{"id":289207,"date":"2017-01-09T01:58:56","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T00:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/koch-astroturf-army-cheers-union-busting-in-kentucky\/"},"modified":"2017-01-09T01:58:56","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T00:58:56","slug":"koch-astroturf-army-cheers-union-busting-in-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/koch-astroturf-army-cheers-union-busting-in-kentucky\/","title":{"rendered":"Koch Astroturf Army Cheers Union Busting in Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"wf_caption\" style=\"display: block; max-width: 640px; width: 100%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/images\/images_2017_01\/2017_0108k_.jpg\" alt=\"The Kentucky state capitol building. The effort in Kentucky follows a playbook utilized by Team Koch in Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and West Virginia.\" width=\"640\" style=\"width: 100%; margin: auto;\"\/><span style=\"text-align: left; margin-top: 3px; display: block;\">The Kentucky State capitol building. Recently, Speaker of the House Jeff Hoover rammed through the legislature three bills to break the back of unions and lower wages for highly-skilled construction workers. (Photo: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sniegowski\/30628162846\/\" target=\"_blank\">Don Sniegowski<\/a>)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>On the first day that the Kentucky legislature got underway with a newly elected Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican governor, the Koch brothers&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/Americans_for_Prosperity\" target=\"_blank\">Americans for Prosperity<\/a> group blew the whistle and legislators jumped to do their bidding.<\/p>\n<p>This week, the Speaker of the House Jeff Hoover rammed through the legislature three bills to break the back of unions and lower wages for highly-skilled construction workers.<\/p>\n<p>It was bare-knuckled partisan politics. &#8220;We can pretty much do whatever we want now!&#8221; crowed GOP Kentucky Rep. Jim DeCesare <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/conservatives-plot-their-course-on-the-rising-sea-of-red-in-state-capitals\" target=\"_blank\">behind closed doors<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You have only to look at Trump&#8217;s narrow victory in Rust Belt states to understand why the GOP is desperate to get rid of the Democratic Party&#8217;s boots on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Trump won by narrow margins in Wisconsin and Michigan and took Indiana. These are three states where unions &#8212; the only organized voice for working families able to stand up against CEOs and corporate elites &#8212; were crushed by right-wing governors after Obama won them in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>In Wisconsin, union membership is down an estimated 133,000 since Governor Scott Walker destroyed a 50 year tradition of peaceful collective bargaining for higher wages. Trumps margin of victory? Less than 30,000.<\/p>\n<p>Tracy Sharpe of the Koch-backed State Policy Network (SPN) boasted of the success of the union-busting strategy in a recent Wall Street Joural\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-spoils-of-the-republican-state-conquest-1481326770\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> entitled &#8220;The spoils of a Republican State Conquest.&#8221; &#8220;When you chip away at one of the power sources that also does a lot of get-out-the-vote. I think that helps for sure,&#8221; she chirped.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kentucky GOP Closely Follows Koch\/ALEC Game Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The three bills being rushed though committee hearings this week borrow heavily from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) library of bills&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/news\/item\/39016-koch-astroturf-army-cheers-union-busting-in-kentucky\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Kentucky State capitol building. Recently, Speaker of the House Jeff Hoover rammed through the legislature three bills to break the back of unions and lower wages for highly-skilled construction workers. (Photo: Don Sniegowski) On the first day that the Kentucky legislature got underway with a newly elected Republican House, a Republican Senate and a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-289207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}