03/21/2011:
ÜBERSTAFFSBAHNFÜHRER SCOTTIE'S RACE TO THE BOTTOM: Despite the dissings of a few mewling corporate sycophants on Mitch Berg's blog, we don't need to defend our conservative credentials hereabouts. We have always stepped up to the plate when it came time to out radical communist fronts like Medea Benjamin's "Code Pink," which hosted a group of "soccer moms" in opposition to the Iraq war.
George W. Bush and the "Neocons" started an exciting movement in American history when they started to divorce conservatism from the pockets of Daddy Warbucks capitalists and steer it in a more socially-liberal, globally-responsible direction. But since President Bush's departure, the tea-party nutburgers and other shills for big business (which, don't you EVER forget, almost destroyed the American economy in late 2007) have gleefully decided to make newly-minted Wisconsin governor Scott Walker their poster boy.
Hopefully I am not the only conservative who has made a little note to self: If it looks like a fascist, talks like a fascist, and walks like a fascist... it must BE a fascist. Just like liberals are all too ready to put their stamp of approval on communist symps like Medea Benjamin and fronts for terror like CAIR, conservatives have apparently reverted to their unfortunate habit from bygone days of cozying up to fascists.
Obviously, Scott Walker (our only sitting governor who failed to attain a college degree) is too stupid to have read Machiavelli on his own. But he has managed to absorb the important points of Machiavellinism, probably through a cursory study of other dictators who were equally obsessed with seizing absolute power:
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Terminate the free flow of information. Walker was caught with his pants down late last week when it developed that an addendum to his budget repair bill gave Walker the power to appoint every one of the 36 positions responsible for enforcing Wisconsin's Open Records Law (these were previously standard civil-service positions)—giving our new generalissimo a total stranglehold over the information passing between the government and the governed. That is one of the classic moves of fascist dictators everywhere, and I was beginning to think Walker had overlooked it in his blind rush to begin internment of his political enemies.
The first lie Scott Walker told the people of Wisconsin is that government employees had not "shared in their suffering" (which is the point where a good leader might have asked, "What can we do to end the suffering?"). Under eight years of USBführer Scottie's predecessor, Jim "Gov. Asshat" Doyle, state employees felt enormous pain. I had not a single cent in salary increases, including cost-of-living increases, over a five-year period while my workload doubled due to layoffs—an austerity meaure unequaled by the most rapacious plutocrat, and one that seriously decimated my already modest standard of living. State workers who stuck around after I jumped ship in 2006 were hit with the double whammy of mandatory furlough days (8 per year) and a huge jump in healthcare premiums. It was already hard to see why anyone in his or her right mind would choose a future career in Wisconsin civil service.
Jim Doyle, the textbook definition of a bored and unimaginative bureaucrat, understood the necessity of finding a scapegoat (again, state employees) upon which to focus public enmity while he went about the business he really loved—being wined, dined, and feted from coast to coast as an American governor. But since he had absolutely no interest in a hostile takeover of the state, Machiavelli’s other edicts were never applied.
I think most Wisconsinites, even those who voted for Walker, can be forgiven for not seeing the Nazi in sheep’s clothing (one of my few hints was an early, and quite disturbing, statement Walker made about the firing of the air-traffic controllers by Ronald Reagan being the greatest moment in American history). And I like to believe that many who voted for him never thought they were voting for a man who would not only try to seize absolute power, but would also openly embrace a race-to-the-bottom with private sector employers while he gutted whatever minimal appeal state, county, and municipal jobs may have held for qualified workers after eight years of Doyle.
Many are asking, quite rightly, why anyone in their right mind would want to relocate their company to Wisconsin, no matter how shrilly the governor shrieks that we are "Open For Business!" No other states in the Union can claim to be ruled by a fascist dictator, after all. I’m sure most Americans share my sentiment that living under a fascist dictator is, well, a bad thing.
And even now, early assessments are coming in that Generalissimo Walker has already cost Wisconsin thousands and thousands of jobs.
But, hey. It’s all the fault of those damn Jews—er, um, we meant, um, government employees.
Posted by Alois on
