Serfs Or Citizens?

It is striking: in Wisconsin, Scott Walker insists there's a budget crisis--after cutting taxes for businesses, i.e. the wealthy. Following that, he and his fellow Republicans demand cuts to the salaries and benefits of teachers, and other public employees, and also eliminating their collective bargaining rights--in order to make up the shortfall they helped to create.

In Washington, Republicans insisted on cutting taxes on the wealthy, at a cost of $70 billion a year, and simultaneously declared a budget emergency. House Republicans vow to cut $70 billion from programs like Title X aid to women's health, Head Start, public broadcasting, COPS, the police aid program, community development aid, teachers--

Already, in California, high school class sizes will rise to 60 per classroom.

We are eating our young; we are eating ourselves, to feed the fat of the land.

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott announced he would cut taxes on corporations by $1.7 billion and would cut education funding by--$1.7 billion!

And now the Wisconsin Rump, the Republicans in the Senate without a quorum (they claim one isn't needed for non-budgetary items), met almost in secret, voted to slash collective bargaining rights for public employees, after recasting the bill to strip it of all budgetary implications!

This is where it gets transparent: the rationale for stripping collective bargaining was to cut the budget deficit. Couldn't be done without it, Walker insisted. Now they've stripped collective bargaining and haven't gotten any closer to balancing the budget. Good job, says Walker.

It isn't about budgets; it isn't about deficits; it's about who gets the money. Republicans, funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers, have been elected by that money to insure that the people with money keep more and more of it out of taxes, while simultaneously looting the government and the nation.

It's been a very sophisticated takeover, of ideas, of communication, of governments, by people who have a lot and want it all. Yes, they are greedy, for money and power. They have taken over the Supreme Court. They have taken over more than half the states governments, they have taken over the US House of Representatives, and they have cowed and corrupted enough of the Democratic majority in the Senate, that we've so far seen from it only limp-wristed "compromise" proposals. Ditto the President.

Finally, though, people are beginning to wake up. Thousands are converging on Madison Wisconsin, day after day. And the same things are happening in states like Indiana, Michigan and Ohio rallying against similar and worse proposals. There have been sympathy rallies all over the nation. Even more encouraging: support for unions and for public employees has risen in the polls, even unionized teachers (approved of by 66%).

Rachel Maddow said: "It's a movement."

It might have to be almost a revolution to stop our contemporary Roman Senators from turning us all into serfs!