Guest Post

Shock Therapy

Paul Krugman: "... if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.... The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players ... who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence."

Kate Madison of Depoe Bay, Oregon, comments:

Scott Walker, the Tea Party governor of Wisconsin, is doing, as Naomi Klein, explains: "a classic example of The Shock Doctrine," her excellent book about how politicians create a crisis (or take advantage of one--i.e, 9/11)," then use that crisis as an excuse to push through horribly unpopular economic policies." [CW: You can hear Klein's comments in the video in The Commentariat for February 20.]

Let's face it, people! Democracy in America is in hospice, and not doing well at all. Ronald Reagan, our first oncologist, treated our economy with Milton Friedman's "free market" chemotherapy, and the rich got richer, but the cancer worsened. Our prognosis has gone downhill from there. Each succeeding President has promised a new, less toxic, form of chemo to address our festering economic cancer, but each has cooked up another "free market" concoction -- hidden in giveaways to corporations -- with George W. Bush's almost lethal cocktail being the worst. The rich just kept getting richer, and the economy sicker.

Then, in 2008, we got Barack Obama, the man of HOPE. He promised an entirely new form of chemotherapy to address the dying economy and bring our Democracy back to the land of the living. Sad to say, President Obama came down with a bad case of "corporate flu," a virus passed to him through Wall Street dollars. This blinded him to the reality of what needed to be done. So he too decided to use "free market" chemo and called in Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner to administer the "new and better potion," assuring us this was different. Some of us pointed out that there were Nobel laureate economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, who had a different idea of a cure for our cancerous, fast failing economy, and an entirely different idea about chemotherapy. Obama said "no thanks," but graciously offered to do lunch sometime. Then he extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent.

The rest is history. EXCEPT -- the people of Wisconsin understand what the chemo (now proposed by a Tea Party governor, which involves neutralizing their unions) would actually do to them. Wisconsin may be economically ill, but its citizens are not stupid, and they have their eyes wide open. They know at the beginning of 2010 Wisconsin had a budget surplus which the governor gave away in tax breaks (to corporations that had supported him), creating a deficit. So ... the people are writing their own story to resist the false panic that the psychopathic governor is telling them is "the only alternative." They have rejected Walker's chemo, and are strengthening their collective immune system through mass demonstrations,  speaking up and refusing to turn their rights over to a quack. Free market chemotherapy is in reality a toxic, tired tea. And the people in Wisconsin are not going to drink it! Give it to the Tea Party zombies that Americans for Prosperity have bussed into Madison from out-of-state to try to stir up the protesters and confuse the rest of us. Maybe it will put them back to sleep.

Cross-posted on Sardonicky.