6.10.12: The Off Week

Call us creatures of habit that we had to write a post today even though this week's Meet The Press did not air due to French Open coverage.  If you're a follower of politics you certainly know that this week was a bad one for the President.  Starting with the weak jobs report then moving on to a big Democratic loss in Wisconsin to the President himself making the verbal gaffe by saying that the private sector is fine to the finale of being out fund raised by the Romney campaign by 17 million dollars.

But what may not be so evident is that this week's happenings are a peak at what's to come to come for the United States down the road,  and for the sake of off-week candor, it's not good for the American people.  Because if you take these incidents and extend them out a bit further, here's what you might see. 

In the case of the gubernatorial election in Wisconsin, Scott Walker retained his seat as governor and more significantly, what people are calling it is a death blow to public unions.  What Wisconsin showed us is that the unions don't have the muscle anymore to stand up to corporate energy.  If you look at the statistics over the past 30 years, you'll see that as union jobs decline so has middle class income.   The goals of the Republican Party's corporate benefactors are to crush unions in the private sector to maximize profits, profits that were used to outspend the Democrats approximately 9 to 1.  And though Governor Walker exempted the police and firemen from the slashing of negotiating rights (virtually rendering the unions ineffectual), but it's just a matter of time to when they will not be exempt.  Eventually, the police and fire unions disappear as well... then what?  Following the corporate tact to a farther conclusion, these organizations will become inefficient as Republican politicians advocate for privatization.  A for profit police force would be devastating to our culture.  Think about it, prisons today have a financial incentive to have more people in prison because they are privately owned with shareholders - the more prisoners, the more profits.  So imagine if the same company owned the local jail and the local police force.

Secondly, corporate money is decidedly behind the Republican party.  The showed their hand in Wisconsin and then it was proven with the windfall of cash that the Romney campaign received and we think it's only going to get worse.  Now that Republicans are beginning to rally around the single candidate, this solely unique candidate that is a representative of the consolidated money hence power structure, the distance in sums will become greater.

And though some say that the money that was injected into the Wisconsin race would have been legal even if the Citizens United Supreme Court case went the other way, Citizens United opened up the flood gates to for corporate entities to operate without having to disclose, hence political agendas with no checks and balances. 

A short yet a bit dire column, we know, but we believe the ultimate success of the United States is in striking the right balance between private control and public control of the country's general welfare.  And what is most disconcerting is that this balance is being irrevocably damaged, permanently tilting to the side of the private where money and not the general welfare, will be the goal.