TOM MORELLO IN MADISON, THE NIGHTWATCHMAN AND LEAD GUITARIST, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

MOVE ON CALLS OUT GOVERNOR WALKER

Move On, the Internet activist group, came to the aid of Wisconsin today, calling Walker out for saying he had received "19,000" emails in support of his proposal to end collective bargaining when some 200,000 people had taken to the streets this past week. Move On sent an alert to its Wisconsin members asking them to send an email to Walker letting him know how they feel, stay tuned for the count. Excerpt from the Move On alert:

Madison, Wisconsin -- The Associated Press (AP) has been covering the Wisconsin protests this past week, in a way.

With the wave of cutbacks at papers across the nation, big and small circulation papers rely on the AP for wire stories that are re-published in local papers. It describes itself as "the largest newsgathering organization" in the world. With few national outlets having reporters located in Madison or Wisconsin, the AP is a dominant vehicle for sharing information about what is happening in the state with the rest of nation. The AP is also the dominant news feeder for Yahoo News, and Yahoo is now one of the top five most-trafficked websites in the world. So it matters whether the AP is fairly covering the news, in the headlines and in the bodies of its stories. (The Center for Media and Democracy is on record as a strong critic of corporate media, like the AP.)

In the report Scott Walker Runs on Koch Money, the Center for Media and Democracy's Executive Director Lisa Graves pointed out how the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity helped elect Scott Walker as Wisconsin governor, and how his attack on public sector unions looks like a return on the Kochs' investment. While suppressing workplace democracy will certainly benefit corporate interests by allowing business managers to focus exclusively on increasing shareholder returns (and not getting distracted by employee demands for safe and productive working conditions), attacks on unions will also eliminate barriers to absolute corporate control of our political democracy.