Move on liberals: the number 99 died in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin recall election of Governor Scott Walker was concocted by liberal Democrats and was to be a liberal’s dream come true.

There wasn’t a charismatic politician on the right, a personal or religious scandal to cloud the issue. Months of debate were conducted about union rights and the management of the state’s financial affairs. Each side had plenty enough money, campaign professionals, and neighborhood volunteers to get their message out, and repeat their message over and over.

Nothing is airtight in politics. Some voters didn’t think a recall election was justified in the first place. However, a strong majority voted to keep Walker as governor and, according to CNN exit polls, a good half of those voting openly supported his legislation to restrain the public payroll and the power of public sector unions.

Walker didn’t just complain about greedy unions. He severely reduced their rights and their financial capacity to advance their interests in the future. Liberals asked voters to side with the unions—to stand as 99 per centers. They declined.

Walker, of course, didn’t settle the issue for all time, for Wisconsin, or for America. However, his re-election does demonstrate that middle-class America is not of one mind on bread-and-butter issues and will not automatically unite with liberals, even when conservatives aren’t messing up their heads with religious and patriotic gimmicks.

Liberal Dean Bakolpoulos in Salon isn’t yet ready to learn anything from what happened:

“If Barack Obama plans to win in November, he needs to unite two factions of the Rust Belt population: The middle-class of public workers and union members and teachers, and the other middle-class, which ranges from self-made entrepreneurs to struggling service industry workers. How does he do it? With an honest message that points to the real villain: An increasingly greedy corporate culture that stops at nothing in its quest to consolidate power and wealth.

“There is, in fact, a 99 percent in this country. But right now, a big chunk of it votes in the interest of the 1 percent.”

Click on: www.salon.com/2012/06/06/whats_the_matter_with_wisconsin/singleton/

Barack Obama has had the good sense to reject this advice. He hasn’t singled out the 1 percent as villains—or their wealth as the salvation of all America’s problems.

To redress the federal government’s structural deficit, he has frozen federal salaries, endorsed in principle the Bowles-Simpson recommendations, and he has offered a “grand bargain” that would accept as much as three times more in federal spending cuts as in new taxes.

Obama and fellow Democrat pragmatists in state governments today didn’t create all the unfunded liabilities of federal and state governments. They needn’t defend past excesses. Liberals in office, like popes, make mistakes and needn’t treat what they have inherited as infallible.

America without strong unions would become an even tougher place to live. However, the middle class will not buy the argument that the ambitions of public unions and their ambitions are always the same.

If pro-union policies by public employers were invariably in the best interests of the middle class and the less so, states like Illinois, for instance, wouldn’t have an unfunded liability of $83-billion in public employee pensions.

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/wisconsin-recall-vote-shows-its-about-math-not-politics/article4237376/

Keynes wasn’t a Keynesian every time he saw a tough problem. He would have collected necessary taxes to pay for all operating expenses, including salaries and benefits—and accounted for how future liabilities would be met.

When the interests of the middle class and positive government are aligned, they will vote for “tax and spend” liberals. When liberals believe in what they’re doing in government, they should ask for the money.

Occupy Wall Street Movement is planning a General Strike

While the clowns and amateurs are falling away and millions of American grown-ups are returning to the world’s oldest two-party system to defeat or re-elect centrist Barack Obama, 12,000 Wall Street Occupiers are planning to go nuclear—to hold a general strike, to get in Time Magazine again, in the sunny month of May.

Natasha Lennard reprints in Salon their “painstakingly drafted” call for national paralysis:

“May Day 2012: Occupy Wall Street stands in solidarity with the calls for a day without the 99 percent, a general strike and more!! On May Day, wherever you are, we are calling for: No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping, No Banking. Take the Streets!”

Click on: www.salon.com/2012/02/29/can_occupy_pull_off_a_general_strike/

A general strike is a damning proposition and not something any incumbent president can abide. Lennard, of course, sees its limitations.

“There is, however, a shared desire underpinning this ambitious call to action – even among those who resist the language of general strike – to disrupt business as usual and for May Day 2012 to escalate a fiercer wave of dissent against our current socio-politico-economic context.

“Among the slogans resonating around the May Day calls is the pithy reminder that 'strike is a verb, not a noun.' The call to general strike, then, is best understood at this point as a brash and ambitious call to action. Writing in the early 20th century, French theorist Georges Sorel argued that a real general strike could only function as a myth and that the myth was all important – the idea of something unattainable, mysterious and indescribable that can drive and inspire revolution. By Sorel’s lights, there can be no successful general strike on May 1, there has never been a successful general strike and never could be one – and that is why it’s all important to call for general strike to invigorate action.”

So, finally—on May 1st—America will also experience a fierce wave of futile dissent.

How French.

Failing at being French, however, is not always an American vice. George Sorel’s fascination with violence and attraction to the radicalizing impact of futile gestures served European fascism, not the 99-percenters.

The American rallies that made positive history were made up of Americans who’d already earned national attention by personal effort and personal courage registering voters, riding buses, and various other acts of persuasive democratic law-making.

In free societies, rallies simply dramatize social change and general strikes often end up making democracies less free.