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.

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?

Another attempt to gut government services meets federal pushback

Scott Walker & Co. are bent on destroying government, or as one infamous Repub, Grover Norquist, once put it: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."  Now they're playing that game with poor people's access to food in this state.

Here's the story in today's Journal Sentinel.  The Feds are not happy with Walker's plan to centralize and privatize the processing of applicants' elegibility for food assistance. As the article notes, such attempts have been disasters in other states. This approach has a track record.  The suffering of poor people? Too bad. Some things must be sacrificed on the altar of a corporate driven, rightist ideology.

Public sector unions, educators, healthcare workers, students, writers, you know, all of us - are we prepared to join together to also defend the rights of the most vulnerable among us?  Will we all join together in this struggle to defend basic human decency and core human rights, to defend government programs that are meeting the needs of those under direct assault from the Walker administration?

Beyond each threatened group or sector is this broad assault on government itself, on the public realm. To defend that democratic 'space,' what is required is a strong broad-based movement to push back against this assault from the right.

They are determined; they are focused; they are well-funded; they will not stop. Only democracy from below can salvage government as representative and at the service of the people. Otherwise, 5-10 years from now, we will be reeling at the country that these people are trying to create.

For a couple of decades now, they have been playing working people and taxpayers for fools with their rants about government waste and how our tax dollars are taken from us to make lazy bureaucrats happy - until Alabama gets hit by scores of tornadoes and suddenly federal help is wanted and crucial. The right would love to privatize FEMA, too.

Walker has a scary determined unbending focus that shows me he is prepared to violate federal law (as in this case), to destroy as much government as possible, without any real sense of connection to the suffering that will follow. How do these people envision our society a decade from now, or two, or three?  I can tell you this - it will be mean, more people will be poor, more cities will be crumbling, education will be only for those who can afford it (they want to privatize education, too), and rich people will live well in their walled-off communities and summer vacation homes.

What they want, friends, is to take our public money and make it available to private investors to make profits, to make it available in the private sector for more corporate power over our economy with far fewer constraints in how big business operates (like environmental regulations, like worker rights, like child labor laws, etc. -- all these things about which we do have laws, rules, and regulations). They want access to our state and federal parklands.  They want our tax dollars for their pockets.

That's the agenda. I am not making this up or making baseless accusations. At least now these intentions are getting some airtime, some space in more newspapers.  Pay attention, because if we don't understand what we are really up against, we will not be able to effectively put the brakes on this agenda.

Photos: Margaret Swedish