Are We Broke ... or Broken?

What follows is an admittedly rambling and disjointed musing about the state of America today, the situation in the state of Wisconsin, and the state of the American people as we trudge through the syrupy 'emotion vs. logic' atmosphere that has been poured over us in the last few years.

The Boogey Man That Broke Your Piggy Bank 

Not to be antagonistic to what those in power (Republican, Democrat, or Tea Bagger) would like you to believe so that you'll give up your retirement benefits (if you even have any), accept a smaller salary, pay more fees, and basically settle for the life your great-grandparents had, but America is NOT broke.  Not by a long shot!  This country is awash in wealth and cash.  It's just that it's not in your hands anymore.  It has been transferred, in the greatest filching in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.  Think about it.

This should make you absolutely sick: 400 obscenely rich people in this country now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.  If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup then you're simply not being honest about what you know in your heart.  I do realize that denial is more than just a river, but come on ... admit it.

And I can see why.  For us to admit that we have let a small group of people abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we really have surrendered our precious little Democracy to the moneyed elite.  Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have sat by and felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.  In some cases, even actually voting to make it happen!

So Thank You, Wisconsin.
Thank you for seeing through the veiled rhetoric about budgets and deficits, taxes and cuts, etc.  Thank You for not being lemmings by simply lining up to fear the next boogey man this time. 

You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans.  For 3 long and wintery weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. 

No matter how the drama there plays out, no matter who “wins”, you’re sparked something and I firmly believe it’s only the beginning… finally.  Teachers, who play more of a role in the economic development than anybody who wants to take a chance on Wall Street, are just one of the groups being vilified and targeted unfairly.  Nobody goes into teaching to get rich - everybody knows that.  Similarly, nobody goes to take a chance on Wall Street to learn about business ethics.

This time, I believe, the smug moneyed power players have overplayed their hand.   They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the U.S. Treasury.  They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere.  No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world.  They had to have our soul.  They had to strip us of our dignity.

Corporations tried to control the message but the people said "Screw you! We have Facebook, and Twitter, and Bebo!"  They tried to feed you a poison pill - their version of mutually assured destruction - and you said "Hell no!"

They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job.  That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people to Madison or D.C or the Iowa pre-primaries.  But he's stopped trying to get better pay.  All he asks is that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare or Dulles airport.  That's how despicably low we have sunk.  The corporate pirates couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year.  They wanted to take away his sleep, his voice, his dignity.  They wanted to demean and dehumanize him.  After all, he's just another working slob and he should feel damn lucky to even have a job, right??!!   Yup, he’s just another overpaid whiny slob like the rest of “us” … and after all, lest you forget, this is all OUR fault, right?

But fear not, my fellow stooges, “THEY” will be our heroes and stand up to all the other whiners and overpaid union employees and public servants – the ones who actually have it much much better than we do but don’t work nearly as hard as we do.  (sarcasm intended)  Teachers, who spend way more time molding our children than we do.  Putting up with our kids' shenanigans so we can bitch later about how unfair they were to fail little Susie or bar Johnny from the game.  The reason for that must be because they have tenure or union seniority and make way too much money.  If only all of us had it as easy as THEY do!

Oh, ok.  Now I get it … it’s actually THEIR fault, not my fault.  Good, now I can contemptuously point my finger at them.  This is all so confusing; I’m so glad I was able to get it figured out.  It’s … THEIR … fault!  Not your fault … and definitely not my fault.  Turns out it’s much much easier for us to point our fingers at each other in heated debate rather than even thinking about all of us pointing our fingers at the puppet masters who skillfully control the economic movement, dialogue, and rhetoric.

"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you...?"

America isn’t broke!  The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers.  And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on.  Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich and powerful hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact:   There are more of us than there are of them!

It Takes Balls!

The same type of balls one little fruit cart vendor in Tunisia had.  The balls of Stihl (pun intended) that helped Germany resurrect its economy and carried it out of the Great Recession more quickly than most major industrialized countries.  Germany could be compared to the China of Europe in that sense - it alone accounted for 60% of the GDP growth of the euro zone in 2010!  And family-owned powertool manufacturer Stihl manages to make manufacturing profitable even while paying the nation's high wages.

It's good to remember that, in the end, the prairie fire over the rights and benefits of union members and public employees is about people.  Some of them are overpaid and under qualified.  I personally know people like that that AREN'T in any union and don't work for a government agency.  But that's certainly not the majority of people.  Most people are in about the same boat as I am and some are less fortunate.  School bus drivers, home health care workers and cafeteria workers who, even with union 'protection', barely make enough to keep their families afloat.

It's also good to remember your history.  America's most prosperous time - the period from the 1950s to the 1970s - was also when it's trade/union movement and its middle class were at their strongest.  That was not a coincidence.  The rights and wages won by workers in the turmoil of the 1930s created a soncumer class eager to buy every product - from homes to hula hoops - that America could produce.

Will history repeat itself?  We'll have to wait and see.

Madison, do not retreat.  Stay strong.  We are with you.  We will win together.

Because THAT'S what America is all about.

My name is Thad (just Thad) and I can confirm that I may or may not announce my political aspirations (if I have any) soon (or at some point in the future) if I choose to.  Please stand by.  :)