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Koch adds life -- to future labor unrest in Pa.

Incoming!

I've been telling you how the not so invisible hand of the billionaire libertarian and anti-union-zealot Koch (pronounced "coke") Brothers is fueling the present crisis in Wisconsin -- by buying up the Scott Walker for governor campaign and now delivering counter-protesters to Madison through their Americans for Prosperity.

The New York Times has a great piece on all of this today, and it's increasingly clear that Pennsylvania's got "next":

Even before the new governor was sworn in last month, executives from the Koch-backed group had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown, Mr. Phillips said in an interview on Monday.

State governments have gone into the red, he said, in part because of the excessively generous pay and benefits that unions have been able to negotiate for teachers, police, firefighters and other state and local employees.

"We thought it was important to do," Mr. Phillips said, adding that his group is already working with activists and state officials in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to urge them to take similar steps to curtail union benefits or give public employees the power to opt out of unions entirely.

Look, as long as they follow the law -- and in America in 2011, that is not hard to do -- the Koch brothers have a right to participate (yes, just like a liberal billionaire like George Soros). But the reason that I and others write a lot about their activities is that the public also has a right to know what these people -- who've been given undo influence in American life by a renegade High Court -- are up to. If money is a form of free speech in U.S. politics, the only way to fight back is free speech, and exposure. In the case, the Koch brothers aren't concerned about Wisconsin's money problems, but they want to crush unions, one of the few bases of (limited) power that oppose them.

The depressing long-tern trend, as E.J. Dionne writes in his column today, is that the Tea Party is winning by redefining the debate:

No, Washington is acting as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit; the only test of leadership is whether the president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly; and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.

Take five more steps back and you realize how successful the Tea Party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, Tea Party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country's dialogue.

Consider all of the problems taking a back seat to the deficit in Washington and the media. You haven't heard much lately on how Wall Street shenanigans tanked the economy in the first place - and in the process made a small number of people very rich. Yet any discussion of the problems caused by concentrated wealth (a vital mainstream issue in the America of Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts) is confined to the academic or left-wing sidelines.

You haven't seen a lot of news stories describing the impact of long-term unemployment on people's lives or the difficulty working-class kids are encountering if they want to go to college.

Coming soon to a Harrisburg near you.