Democracy is collapsing under the weight of this much wealth concentration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now we see the great divide

Gov Walker and Republican state legislators have certainly helped to do one important thing - to surface the great cultural divide in my state.

* Solidarity v. fierce individualism

* Workers v. corporate powers

* Cutting taxes as an ideology v. a strong social safety net based on a sense of shared responsibility

* Government as outside monster v. government as a service to its people

* Government as guarantor of private business and wealth generation v. government as guarantor of rights and fairness

* Leave me alone! v. we are all in this together

It doesn't have to be this way. What we are seeing now in the public sector in this state we saw in recent years in the private sector - a divide-and-conquer strategy. Threaten to move a plant out of the state to force workers into huge wage and benefits concessions. Threaten massive layoffs of public workers if they don't accept being stripped of collective bargaining rights. Worse, there is a calculated campaign to drive a wedge between the unemployed or workers seeing their wages fall and benefits disappear, and public sector workers who still have jobs and benefits.

It's an old, tired, anti-people strategy - breakdown solidarity among workers, make them feel like the unions are the enemy, rather than the bosses who are trying to remake the workforce to their benefit.

What in the world happened to our once-inspiring pro-labor culture here, to our sense of pride in what workers built here?  This city was built on the labor of my ancestors, my uncles, my cousins, musicians who worked for my father - all of whom had access to decent well-paid work and benefits because of unions, who had clout in setting work rules (like the 40 hour work week, overtime pay, safe factories, grievance procedures, and more) and from all of that were able to own a house, raise their kids, send them to good public schools, etc., etc. - because of unions, because of organized labor fighting for their rights.

The powers-that-be say we can't afford this anymore, but before we rush to that judgment, take a look at what is happening to the earnings of the already wealthy, to the soaring Wall Street companies. Read articles in the business news about how many corporations are awash in cash but not hiring - because they don't need to do that to make money anymore.

Then check out how many of the wealthy pay little or no state taxes at all (Chris Abele being among them) because tax rules are stacked in their favor. And here, while you're at it, study this document and its many graphs indicating how the top 1% in the US own 34.6% of all privately held wealth while the bottom 80% owns just 15% of all wealth.  This is a staggering divide and something to keep in mind when the anti-tax rhetoric is soaring across the airwaves.

One thing you won't hear our governor talk about is how revenue could be raised to help meet the needs of our people. That actually could be done. But if you think public service is a cancer on the body politic rather than a service - educating our kids, answering the phone when you call 911, plowing snow during and after a blizzard, picking up the garbage, processing marriage certificates and birth records, staffing courtrooms and public health centers - if you think all these public sector workers are sitting with their feet up on desks raking in the dough and not working very hard, then you think Scott Walker a hero.

He is not. And if he gets to run the show here, this state is headed for real trouble.

Hard times coming

Did you see NBC Nightly News last night (the 15th)? I want to put this story (see below) in the context of our current Wisconsin political situation.  In recent years, we have seen more and more companies and politicians gut the welfare and rights of workers. In a time of high unemployment and weakened unions, it has made business sense to do this - to increase profit margins by lowering the costs of labor. With the economy weakened by recession and unemployed folks desperate for any job they can get - especially as unemployment benefits run out - leverage for salaried workers has plummeted.

A sad reality of the global economy is that wages have been stagnant or even on the decrease in the past couple of decades while corporate profits are up, bonuses for executives of financial institutions have reached record levels, the stock market is roaring back from the lows of 2008, and the gap between rich and poor in this country has widened, now one of the highest in the world.

Great time for the powers-that-be to wage a divide-and-conquer campaign against organized labor, even now pitting struggling private sector workers against public sector workers - as if workers don't have much more in common with each other than they do with their bosses. But people are scared and labor solidarity is probably not high on the list of priorities for frightened people who don't really understand what is happening to them and why.

It's an old tactic, and an effective one, until workers begin to realize once again that only as a collective do they have any bargaining rights against corporate bosses or libertarian, anti-government, anti-tax politicians.

Now get ready for the next big whammy - which is what this story is about. Just at a time when politicians are bent on balancing budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable of our community, we are about to be clobbered with sharply rising prices for what we eat, what we wear, and how we get around.

The cultural discourse on this looming crisis is barely to be heard. No one wants to prepare us for this. No one really wants to talk about it much. Because there is only one way to deal with a crisis like this - for the wealthy to pay more, much more, in taxes to support the needs of those who are being dumped into the margins of the economy, or left out altogether.

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