There's a joke that goes something like this: "A CEO, a Tea Partier and a union member are sitting in a room. Someone brings in a plate full of cookies. The CEO grabs all but one of them, looks at the Tea Partier and says: ‘You better watch out, he's trying to take your cookie.'" As much one may want to chuckle, the kernel of truth hidden in this jest has now become too outrageous to bear.
Whether or not Republican state senators in Wisconsin technically violated the law when they rammed through Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's Budget Adjustment Bill is irrelevant. What should be obvious to us, the people, is that the modern−day GOP cares nothing about jobs, workers' rights or the working−class Americans who have been suffering quietly for years. Republicans of today hold aloft Ronald Reagan as their hero and savior, the divine light of his fictional "city on a hill" illuminating the same wrinkles and laugh lines that were undoubtedly contorted into a sneer as he broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981.
That mythical city of peace and plenty is reserved for an upper−crust elite perhaps best represented by the Koch brothers, Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire Republican kingmakers who have positioned themselves to gain the most from the destruction of private−sector worker's rights and the privatization initiatives buried in the legalese of Gov. Walker's bill. This assault on public sector workers comes after years and years of diminishing returns for private sector workers whose hours have increased as wages have stagnated in real terms — and all the while the disparity between worker and CEO pay has, overall, increased staggeringly. This wage gap widened in the 1980s under Reagan's auspices and has continued to this day at an ever−accelerating pace. And the GOP has stoked the rage of working−class Americans who have, by design, turned against their compatriots in the public sector while remaining ignorant of the larger picture.
Though the Tea Party is unable — or unwilling — to see the forest through the trees, the onus is on us to hold those in power accountable. President Obama did us all a disservice when he led the charge to cave in to Republican pressure and extend tax cuts to top earners last year. And while Republican efforts at the national level have fallen just short of control of both houses of Congress, the damage they can do at the state level is now clear for all to see. Their motivations are laid bare in the unguarded moments — Majority Leader Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R−Dist. 13) stated on Fox News that destroying the unions would make President Obama's reelection prospects in Wisconsin more difficult and Walker himself rushed to answer a prank call by someone posing as David Koch. Yet rarely does the mainstream media call out this level of political cynicism for what it is. Massive, grassroots protests by pro−union Americans are routinely contrasted with feeble, astroturfed campaigns by Americans for Prosperity and other Koch−funded organizations, which are given equal coverage, equal weight and equal legitimacy as the voice of the people. Thousands upon thousands of voices were ignored outright by a handful of Republican ideologues who sneered knowingly as they pushed through a "budget saving" bill stripped of all spending powers — a naked attack on collective bargaining bankrolled by a privileged few. Democracy is better embodied by the raised voices of outraged masses than by backroom wheeling and dealing in police−barricaded legislative chambers.
Now is the time for true Democratic outrage. A recall effort is already under way targeting those Wisconsin senators who, whether by action or inaction, allowed this travesty to pass. Through grassroots — or Netroots — efforts, we as a nation have a chance to push back against the destructive, despicable cynicism that has fueled these attacks on 50 years of progressive labor rights. The thousands protesting in Madison were not just public employees and their families; they were the private sector workers whose children were taught by Wisconsin schoolteachers and whose homes were safeguarded by Wisconsin firefighters and police officers. We all have a stake in what has happened and in what may come next should we fail to be outraged.
--
