"The fight is not over" - even when it seems we're losing

I mean, there's just no getting around the reality that last November a small minority of eligible voters in this state voted for a complete rightist takeover of state government. The Kloppenburg/Prosser election probably cements that ideological stranglehold, despite the unprecedented voter turnout for a special court election that ended in a breathtakingly strong challenge from a relative unknown (who I believe would have made a fine judge - and may yet in years to come).

 

 

Mahlon Mitchell (ctr/left), prez of Professional Firefighters Assoc. of WI, and his colleagues lead march around the Capitol

But I needed a boost, so I went with my brother to Madison on Saturday for "The Fight Is Not Over" rally. I mean, if you can get 10,000 raucous, enthusiastic, democracy-loving folks out in the streets in 45 degree temps and winds gusting over 40 mph on just a couple weeks notice, well, for sure, the fight is not over.

There will be plenty of issues to comment on this week, but today I want to just point out the most glaring economic reality of our country right now, being played out here in our state - the rapid, vast, concentration of wealth over the past couple decades. Since economics is not taught in schools (it ought to be from K-12 and on), most folks may not understand how this wealth of the super-rich is being generated. Just to be clear, it is not because any new wealth is being created - it is because wealth is being transferred.

Right - from workers and the poor, from the public sector, from fake capital expansion (like those financial 'instruments' that brought down the economy in 2008 which is largely speculation involving our money, our mortgages, our retirement benefits, our consumer behaviors), and the global market - from the vast 'bottom' of the economy, in other words, to the tippy top.

Very good column in Sunday's JS Crossroads section, Income distortions affecting our democracy by Mike McCabe:

We have reached the point in which the richest 1% of Americans have more wealth than the bottom 95% combined, a sad truth verified in 2009 by PolitiFact.com. The 400 richest Americans have a bigger net worth than half of all Americans collectively, another harrowing statistic confirmed by PolitiFact earlier this year.

Such a grotesque redistribution of wealth from the many to a privileged few is inconsistent with any legitimate notion of economic justice, not to mention incompatible with democracy.

This condition is the product of a long series of deliberate policy decisions flowing from a corrupted political process. It also, in turn, reinforces the establishment of plutocracy - government of, by and for the wealthy.

As I have said many times in many places - societies with wealth this skewed do not do very well. And when 'free market' people (there is no such thing as a free market, only a market operating under whatever rules someone sets for them) say it is not time to raise taxes, as free marketer Brett Healy also wrote for Crossroads, don't believe them - because none of this wealth of the super-rich is going to bring about job creation, and those few jobs that may be created will offer wage scales that continue to bring working folks in this country from a middle class way of life to the ranks of the working poor.

In fact, the time of the broadest prosperity in this country came during the decades in which wealth was taxed at 70-80% - and what I remember is that the rich didn't complain too much about it, as they still could live in mansions and summer in Europe.

So while the fight is not over, we have difficult times ahead of us. Billions of dollars will buy you billions in influence, and this tidal wave of billionaire plutocrats' money continues to wash over the body politic. With Kohl resigning, you just watch as that tidal wave becomes a real tsunami, Koch/Rove/DeVos/Bradley and other money trying to consolidate this anti-democratic takeover of our state's political culture.

I hope folks can keep their spirits up for the long haul. Plenty of spirit in the streets on Saturday. We need to keep feeding each other this positive energy. Movements take time and unity. This one, too.

Madison's 'Forward Marching Band' 

Traditional counter-clockwise march around the Capitol before the rally

Si se puede - yes we can

Who would ever have thought it would come to this :)

All photos: Margaret Swedish

Democracy is collapsing under the weight of this much wealth concentration

400 people in this country have more wealth and assets than half our population; that is, more wealth than 154,000,000 people COMBINED.

That is just one of the 'factoids' Michael Moore mentioned in his surprise appearance, and stirring speech, at Madison's Capitol on Saturday (see below). 

Read it again.  It is a breathtaking fact.  It goes with the graph I posted previously, and will again.

Is this really the country we want?  While wealth has been flowing to the top 1%, wages have been slipping, jobs have been disappearing, benefits are disappearing, and so is the middle class, and more and more people, including working people, are slipping into poverty.

This is the socio-economic context, that backdrop, for what is occurring in Wisconsin right now. And Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are proposing policies and budgets that will exacerbate this growing divide, an economic restructuring of this country that is turning it into a nation for the elite, run by the elite, at the service of their business interests.

For the rest of us? - only hurt is in these proposals.

We did not come to this all of a sudden. Some of us have been trying to talk about this, to shout into the wilderness, since the Reagan days when the assault on working people and the poor really began. That's what makes this graph so dramatic - this has been happening inexorably as the Republican Party became the party of corporate America, and the Democrats did their best to keep up.

Part of what makes the struggle in my state so crucial is that, thanks to the Wisconsin 14 (thanks again especially to my guy, State Sen. Chris Larson) and to the indefatigable protesters in Madison, precious time has been given us to discover things we needed to know a couple of decades ago - things they didn't want you to know. The Koch brothers did not want the notoriety they have now; they would rather work under the radar.  Too bad, guys, the curtain has been pulled away and we see now who is behind it.

Not the 'invisible hand' of a free market, but billionaires taking control of our economy, our politicians, our tax laws - and not just here, but in board rooms across the world, or in gatherings like the World Economic Forum, or in the World Trade Organization where global trade rules are written by the world political leaders and the billionaires.

Here is what becomes essential if we are to restore our democracy, to take government away from people whose interest is to privatize everything so that they have control of everything, to take our resources if they can earn profit from it, to gut the livelihoods of workers if that helps the bottom line. The sleeping giant awakened in Madison has to begin to get seriously organized for the long haul. It must build a movement. Public sector workers who have seen so much solidarity in the past 3 weeks must now give their time and energy unselfishly in return to hurting private sector workers and unemployed and those living in poverty. Without that solidarity, this glorious moment in Wisconsin will ultimately fail; without solidarity that supercedes the narrower interests of particular sectors of workers, and without a solidarity that gets voters out in huge numbers in 2012 - or in recall elections should we have them later this year - this energy will dissipate.

I think of the days of the real robber barons.  I think of how horrible the world was before workers got organized, of the days of companies savagely exploiting workers - 7 day work weeks, filthy and dangerous conditions, company towns, and more.

Some fabulously wealthy would be happy to return to such a world.  I don't want to.

Income disparity growing - what you need to know in a glance

Here is a graph you might just want to sit with, ponder, let this reality sink in:

This is all you need to know about what has been going on in US politics over the past 30 years.  The question it begs could not be more profound - what kind of world do we want to live in, to pass on to the next generation?

This didn't happen because the top 1% of the population worked harder or were so particularly bright, clever, ingenious. It happened by design, it happened at the table of institutions like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, hedge funds board rooms, among billionaire investors with resources that outmatch the GDPs of entire nations. With their fortunes, they could buy up media (with cable news channels being particularly egregious examples), political campaigns, and politicians themselves. They could indeed make their claim at being 'Masters of the Universe.'  The rest of us?  Just not their problem or their concern.

The health of the planet?  Not if there is profit to be made by exploiting it.

I will tell you this - any politicians, any judge, any official that gets lots of support from that top 1%, or has worked for them (unless sincerely repentant of this past), or intends to work for them in the future, does not have in mind the best interests of the majority of people in the state or anywhere else in the world. We need to know this. We need to understand why the organized voices of workers, teachers, families, the 'folks,' is so vital to our well-being. An organized voice with millions of people behind it is one of the few instruments we have to push back against the stealing of our state's and our nation's wealth by this top 1%.

And that voice must resist efforts to divide it, or sow resentment within it. It must overcome racism. It must embrace the diversity of the populations it ought to include wholeheartedly - because we are all in this together. It must resist acting out of the rage and fear so many of us feel today because what is being proposed, and is likely to pass, by this governor and his colleagues in state government is going to be disastrous for the people of Wisconsin, for our precious environment, for the efforts of so many good people and social organizations that have been trying to address the injustices, suffering, and needs of our most vulnerable populations.

Stephen Colbert did a great satire on this on his show last night. He's always a bit on the rude/crude edge, so fair warning. On the other hand, with humor and satire, he absolutely nails it. So maybe we can laugh a bit as we weep. And maybe we can think about how we pull ourselves and our communities together to put forward a different vision of our future than the one outlined in the governor's budget address the other day.

Government by cruelty

"It is a hostile corporate takeover of the state of Wisconsin." Senator Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton)

I try to use reasonable language, right? not to use extremes or hyperbole, even when emotions run high. But I stand by my headline. If Gov Scott Walker's budget became real in my dear state of Wisconsin, it would amount to government by cruelty - cruelty towards the most vulnerable of our populations, a taking of money from the poor and struggling and using it to subsidize the affluent and the millionaire and billionaire business people so favored by this poor example of a 'governor,' as in, one who governs for the welfare, rights, and interests of all.

Photo: Margaret Swedish

My dear Wisconsin voters, what have we done? So many of us, fueled by anger and resentment by our deteriorating quality of life, took out our frustrations in the polling booth not knowing what was really being prepared for this state. So many who have seen wages fall, home values plummet, jobs and benefits lost, who are falling between the widening cracks of a dysfunctional economy more and more at the service of the richest 1% of the population, who are angry and resentful, voted for this guy because they thought he cared about them.

He has just handed back to you a disastrous budget that will gut the quality of life in this state and do exactly what Sen. Erpenbach said yesterday - hand over the state to the Koch brothers and Heritage Foundation folks who helped write this budget (trust me, Walker was not capable of that) in a hostile bid to put this state into the hands of polluters, of people who want to increase their profits by vastly reducing their production costs - like labor and environmental costs.  They want your labor and our forests, waterways, air and other resources for free - or as close to free as they can get.

Here's a budget that would help them do that - if it passes.

For example, capital gains taxes will be cut or eliminated for the Koch brothers whose personal fortune approaches $100 billion. Meanwhile, this proposal would eliminate caps on the school voucher program, meaning that people who can afford to pay tuition for private schools could use them - meaning our tax dollars would subsidize the affluent to send their kids to private schools - another transfer of funds from the poor to the wealthy.

Another example: the elimination of recycling requirements all across the state. Oh, you can just see how folks like the Koch brothers and our new Senator, plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson, wanted that provision thrown in!! If you contribute to Walker's campaign, amazingly, tax breaks and lax regulations for your businesses do seem to follow. Public workers, inner city families with kids in public schools, poor folks in the BadgerCare system? Not so much.

What in the world is going on here? This is NOT about balancing budgets because there are other ways to do this - to balance a budget and keep vital services - for one thing, by increasing revenue from those who can well afford it.

But I can tell you what this budget proposal will do - it will divide this state further, it will throw fuel onto the seething fires of our growing resentments as more and more people suffer the effects of this most dangerous state and nationwide trend - the concentration of wealth in the top 1% of our population, the old champagne glass model of the economy where wealth bubbles up from below to the top, stealing from people's labor, our resources, our schools, our quality of life all the way up.

Friends, sadly, this budget was more than a shout-out from the extreme right; it is, indeed, a bold attempt at a hostile corporate takeover of our state.  And it must be stopped.

What are the possibilities that all that good will and energy that has occupied and surrounded our state capitol for the past 2 1/2 weeks can become a broad movement to reclaim our progressive values in this state? Because the answer to that question will decide whether this cruel budget, god forbid, ever becomes the program of our state government.


-------------- 
To learn more about what is in Walker's budget proposal:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117212348.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117192683.html
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117193763.html
http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/search_news.php?keys={mad}

All together or all apart - which way will we go?

It's difficult for me not to think of the Wisconsin governor and Republican legislators as crossing over the threshold from merely damaging, ideologically rigid politics to cruelty. But when I read articles like this in the morning paper, the word cruelty bubbles up. When deficit hawks create or deepen deficits by offering government services and tax breaks to the wealthiest and to corporations, then insist they are 'broke,' cruelty is one result. (Note to Governor Walker: please get a dictionary and look up the word 'broke;' we are not broke! We have imbalances in revenue and spending, but we are not broke!!).

Cruelty towards human beings, towards students in public school systems who will be failed by these policies, towards public workers who provide services to all of us for very modest incomes (put the cuts to these workers up against the tax breaks for folks like the Koch brothers), towards those slipping rapidly from the ranks of what we once called the middle class while the wealthy become obscenely wealthier, towards the poor who are about to see BadgerCare 'reformed' by cruel policy by a governor attempting to legislate sole authority over the program - oh, we could go on.

This is class warfare in the extreme, brought to you by 20-30 years of the erosion of our democracy, an erosion caused by handing it over to corporations and financial institutions. They own the system. They can purchase politicians, hire lobbyists who help write the legislation that will serve their interests (I am not making this up. I learned this all too well in my 26 years working in Wash. DC), and if they get the right presidents, they can appoint Supreme Court justices who will defend corporate interests.

For decades now, the courts have recognized corporations as 'persons' with certain constitutional rights. This is completely made up and never intended by our Founding Fathers or anyone else until this past century. But it has served corporate interests well. And these are the folks that have money to buy cable news channels, to saturate the airwaves with paid ads from mystery organizations, and do things like move lobbying offices right into the heart of Madison to influence legislation.

So, the struggle here in Wisconsin really is about the soul of this nation, and what kind of nation we want to be. Will we allow those with power and wealth to tear us apart so that they can better control our lives and well-being, will we allow ourselves to be bullied or duped by their faux news outlets, paid ads, or politics of blame - blame of the marginalized, the public worker, the failing middle class, the urban poor, the immigrant? Or will we choose to resist those trends and create solidarity among our people, pull together across class and lines of 'competing' individualistic interests, and center our values on a sense of the common good and the good of the commons, a realization that we are all in this together, and that the path of mere self-interest and concentration of wealth and power is leading us towards a world most of us won't want to live in - mean, impoverished, cruel, heartless, and ecologically wrecked?

Thank you Wisconsin 14, thank you to my guy Chris Larson, thank you protesters, thank you public sector workers - for giving us all this time to find out what is really going on. The real victory here is knowledge, and the more we have about what is really going on, the more empowered we are to change this ugly course before things get worse - much worse - which is what Walker, the Koch brothers, and Repub state legislators sadly have in mind for our state.