect Republican to run the economy on Republican principles. After all, he’s already bankrupted one of his own casinos. As he pointed out, how do you lose money running a casino – it’s already set up so the house always wins!
Getting back to public art….
I took some art classes in college. I was pretty good at it while in high school, and I held my own in freshman level art classes at college, but by the end of my sophomore year I was in over my head – all my classmates were art majors, and they spent all day and night in the studios, and it was tough keeping up with them. I had to call it quits and concentrate on my major.
Anyway, every drawing student eventually has to do portraits of nudes. The subject/model would usually be a student who was earning a few extra dollars by spending a hour or two, twice a week or so, being very still while some twenty students were drawing pictures of him or her. Normally you had to be in at least sophomore-level drawing courses, which weeded out anyone who just wanted to take the class for purient purposes.
I was a little surprised when it turned out I knew one of the models, she lived on the same floor of the dorms as my girlfiend. But she wasn’t embarrased, so I figured it wasn’t a problem. But my girlfriend (now my wife) saw my drawings, and recognized her, and she was a bit unnerved. I had to invite her to sit in on the class before she was really convinced that I was drawing her in a classroom setting, and that I wasn’t cheating on her.
Anyway, that state was (is) pretty conservative, and some of the state legislaters, Republicans all, were shocked (shocked, I say!) to discover that state funds were paying for girls to discard their clothing so university students could stare at them, even if they were drawing at the time. After a big row in the legislature where they threatened to cut funding for the entire University, the University administration had to promise to do away with that aspect of the class.
So even if the classic artists of the Renaissance could use nude models, art students could not. I don’t know if they slipped it back into the coursework, but it that’s where it stood when I moved out here for my graduate studies.
Well, it looks like Newt is fairly quickly moving to Twitter and the internet to argue that his positions weren’t really inconsistent, and trying to blame it all on Obama. You can read his comments, and the de-construction of them, here
In short, Newt is ignoring his previous statements, trying to interpose Obama’s statements in between, and hoping nobody calls him on it.
Of course, if you are accostomed to Newt-speak, you know this trick. He’s a hypocrite of the highest order, and he knows it. He just figures everybody else is so dumb that he can say whatever he wants, and get away with it. Now that he’s put out his “non-explanation” explanation, he will simply dismiss any further questions on the issue by saying that he was already explained his comments, and implying that anybody who isn’t satisfied with that hasn’t done their homework, is biased against him, or just isn’t smart enough to understand him.
I can understand why his mother named him Newt, he IS a reptile. Although I can understand why real newts would be offended by the comparison.
@13 Yep, Malcolm Forbes is another one of those self-made scions who bootstrapped himself into an inherited fortune.
@ 40
Only 38% of Mainers are idiots. 62% of us didn’t vote for LaPoop.