WASHINGTON, D.C., March 6, 2011 — Forget trying to sort out what the pundits are saying these days about the Republican power grab in Wisconsin and beyond. A joke making the rounds sums up perfectly what is happening in those states controlled by Republican governors.
A wealthy CEO, a Tea-Party member, and a unionized public employee are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 of the cookies, looks at the Tea Partier, and says, "Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is it in a nutshell.
A protester raises his fingers after putting his mask on the statue "Forward" at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., Saturday, March 5, 2011. (Photo: Associated Press)
Americans understand the concept of the cookie because it about their cookies and they know whose hand is in the cookie jar.
Republican leaders in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and Idaho are dishing out corporate tax cuts with one hand and taking away from the average worker with the other.
They thought no one would notice. They were wrong.
Until throngs of protestors flooded Madison, most of Wisconsin hadn’t realized that Governor Scott Walker had bestowed generous tax cuts to businesses back in January. Suddenly they are very aware of what their governor is up to.
Last Tuesday, Walker unveiled his so-called Budget Repair bill, revealing deep cuts in aid to schools and local governments by nearly $1 billion over two years while preventing local governments from raising property taxes to compensate for the loss of revenue.
The result would be massive layoffs across the board and unleashing fiscal havoc in Wisconsin communities. Walker claims his budget is about educational reform. Instead it will result in increases in class size, cuts in teacher pay and benefits, the elimination of bargaining rights, the dismantling of teacher tenure, and the funneling of public money towards private schools.
A Classic Overreach
As Republican state senator Dale Schultz said on a local Wisconsin radio station: “All I know is that we're not talking; we're wasting valuable time about collective bargaining, which I don't ever remember being a part of last election's discussion whatsoever.
"We are going to create a situation where we focus all our energy on wars with each other, rather than building up Wisconsin. Let's tackle this budget, let's not raise taxes, but let's do it in a way that doesn't wind up tearing apart families and communities. This just looks like the classic overreach.”
Now folks in Wisconsin are considering a recall vote on some Republican state senators and Governor Walker. There is talk of this happening in other Midwest states as well as GOP governors push the limits in their states, using the recession as a means to destroy unions. After all it was not the public employees who caused the states’ fiscal crisis but the national debacle of the big banks and the likes of Lehman Bros. and AIG.
The Republican Governors Association has put up an ad in Wisconsin asking its citizens to Stand With Scott, touting his reckless behavior as being good for the state. The question most Americans ask themselves is: why would these governors go after their own people, the Middle Class, that made our country great?
Follow the Money
Simple. During the last election, average Americans were courted by the GOP with promises to tackle the deficit, telling them what they wanted to hear with memorable sound bites but not saying what it would mean in their own lives. Complex ideas were sold in a simplistic package.
Basically, Americans were duped, as they've sadly come to realize.
So why now sell them down the river? The Middle Class may have the votes, but they don’t have the money. That comes from corporations and Big Wealth. The $25 the average Jane and Joe can scrape together to contribute to a campaign just doesn’t cut it.
Mega Money is what fuels elections so million dollar political ads can get on TV. Mega Money pays for the campaign bus, the staff, the phone banks, the yard signs, and the headquarters.
And there is a catch: after the election Mega Money expects a return on its “investment” in the form of corporate welfare and tax breaks for Big Wealth. If you are a good little politician while in office, there is probably a lucrative job waiting for you on retirement with one of those corporations or a plum lobbyist job.
Can you sitting at your kitchen table deliver that?
That is why the GOP, the party of big business long before the days of FDR, does the bidding of the money masters like the Koch Brothers, the Bradley Foundation, the oil companies, or any of the big players. Mega Money buys elections and thus government.
Then government doles out the tax cuts to the top 1%, doesn’t close tax loopholes, allows corporations like Boeing to not pay income taxes, and slashes regulations that keep corporate greed in check.
There has been a great awakening in this country, started initially by the Tea Party and now inspired by the events in Wisconsin. As a growing and deepening political awareness spreads, Americans, many of them union folks who voted Republican in 2010, now realize they were snookered.
Middle Class Americans know they are the ones who bake the cookies in this country, and they resent it when they see the fat paw of corporations in their cookie jar.
Read more Ad Lib in The Washington Times Communities.
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
