Scott Walker, John Kasich And Their GOP Colleagues Want You To Share A Bunch Of Sacrifices... And STFU

New polling in Wisconsin indicates that there may soon-- although perhaps not soon enough-- be a lot fewer Republican state senators in the legislature. Right wing fanatic Dan Kapanke, for example, who tried unsuccessfully to defeat conservative Democratic Congressman Ron Kind in November, is probably going to be looking for honest employment for the first time in his life. Greg Sargent reports that "57 percent said they'd vote for someone else, versus only 41 percent who said they'd vote for Kapanke" and that was in a poll taken before the outrageous and extremely unpopular over reach that Kapanke helped Walker work out Wednesday night. Over reach that Keith Olberman described like this Wednesday evening:

Still having never learned to be calm, retract their claws, and sit around and act rationally in a situation that calls for panic, Wisconsin’s Republicans and their Corporate Puppeteers tonight guaranteed themselves an unprecedented and disastrous recall next January.

More over, they also guaranteed themselves that any cloak of stealth under which they have operated in their attacks on teachers, firefighters, policemen, unions, and the settled law of collective bargaining, has been stripped away. If you pass a supposedly urgent “budget repair” bill with key budget components cut from it, you forfeit the fiction that you are doing anything remedial, anything essential, anything except a naked power grab on behalf of corporations who will get the money stolen from organized labor-- civic or private.

And further, when you accomplish all this by parliamentary trick-- after your national party has spent two years and more decrying Congressional reconciliation-- when you deny the minority the right to participate in the outcome whether by compromise or protest, you cut through the cacophony of political-speak in this country and you transmit your sneering indifference towards democracy to ordinary citizens who do not normally pay attention.

Like us, Bob Reich was quick to cast the GOP move in Wisconsin as a virtual coup d’etat, pointing out that their actions have "have laid bare the motives... By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn’t be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It’s been to bust the unions." Labor leaders are calling Walker the greatest organizing tool of the decade, probably more so even than George W. Bush. And John Kasich (OH), Paul LePage (ME), Rick Snyder (MI) and Rick Scott (FL), to name just a few, are determined that they get a piece of Walker's spotlight. No one even thinks about southwestern sociopaths Jan Brewer (AZ) or Rick Perry (TX) any longer, although both are up to as much harmful mischief as Rick Scott and the Midwestern trio. It's all about "shared sacrifice"-- poor people sharing sacrifice while our political elites and 400 wealthy families share the stolen, un-taxed riches of America.

[Poll] after poll shows that, in fact, Americans are far more concerned with unemployment and favor surtaxes on the wealthy to close the deficit. And so, from time to time, these gilded Regular Joes are forced to regretfully admit that sometimes the people are like dotty old relatives who “just don’t get it” or that they just want a “free lunch”-- after which they promptly forget those findings and go back to pretending that the American people see things exactly the way they do. 

Even worse than that is the common assertion by these millionaire pundits that “we all” must sacrifice for the greater good and allow Social Security to be slashed. This is usually spoken with such a tone of lugubrious forbearance that one imagines they would like us to believe that while they might be forced to become Wal-Mart greeters in their elder years, patriotic duty demands we all pitch in. They seem to have no idea that the median wage in this country in 2009 was $26,261-- sadly, lower than it was in the year 2000. (Even when you average in the billionaires, it was only $39,269.) Clearly, the average political TV host takes home many times that wage, so this idea that “we” are all “sharing” in the proposed sacrifices is a bit much, particularly in light of the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts, hailed in the media as the greatest piece of legislation since the founding of the republic. 

Now, it’s true that these powerful media figures would get a smaller Social Security check and have to kick in more for their Medicare just like the rest of us if these programs are cut. But it’s highly unlikely they will suffer the same financial pinch as the person scraping together a retirement income based on a paltry Social Security benefit and whatever he’s managed to salvage from his wrecked 401(k) and lost housing equity. 

It’s very easy to prescribe “shared sacrifice” when you will not personally sacrifice anything at all.