Normally, we all look to events for encouragement or emotional uplift that demands that we get up out of our chairs. Not everyone. Some people are motivated 24/7/365 against injustice, denial of human rights or intense need by some member or segment of society.
When Haiti happened, for example, or when the monster earthquakes hit even our enemy Iran, we acted quickly and decisively. And although Bush fiddled and golfed during Katrina, the American people responded in a massive show of support. By and large, we are not a bad people.
But many Americans are begin misled into gigantic mistakes by Neocon politicians with their own motives and those do not align with the welfare of the large body of Americans known as the Middle Class.
That is why the Republicans, the Neocons, move gradually, step by step, flying under the radar to achieve what many of us feel to be their goal…a totalitarian government. In other words, they are trying to gain control of the entire political system and run it as if it were a group of nobles from an ancient feudal system.
Totalitarians do not tell you the truth. They do not confront you directly. They play on fears. A man like a Governor Pawlenty will lie about the reasons he wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare as long as his quiet demeanor is not discovered to be that of a storm trooper. That only happens after you have voted for him, hoping fruitlessly that this time he is telling the truth.
A good example of that is the combination of human rights and civil rights and rights of a democratic system that are being removed in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. There is no difference between what is happening in those states and the effects of an army marching in and taking over.
Whether you are imprisoned or impoverished over a series of months and years, or in a blitzkrieg of military or police activity does not matter. It is the same result. If you think the national rifle association is about hunting, then you are going to lose your freedom.
If you can’t make the political connections between those two issues, loss of civil rights and the overwhelming power of guns in the hands of Nazis…and who the Nazis are today…then one day you will lose a job, a home, and when you do something irrational to keep from starving or being homeless…you will lose your freedom. And when the Nazis get tired of housing you and feeding you…because you are not one of them…you will lose your life.
For example, in Wisconsin, until the recall elections change things, Governor Walker has attacked unions directly. The idea is pretty simple. Unions do spend a great deal of time and effort and money…which comes from the members, not some sinister cabal…to support legislators who will advance the working man. The Republicans, as just this legislation from Walker alone proves, are funded by the rich and support cutting taxes for the rich, which means cutting government, whether it is necessary or not.
Walker’s legislation eliminates collective bargaining for anything but wages. But it also says that the local governments, or any employer, could no longer collect union dues but would require unions to go to workers individually to collect wages. It also says that some Wisconsin nurses lose their collective bargaining rights completely and unilaterally. Basically, the entire package of restrictions ends the rights of public employee unions in Wisconsin.
The fake phone call recorded by someone who knew that Walker was in touch with the Koch family proved Walker’s motivation. Why would he cut taxes by $176 million and then attack worker’s benefits? Who benefits?
Billionaires like the Kochs benefits. These are fabulously wealthy people who pay enormous amounts of taxes in absolute dollars but a tiny percentage of their total income. They want to avoid cleaning up the messes that they leave behind when making their enormous fortunes.
Walker had already negotiated lower benefit and wage concessions with the public worker unions. The reason he then played his hole card…basically decertifying unions was to repay his billionaire backers. By eliminating collective bargaining he could destroy the unions and lower wages and benefits for the average public employee.
Of course all of this will last only as long as he can forestall the upcoming recall elections that will certainly throw out half a dozen Wisconsin house members. The only reason for Walker’s actions is that he is in the pocket of corporations who want to drive down wages of public employees, like nurses, teachers, firemen and cops, who are the only remaining workers with unionized jobs.
Walker is a perfect example of the Nazi mentality. Work for an ideology that enables you to foster your prejudices, to beat down the average citizen in favor of your group, the like-minded members of your “superior” caste. Neoconservatism is nothing new Walker is merely the latest incarnation of a failed political philosophy.
In Michigan, things are worse. It is not merely the loss of the ability to negotiate wages but Governor Rick Snyder, a hugely wealthy former investment banker, is doing the dirty work for the entire Wall Street and global corporate community. His job is to take over this state structure, weakened by the long, disastrous Bush Recession and Republican obstructionism, and turn it into a cash cow for private Republican businesses.
Because the Right Wing television and talk show people were so successful at lying and creating anxieties about health care and about the need for government cutbacks, the people of Michigan, suffering as badly as any state in this crisis, voted in a strong Republican slate of legislators, plus Snyder. That was a mistake.
Upon taking office, Snyder, for a variety of reasons, but one that is very clear, and the Michigan State legislature enacted a law that would essentially remove from office, under certain conditions, and replace with a Snyder appointee any mayor, city manager, community authority or practically anyone else who might run a community, regardless of his capacity as an elected official.
Under the law the governor may: “Make approve or disapprove any appropriation, contract, expenditure, or loan, the creation of any new position or the filling of any vacancy in a position by any appointing authority.” In other words, Snyder, at will, can take over just about any community so long as they have any financial difficulties at all.
But here is the really interesting part. What was the first place that Snyder took over…almost immediately? Benton Harbor. Al Pscholka of Benton Harbor wrote the bill. And who is Al Pscholka? He is the former legislative aide to Fred Upton. He is also the former Vice President of the company trying to get the Harbor Shores development approved.
And who is Fred Upton? He is a Neocon Congressman from that area of Michigan, (as is Pscholka in the Michigan legislature) an heir to the Whirlpool fortune and an interested party in having the major city park in Benton Harbor adjacent to the Harbor Shores Golf Club and Residances.
Benton Harbor itself is largely a black community with a median income of about $10,000, far below Federal poverty standards. So why would they need a luxury country club instead of a big and popular city park?
Once the state law went into effect, Governor Snyder rushed to replace the city manager with Joe Harris. Joe Harris then rushed to remove the members of the Planning Commission who could cause them trouble and members of the development board for this project.
In other words Czar Joe Harris locked in the votes he needed to obtain the shoreline for the Whirlpool heirs, for their pals, and for the governor’s cronies. (Whirlpool now has no employees in Benton Harbor. For a long, long time Benton Harbor and St.Joseph were virtually company towns for the huge Whirlpool manufacturing facilities.)
So much for saving the finances of small Michigan communities. This whole thing has been cooked up for situations like this one. The idea is to put more control, total control into the hands of the governor and his friends who will get the contracts that will make them all rich. The Benton Harbor situation has exposed the real purpose behind the Snyder governorship. It is to pull a Dick Cheney on Michigan. The looters are in power.
And then there is John Kasich, governor of Ohio. He makes no apologies. Goes right at the unions. One of his first bills was a piece of legislation to make it illegal to bargain collectively with unions.
Kasich left public life after years of supporting Reaganomics. In other words, he is responsible for voting into legislation and leading the battle for legislation to create the largest deficits in our country’s history and an enormous national debt. Now, John Kasich will lie as often as is necessary because he considers lying to the people to be good politics.
After serving time at Lehman Brothers, until the management he was part of ran that old established firm into the ground, he became one of the insiders. He is now on the team against the Middle Class. He used the billionaires money and the unfortunate circumstances of the lingering Recession to create fear among the citizens of Ohio.
That is what the last election was all about. It was a chance for the Nazis to sow the seeds of fear, hate and envy among the People. Divide and Conquer. And that is what Kasich is doing in Ohio. He has launched an all-out attack on the unions and he will not be satisfied until every workers has had his or her income reduced, wages reduced, benefits reduced.
This is the billionaires’ plan and it is working. Hire a bunch of scum as your governors and senators and as your media commentators. Pay them so much that they cannot even afford to run for President. Make them millionaires as they have done to the hapless, ignorant, foolish Sarah Palin.
If we do not rise up against these three state governments, plus New Jersey and Florida (where the governor, a crook in my opinion) now has only a 29% approval rating, we will get the country we deserve.
