Below is a video of a visit by filmmaker Michael Moore to the on-going citizens' rights protest in Madison, Wisconsin.
Make no mistake, what happens there will affect us here, for better or for worse.
It is easy to feel that we are constrained by the limitations of our economy. This sea change in the American economy has its roots in the Reagan administration when air traffic controllers were busted out of their union. It continued through the Clinton administration as unbalanced trade agreements shifted American jobs to third world sweat shops. It is felt now as those factories, that used to make goods for domestic consumption shut down in favor of foreign manufacturers, are removed from the tax rolls.
Right wing taxaphobe Grover Norquist famously said, "I don't want to kill government, I want to shrink it to the size we can drown it in a bathtub." This is what it looks like in Norquist's bathtub.
As Lincoln proclaimed, ours is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. By the great man's logic, we are in the bathtub.
It is we who must pull the stopper.
Along the same lines, Jon Stewart shines a brilliant light on the hypocrisy used to divide us from our fellow citizens. Fox News is simply a tool of the radical Republicans, aka teabaggers.
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4 comments:
"unbalanced trade agreements shifted American jobs to third world sweat shops."
Don't forget the race-to-the-bottom local and state govt plays with tax abatements and incentives for business.
Additionally, one of the biggest reasons manufacturers who once hired locally are now overseas, is simply, our tax codes encourage it. If you have a good accountant/tax lawyer, you just don't pay taxes, period.
So we have wealth concentrated more and more to the few. There are many reasons corporate America has sucessfully divided and conquered the workers of America.
G Coyle:
You are correct.
As Chauncey Gardner might say, "There are many weeds in the garden. And spring is the time to pluck them out."
We must roll up our sleeves, get our knees dirty and root out those pernicious invaders which treaten the survival of our garden.
The people of Wisconsin are right now stopping more seeds from taking root.
Soon will come the time to clean up the mess others have made. But the current situation surely is a wakeup call alerting us all to the fat cats' playbook. The masks are off.
I saw someone on TV disparage a 30 year teacher who made $110,000/yr and would retire with an $80,000 pension and full health benefits.
Personally, I think the salary is very appropriate for a good teacher with 30 years experience. I'd pay more even... but where I run off the rails, in terms of sustainable lean government - is the pension and health. We have medicare, why the health? Pensions were stripped from the taxpayers years ago during the Bush "ownership" society debacle, so it's just hard to swallow, that people even still get pensions is a surprise to me.
G Coyle:
You said, "We have medicare, why the health?"
I agree here. We should have medicare for all. This would raise us to a level playing field with the rest of the developed world. The premium we pay to maintain the parasitic healthcare delivery system places an unnecessary burden on our products in the world marketplace.
I disagree that the way to make government leaner is for the citizenry to go on a diet.
That seems to be your point with, "Pensions were stripped from the taxpayers years ago during the Bush "ownership" society debacle, so it's just hard to swallow, that people even still get pensions is a surprise to me."
Why do we now tolerate that CEOs make hundreds of times what average workers make, when in the fairly recent past that was not the case?
Perhaps the same reason many people who could never even approach the lowest trigger point now fear the Luntz-tagged "Death Tax"?
It's dividing and it's conquering.
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