Wisconsin and the Cutting Room Floor

So where were all those public employees at the state capitol in Madison this week on a far more important day--last election day? Probably mouthing some of the tea-party garbage, all of it a front for corporate America to crush everything in its way to total dominance. And then we get people seriously discussing the GOP rush to cut the federal government expenditures in all the areas that don't add up to squat. It should be as embarrassing as when John McCain admitted that cutting earmarks--generally, btw, an admirable goal--adds up to a grand $18 million.

End the war--cut the defense budget, now we're talking real money. We also are threatening the military-industrial complex, that behemoth pinpointed for us by none other than Ike. Just like Lyndon B, George W went for giving us both guns and butter. So in each case, the economy couldn't sustain it in the end--especially when you can't raise taxes on billionaires--something that would pay for all of it. Oh right, someday I might be a billionaire so I better not increase their taxes. Forgot that for a moment.

The media and the commentariat and the pundits play along with this dreck, too. Oh yes, we have to trim people's paltry pensions and their Social Security so the banks can be bailed out and Jamie Dimon of Morgan gets, per today's newspaper, his extra $17 million or billion in rights. I guess I have a hard time feeling that public employees are ripping us off when I see that no hedge fund guys have yet been prosecuted and only Bernie Madoff has been sent to jail for financial shenanigans that were almost a separate iceberg from the real crooks--the ones who have gotten away with all of it.

Screw the public employees benefits provided by contract but the AIG guys have contract rights that cannot be breached--as long as they own Congress? Oh, I see. And we pretend to have Rule of Law in this country.