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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madison's 'Forward Marching Band' 

Traditional counter-clockwise march around the Capitol before the rally

Si se puede - yes we can

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

All photos: Margaret Swedish

Damage piling up

It is hard not to be discouraged. The damage already done and about to be perpetrated by our state government is considerable and will have permanent ripples across our dear Wisconsin. Last November, by not telling the truth about what they were intending, by not having to disclose their billionaire and corporate backers (thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision), and with only half of voters exercising this precious right, we put in place a state government with no balancing opposition.

And until the Wisconsin 14 made their daring move across the Illinois state line, the Democratic Party could barely muster a credible opposing argument to NO NEW TAXES!! MORE JOBS!!  WISCONSIN IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS!! - that shrill cry of the right used to mask their true intentions.

This is what 'open for business' means. In January when Walker took office and Koch Industries opened their lobbying office in Madison, it meant Walker's people sitting right down with the Koch people to negotiate an easing of restrictions on phosphorous pollution from the Koch's Georgia-Pacific plants into our Wisconsin waterways. Controversial State Supreme Court Judge Prosser was in on this, another indication of the trifecta of rightist power we have in our executive, legislative and judicial branches. Today we also see that it means speeding up the environmental review process for construction of mines, a policy aimed directly at Gogebic Taconie of Hurley, a company bent on opening an iron ore mine Up North.

And just as Koch Industry lobbyists helped craft the easing of the phosphorous pollution restrictions, so, reportedly, did the owner of the mining company, Bill Williams, with the environmental review process. Is this who we want writing our laws? Did you vote for these guys?

This is what it means in Scott Walker's world to be 'open for business:' to allow corporate leaders themselves to write the rules and regulations under which they will operate. Good for their business, really bad for you and me and the quality of life in this state. In this case, in the professed cause of creating jobs - as if environmentally destructive industries are the only ways to create jobs in this state - ecological wreckage will come to yet another corner of our once beautiful state (still beautiful in parts, but that beauty is eroding thanks to these kinds of businesses, developers, golf course operators, industrial farmers, etc. - open for business indeed).

The Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) is becoming a tool of industry under the Walker regime, certainly not a protection of our precious ecosystems under threat all over the place from road builders and developers, toxic industrial farmers, corporations seeking more nature to exploit for their profit.

Really, I hope this weekend's rally in Madison is about more than collective bargaining rights, more than the threats of the regime to well-compensated middle-class public sector jobs, important as that it. I hope it is about voting rights (about to be severely suppressed), about the gutting of public transportation vital to poor people to get to work, about the racism that underlies so much of this regime's policies, about what it will mean to destroy public education systems under threat by the broadening of the voucher program, about ecology and what it will mean if we continue to toxify and rip apart the ecosystems of our state, its waters, soils, forests, and more.

The ability to push back legislatively does not exist now, and much of the initial damage will be done before recall elections. So where is our leverage? Little in the immediate term. But even in the medium and longer term, in order to turn this course around, it means coming to terms with the rightist assault on our democracy, with the real powers and intentions of the people that put Walker and other rightist state governments in power in nearly half our states. And there is not yet anything approaching the breadth of a movement that is required to resist and overcome this kind of power.

It took 20-30 years for the civil rights movement to accomplish the end of legal segregation and recognition of voting rights for African-Americans in this country. What we lose will have to be won back. And that won't happen in one election cycle.

The great coming-together of all populations under threat right now from this regime hasn't happened yet - but it is the only real power the people have, or have ever had, to defend their rights and their dignity in the face of threats to those rights and to the common good and the goods of the commons, what safeguards the minimum of dignity and well-being for all.

What is being born in Wisconsin?

Something amazing is happening in the State of Wisconsin. Today saw one of the largest rallies in the state's history - a rally of the most marvelously ordinary folks with whom I have ever shared the streets. Can this be sustained? Is it the birth of something that can turn around this rightist assault on democracy and begin to shape something new?

Jury is out on this one. All I can say is that it was a glorious day to be in Madison.  Much more to come on this blog through the week - photos, thoughts, reflections on the weekend's events and hopes for how it might unfold in the days ahead. Stay tuned.

Photo: Margaret Swedish