Wisconsin Death Trip

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/


The Plan to Steal Everything and Sell the People into Slavery


On Wednesday evening, in a veritable Night of the Long Knives, Wisconsin's integrity was brutally murdered on the floor of the state Capitol in Madison. On 9 March, integrity and trust built up over a century was obliterated as Wisconsin state senators quickly reversed course and cleaved its budget "repair bill" in half. Financial items require a quorum, thus, collective bargaining was split off from the budget repair bill and voted on separately so as to permit its being voted on now. Even so, this still broke the state's open meeting law requiring 24 hours' notice to ensure transparency. Instead, the Wisconsin senate Republicans pulled out this new legislation without advance notice and began voting, leaving only a stunned Democratic legislator, Peter Barca, to read the open meeting law out loud to prevent the senators from voting. The senate voted over his objections anyway.

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Economics textbooks, along with Fox News and shout radio commentators, spread the myth that fortunes are gained productively by investing in capital equipment and employing labor to produce goods and services that people want to buy. This may be how economies prosper, but it is not how fortunes are most easily made. One need only to turn to the 19th-century novelists such as Balzac to be reminded that behind every family fortune lies a great theft, often long-forgotten or even undiscovered.

But who is one to steal from? Most wealth in history has been acquired either by armed conquest of the land, or by political insider dealing, such as the great US railroad land giveaways of the mid 19th century. The great American fortunes have been founded by prying land, public enterprises and monopoly rights from the public domain, because that's where the assets are to take.

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So Walker's war is not only against the Democrats and labour, it is against Wisconsin's Progressive Era institutions. His policy threatens to pauperize the state and deal a coup de grace to Progressive Era institutions and impoverish the state's middle class. Contra John Maynard Keynes's gentle suggestion of "euthanasia of the rentier", it is the middle class that is being euthanized – throughout North America and Europe.

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slavery is not dead

so long Wisc. its been good to know you. sorry, but you won't rest in peace.

[theaocp]

1. k&r, but it's from counterpunch

and they're a bunch of Obama-haters, so I guess there's nothing to see here. :sarcasm:

[Viking12]

2. and climate deniers....

As such, I don't generally take serious much of what's posted at counterpunch. I think they're on to something here, even if they grossly overstate it.

[ensho]

5. its not grossly overstated.

what part is overstated?

[lutefisk]

6. It's understated, grossly.

The looting, privatizing, and selling off of Wisconsin is just getting started.

Just read the budget and media reports and analysis. The Cap Times is doing a good job of reporting, for example.

http://host.madison.com/ct/

[HereSince1628]

3. Yep, just like medieval europe. It'll probably be made into a GOP Opera

[Lefta Dissenter]

4. WOW, WOW, WOW. (n/t)