Wisconsin - Lessons in Cutting Your Own Throat

By TRB

And so it begins - that final step into the open arms of neofascism . The Republicans and the Tea Party have made their decision. They will balance the budget on the backs of the poor, and to do that in an efficient and timely manner, they will bust the unions. We see it happening in Wisconsin.

This is its history. Bankers and Wall Street ripped off the American public for trillions of dollars over the past several years. Now someone has to pay for the money they stole from your investments and pension funds. The Republicans have decided that you will pay for the money they stole from you. At the same time they've extended a massive tax cut for only the nation's top wealthy.

The above description is 100 percent accurate to the word. It is exactly what is occurring right now. The thieves want you to return the money they stole from you. Get it? To accomplish this they will have to raise your taxes, while lowering taxes on the rich. They will have to deregulate even more, because regulations, which save thousands of lives in the U.S. every year, are very expensive, and Corporations are tired of paying for them.

But most important, they have to kill the labor unions in the United States. And they are betting that you will sit home and watch it on television, and do nothing beyond that. There is only one problem. This thing in Wisconsin is a traveling show. It is in Wisconsin at the present moment, but it is coming your way. And you will have to decide which side you are on.

This time the neofascist Republicans have made a mistake. The summer is coming. It is almost here. It is extremely cold in the capital of Wisconsin but 100,000 people are in the streets. How many people will be in the streets this June or July, as the Republican plan to destroy unions across America continues? Hasn't anybody told them: The people united will never be defeated. Remember that chant? It is simple. But it often goes that way. Someone should tell the Republicans.

Or do Republicans have to learn that lesson the hard way? Apparently so.

Look at what is happening in Wisconsin. The unions made concessions. They agreed to pay more into their pension funds and their health care. This they agreed to do while the economy is tanking and every penny counts. It was a deal the state should have agreed to immediately. Instead, this is the age of the Tea Party, the age of reactionary Republican governors, most of whom know little if anything about the history of the U.S. Labor Movement.

So this stubborn governor, Scott Walker, felt that the concessions were not good enough. No, he wanted to get rid off, to erase from union contracts what up until that very moment had been the right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between management and unions about pay and working conditions. Union negotiators, educated in labor law, usually perform collective bargaining on behalf of the worker.

Sometimes the union wins concessions in these negotiations, but just as many times it loses. Collective bargaining began around 1945 and became a permanent part of the labor-management process in 1975. It is what unions are all about. It is the one time the worker has the chance to communicate his or her concerns to the management. It has become over the years, as American as the flag. We are not talking "socialism" here.

It is sad watching as we harm ourselves over these extremist ideologies that really have nothing to do with a good 80 percent of this country. Are these fanatics, who we were foolish enough to elect to Congress really going to freeze budget talks later this month, cutting off all entitlement checks, including social security, social security disability, and some of Medicare?

The real question: when are the reactionary works of these neofacsict Republicans going to drive us into the street, like the Egyptians were driven? When are we going to throw these bums out, actually demand that they leave? And will there be violence as a result? Will the U.S. be the same nation when it is over? Because it is going to happen.

You don't foreclose on millions of homes, destroy thousands of pension funds, stop social security checks and cripple the unions in a single stroke. And if you think you can do that, without major, perhaps, government-changing public unrest, you are just, plain stupid.