Just this quick note today. Why is it so hard to get Repubs to say one intelligent thing about global warming and climate change? This was not always true. What happened?
This article explains: Americans for Prosperity Takes Credit for Bullying GOP Lawmakers Into Climate Denial.
Read that headline again, then just sit a moment and take it in. Think about what this means. AFP, founded by the Koch brothers, founders and funders of the Tea Party, have bullied their paid-for politicians into denying, obfuscating, ridiculing one of the gravest threats to humanity - ever!
Take it in on ethical and moral grounds. Take in what this means in terms of the common good, the good of the commons, and the prospects for a decent future for our descendents. Think about what these people are doing for the sake of their short-term interests, for profits and power.
Then, if you are a citizen of Wisconsin, think about the power these people have over our [s]elected officials. Remember that AFP and other Koch-funded groups put enormous amounts of money into influencing campaigns, running ads that do not tell the truth or outright lie, that manipulate people with conservative beliefs to deny what is actually occurring all around them. Think of the role of the propagandists, from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to our own Charlie Sykes.
Think about this. And if you are still looking for any motivator to get involved in citizen efforts to restore government with integrity, government that serves the real interests of its citizens, here is a really, really good one.
Then while you're at it, read this, from those wild liberal radicals at the journal, Nature.
Showing posts with label koch brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label koch brothers. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Worried about civility
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is worried about civility in this state as our political discourse sharpens. I understand. We worry about that, too. We also would like to invite all those engaged in Wisconsin's popular democracy efforts right now to act like adults, to be the political culture we would like to be.
But let's also be clear about what is creating this acrimony. When parties representing one set of narrow interests uses cudgels of power to beat down the rights of others, those latter folks get upset. That upset ought not be equated with the atmosphere created by those with the cudgel.
And those with the cudgels need to take responsibility for the hatred, racism, and resentment that often gets unleashed in the spaces created by their politics of arrogant exclusion. When your policies increase the suffering of the suffering, when they squeeze more from those who have less and less to be squeezed, when they take rights that empower workers, students, poor people, and elderly to participate in democracy away from them, or make it harder to exercise them, they create fear, frustration, and growing feelings of powerlessness.
The Walker recall campaign did not create this acrimony, but acrimony from the right and the cudgel being used by the Walker/Fitzgerald regime helped mightily to create the recall campaign. People didn't take to the streets and shopping malls and Lambeau Field and their own front yards to gather signatures because they don't like Scott Walker or just for fun or because they are Democrats or because they don't like Repubs and on and on. And despite what the governor says, they aren't doing this because 'big unions made me do it!' They are doing it because of concrete tangible grievances having to do with the politics of deception of the Walker 2010 campaign, because of anti-democratic policies that have passed the state house and been signed by the gov. They are doing it because of the threats they feel to their livelihoods and well-being. They are doing it because it has become abundantly transparent that this current government exists to promote the narrow interests of its corporate and other rightist backers, not the interests of the public it is meant to serve.
Just want to make note of yesterday's front page article on the Bradley Foundation. The writers note that while we have focused so much attention on the Koch brothers, this Foundation has helped put Walker in the governor's mansion and been architect of many of his policies.
I didn't vote the Bradley Foundation into office, nor the Koch brothers and their offspring, Americans for Prosperity.
Yup, it's true; elections have results, as Walker's supporters love to tell us. Democracy is built upon them, but not on them alone. Some of the most important aspects of democratic participation are what happens between elections. The recall 'tool' (Walker loves to use that term, so we will, too) exists for a reason - to provide a mechanism through which the people can reverse an election when the outcome is undemocratic, a threat to democratic rights (like worker rights), or when it is discovered that a government is at the service of interests that are at odds with the common good.
I won't hold my breath, but maybe we could allow this recall process to unfold the way we do an election. They are both written into democracy here in Wisconsin. Sadly, elections themselves have become subject to the culture of nastiness that has emerged in our difficult times.
So what I do ask here is that all of us who care about these things raise ourselves to a different level. Even when that guy roared passed me with his car the other day when I signed the petition, I found myself wondering what his story is, his particular fear and anxiety. What is it that makes him feel such threat, as if his world is somehow rocked by my signing the recall petition.
Maybe if we could realize that most rage, resentment, and fear is based in pain and suffering, we could approach even the angry and resentful with the necessary compassion required to tamp down the fiery, volatile tones of this political era.
It's not as if life is going to get easier - not for a long while. But it can become kinder if we can figure out how to get to the point of realizing we are all in this together. We can go up in flames together, or we can figure out how to get through the hard times with a better world than this one, so full of injustice, violence, anger, and ecological unraveling. We can figure out how to re-knit the human community into one that has compassion at its heart and the well-being of all of us and the generations to come after us at the top of its priority list.
But let's also be clear about what is creating this acrimony. When parties representing one set of narrow interests uses cudgels of power to beat down the rights of others, those latter folks get upset. That upset ought not be equated with the atmosphere created by those with the cudgel.
And those with the cudgels need to take responsibility for the hatred, racism, and resentment that often gets unleashed in the spaces created by their politics of arrogant exclusion. When your policies increase the suffering of the suffering, when they squeeze more from those who have less and less to be squeezed, when they take rights that empower workers, students, poor people, and elderly to participate in democracy away from them, or make it harder to exercise them, they create fear, frustration, and growing feelings of powerlessness.
Just want to make note of yesterday's front page article on the Bradley Foundation. The writers note that while we have focused so much attention on the Koch brothers, this Foundation has helped put Walker in the governor's mansion and been architect of many of his policies.
I didn't vote the Bradley Foundation into office, nor the Koch brothers and their offspring, Americans for Prosperity.
Yup, it's true; elections have results, as Walker's supporters love to tell us. Democracy is built upon them, but not on them alone. Some of the most important aspects of democratic participation are what happens between elections. The recall 'tool' (Walker loves to use that term, so we will, too) exists for a reason - to provide a mechanism through which the people can reverse an election when the outcome is undemocratic, a threat to democratic rights (like worker rights), or when it is discovered that a government is at the service of interests that are at odds with the common good.
I won't hold my breath, but maybe we could allow this recall process to unfold the way we do an election. They are both written into democracy here in Wisconsin. Sadly, elections themselves have become subject to the culture of nastiness that has emerged in our difficult times.
So what I do ask here is that all of us who care about these things raise ourselves to a different level. Even when that guy roared passed me with his car the other day when I signed the petition, I found myself wondering what his story is, his particular fear and anxiety. What is it that makes him feel such threat, as if his world is somehow rocked by my signing the recall petition.
Maybe if we could realize that most rage, resentment, and fear is based in pain and suffering, we could approach even the angry and resentful with the necessary compassion required to tamp down the fiery, volatile tones of this political era.
It's not as if life is going to get easier - not for a long while. But it can become kinder if we can figure out how to get to the point of realizing we are all in this together. We can go up in flames together, or we can figure out how to get through the hard times with a better world than this one, so full of injustice, violence, anger, and ecological unraveling. We can figure out how to re-knit the human community into one that has compassion at its heart and the well-being of all of us and the generations to come after us at the top of its priority list.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Need for serious recall
If this does not succeed, please, Wisconsin friends, do not become demoralized. This is a hard thing to do when even many Walker opponents are uncertain about using recall as an expression of political disagreement, however profound. He was elected, the wisdom goes, so let him serve his term and oust him in the next election.
But then others say, but just look at all the damage after only one year in office...
So we'll see how this goes. Most news pundits continue to focus their coverage on the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers and the undermining of the union recertification process itself. We do have a fiercely anti-union politics in this country right now, and this really ought to have surprised no one. Follow the path from Reagan to now. The politics of the corporate right has been taking over our national politics from the bottom up and using slick media tools to ramp up this anti-labor sentiment - along with bogus emotional issues like gun rights, abortion rights, and gay marriage, great tools of manipulation that hide the real agenda of the corporate right.
Let's remember, please, that most public sector workers actually work on behalf of these very populations. That's why their demands matter. It's a question of putting the interests of those they serve at the top of their publicly expressed concerns. Many people think of these workers as spoiled or over-compensated, rather than providing vital services that meet the needs of the populations that, you know, have those needs.
The problems this state faces are abundant and frightening. Our state is in the hands of people who have little regard for the majority of us, especially workers and poor people, or for the lands, forests, and waters that make up the beauty and wonder that is Wisconsin. Collective bargaining rights may be the least of our worries if we allow mining companies, developers, and corporate polluters like Georgia-Pacific and immense industrial dairy farmers, to run our state politics, to write our laws and then hand them to the Fitzgerald brothers for passage in the statehouse. Think about the clash between environmental groups and unions over the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline extension. Unions want jobs for their members. Ecologists and climate scientists see the pyrrhic nature of this demand, knowing how the oil tar sands pose a threat to the planet whose consequences are beyond imagining - though we are beginning to imagine it.
There won't be any good union jobs in a world facing ecological collapse.
Or, closer to home, think iron ore mine in the Hurley area - unions also see good jobs while the Bad River Band and environmentalists see the imminent ruin of land and forest, and grave threats to a watershed relied on by many for drinking water.
We need a serious recall - a recalling of values and principles, a recalling of a social contract that understood that inequity and injustice is built into the capitalist system and therefore a strong publicly funded social safety net is required to keep those injustices from tipping into social unraveling and chaos.
We need a recall of the interrelationship between humans and their eco-communities, and how if you unravel those communities, if you ruin and toxify them, you threaten the future of the human as well.
I hope the recall is a recall of what democracy really is and that it will promote a renewal of democratic culture by helping people realize what is really happening here, and how Wisconsin has become a political center for the most anti-democratic tendencies in the country, a testing ground, if you will, for how far these people can go.
I hope it is a recall of the value of dialogue, mutual respect, cooperation and compromise, the supremacy of the right to human well-being within healthy eco-communities over the right to wealth generation and corporate profit-making, the importance of neighborhood and community if we are to return to a social and cultural sanity that is being lost amidst the noise being fomented by these rightists to keep us from caring about one another.
Yes, we need a recall - a really profound one.
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All photos: Margaret Swedish
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
The tearing of our fragile social fabric
Hi again - I know, it's been a while. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this blog, but so many outrageous things are going on, it's hard not to vent here. If you get something out of these posts, maybe you could share the link with friends and invite them to visit, and then we'll see. For now, I will try to post a couple times a week.
What inspired me to break the silence was today's JS headline: "Bus system may cut routes, fares." If you have read it, then you have a sense of the breadth of the cuts coming for public transportation around here. Walker's 10% cut in state support for transit translates into a $6.8 million loss for the Milwaukee County Transit System - per year!
The guy hated county government when he was our woeful executive, and he hates public services for the non-wealthy, as proven in his budget repair bill and his biennium budget. He also seems to hate anything that gets people out of their individual cars to save on energy, environmentally unfriendly and costly road-building, air pollution, and congestion.
But of course the worst thing is that buses are the main way the not-so-wealthy folks get around - like to jobs or schools. But if you are in the company of the Ayn Rand crowd (like Paul Ryan who makes his staff read her vacuous baloney), the descendents of John Birchers (the Koch brothers certainly come to mind), and the corporate bosses who donate to your campaigns and put mediocre thinkers and ideologues into public office, I guess services for those poor dumb masses is just not your priority.
Really, friends, it feels that bad. I can't write that in a serious journal, but I can write it here - because in my heart of hearts, that is what I think is really going on.
My heart sank reading of the mob attack in the Riverwest neighborhood the night of the fireworks (Flynn's comments being distinctly unhelpful). It is so easy to blame the thugs who sent several people to hospitals to get stitches, but if we don't understand what creates that kind of behavior, especially the disdain in which the attackers appeared to hold those they were attacking, if we don't address what is really tearing our social fabric apart, what it means when people like Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and people like Vos or Darling inflict - with an arrogant attitude, mind you - more suffering and marginalization, more hardship, on populations already reeling from stresses both historic and new (esp. since the 2008 criminally caused financial meltdown), then we can look forward to more signs that that social fabric is indeed unraveling.
Poverty and racism cannot be overcome with more poverty and racism. Really, it's true.
A lot of attention is focused right now on recalls, and that's a fine thing. But let's not leave for later the urgent need to address the attitudes and values that are at the root of these vast inequities, examining them within ourselves and our families, and overcoming them in all our social interactions, in our communities, churches, as a counter-witness to those who believe affluence and privilege, or the power of political offices, or - let's just say it out loud - their white skins, give them a right to enhance their privilege further at the expense of those they do not see as equals and for whom they feel no connection, no responsibility - as if their wealth and privilege is not a direct result of long and deeply-rooted attitudes and injustice.
It's just gotta be said out loud. These people are implementing policies that are going to bring out the worst in us. We have to counter with a commitment to the best in us, an overwhelming assertion of the best in us.
What inspired me to break the silence was today's JS headline: "Bus system may cut routes, fares." If you have read it, then you have a sense of the breadth of the cuts coming for public transportation around here. Walker's 10% cut in state support for transit translates into a $6.8 million loss for the Milwaukee County Transit System - per year!
But of course the worst thing is that buses are the main way the not-so-wealthy folks get around - like to jobs or schools. But if you are in the company of the Ayn Rand crowd (like Paul Ryan who makes his staff read her vacuous baloney), the descendents of John Birchers (the Koch brothers certainly come to mind), and the corporate bosses who donate to your campaigns and put mediocre thinkers and ideologues into public office, I guess services for those poor dumb masses is just not your priority.
Really, friends, it feels that bad. I can't write that in a serious journal, but I can write it here - because in my heart of hearts, that is what I think is really going on.
My heart sank reading of the mob attack in the Riverwest neighborhood the night of the fireworks (Flynn's comments being distinctly unhelpful). It is so easy to blame the thugs who sent several people to hospitals to get stitches, but if we don't understand what creates that kind of behavior, especially the disdain in which the attackers appeared to hold those they were attacking, if we don't address what is really tearing our social fabric apart, what it means when people like Walker, the Fitzgeralds, and people like Vos or Darling inflict - with an arrogant attitude, mind you - more suffering and marginalization, more hardship, on populations already reeling from stresses both historic and new (esp. since the 2008 criminally caused financial meltdown), then we can look forward to more signs that that social fabric is indeed unraveling.
Poverty and racism cannot be overcome with more poverty and racism. Really, it's true.
A lot of attention is focused right now on recalls, and that's a fine thing. But let's not leave for later the urgent need to address the attitudes and values that are at the root of these vast inequities, examining them within ourselves and our families, and overcoming them in all our social interactions, in our communities, churches, as a counter-witness to those who believe affluence and privilege, or the power of political offices, or - let's just say it out loud - their white skins, give them a right to enhance their privilege further at the expense of those they do not see as equals and for whom they feel no connection, no responsibility - as if their wealth and privilege is not a direct result of long and deeply-rooted attitudes and injustice.
It's just gotta be said out loud. These people are implementing policies that are going to bring out the worst in us. We have to counter with a commitment to the best in us, an overwhelming assertion of the best in us.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
When corporate money owns the government
This is what comes of electing judges rather than appointing them, running them through a vigorous confirmation process that examines who they are, their record, their potential conflicts of interests, etc. They end up serving the same interests as elected politicians, but with more at stake.
If it is true, and this stands, that a majority of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices do not have judicial authority to hold the actions of the legislature to constitional tests, then we really are moving towards one-party rule in this state. And that party has been bought by the rightist money that is trying to do the same throughout the country.
From Karl Rove and his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS (those groups funded by a handful of millioniaires), to the Koch brothers -funded Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth, to direct compaign donations flowing into the coffers of the Repub's most rightist politicians, we are seeing a kind of power grab that spells real trouble for the people of this state and this country.
Why do we hate the very unions who brought us a worker rights laws, decent wages (which tended to raise wages for everyone, not only union members), and some organized defense against the overwhelming power of corporations? The US Chambers of Commerce is incredibley organized and their members are now spending huge millions of dollars to lobby for business interests - but unions are losing their collective bargaining rights in state after state. First private sector unions were gutted as business threatened time and again to leave states in which workers did not agree to tear up contracts and accept their new terms.
Now the State of Wisconsin has devastated those rights in the public worker sector.
Scott Walker's Wisconsin is 'open for business' and closed to the well-being of its citizens and our precious environment.
But let's be clear about what the corporate right has been able to take advantage of - the apathy and disinterest of the citzenry, the lack of interest in government, understanding how it works (more than a third of people polled do not know the three branches of government and even fewer know what their responsibilities are - like checking the power of the legislature when it acts unconstitutionally), and being incredibly susceptible to manipulation by those interests who use God and guns and abortion and gay rights to mobilize people to support their corporate right agenda.
Watch wages fall. Watch the downward trend in the quality of life for more and more people in this state, many of whom really believe that somehow this is a gleeful moment - "Yea, we've undermined the power of unions!"
What in the world is wrong with us?
This will have to play itself out. And what I can say about it this morning is that we are moving into unprecedented times. And if what folks try to do is recover what has been lost, try to move back in time to an old framework now being dstroyed, we will not get through this. These other guys have recognized better than most of us that times have changed, the global economy has changed, power bases are shifting, the old political divides don't describe anything real anymore, they just serve the interests of the conquer-and-divide rightists whose tactics have worked so well.
If times are unprecedented then the response must also be unprecedented. First is understanding how power is shifting in response to a new phase of global capital, one that is fiercely anti-democratic and anti-popular, and beginning to operate out of a narrative that does not describe what has been lost so much as how to move forward in that reality.
If it is true, and this stands, that a majority of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices do not have judicial authority to hold the actions of the legislature to constitional tests, then we really are moving towards one-party rule in this state. And that party has been bought by the rightist money that is trying to do the same throughout the country.
From Karl Rove and his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS (those groups funded by a handful of millioniaires), to the Koch brothers -funded Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth, to direct compaign donations flowing into the coffers of the Repub's most rightist politicians, we are seeing a kind of power grab that spells real trouble for the people of this state and this country.
Why do we hate the very unions who brought us a worker rights laws, decent wages (which tended to raise wages for everyone, not only union members), and some organized defense against the overwhelming power of corporations? The US Chambers of Commerce is incredibley organized and their members are now spending huge millions of dollars to lobby for business interests - but unions are losing their collective bargaining rights in state after state. First private sector unions were gutted as business threatened time and again to leave states in which workers did not agree to tear up contracts and accept their new terms.
Now the State of Wisconsin has devastated those rights in the public worker sector.
Scott Walker's Wisconsin is 'open for business' and closed to the well-being of its citizens and our precious environment.
But let's be clear about what the corporate right has been able to take advantage of - the apathy and disinterest of the citzenry, the lack of interest in government, understanding how it works (more than a third of people polled do not know the three branches of government and even fewer know what their responsibilities are - like checking the power of the legislature when it acts unconstitutionally), and being incredibly susceptible to manipulation by those interests who use God and guns and abortion and gay rights to mobilize people to support their corporate right agenda.
Watch wages fall. Watch the downward trend in the quality of life for more and more people in this state, many of whom really believe that somehow this is a gleeful moment - "Yea, we've undermined the power of unions!"
What in the world is wrong with us?
This will have to play itself out. And what I can say about it this morning is that we are moving into unprecedented times. And if what folks try to do is recover what has been lost, try to move back in time to an old framework now being dstroyed, we will not get through this. These other guys have recognized better than most of us that times have changed, the global economy has changed, power bases are shifting, the old political divides don't describe anything real anymore, they just serve the interests of the conquer-and-divide rightists whose tactics have worked so well.
If times are unprecedented then the response must also be unprecedented. First is understanding how power is shifting in response to a new phase of global capital, one that is fiercely anti-democratic and anti-popular, and beginning to operate out of a narrative that does not describe what has been lost so much as how to move forward in that reality.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Repubs continue war on the poor
Wisconsin Repubs continue their assault on the poor, assigning them more blame for their fate and more responsibility for carrying the burden of our fiscal challenges.
It fits very nicely with the Ayn Rand approach to life as exemplified by Paul Ryan - the superior shall rule over all others at their expense - or the crass power grab of those making off with our economy, the corporate state personified in people like the Koch brothers, the CEOs of big manufacturing firms (Bucyrus, Harley Davidson, Kohler, Mercury Marine, Georgia-Pacific, Harley-Davidson, etc.), and the bastions of the nation's ideological right, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Murdoch and Fox faux-news, and then their minions that do their bidding.
Of course, there is a lot of crossover among all these folks. Government is for the rich, or to free the rich to become richer. By their belief system, the poor are just slackers, laggards or lazy, responsible for their own fate. Of course, any black kid growing up in the inner city with lousy schools and fragile families torn apart by the daily struggle for survival facing racism all around and the expectation of failure should be able to be just as successful as the multi-billionaire Kochs, right?
Okay, once more we have news that reveals as clearly as ever the moral bankruptcy of this Repub class - the new GOP assault on the already woeful W-2 program. At a time of high unemployment, growing poverty, the demise of the middle class, slashing of wages and benefits even if you have a job - the Repubs are preparing to implement measures to shrink W-2 client roles.
Well, if you read this blog, you probably read the paper, so here's the story for all the gory details.
We are becoming a cruel society, cold, heartless. The worst in us is rising to the top now - all these latent attitudes of racism and derision towards those for whom life is a struggle. It is easier to defend your privilege if you demonize those who pay the price for it. Meanwhile, politicians representing your defense and your scapegoating make policy right out of those attitudes and make them popular on Fox or Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh shows. Feeding the worst in us, that's the politics of the right these days.
The big headline, of course, had to do with the expansion of the school voucher program: income level raised, vouchers that can be used to go anywhere, even if that means public money for religious education (good people disagree on that question, of course), even if that means tax-payer money to families that can afford to pay for private schools. Because the intention here is clear: step-by-step, the rightist Repubs are bent on undermining and eventually throwing public education under the bus (well, except that the buses won't be running in and out of poor neighborhoods anymore either).
Look, MPS is a mess, lacking vision and a clear sense of mission, lacking effective leadership, lacking the zeal required to address the poverty and racism, and the structural issues, that ensure that many Milwaukee kids get a mediocre-at-best education. And the whole national approach is a mess, focused as it is on standardized testing and competition and race to the top b.s. and preparing kids to compete in the global economy and blah, blah, blah... But abandoning public education as a basic right for all kids is not the path toward revolutionizing a woeful, failing system being strangled by bureaucracy and politicization, and collapsing under the weight of long-neglected realities of social injustice and economic disparities.
Here's a truth about capitalism, a sort of economics 101. Capitalism requires a poor class; it requires a certain level of unemployment. It is part of its unjust structural nature. This belief that everyone has a chance to succeed if they just work hard enough contradicts capitalism itself since, if everyone did that, it would be the end of the system. Can we all be Koch brothers or Scott Walker? Who then would do the dirty work in their factories, or cut Walker's lawn, or be the security people that have to sit outside his house all day keeping him safe? And who in the world would want to go into the office buildings overnight to clean the toilets of the CEOs and their staffs?
Because of this basic truth of the structural injustice in the system, different societies make different decisions about how to compensate - or not - for that injustice. We deride Western European countries for their broad, generous social safety nets, but you don't see more affluent people out in the streets about the high taxes they pay for their superior publicly financed health care systems or public schools or generous unemployment benefits - because they all know that these programs benefit everyone in the end in part by creating a certain stability in the society. Gaps between rich and poor may still be wide, but nothing like here where the gap is widening as the corporate right and their minions no longer want their lavish wealth to be taxed to ease the burdens of this great injustice.
Look what happened to the centrist Barack Obama when he dared to once use the phrase "spread the wealth." Accused of being a socialist (as if that is the worst thing you can call anyone), some of his right-wing evangelical opponents might take a moment to read the Gospel of Luke.
We have arrived at the mean season, very, very mean. Nasty. Ugly. The rich are turning on the poor and selfish individualism is being made our state religion. Politics is now being dominated by those who don't think a society's people need care for one another, see the connections between one person's or one community's suffering and the enrichment of someone else - though these connections are obvious, and become more obvious with each measure passed in our state legislature this year.
What bothers me is that I just don't see any real effective pushback. I mean, a lot of angry people got arrested at the Capitol yesterday disrupting the vote on the voucher stuff, but where is the discourse that really speaks to the growing selfishness and isolation of the wealthy? Where is the discourse on the economy that puts what is happening in its real context? Where is the counter to this philosophy of rugged individualism that is pervasive and represents nothing real in this world?
Because none of us - not a single one of us - is an isolated individual, and everything we do has cause and effect. And right now, the things being done in Madison will certainly have effect - they will deepen the suffering all around us, further deteriorate the quality of life in our state, widen the chasms among us, and make for one difficult future in this beautiful state.
It's disheartening. To see politicians appealing to the worst in us, to see the ugly discourse rise to the surface like this - it's disheartening. Hard to win back what you lose. We have to start thinking about how we are going to live here in a fundamentally new way. Those of us who care about these things have got to come together in a broader and deeper solidarity with a different vision to guide us than the one guiding the Repubs in Madison right now.
It fits very nicely with the Ayn Rand approach to life as exemplified by Paul Ryan - the superior shall rule over all others at their expense - or the crass power grab of those making off with our economy, the corporate state personified in people like the Koch brothers, the CEOs of big manufacturing firms (Bucyrus, Harley Davidson, Kohler, Mercury Marine, Georgia-Pacific, Harley-Davidson, etc.), and the bastions of the nation's ideological right, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, Murdoch and Fox faux-news, and then their minions that do their bidding.
 |
| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
Okay, once more we have news that reveals as clearly as ever the moral bankruptcy of this Repub class - the new GOP assault on the already woeful W-2 program. At a time of high unemployment, growing poverty, the demise of the middle class, slashing of wages and benefits even if you have a job - the Repubs are preparing to implement measures to shrink W-2 client roles.
Well, if you read this blog, you probably read the paper, so here's the story for all the gory details.
We are becoming a cruel society, cold, heartless. The worst in us is rising to the top now - all these latent attitudes of racism and derision towards those for whom life is a struggle. It is easier to defend your privilege if you demonize those who pay the price for it. Meanwhile, politicians representing your defense and your scapegoating make policy right out of those attitudes and make them popular on Fox or Charlie Sykes and Rush Limbaugh shows. Feeding the worst in us, that's the politics of the right these days.
The big headline, of course, had to do with the expansion of the school voucher program: income level raised, vouchers that can be used to go anywhere, even if that means public money for religious education (good people disagree on that question, of course), even if that means tax-payer money to families that can afford to pay for private schools. Because the intention here is clear: step-by-step, the rightist Repubs are bent on undermining and eventually throwing public education under the bus (well, except that the buses won't be running in and out of poor neighborhoods anymore either).
Look, MPS is a mess, lacking vision and a clear sense of mission, lacking effective leadership, lacking the zeal required to address the poverty and racism, and the structural issues, that ensure that many Milwaukee kids get a mediocre-at-best education. And the whole national approach is a mess, focused as it is on standardized testing and competition and race to the top b.s. and preparing kids to compete in the global economy and blah, blah, blah... But abandoning public education as a basic right for all kids is not the path toward revolutionizing a woeful, failing system being strangled by bureaucracy and politicization, and collapsing under the weight of long-neglected realities of social injustice and economic disparities.
Here's a truth about capitalism, a sort of economics 101. Capitalism requires a poor class; it requires a certain level of unemployment. It is part of its unjust structural nature. This belief that everyone has a chance to succeed if they just work hard enough contradicts capitalism itself since, if everyone did that, it would be the end of the system. Can we all be Koch brothers or Scott Walker? Who then would do the dirty work in their factories, or cut Walker's lawn, or be the security people that have to sit outside his house all day keeping him safe? And who in the world would want to go into the office buildings overnight to clean the toilets of the CEOs and their staffs?
Because of this basic truth of the structural injustice in the system, different societies make different decisions about how to compensate - or not - for that injustice. We deride Western European countries for their broad, generous social safety nets, but you don't see more affluent people out in the streets about the high taxes they pay for their superior publicly financed health care systems or public schools or generous unemployment benefits - because they all know that these programs benefit everyone in the end in part by creating a certain stability in the society. Gaps between rich and poor may still be wide, but nothing like here where the gap is widening as the corporate right and their minions no longer want their lavish wealth to be taxed to ease the burdens of this great injustice.
Look what happened to the centrist Barack Obama when he dared to once use the phrase "spread the wealth." Accused of being a socialist (as if that is the worst thing you can call anyone), some of his right-wing evangelical opponents might take a moment to read the Gospel of Luke.
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| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
What bothers me is that I just don't see any real effective pushback. I mean, a lot of angry people got arrested at the Capitol yesterday disrupting the vote on the voucher stuff, but where is the discourse that really speaks to the growing selfishness and isolation of the wealthy? Where is the discourse on the economy that puts what is happening in its real context? Where is the counter to this philosophy of rugged individualism that is pervasive and represents nothing real in this world?
Because none of us - not a single one of us - is an isolated individual, and everything we do has cause and effect. And right now, the things being done in Madison will certainly have effect - they will deepen the suffering all around us, further deteriorate the quality of life in our state, widen the chasms among us, and make for one difficult future in this beautiful state.
It's disheartening. To see politicians appealing to the worst in us, to see the ugly discourse rise to the surface like this - it's disheartening. Hard to win back what you lose. We have to start thinking about how we are going to live here in a fundamentally new way. Those of us who care about these things have got to come together in a broader and deeper solidarity with a different vision to guide us than the one guiding the Repubs in Madison right now.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Take from the poor to give to the rich
And so today. I pick up my morning paper and see this headline: "Panel votes for corporate tax break," and the sub-head below it, "But GOP-run committee further cuts credits for working poor."
Our fearless governor keeps telling us the state is broke. It ain't broke. But in these days of tighter budgets caused by the financial collapse of 2008, money is being moved around, that's for sure. The corporate right, which pays for campaigns like Scott Walker's, has an opportunity right now to convince the public that the poor simply must suffer more because of budget problems. Meanwhile, corporations and their CEOs are making enormous profits and executive payouts while tax policy and government subsidies are being increased for the corporate sector.
The mantra is that we must create jobs. And people fall for it - or at least many do.
The story in the paper describes how Repubs voted yesterday to further cut taxes for corporations and investors while slashing tax credits for the working poor. Very moral, these guys. But poor people aren't able to contribute much to political campaigns.
Earlier in May I was struck by this headline: "State may lose food assistance funding; Federal officials cite privatization efforts." You see, in this case, Walker & Co. want to hand over more of the administration of the FoodShare program, including the process of deciding who gets the assistance, to the private sector. The feds are saying, um no, not with federal money. If you go as far as you want to go, you will not only lose federal money, you will have to pay us back.
The feds have seen the results in states that have taken such steps, and it ain't a pretty picture.
But it reveals priorities, doesn't it? See, the thing about government is this - while it is fine to use some public funds to give businesses needed boosts, emphasis on the word needed, it is not the role of government to be at the service of corporations, to be a servant of them, to give them whatever they want to make a profit. The role of government is to represent the concerns of all its citizens, to defend political and civil rights, to promote justice and the Constitution equally for all, and to protect the most vulnerable among us.
Right now, these libertarian, Ayn Rand, types of very, very rich people (like the Koch brothers, Paul Ryan, or Rand Paul) who control the Repub party, especially in this state, are trying to force on us a very different idea of government - as an instrument for a survival of the fittest kind of economics. They do not see government as a service and look with scorn on those who need government services to get by in hard times.
Paul Ryan speaks often of people who don't want to work and how government programs promote laziness and indolence - and I wonder if he gets at all what it's like to be poor, and, in this city with deep-seated racism still at work, to be African-American, trying to survive these bad times, raise your kids, find a job in this time of high unemployment and lingering discrimination.
But it doesn't matter if he gets it, because he is a follower of Ayn Rand and the poor are just the social detritus, those left behind while the superior among us go off and run businesses and get wealthy, rising to the top, deserving because of their superiority. They want to rule the world.
This lack of compassion runs through many of these policies and, if we follow this path, our future will be grim indeed. As long as there is more emotion around concealed carry than programs that support poor communities and families trying to feed their kids or find a job, we are a morally and ethically impoverished, compromised society. As long as we see struggling people, poor people, as other-than-us and deserving of their lot, instead of our sisters and brothers whose fate we share, we are on a road to moral bankruptcy as a society.
One more thing to share, this very good essay by NY Times Editorial Observer Eduardo Porter, A Budget Without Core Purposes, Taxation Without Compassion. He says it. He really lays it bare.
The budgetary policy of the United States has been the least generous in the industrial world for a very long time.And that ought to make us embarrassed and very ashamed. I urge you to read the rest.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Losing our democracy
Wisconsin's democracy was significantly eroded last night with the passing of the Voter I.D. law in the assembly (note to opponents of the bill: 2 Democrats voted with the Repubs. All assembly members who voted for this need to hear from constituents, but especially Peggy Krusick of Milwaukee and Tony Staskunas of West Allis).
Here's what I want to say about this: rightist racists in this country, some of them very powerful corporate political actors (yes, I do mean you among them, Koch brothers), some of them politicians in state and federal government, are stunned that we have an African-American president, that he remains popular no matter how much they try to demean or discredit him (the reaction to the appearance of Common at the White House is beyond revealing of the racist undertones of much of the opposition).
What I want to say is that this voter I.D. law and others like it around the country are intended to make sure something like this does not happen again. Two of Prez Obama's biggest constituencies are African-Americans and students. In our state, in part because of our long history of racism (I grew up with this, so I know what I am talking about), poverty has affected African-Americans most especially in this city of Milwaukee.
So, voter I.D. - make it harder for people who are poor to vote, and make it harder for students to vote.
And, really, this is about stopping voter fraud, that nearly nonexistent problem?
What do I say to my poll volunteers when I go to the same table with the same people and they have to ask for an I.D. and none of us believe in this violation of our voting rights?
I hear these Repubs say that it will make us all feel more confident in the voting process. Really, guys who are trying to weaken and limit democracy, you guys who try to pass laws by bypassing rules, quick votes when you hope no one is noticing or can create a ruckus, you who right now walk right around the overwhelming opposition to many of your policies now that people know what they are - and you care neither for this opposition or even for creating the spaces for it to be expressed - you're going to lecture us on trust in the democratic process?
I'm going to say this because it is true - certainly there are people who sincerely believe in this agenda thinking it might make a better world, but that is not what Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are about. To understand what they are about, all one need to is a little reading and research on the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Cato Institute (another Koch-funded group), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute - the list is long - rightist corporate backed groups who are trying to steal our public money, eliminate government, and undermine democracy itself in the cause of a global market running rampant and free for their benefit.
For a one-stop website to look at the background of these and other such groups, visit SourceWatch. You will find plenty here to unnerve and alarm you.
The first step in exercising one's demoratic rights is to be well-informed, well-armed, if you will, with information. The first step is to know what's really going on so that we aren't manipulated by media messages of the same people behind these rightist groups and their anti-democratic agenda.
The rally on Saturday needs to get to the heart of the matter. The assault on collective bargaining rights is symptom, not the fundamental cause. The fundamental cause is the attack on democracy itself so that the corporate right can have its way with the national and global economy - and trust me, friends, not for the betterment of the common good or the good of the commons.
Here's what I want to say about this: rightist racists in this country, some of them very powerful corporate political actors (yes, I do mean you among them, Koch brothers), some of them politicians in state and federal government, are stunned that we have an African-American president, that he remains popular no matter how much they try to demean or discredit him (the reaction to the appearance of Common at the White House is beyond revealing of the racist undertones of much of the opposition).
What I want to say is that this voter I.D. law and others like it around the country are intended to make sure something like this does not happen again. Two of Prez Obama's biggest constituencies are African-Americans and students. In our state, in part because of our long history of racism (I grew up with this, so I know what I am talking about), poverty has affected African-Americans most especially in this city of Milwaukee.
So, voter I.D. - make it harder for people who are poor to vote, and make it harder for students to vote.
And, really, this is about stopping voter fraud, that nearly nonexistent problem?
What do I say to my poll volunteers when I go to the same table with the same people and they have to ask for an I.D. and none of us believe in this violation of our voting rights?
I hear these Repubs say that it will make us all feel more confident in the voting process. Really, guys who are trying to weaken and limit democracy, you guys who try to pass laws by bypassing rules, quick votes when you hope no one is noticing or can create a ruckus, you who right now walk right around the overwhelming opposition to many of your policies now that people know what they are - and you care neither for this opposition or even for creating the spaces for it to be expressed - you're going to lecture us on trust in the democratic process?
I'm going to say this because it is true - certainly there are people who sincerely believe in this agenda thinking it might make a better world, but that is not what Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are about. To understand what they are about, all one need to is a little reading and research on the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Cato Institute (another Koch-funded group), Americans for Prosperity, Heartland Institute - the list is long - rightist corporate backed groups who are trying to steal our public money, eliminate government, and undermine democracy itself in the cause of a global market running rampant and free for their benefit.
For a one-stop website to look at the background of these and other such groups, visit SourceWatch. You will find plenty here to unnerve and alarm you.
The first step in exercising one's demoratic rights is to be well-informed, well-armed, if you will, with information. The first step is to know what's really going on so that we aren't manipulated by media messages of the same people behind these rightist groups and their anti-democratic agenda.
The rally on Saturday needs to get to the heart of the matter. The assault on collective bargaining rights is symptom, not the fundamental cause. The fundamental cause is the attack on democracy itself so that the corporate right can have its way with the national and global economy - and trust me, friends, not for the betterment of the common good or the good of the commons.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Assembly Committee Repubs approve voter suppression legislation
The dismantling of Wisconsin's government and broad democracy continued yesterday in the Repub-dominated Assembly Committee on Elections and Campaign Reform. With Sen. Alberta Darling leading the way, the committee approved the new voter ID law intended to suppress voting rights, targeting students, elderly, and the poor, populations most likely to vote for Democrats.
This follows a national pattern in several states intended to bolster the power of Repubs at the cost of their opposing party and democracy itself.
Let's be clear: this is not about voter fraud, the great faux issue the Repubs say they are addressing. Voter fraud in this state is a problem being invented, one that barely registers on the 'dangers-to-democracy' radar. The real threat to democracy is coming from the right, funded by corporations and the groups they support, like Karl Rove's GPS Crossroads, the Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party and Club for Growth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
For years, these groups have been trying to get a hold on the electoral system itself to manipulate it to their benefit. I need to remind myself over and over again that the Repub Party they are using as their tool, in this state, in Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere, is not the Repub Party of my parents' generation. This is a party that has been taken over by billionaires (Rove's group is funded almost entirely by billionaires' money), rightist corporations like Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil, for the purpose of reshaping our country to something that ressembles the days of the robber barons and Tammany Hall, back to the days when powerful white business groups ran corrupt political machines and controlled political parties and local and state governments without the restrictions of things like human and civil rights, labor unions, environmental laws, or broad-based popular democracy.
Again, as I wrote yesterday, I wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to get attention.
So, we were all in the streets over collective bargaining rights for public workers and the assault on the middle class. Will these same people be willing to go into the streets to defend the right to vote for poor people, inner city neighborhoods, African-Americans, students, and the elderly? I am just not feeling the same urgency that came with the assault on collective bargaining - and you can be sure they are counting on that. It has been a long time since the people of this country went into the streets to defend the right to vote - and that came from the disenfranchised by way of the civil rights movement some 50 years ago now.
Recall our history: most expansions of the right to vote - women's suffrage and the civil rights movement as our preeminent examples - came from persistent struggle, came from movements and protests. We had to struggle at every turn to broaden democracy to the point where it became that - democracy, not rule by the elite.
According to the morning paper, Darling and Leibham of Sheboygan were insistent on banning all forms of student IDs. They don't want students - with rights as profound and inalienable as theirs or yours or mine - to be able to exercise their right to vote. What they want, my friends, is the ability to dismantle government and hand the public sector over to the corporate sector without pushback or the inconvenience of organized political opposition.
Example? The other thing they did yesterday - the budget committee voted to repeal the regional transit authorities that were created to promote and build commuter rail from Milwaukee to Kenosha. They want them to go away. The road-building lobby which lavished funds on Walker's campaign want more cement poured, more traffic congestion, more neighborhoods and habitats destroyed, for their profit.
...while gas prices are approaching all-time records.
I can't say this strongly enough - our Wisconsin political system and much of the quality of life in our state is under threat from this regime. And I guess we are about to find out just how much we care about those things.
None of this stuff has become law - yet. But we are running out of time. While all this anti-Walker regime energy gets focused on the recalls, the vote on Walker's biennium budget will take place before those elections. In fact, the Repubs will use every legal maneuver available to them to keep those elections from happening before the vote on the budget. Sure would be nice to see some of the energy go where it needs to go now. Sure would be good to see folks called back to the Capitol to reclaim our rights and our democracy.
This follows a national pattern in several states intended to bolster the power of Repubs at the cost of their opposing party and democracy itself.
Let's be clear: this is not about voter fraud, the great faux issue the Repubs say they are addressing. Voter fraud in this state is a problem being invented, one that barely registers on the 'dangers-to-democracy' radar. The real threat to democracy is coming from the right, funded by corporations and the groups they support, like Karl Rove's GPS Crossroads, the Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party and Club for Growth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Again, as I wrote yesterday, I wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to get attention.
So, we were all in the streets over collective bargaining rights for public workers and the assault on the middle class. Will these same people be willing to go into the streets to defend the right to vote for poor people, inner city neighborhoods, African-Americans, students, and the elderly? I am just not feeling the same urgency that came with the assault on collective bargaining - and you can be sure they are counting on that. It has been a long time since the people of this country went into the streets to defend the right to vote - and that came from the disenfranchised by way of the civil rights movement some 50 years ago now.
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| Source: New World Encyclopedia |
According to the morning paper, Darling and Leibham of Sheboygan were insistent on banning all forms of student IDs. They don't want students - with rights as profound and inalienable as theirs or yours or mine - to be able to exercise their right to vote. What they want, my friends, is the ability to dismantle government and hand the public sector over to the corporate sector without pushback or the inconvenience of organized political opposition.
Example? The other thing they did yesterday - the budget committee voted to repeal the regional transit authorities that were created to promote and build commuter rail from Milwaukee to Kenosha. They want them to go away. The road-building lobby which lavished funds on Walker's campaign want more cement poured, more traffic congestion, more neighborhoods and habitats destroyed, for their profit.
...while gas prices are approaching all-time records.
I can't say this strongly enough - our Wisconsin political system and much of the quality of life in our state is under threat from this regime. And I guess we are about to find out just how much we care about those things.
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| Okay, but is this true? |
None of this stuff has become law - yet. But we are running out of time. While all this anti-Walker regime energy gets focused on the recalls, the vote on Walker's biennium budget will take place before those elections. In fact, the Repubs will use every legal maneuver available to them to keep those elections from happening before the vote on the budget. Sure would be nice to see some of the energy go where it needs to go now. Sure would be good to see folks called back to the Capitol to reclaim our rights and our democracy.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
So, is destroying government a lot of fun?
I mean, as Scott Walker, the Koch brothers, the Greater Milwaukee Committee, the Bradley Foundation, the Fitzgerald brothers, plot the end of Wisconsin state government except as a service to business, the presence of federal programs in the state, the evisceration of municipal government through takeover schemes - are they having fun? Do they sit around tables in dark rooms having a good laugh knowing the chaos and suffering to come?
Really - what are these people made of?
One example, the privatization of the food stamp program, a for-profit private business deciding who gets them and who does not, therefore, in many cases, who eats and who does not. This would also mean the disappearance of federal funds for the program. It would mean, really, the end of the program - which is what they want ultimately, the end of government programs, the demise of the public sector, the one accountable to you and me.
Second example, the evisceration of the public school system, including yet another transfer of tax dollars to wealthy families, this time to use for vouchers in the 'choice' program. They do this by eliminating the income cap for the program. Here we go again, another scheme to transfer more of our public wealth from the 'masses' to the rich. It is also a way of further abandoning Milwaukee, with well over a quarter of its population living in poverty. Why waste potential profit-making dollars on the poor?
Third example, the evisceration of public transit, a vital element of any city's hopes to create employment options for the poorest among us. They have to get to work. They have to get to job interviews. They have to get to job training programs. A waste of money! Poor people needing to get to work?! Business is moving out of the city's core and apparently doesn't care about the neighborhoods and the people who are being abandoned.
They don't care.
Fourth example, in secret they have been preparing a plan that would allow Walker to take over municipal governments whose financial practices do not meet Walker's standards (not his because he is not that smart, but the standards being written for him). They won't do this because they love our city. They will do this rubbing their hands with glee to finally pick on the city that picked on Walker, or that Koch and their ilk see as a drain on the economy and on potential investment income.
Oh, and they want to completely disband and eliminate county government as well, you know, while they're at it.
If this is allowed to happen, if it does not meet fierce resistance, then don't even worry about their assaults on voter rights and their voter suppression measures - because there won't be much left to vote for. Once these services are privatized, another election won't reverse that process. You know, all those contracts that will have been signed. Once you eliminate government agencies and programs, getting them back is a monumental challenge, one that could take another generation.
Once again, I only wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to stir things up. I would sleep better at night if that was the case. The real battle for the future of Wisconsin has been engaged, as Sen. Mark Miller so famously said upon the triumphant return of the Wisconsin 14. Are we up to this battle?
Really - what are these people made of?
One example, the privatization of the food stamp program, a for-profit private business deciding who gets them and who does not, therefore, in many cases, who eats and who does not. This would also mean the disappearance of federal funds for the program. It would mean, really, the end of the program - which is what they want ultimately, the end of government programs, the demise of the public sector, the one accountable to you and me.
Second example, the evisceration of the public school system, including yet another transfer of tax dollars to wealthy families, this time to use for vouchers in the 'choice' program. They do this by eliminating the income cap for the program. Here we go again, another scheme to transfer more of our public wealth from the 'masses' to the rich. It is also a way of further abandoning Milwaukee, with well over a quarter of its population living in poverty. Why waste potential profit-making dollars on the poor?
Third example, the evisceration of public transit, a vital element of any city's hopes to create employment options for the poorest among us. They have to get to work. They have to get to job interviews. They have to get to job training programs. A waste of money! Poor people needing to get to work?! Business is moving out of the city's core and apparently doesn't care about the neighborhoods and the people who are being abandoned.
They don't care.
Fourth example, in secret they have been preparing a plan that would allow Walker to take over municipal governments whose financial practices do not meet Walker's standards (not his because he is not that smart, but the standards being written for him). They won't do this because they love our city. They will do this rubbing their hands with glee to finally pick on the city that picked on Walker, or that Koch and their ilk see as a drain on the economy and on potential investment income.
Oh, and they want to completely disband and eliminate county government as well, you know, while they're at it.
Friends, Walker & Co. are seeking to hand over our state government and its services to the private sector, to corporations - for profit. Not for you and me, not to deliver services, but to make a profit. What they are talking about is a massive transfer of our public wealth and resources to private business.
If this is allowed to happen, if it does not meet fierce resistance, then don't even worry about their assaults on voter rights and their voter suppression measures - because there won't be much left to vote for. Once these services are privatized, another election won't reverse that process. You know, all those contracts that will have been signed. Once you eliminate government agencies and programs, getting them back is a monumental challenge, one that could take another generation.
Once again, I only wish I was using hyperbole and exaggeration to stir things up. I would sleep better at night if that was the case. The real battle for the future of Wisconsin has been engaged, as Sen. Mark Miller so famously said upon the triumphant return of the Wisconsin 14. Are we up to this battle?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Authoritarian takeover of local government - next on the docket?
"Walker’s plans give further credence to the notion that the efforts of the GOP governors with Republican majorities in their state legislative bodies are part of a coordinated plan to enforce a right-wing agenda designed to not only destroy state, county and municipal employee unions, but to take control of local governments by replacing elected officials with appointees, both corporate and individual, of the state’s highest executive officer."
Does that paragraph get your attention? If it terrifies you, it should. I think it is time to stop being afraid to state clearly what is going on. This is more than some grassroots insurgency that came out of nowhere, more than a campaign of Tea Party crazies on the right who hate taxes, African-American presidents, immigrants living in our communities, and who managed to accidently get elected in last year's throw-the-bums-out electoral atmosphere.
It becomes more and more obvious that we are in the midst of a swift, pervasive power grab at the state level, a campaign paid for by anti-democratic corporate interests with the intention to gain control over state government and, while they're at it, municipal government as well, to get control of tax policies, the regulatory regimen, state and local budgets, how business operates and under what rules. It is also apparent that these folks mean to diminish or destroy the ability of the Democratic Party to compete against the Republican Party that now represents their interests (it's certainly not the old Repub party of my parents' generation). One party rule. Not a good thing, except for those who control that party.
So the opening paragraph comes from Rick Ungar at Forbes. Here's the whole article, and I urge you to read it. We need to know this stuff. Ungar reports that Gov Walker wants to follow in the steps of rightist Michigan governor, Rick Snyder, by granting himself power to take over municipal governments if they fail to meet certain financial management standards.
What?!?!?! In the United States of America?!!
Rachel Maddow scared me to death tonight as she outlined the full frontal assault on our democracy by way of state government brought to you by Koch brothers money, ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, and that whole family of authoritarians on the right who see their moment to assert power over our lives, our resources, our future. Her show is not up on her website yet, but I urge you to take time to watch the first half hour once it is. It is terrifying TV viewing as she lays out the extent to which an aggressive, deliberate strategy is being implemented at the level of state governments to change fundamentally the social contract, the political culture of democracy, the very way the nation functions.
All of it is connected - the union busting, voter suppression in the guise of voter ID laws, demolition of public services, including public schools, as in, free education by RIGHT for all our children, nullification or overturning of local laws by rightist governors, and more.
Ungar updates his story to tell us that Walker has denied that there is a 'financial marshall law' scheme underway. We'll see. If the scheme was in the works and the exposure puts a damper on it, this would be a good thing.
Something scary is going on in this country right now, and what I don't know is whether my people are up to this struggle. We are very complacent about our democracy (low voter turnouts being one manifestation of that), but we sure will miss it when it's gone. And this reminder: once it's gone, it's very hard to get it back.
Monday, April 11, 2011
What is it about Wisconsin?
What is it about my home state that produces such wild characters in our nation's politics? I mean, Paul Ryan? Really, I don't understand why he is taken so seriously. His ideas are not that interesting - unless you like slash-and-burn approaches to our profound, complex national problems - and his 'radical,' 'revolutionary' budgets never quite match up with reality, never square with economic reality, never actually balance (quite the opposite), are not even sophisticated enough to be smoke-and-mirrors. They are just straight out lies and deception.
For example, that you can sharply cut back tax rates on corporations and the wealthy to pre-1931 levels and ever, ever, ever cut the long-term deficits by doing it on the backs of those with so few resources - working poor, unemployed poor, children, elderly, you know, the usual crowd so disliked and disdained by the rich (reminding ourselves that most members of Congress are millionaires).
Or this - that you can help balance the budget by taxing wages rather than wealth, as has been the practice more and more since Reagan and right on through the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama years, meanwhile busting unions, lowering labor costs by gutting wages and benefits meaning less wages to tax, which means more long-term deficits, oh, and meanwhile you slash more at the social safety net, cutting unemployment benefits, food stamps - well, you get the picture.
So what are they really trying to do?
Or take the Obama-led health insurance reform. Everyone on God's earth knows the most efficient and cheapest way to deliver health care is in a regulated publicly funded single payer system. Our private health insurance system has created one of the most health-care-delivery-hostile systems in the western world, a case where even those who think they have insurance still must wage all out war sometimes to get their insurers to pay the costs of their surgeries and illnesses. I have to shop on the private individual market. My premiums are nearly unaffordable and God help me if I actually get sick!
What did we get from the reform? Yet another major transfer of wealth to an expanded private health insurance market - companies insuring us for the sake of their own and their shareholders' profits. Do you really think they care about my health or yours?
So - Social Security and Medicare. Just imagine how investment firms are salivating at the thought of getting their greedy hands on these enormous pots of public money. By most analysts' accounts, Ryan's budget would mean that seniors would one day be paying up to 70% of their health care costs. Translate: elderly folks will live lives of misery, pain, and earlier death because any sane person knows the vast majority of our seniors will not be able to do that. Meanwhile, since his plan involves giving seniors vouchers to cover some of the cost of purchasing private health insurance, well, gee, whaddya know? once again, health insurance companies would get that public money to subsidize their industry.
See, friends, a lot of this policy stuff from our corporate-financed Repubs (Dems, too, I'm sad to say, which is why our political engagement should not wed itself to either party) involves accelerating the transfer of wealth from the public sector to the corporate sector, from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
Paul Ryan wants to make the rich richer and turn this country into a paupers' land, a United States we once knew in our earlier history when most people lived lives of misery and want while the rich had a great party.
What is remarkable to me is how much of this political energy right now, a focal point of the nation's great divide, of the vast chasm opening between the few rich and the growing numbers of poor and struggling, of the politics of corporate greed and right wing closed-mindedness v. the politics of expansiveness and inclusion, is centered right here in the State of Wisconsin.
We've always had characters - Joe McCarthy and 'Fighting Bob' La Follette, for example, the state could produced both these guys, or the German Bund and Father James Groppi, both possible here. Is it something in the drinking water that keeps our politics so divided and so lively? So maybe we are presented here with a great opportunity and even responsibility:
Or this - that you can help balance the budget by taxing wages rather than wealth, as has been the practice more and more since Reagan and right on through the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama years, meanwhile busting unions, lowering labor costs by gutting wages and benefits meaning less wages to tax, which means more long-term deficits, oh, and meanwhile you slash more at the social safety net, cutting unemployment benefits, food stamps - well, you get the picture.
So what are they really trying to do?
They are trying to privatize as much of the economy as they can; they are trying to take even more of our public funds and make them available to investors and corporations to make profits off them.Example - convincing millions of Americans that it would be in their interest to move out of guaranteed pension plans into private 401(k) investments. Public money put into the hands of financial firms. You see how well that did back in 2008. Millions of those millions of Americans will never fully recover their lost savings. Oh, and by the way, have you heard that investment firm executives are making record pay and bonuses now?
Or take the Obama-led health insurance reform. Everyone on God's earth knows the most efficient and cheapest way to deliver health care is in a regulated publicly funded single payer system. Our private health insurance system has created one of the most health-care-delivery-hostile systems in the western world, a case where even those who think they have insurance still must wage all out war sometimes to get their insurers to pay the costs of their surgeries and illnesses. I have to shop on the private individual market. My premiums are nearly unaffordable and God help me if I actually get sick!
What did we get from the reform? Yet another major transfer of wealth to an expanded private health insurance market - companies insuring us for the sake of their own and their shareholders' profits. Do you really think they care about my health or yours?
See, friends, a lot of this policy stuff from our corporate-financed Repubs (Dems, too, I'm sad to say, which is why our political engagement should not wed itself to either party) involves accelerating the transfer of wealth from the public sector to the corporate sector, from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
Paul Ryan wants to make the rich richer and turn this country into a paupers' land, a United States we once knew in our earlier history when most people lived lives of misery and want while the rich had a great party.
What is remarkable to me is how much of this political energy right now, a focal point of the nation's great divide, of the vast chasm opening between the few rich and the growing numbers of poor and struggling, of the politics of corporate greed and right wing closed-mindedness v. the politics of expansiveness and inclusion, is centered right here in the State of Wisconsin.
We've always had characters - Joe McCarthy and 'Fighting Bob' La Follette, for example, the state could produced both these guys, or the German Bund and Father James Groppi, both possible here. Is it something in the drinking water that keeps our politics so divided and so lively? So maybe we are presented here with a great opportunity and even responsibility:
to take the eccentric, eclectic character of this state and use it to turn this time of crisis into a time when a new kind of democracy is born here, when we honestly grasp the stakes involved at this turning point where we face either decline and intense class struggle or a new kind of hope for a just and inclusive society. It is time to answer the Paul Ryans and Scott Walkers and Fitzgerald brothers and Koch brothers and all who have an agenda of exclusion, of indifference to the suffering of workers and the poor, of greed and anti-democratic tendencies, with an agenda of inclusion, honesty, compassion, justice, integrity - all those things missing right now from these state and federal budgets, budgets that would mean vast misery and deteriorating quality of life for most of us if they are ever enacted.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Judge Sumi really, really means it
In just a little while, Dane Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi will hear arguments on the request by Dane County DA Ismael Ozanne to block the union busting law until she can consider whether or not Republican legislators passed it properly (this morning's front page article). I don't have to tell you why it is being challenged. We all remember with a bit of rage how Sen. Scott Fitzgerald rammed it through in violation of the state's open meetings law while 14 Democrats were 'on the lam' in Illinois to deny them a quorum on the notorious budget repair bill.
Yesterday for the THIRD time, Judge Sumi basically asked Repubs what it is about her temporary restraining order that they did not understand, at one point threatening sanctions if they continued to defy the court. Now Guv Scott Walker is all polite on us saying he'll abide by the law because he has to, but doesn't really want to.
He really does remind me sometimes of the playground bully who thinks he has the ball and can run home with it if he feels like it. Democracy - you run for governor, you win by withholding your real agenda from voters, you start implementing the real agenda, voters are outraged, but you think once elected you can do whatever you want, and now a court says, well, maybe not, meanwhile your approval rating sinks into a deepening abyss.
Democracy - really doesn't stop on inauguration day.
Democracy - you have to abide by the law (yes, King Scott Fitzgerald, that even means you), even when it means you don't get your way during your reign.
United States democracy - founded on a revolution against the king, founded on a revolution against tyranny from the crown, when rule by the monarchy felt a lot like a suffocating oppression.
All you protesters and fed-up public and private sector workers who have seen you labor rights eroded, your wages sink, your houses lost to foreclosure, your kids' education in jeopardy, your health insurance disappearing - please ponder this. We are only in a 'budget crisis' by design of the corporate backers of these politicians and these initiatives in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Indiana, and elsewhere, by design of mega-corporations who want to get government - and you - out of their way. They have no intention of creating good-paying jobs because they don't need to and don't want to - except for the fewer workers they need at lower wages and benefits (a la Kohler, Mercury Marine, and Harley Davidson).
In the public sector, they want to outsource your jobs, our schools, our utilities, our airports, our flagship university, our prisons, and more so that they can run things for their financial benefit, so that they can make more and more of this country into a corporate state - a bit like England in the 1700s.
The more this happens, the more we lose access to the big decisions that effect all of our lives and the common goods (along with the good of the commons), the quality of our lives, our environment, our educational institutions, etc. We can challenge government; it remains accountable to us. Corporations remain legally accountable only to their shareholders, or in the case of the very private Koch brothers, to themselves.
Once upon a time, writing like this would leave one vulnerable to accusations of being 'leftist,' or 'socialist,' or a crazy liberal. But now we know that what I write here is merely descriptive, not polemical.
Republican appointee Judge Sumi is one great example of this. She is hardly anybody's liberal, but she is obviously pretty convinced that Ozanne has an excellent case and an excellent chance of winning. While no one can say yet how she will ultimately rule, or what pressures she is dealing with right now, the response of King Fitzgerald to the perfectly legitimate actions of Democrats to prevent quorum, the deceptive and hasty maneuver to get the union-busting law passed, and then the response from the Walker administration when Judge Sumi said, 'whoa, wait, not so fast,' again reveals the essential thing we need to know right now about this administration and it's Fitzgerald enablers in the Senate and Assembly.
Folks, stay very engaged in this. Don't give up or lose hope. Something special has been sparked here in Wisconsin. Democracy can overcome corporate monarchy one more time, this time before it has a chance to re-entrench itself. I want democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people, not for the corporate giants, their shareholders, and their wealthy investors. I have a feeling you do, too.
Yesterday for the THIRD time, Judge Sumi basically asked Repubs what it is about her temporary restraining order that they did not understand, at one point threatening sanctions if they continued to defy the court. Now Guv Scott Walker is all polite on us saying he'll abide by the law because he has to, but doesn't really want to.
He really does remind me sometimes of the playground bully who thinks he has the ball and can run home with it if he feels like it. Democracy - you run for governor, you win by withholding your real agenda from voters, you start implementing the real agenda, voters are outraged, but you think once elected you can do whatever you want, and now a court says, well, maybe not, meanwhile your approval rating sinks into a deepening abyss.
Democracy - really doesn't stop on inauguration day.
Democracy - you have to abide by the law (yes, King Scott Fitzgerald, that even means you), even when it means you don't get your way during your reign.
All you protesters and fed-up public and private sector workers who have seen you labor rights eroded, your wages sink, your houses lost to foreclosure, your kids' education in jeopardy, your health insurance disappearing - please ponder this. We are only in a 'budget crisis' by design of the corporate backers of these politicians and these initiatives in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Indiana, and elsewhere, by design of mega-corporations who want to get government - and you - out of their way. They have no intention of creating good-paying jobs because they don't need to and don't want to - except for the fewer workers they need at lower wages and benefits (a la Kohler, Mercury Marine, and Harley Davidson).
In the public sector, they want to outsource your jobs, our schools, our utilities, our airports, our flagship university, our prisons, and more so that they can run things for their financial benefit, so that they can make more and more of this country into a corporate state - a bit like England in the 1700s.
The more this happens, the more we lose access to the big decisions that effect all of our lives and the common goods (along with the good of the commons), the quality of our lives, our environment, our educational institutions, etc. We can challenge government; it remains accountable to us. Corporations remain legally accountable only to their shareholders, or in the case of the very private Koch brothers, to themselves.
Once upon a time, writing like this would leave one vulnerable to accusations of being 'leftist,' or 'socialist,' or a crazy liberal. But now we know that what I write here is merely descriptive, not polemical.
Republican appointee Judge Sumi is one great example of this. She is hardly anybody's liberal, but she is obviously pretty convinced that Ozanne has an excellent case and an excellent chance of winning. While no one can say yet how she will ultimately rule, or what pressures she is dealing with right now, the response of King Fitzgerald to the perfectly legitimate actions of Democrats to prevent quorum, the deceptive and hasty maneuver to get the union-busting law passed, and then the response from the Walker administration when Judge Sumi said, 'whoa, wait, not so fast,' again reveals the essential thing we need to know right now about this administration and it's Fitzgerald enablers in the Senate and Assembly.Folks, stay very engaged in this. Don't give up or lose hope. Something special has been sparked here in Wisconsin. Democracy can overcome corporate monarchy one more time, this time before it has a chance to re-entrench itself. I want democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people, not for the corporate giants, their shareholders, and their wealthy investors. I have a feeling you do, too.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Wisconsin: know who the Koch brothers are - this is crucial to our future
Hey, Wisconsin friends and advocates: there's been a lot of talk lately, protest, and more, about Koch Industries, and the Koch brothers, David and Charles, who helped bankroll the Walker campaign, then opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison when he took office in January.
We know this about them so far: their economic interests in the state include the oil pipeline from Alberta and the planned extension, called Keystone XL, down to the Gulf of Mexico; the interests of their polluting paper and pulp manufacturing company, Georgia Pacific (see below); a governor and legislature willing to crush unions, lower wage scales and benefits, create a 'right to work' state and lax regulatory environment (for example, read about a new threat to the Fox River near Green Bay and more info on GP's polluting corporate practices in our state and elsewhere), a new state government willing to cut corporate taxes even more, allow more freedom to pollute, and privatize whatever they can manage to privatize.
But the more I learn about them, the scarier this gets. For instance, how many of us know that the roots of the family's wealth is in Stalin's Soviet Union, that after whatever break happened there, the patriarch Fred became a rabid anti-communist, leader of the rightist John Birch Society back in the 50s and 60s, known for their hatred of Jews, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, labor unions, etc? How many of us know that a third brother, William, broke with his siblings back in 2000 to publicly accuse them of making a fortune through stealing and cheating?
Here's what you need to know, my friends, about these powerful corporate actors who operate in our state with intentions to destroy so much of what we love about our Wisconsin.
The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement
It is crucial that we get this. We are confronting a major threat to our democracy, not only in this state but nationally. These guys also want to bring down President Obama and purchase our government for their interests. Friends, their interests are not your interests, not the interests of your children, or the health of our communities, or representative and accountable government - which just gets in their way.
From Wikipedia: "Based on year 2000 data, researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts named Georgia-Pacific as the fifteenth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States. In that year, Georgia-Pacific facilities released more than 22,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air. Georgia-Pacific has also been linked to some of the United States' worst toxic waste sites."
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| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
But the more I learn about them, the scarier this gets. For instance, how many of us know that the roots of the family's wealth is in Stalin's Soviet Union, that after whatever break happened there, the patriarch Fred became a rabid anti-communist, leader of the rightist John Birch Society back in the 50s and 60s, known for their hatred of Jews, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, labor unions, etc? How many of us know that a third brother, William, broke with his siblings back in 2000 to publicly accuse them of making a fortune through stealing and cheating?
Here's what you need to know, my friends, about these powerful corporate actors who operate in our state with intentions to destroy so much of what we love about our Wisconsin.
The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement
It is crucial that we get this. We are confronting a major threat to our democracy, not only in this state but nationally. These guys also want to bring down President Obama and purchase our government for their interests. Friends, their interests are not your interests, not the interests of your children, or the health of our communities, or representative and accountable government - which just gets in their way.
--------------------Friends of Wisconsin, understand who these power players are. Understand who represents their interests in our state government. Follow this money - all around the nation - because it will help us not only understand what is really going on, but how to counter it by our advocacy, our community work, our votes, and our sharing of this info with neighbors, families, friends.The only way I know to counter grave threats to our democracy is by way of our democracy. Democracy fails when citizens are not well-informed and engaged. So this challenge now lies in the laps of all of us. Are we up to it?
From Wikipedia: "Based on year 2000 data, researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts named Georgia-Pacific as the fifteenth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States. In that year, Georgia-Pacific facilities released more than 22,000,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air. Georgia-Pacific has also been linked to some of the United States' worst toxic waste sites."
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
A glance at Scott Walker's Wisconsin
In Scott Walker's world, the elderly can no longer afford their medication, taxpayer money will go to vouchers for middle class folks to send their kids to private school, at risk kids will no longer have special programs available to them to keep them in school and help them survive the harshness of urban poverty, and folks on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder will have less and less transportation available to them for things like getting to work or to a job interview because bus routes will disappear and, of course, there will be no rail of any kind, not light, not commuter, not high-speed.
There will be plenty of money for road construction (road-building lobbies contributed to his campaign, of course), dirty industries will get anti-pollution regulations weakened or eliminated (payback for the Koch brothers and WI's new Senator, plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson), the wealthy who already don't pay taxes will still not have to pay taxes though the heavy weight of their industries and privileges will cost the taxpayer dearly, and wages will continue their trend downward, another boon for employers like Harley-Davidson and Mercury Marine and Kohler, but bad news for working families.
Lots of folks will be kicked off BadgerCare rolls in an effort to 'save money,' which means more people will go to emergency rooms already very sick, which is a far more expensive way to get health care, and then we will all pay for that in higher insurance premiums for our private sector health insurance policies.
Also gone: any sense of, or commitment to, the common good and the good of the commons, to government at the service of its people whom it is supposed to represent and serve, any sense that to provide the services needed by all our people, we must all contribute our fair share of taxes to make this possible.
We are moving deeper into a time of vast inequities and unfairness in our society, a time in which the enrichment of the few will come at the expense of the most vulnerable populations and the growing number of struggling workers and their families.
Do we see where this goes? Do we understand what is happening? Is this the Wisconsin we want?
There will be plenty of money for road construction (road-building lobbies contributed to his campaign, of course), dirty industries will get anti-pollution regulations weakened or eliminated (payback for the Koch brothers and WI's new Senator, plastics manufacturer Ron Johnson), the wealthy who already don't pay taxes will still not have to pay taxes though the heavy weight of their industries and privileges will cost the taxpayer dearly, and wages will continue their trend downward, another boon for employers like Harley-Davidson and Mercury Marine and Kohler, but bad news for working families.
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| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
Also gone: any sense of, or commitment to, the common good and the good of the commons, to government at the service of its people whom it is supposed to represent and serve, any sense that to provide the services needed by all our people, we must all contribute our fair share of taxes to make this possible.
We are moving deeper into a time of vast inequities and unfairness in our society, a time in which the enrichment of the few will come at the expense of the most vulnerable populations and the growing number of struggling workers and their families.
Do we see where this goes? Do we understand what is happening? Is this the Wisconsin we want?
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Messiah complex
It's just never good when a politician has a Messiah complex. Things get scary because the motivation for certain decisions become impervious to exigencies like responding to actual needs, cries, crises, or the voices of the people one is elected to serve. Religion compromises politics for a reason. And these days within the US political culture, religion is playing one terrifying role, being used to justify assaults on basic human and political rights, to set folks against one another, to excuse even lying and manipulation in the name of God's purpose as one defines that.
Religion sets people apart, fosters certain identities around a set of beliefs. Government needs to bring together, to represent all the people and to serve their needs. Democratic government must not discriminate among religious beliefs, or to argue about who has a hold on religious, dogmatic, 'truth.' It cannot 'rule' based on religious beliefs if it is to remain democracy. Rather, in a democracy, government must struggle to hold a balance of competing interests for the sake of the common good. When a person governing claims an exclusive mission from God, danger sets in, hubris, arrogance, intransigence.
And so our governor, Scott Walker. I had been wondering about this for a while now, about his personal motivations for setting himself apart from the people he is supposed to serve, then came upon these recent stories which reveal that this guy really does believe he is serving God by his intransigent political positions. Worse, he believes he was chosen for this - and that is the scariest thing of all.
Check out this story, Why Walker won't back down from the Wisconsin State Journal. An excerpt:
When people start making personal comparisons like this, the way they see their role in this world, well, let's just say this attitude is not democracy-friendly; it does not respond to the mere presence of throngs in the streets trying to get their grievances addressed. Once a person believes 'God is making me do this,' that they can walk on water, how can they make a decision to let God down?
There's a reason a healthy democracy, especially one as diverse as this one, separates church and state, seeks to avoid imposition of religious belief over the body politic.
This, too, from The Progressive, Scott Walker Believes He's Following Orders From the Lord. I had no idea God was so involved in balancing public budgets. I mean, if Walker was trying to rule the world or command armies, but really, gov...
Oh God help us. Really. This is all way too small for God, don't you think?
What is NOT small is the suffering this causes, real human suffering, to God's children, if you will. It is interesting to me that in these protestations of obedience to 'the Lord,' pretty much all of the Gospel is left out. Don't hear much of anything from Luke, for instance, often called the 'Gospel of the Poor.'
But there are stories like this - that Walker's budget proposals will kick thousands of elderly folks in our state off SeniorCare prescription drug benefits and force them into Medicare Part D plans, raising their costs exponentially. Really, I can see God now going after the most vulnerable among us, saying, 'Woe to you poor who want the rich to pay their fair share for the common good; but blessed are you rich for finding ways to avoid taxes and other social responsibilities.' I can hear God saying, 'Let the rich get richer, for that is the way to enter the Kingdom of God.'
Now here's the thing: Walker says this change will save the state $15 million. $15 million. That's it. The Koch brothers, his benefactors, have a personal worth of some $43 billion. They could write a check for $15 million and it would be pocket change for them. But they get tax breaks and an easing of regulations for operating polluting businesses here instead.
This religion stuff is offensive and dangerous. So I await some prophetic voices from the faith community to speak on these things, loudly.
Meanwhile, another article to make one take pause about what is going on now in the governor's house: Has Walker Become Unrecognizable?
Something is going on here, friends, that is deeply disturbing.
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| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
And so our governor, Scott Walker. I had been wondering about this for a while now, about his personal motivations for setting himself apart from the people he is supposed to serve, then came upon these recent stories which reveal that this guy really does believe he is serving God by his intransigent political positions. Worse, he believes he was chosen for this - and that is the scariest thing of all.
Check out this story, Why Walker won't back down from the Wisconsin State Journal. An excerpt:
The governor gave a hint at how he looks at the world, and his place in it, in a speech he gave to the Christian Businessmen's Committee in 2009. Talking about his first, unsuccessful run for governor, Walker summed up his approach to life as "trust and obey" God.
Walker, the son of a Baptist minister, relayed to the crowd two anecdotes that he credits with giving him political perspective.
One involved the story of Jesus and Peter. In the story, Peter walked on water with Jesus' help, until he lost faith and sank into the water.
The other story involved two sailors, one of whom made the mistake of watching the waves break against the boat. Seeing his colleague was getting seasick, the other sailor advised the man to ignore the water and focus at a point on the horizon. That, he said, would help him ride out the storm.
"Keep looking out at the horizon, to the path Christ is calling you to follow," Walker told the crowd. "Don't focus on the waves, and choppy water."
When people start making personal comparisons like this, the way they see their role in this world, well, let's just say this attitude is not democracy-friendly; it does not respond to the mere presence of throngs in the streets trying to get their grievances addressed. Once a person believes 'God is making me do this,' that they can walk on water, how can they make a decision to let God down?
There's a reason a healthy democracy, especially one as diverse as this one, separates church and state, seeks to avoid imposition of religious belief over the body politic.
This, too, from The Progressive, Scott Walker Believes He's Following Orders From the Lord. I had no idea God was so involved in balancing public budgets. I mean, if Walker was trying to rule the world or command armies, but really, gov...
"Walker said that God has told him what to do every step of the way, including about what jobs to take, whom to marry, and when to run for governor."
Oh God help us. Really. This is all way too small for God, don't you think?
What is NOT small is the suffering this causes, real human suffering, to God's children, if you will. It is interesting to me that in these protestations of obedience to 'the Lord,' pretty much all of the Gospel is left out. Don't hear much of anything from Luke, for instance, often called the 'Gospel of the Poor.'
But there are stories like this - that Walker's budget proposals will kick thousands of elderly folks in our state off SeniorCare prescription drug benefits and force them into Medicare Part D plans, raising their costs exponentially. Really, I can see God now going after the most vulnerable among us, saying, 'Woe to you poor who want the rich to pay their fair share for the common good; but blessed are you rich for finding ways to avoid taxes and other social responsibilities.' I can hear God saying, 'Let the rich get richer, for that is the way to enter the Kingdom of God.'
 |
| Photo: Margaret Swedish |
This religion stuff is offensive and dangerous. So I await some prophetic voices from the faith community to speak on these things, loudly.
Meanwhile, another article to make one take pause about what is going on now in the governor's house: Has Walker Become Unrecognizable?
Something is going on here, friends, that is deeply disturbing.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Let's name what this really is - racism and plutocracy
Okay, let's start with Jon Stewart's 'Moment of Zen' from last night's show:
That's for starters. Be careful who you claim to emulate - can come back to bite you. If Ronald Reagan is your hero, gov, how' bout you quote this? Guess you prefer what he did to PATCO. Sad history, really. Still reverbates.
So let's move on to this article from the Journal Sentinel local section today:
Bus system, county services threatened
If you want to destroy the city of Milwaukee, if you want to erode it's life, send it further into poverty, this is certainly the path to take - and Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers certainly do seem to want to do that.
The times are too urgent to try to avoid the blunt reality of what is going on here. 82% of kids in Milwaukee's public schools live in poverty. They are also overwhelmingly African-American kids.
Another way to accelerate the city's demise - get rid of residency rules for cops, firefighters, and teachers, also on the Walker/Fitzgerald legislative wish-list. This one got a big boost from Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir whose district includes Wauwatosa, the suburb where Walker lives (the one in which I also grew up, so I know of what I write here). As city life deteriorates amidst poverty and gutting of public services, losing more of the middle class to the suburbs will cost the city more in its tax base and a considerable constituency with a stake in the city's welfare.
The urgency of the times means naming this for what it is. Here's a big part of that story:
I know it well. White flight has been going on in my town for a very long time.
And as life in the city deteriorates, what commitment will middle class folks have to rebuild hope in this community?
Let's name it for what it is: the father of the Koch brothers, that would be Fred, was on the governing board of the far, far, far, anti-communist fascist, anti-democratic John Birch Society. Frank Rich described the Koch family background in a column last year. Even if you are not a Rich fan, his facts are, well, facts.
Read more. Learn more - because we must if we are to save our democracy, not just here in Wisconsin, but in our nation. These guys are trying to buy it and bend it to their will. I try not to be extreme. On the other hand, check out this blog post by a journalist in Florida:
http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/08/the-koch-brothers-the-2010-election-and-the-return-of-the-john-birch-society/
Why is Scott Walker prepared to abandon the state's public schools? Okay, he's being bankrolled in part by the Koch brothers, and as we reported earlier, once he was inaugurated, Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison. Now read this, from the link above to a blog called, The Reid Report:
For those who don't know what the John Birch Society is, check out this link. You will learn here that the Society opposes income taxes and wants to repeal civil rights legislation (in case you still aren't sure what this is really about). I am sad to say that the Society's home is in my state, home of both Joe McCarthy and progressive populist, Fighting Bob Lafollette. That is our cultural bifurcation - been there a long, long time.
We used to be slightly more civil about it - but it always seethed under the surface. The Kochs, Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are now trying to rule this state. And, friends, that is why the stakes here are so high.
As we just witnessed in the past 48 hours, they will use whatever means they think they can get away with to do to this state what they want to do. They are banking on our becoming riven, demoralized, frustrated, violent - they will try as they can to discredit us. We have only one weapon that can defeat this kind of power grab -
...democracy, our government taken back by the people - of them and for them. This will take great maturity and strength, a refusal to fall for their propaganda, trying to set private sector workers against public, unemployed v. employed, the poor against one another - as they continue to enrich themselves at our expense.
I have a proposal for balancing our budget, keeping government services at a high level, maintaining an experienced public work force, and supporting creation of jobs in local communities for local communities - tax these people who want to steal our state from us - tax them exorbitantly. And if that means they decide to leave, wave good bye.
That's for starters. Be careful who you claim to emulate - can come back to bite you. If Ronald Reagan is your hero, gov, how' bout you quote this? Guess you prefer what he did to PATCO. Sad history, really. Still reverbates.
So let's move on to this article from the Journal Sentinel local section today:
Bus system, county services threatened
If you want to destroy the city of Milwaukee, if you want to erode it's life, send it further into poverty, this is certainly the path to take - and Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers certainly do seem to want to do that.
The times are too urgent to try to avoid the blunt reality of what is going on here. 82% of kids in Milwaukee's public schools live in poverty. They are also overwhelmingly African-American kids.
Another way to accelerate the city's demise - get rid of residency rules for cops, firefighters, and teachers, also on the Walker/Fitzgerald legislative wish-list. This one got a big boost from Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir whose district includes Wauwatosa, the suburb where Walker lives (the one in which I also grew up, so I know of what I write here). As city life deteriorates amidst poverty and gutting of public services, losing more of the middle class to the suburbs will cost the city more in its tax base and a considerable constituency with a stake in the city's welfare.
The urgency of the times means naming this for what it is. Here's a big part of that story:
From this article in the morning paper: "...for the first time in the city of Milwaukee, blacks now outnumber whites, and minorities outnumber whites by roughly 2 to 1."This is my hometown, friends. I know it really, really well. I grew up on Joe McCarthy and Martin Luther King being a scary communist and, when a mixed family dared look at a house for sale across the alley (man from the short-lived nation of Biafra, wife US Caucasian Montessori school teacher, kids beautifully brown), neighbors whispering in the backyards about what they could do to stop them from buying it. (They failed, and for a long time my Mother was one of the few on the block who talked to them).
I know it well. White flight has been going on in my town for a very long time.
And as life in the city deteriorates, what commitment will middle class folks have to rebuild hope in this community?
Let's name it for what it is: the father of the Koch brothers, that would be Fred, was on the governing board of the far, far, far, anti-communist fascist, anti-democratic John Birch Society. Frank Rich described the Koch family background in a column last year. Even if you are not a Rich fan, his facts are, well, facts.
Read more. Learn more - because we must if we are to save our democracy, not just here in Wisconsin, but in our nation. These guys are trying to buy it and bend it to their will. I try not to be extreme. On the other hand, check out this blog post by a journalist in Florida:
http://blog.reidreport.com/2010/08/the-koch-brothers-the-2010-election-and-the-return-of-the-john-birch-society/
Why is Scott Walker prepared to abandon the state's public schools? Okay, he's being bankrolled in part by the Koch brothers, and as we reported earlier, once he was inaugurated, Koch Industries opened a lobbying office in downtown Madison. Now read this, from the link above to a blog called, The Reid Report:
When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.Where does the Walker/Fitzgerald agenda come from? Follow the research on the Koch brothers.
For those who don't know what the John Birch Society is, check out this link. You will learn here that the Society opposes income taxes and wants to repeal civil rights legislation (in case you still aren't sure what this is really about). I am sad to say that the Society's home is in my state, home of both Joe McCarthy and progressive populist, Fighting Bob Lafollette. That is our cultural bifurcation - been there a long, long time.
We used to be slightly more civil about it - but it always seethed under the surface. The Kochs, Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers are now trying to rule this state. And, friends, that is why the stakes here are so high.
As we just witnessed in the past 48 hours, they will use whatever means they think they can get away with to do to this state what they want to do. They are banking on our becoming riven, demoralized, frustrated, violent - they will try as they can to discredit us. We have only one weapon that can defeat this kind of power grab -
...democracy, our government taken back by the people - of them and for them. This will take great maturity and strength, a refusal to fall for their propaganda, trying to set private sector workers against public, unemployed v. employed, the poor against one another - as they continue to enrich themselves at our expense.
I have a proposal for balancing our budget, keeping government services at a high level, maintaining an experienced public work force, and supporting creation of jobs in local communities for local communities - tax these people who want to steal our state from us - tax them exorbitantly. And if that means they decide to leave, wave good bye.
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