The intrigue in Wisconsin these days is interesting in the extreme, and the reaction to it is even moreso.
I will be baffled until my dying day how average people who are struggling to make ends meet can willfully adopt an anti-union/anti-public employee attitude and think it really makes sense to force public employee unions to essentially cease to exist.
First of all, in the last election cycle a record amount of money was spent by outside organizations, courtesy of the reprehensible "Citizens United" decision which allows any outside organization to spend unlimited millions on ads or other efforts in favor of, or opposing any political candidate. And they don't have to disclose where the money is coming from either. How convienent.
Of the top 10 such groups according to money spent, 6 were business or otherwise right wing lobby groups funded and supported by a relative few number of extremely wealthy interests. The other 4? They were unions, and three were public employee unions.
So they're outnumbered 60/40. But not only that, the unions ranked I believe 4th and 5th, and then 8th and 9th, if I recall correctly.
These unions are the sole remaining organization which can even compete, though not equally, with interests who are behind the massive push to essentially upend government to make it forever beholding to their money and become a bought and paid for arm of the plutocracy not seen since the gilded age.
Not content with near total domination and control over the government and its agenda, these fine folks first priority is attempting to de facto destroy the only groups who can even mount a somewhat equivelent effort in representing and supporting the interests of the 98 odd percent of American citizens who happen to have less than several million dollars in assets laying around, with record gains in income coming in every year.
They've already corrupted and distorted democracy itself and steadily have been creating a new plutocracy. But it's not enough until they have amassed so much power and control that there's literally nothing or no organization that can stand up against them.
And yet, there's those fine folks on the right, swallowing the rancid fever dreams of Glenn Beck and the usual gang of cons, and wallowing in their resentment and anger that THEIR tax dollars are actually going to provide teachers, cops, firefighters, street crews and the like with a wage and benefits that used to be considered the right of any worker who was willing to work hard and play by the rules.
They don't expect those who have reaped such massive windfalls in the past decades to pay a dime more to help balance strained budgets, which are stained precisely because of their excesses and coruption and who gladly banked the millions and walked away scott free.
No, instead they swallow the ridiculous notion that the reason we're in fiscal trouble is because there are still some workers who are paid a fair wage and get fair benefits.
Apparently tearing these workers down is the only way they can feel like they'll be lifted up. Never mind that simply reverting to the tax code in effect in the Clinton era, when the rich were doing quite well, thank you very much, would eliminate or nearly eliminate the very fiscal crisis that is being falsely used as a rationale to bust unions and hurt both public employees and their families, but all citizens as well as they watch their services get worse and worse as pay and benefit standards are whittled down to nothing.
These people, middle class or lower themselves, actually believe that the way to get our financial house in order is to TEAR DOWN other workers in similar situations, rather than dare expect the benefactors of the financial crisis to give back one dime of the literally billions they've reaped over the past 20 years.
I'm not sure there's a word for that sort of reasoning.
Yet there they are. Chickens for Col. Sanders.
