What do you call people who are against people collectively determining their working conditions and who are for more restrictive voting regulations?
I don’t think you call them lovers of democracy or popular will.
What do you call people who are against people collectively determining their working conditions and who are for more restrictive voting regulations?
I don’t think you call them lovers of democracy or popular will.
Re: Voter ID, we’re going to disenfranchise thousands of people to prevent voter fraud which numbers at best a few tens out of millions of ballots cast?
Those concerned about voter fraud ought to spend their energy on making sure that voting machines are above suspicion.
It seems our open season on human beings is just getting started. A shooting of a robber in Milwaukee, the killing of an unarmed  young man in Florida and  the killing of another unarmed man in West Bend are appalling and disturbing.
They are also the consequences of an unholy alliance between the NRA and ALEC.
It’s bad enough that the messengers of the GOP have constantly provoked fear and hatred among Americans. Now they are putting guns into the hands of those they’ve disturbed.
None of these shootings were in defense of human life; they were in defense of property at best, and at worst the tragic consequences of overblown, unrealistic fears.
There is a profound immorality at work here. The makers and promoters of handguns — whose true purpose is to allow humans to kill their fellows  — should be called to task for the lust for money and power that is motivating them.
We are approaching a point of no return: Either we increase taxes, or we abandon the New Deal (i.e., Social Security) and the Great Society (i.e., Medicare/Medicaid).
Make no mistake, the deficits are essentially the product of the relentless drive to reduce taxes. Every tax cut beginning with Reagan led to enormous deficits. The difference now is Tea Party intransigence (or irresponsibility) on raising taxes.
And what have we gotten from lower taxes (principally for the very wealthy)? Lousy roads and schools, stagnant wages for most Americans, and a few people getting insanely wealthy.
We would do well to recall the destitution that typically accompanied old age before Social Security. We’d do well also to recognize that, with all its faults, Medicare is the best-run, most cost-effective health insurance enterprise in the United States.
The problems of most people in this country stem not from high taxes, but low wages, not from big government, but big business.
Eventually, even the Tea Party folks (well, not all of them) will probably figure this out. The question is whether it will be too late by then.
So some Tea Party candidates got elected to Congress. Good for them. I could pretend I respect their views, but why bother? I’ll only concede their right to hold those views.
What I won’t concede is that they have such a perfect vision of the truth that they get to destroy everyone else’s economy.
The Tea Party is welcome to their irrational devotion to tax breaks for the richest Americans. But common sense and the America way of government demands that they recognize and respect the views of the majority of Americans who realize that enough is enough already.
In other words, compromise. The freshmen hardliners need to understand that their view is not the only view, and is in fact a minority view. (That is, if you’re counting voters; if you’re counting dollars I suppose you get a different result.)
Tax breaks for the wealthiest simply have not benefited most Americans. Polls show that 60% of Americans recognize this. But rather than accepting a return to historically normal rates of taxation on the wealthiest Americans, the Tea Party is willing to bring economic ruination on America and the world.
It’s a bitter disappointment to me that President Obama is not hammering on this point every hour of every day.
What are the leading causes of the deficit?
1) Bush’s wars
2) Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy
3) the economic meltdown.
So what are the solutions?
1) Eliminate tax cuts for the wealthy
2) Stimulate the economy
3) Get out of Afghanistan and Iraq ASAP.
Job done.
This, of course, isn’t happening. Discuss.
I usually abhor psychologizing by amateurs like myself but it hit me just now that there’s a kind of timidity in Walker’s constitutional* refusal to negotiate.
I think he’s afraid he’s not smart enough to handle himself in a serious policy discussion.
I think he’s a political idiot savant, but when comes to policy, he’s quickly out of his depth, and at some level he knows it.
So he just takes a position and sticks to it, even if he has to resort to lies — perhaps even to himself — to justify it.
* Not in the sense of rules of governance, but in the way his personality is constituted.
Why do we have unions? Because before unions, workers were exploited. When we lose unions, workers will be exploited again.
Why has government grown? Partly because Americans recognized that the standard market economy doesn’t do a good job of providing for people at the margins of society, in particular people who have left the economy because of age or injury.
Government also serves as a counter-balance to the enormous corporations that otherwise would have more control over society than democracy can tolerate.
So when the extreme right wing of the GOP wants to eliminate unions and government, ask yourself whether this is a step forward or a step backward.
I’ve been on the sidelines long enough.
Here’s what got me off the dime:
Walker’s Trojan Horse (Thanks, Marlene.)
This, in turn, made me see the Senate Democrats’ move in a new light: It affords them — and us — some time to actually examine and bring to light all aspects of this bill.
One final thought: There’s a revenue side to this budget question. Yes, we can actually raise taxes to address state and federal deficits. Our tax burden has steadily been dropping, and government is less and less able to adequately do the jobs most of us want it to do.
The conservative notion that government is bad, and that tax is a four-letter word must be addressed directly:
What’s going on in Madison isn’t about convincing some crazed conservative politicians, temporarily in charge of our state government. It’s about convincing the 50% of the people who didn’t vote, yet support our core values, that the state and country they love are being run into ruin by the right-wing — and they can stop it by making their voices heard above the conservative noise machine.
We’re making a good noise in Madison.
I woke up this morning and found a state employee in my bed. Sleeping, of course. I’m mean, that’s what state workers do, right? Not teach dozens of students each year, spending late nights correcting papers, office hours with individuals.
It shocks me to think back a couple of months, to when this state worker (the one I found in in my bed) WENT TO THE DENTIST. That’s right, she has dental insurance! I’m thinking, “Wouldn’t it be better if she lost her teeth and couldn’t eat? I mean if she starves to death, there’ll be no pension to pay, no Social Security, right? That’s the natural order of things.”
It get worse: The other day I saw a state worker driving to work. In a car. One she OWNED! Though really, since she’s paid with public funds, it’s really OUR car, I suppose. She can keep the kid she’s taking to day care, but I hope she is properly maintaining our public property — even though I’m against public property, which must somehow infringe on my liberty.
Of course, not all my horrid visions of life in socialist hell are waking nightmares. Sometimes at night I think of my daughter. Since she has Down Syndrome, she won’t be driving a car, state owned or otherwise. I’m not quite sure how she will get to work in the future, but the way things are going, I can be pretty confident that she won’t be subjected to the Stalinist horror of public transportation. My socialist nightmare will be over.
Of course, her social darwinist nightmare, envisioned years ago by Anne Rand, will be just beginning.
H. L Mencken does come to mind.
The Republicans have been rewarded for lousing up (not my words) the economy.
2012: We always have to keep the next election in mind. In 2008, we failed to keep 2010 in mind. So we reap the whirlwind in 2010.
OfA has failed to use the tool they discovered to good effect: To build local network in service to local politics. It’s not all about Obama’s agenda, guys. It’s also about the off-year elections. It’s also about people remaining engaged and engaging their neighbors. It’s also about supporting the next generation of candidates. Or maybe they found a tool created by Howard Dean and thought it was just a shiny toy, instead of a strategy that goes deeper than the four-year election cycle.
Political journalism is essentially dead. E.g. PolitiFact parsed trivialities; substantial policy questions got paltry treatment. Case in point: Americans are voting on the wrong information
Scott Walker, Ron Johnson and Leah Vukmir are out of their depth. The republic — and the state — have survived worse, I suppose.
This was an inspiring experience for those involved in the campaign.
We are slowly digging our way out of a hole that was deeply dug by Ronald Reagan and which reached its nadir with George W. Bush. This is a bump on the road.
My personal experience with the electorate was cordial. Don’t make too much of the “Tea Party rage” meme.
FDR lost House and Senate seats in all but the first of midterms during his presidency.
Watch for a useful 1994 vs 2010 analysis.
From ‘Express Milwaukee’:
“What sets Vukmir apart from many of her Republican colleagues are her ultraconservative positions that are far to the right of the standard GOP platform.”
Make no mistake, the candidates the GOP is offering today are essentially McCain/Palin — on steroids, in many cases
This article by Henry Banta is as good a summary of the state of the GOP as I’ve seen in a long time.
I would only add that I suspect there are plenty of heavy-hitting contributors to the party for whom this is less ideology than a trojan horse for a plutocratic power-grab. These people are perfectly happy to contribute to deceptive party messaging that conflates middle class economic anxiety with “culture wars” (i.e., racism, misogyny, homophobia)
Homophobia trumps national security; anti-abortion concerns trump economic justice; etc.
Craig Gilbert seems to be as lost in Paul Ryan’s road map as those he purports to give direction to.
Most notably, the claim that the CBO projects a balanced budget in 50 years disguises the fact the the CBO did NOT use Ryan’s tax (revenue) plan, but another another one, to balance Ryan’s spending plan. So we don’t know whether Ryan’s taxing plan, combined with his spending plan, will do what’s claimed in Craig Glibert’s account.
So Paul Ryan is going to reduce revenues by trillions of dollars — by disproportionate tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — and balance the budget?
Sure, by destroying Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — but only for people who won’t notice for 30 years.
This is the sort of voodoo economics the GOP has tried before, with the result that the hyper-rich get vastly wealthier, while nearly all other Americans see their incomes stagnate or fall.
It’s a shame that a Journal Sentinel reporter is party to this.
Drove up U.S. 41 to the Packer game last night, and was struck by the cultural signs along the way.
Several anti abortion signs, including the particularly revolting, “40 million babies won’t pay into Social Security.” Besides being stupid on its face (they won’t be taking SS payouts, either) it was a weird reduction of the value of human life into dollars. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet that the author supports the people who want to destroy social security.
Another class of signs sells pornography, which put me in mind of the odd red-state disconnect between “family values” and divorce rates. See, e.g. this New York Times article
And then you have the shooters’ supplies stores.
All this, taken with a large number of people driving 80 mph (in Wisconsin!), made me feel like I was in a part of the state like no other.
Saw a bumper sticker the other day:
“I support the IDF.”
My reaction: So, unfortunately, do I, with my tax dollars.
… and I’m one of them.
Whatever the progressive complaints about the Obama administration may be, isn’t it nice to be able to have some confidence that our government is returning to competence?
It’s early days, but consider the difference between Bush’s response to Katrina/New Orleans and Obama’s response to the Haitian disaster. To me, the difference is already clear.
I’ll make a couple predictions here:
1) The American response to the Haiti catastrophe will prove vastly superior to the national response to the Katrina disaster
2) There will be excessive right-wing disparaging of that effort to mask (1) above.
Here’s my letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov):
Mr. Holder,
It is my belief that persons who engaged in torture should be prosecuted on both criminal and constitutional grounds.
1) I believe that laws and treaties of the United States were broken by torture.
2) I believe that the Constitution was violated by the executive branch essentially making its own laws regarding torture.
I further believe that the country would support the full and legal repudiation of torture, and that our nation would gain immeasurable respect around the world by behaving as we claim to behave.
Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Greg Walz-Chojnacki