In today's world, we've lost the ability to be meaningfully critical about our politicians. I don’t mean that we've lost our ability to CRITICIZE them – far from it; We make a celebration out of criticizing political officials and our government. What I mean is that we have lost the ability to look at the actions of a politician and to compare those results to what we voted for and what we were promised. We have a hard time holding the specific person we put into office accountable for their decisions and policies. The tendency, today, is to line up on party or candidate lines and to do everything and anything we can do defend or attack a specific politician no matter what they do.
Critically evaluating patterns in politics is how one achieves clarity. As officials make choices, you look at the information you have like jigsaw puzzle pieces handed to you day by day. You then look at the explanations provided by those political leaders as an assertion of the puzzle will look like when completed. If pieces don't fit, then you start to vary your idea of what the puzzle is really about to include those shapes and colors. Eventually, if you are diligent about accuracy and completeness, the image portrayed by the puzzle transforms and shifts until you stat to see the final image. If your politicians are honest, then the picture matches their description. If they're not, the picture you begin to see starts to resemble something very different.
My contention over the last month or so has been that there has been a growing disconnect between what the Republican party says they are doing and what the policy and priority choices they advocate have been starting to show. This sense of wrongness comes from the process discussed above. It comes from trying to understand first what the Republicans said they wanted to do, then looking at Republican behavior in pursuit of those goals. Whenever I try to take Republicans at their word for what they say they are trying to achieve – namely handling a budget emergency and unsustainable state financial situation, a great many pieces of the puzzle no longer fit. In order to make those pieces fit again, the emerging picture doesn't look at all like what we are told it is supposed to look like.
The core premise is that Wisconsin is broke. The State is in a financial emergency that requires drastic action to remedy, action that will hit every aspect of our lives. In order to balance the budget, we must act now.
Here are some of the strange puzzle pieces that don't quite fit that model and fit less and less every day.
140M in tax cuts in the first month. Even Republicans know that tax cuts are incentives. They are a long range attempt to lure business. But there is no direct or immediate fiscal return on tax cuts, and, in fact, it hurts short term income long before jobs provided would expand the tax base so even conservative leadership generally won't cut taxes during a time of fiscal emergency. Governor Walker gave tax cuts before he released his budget emergency bill.
Collective bargaining has everything to do with the immediate budget emergency until collective bargaining has nothing to do with the budget at all. Explain that. Every fiscal explanation used to cover this has been dropped by the Walker administration, particularly after they passed it as a non-fiscal measure at the end of the battle with the departed Democrats. The only one remaining is as a 'tool' for local districts to manage deep budget cuts. If it is a tool related to the budget, why isn't it in the state budget bill instead of this emergency measure?
Why didn't Walker take the union offer for financial concessions? Walker's legislative strength is unprecedented. He could have walked into those offered negotiations from a position of near dictatorial strength and held them to this offer and even legislated against work-arounds.This would have ended the protests, kept the removal of unions on the table for discussion in the actual budget bill, and dealt with the budget emergency in one fell swoop months ago. No explanation for why this deal wasn't taken makes sense in light of a budget emergency. The best I've heard is that the offer was a sham, but we'll never know because Walker never even entertained it. This fact alone flies int he face of the idea there was a BUDGET emergency that required a fast-pass bill.
Why aren't temporary tax increases on the table? Is this an emergency or not? Republicans are against tax increases as a long term POLICY response to government expansion and economic growth, but they have always been willing to use taxes in the short term when necessary. Reagan increased income taxes 9% his first two years. A .5% sales tax with a two year sunset clause requiring a 2/3rds majority to overturn would have been a Republican friendly short term response 'tool' to help Walker handle the emergency without bone deep cuts. This wouldn't be a policy of tax increase, it would be a temporary tool that would help extend the amount of time Walker would have to roll back spending so as not to disastrously impact existing state functions. Why wasn't it even talked about?
What happened to the bonding requirement that would have saved Wisconsin 163 million dollars? It was the critical motive – the key refinancing – that was urgently on the table and the core reason why Walker said the budget repair bill was necessary at all. What happened to it? Walker stopped talking about it entirely. If the Wisconsin 14 had actually caused the State to lose that money, one would think he would have been trumpeting that all over the press – but no. It was a dire threat motivating the need for drastic action until … it wasn't. It was simply dropped.
Why did Wisconsin Republicans declare procedural war on the state to get collective bargaining removed from state employees; A rushed midnight bill. A 4 minute vote in the Assembly at 1 in the morning. A surprise Senate sub-committee meeting without notice breaking the law to bifurcate the bill and pass the collective bargaining elements. Exploiting a procedural loop-hole to publish the bill despite a restraining order in place to block it. These are not the actions of civil politics. These are the actions of political war where everything important is at stake. These kinds of action create outrage among constituents and the minority party.
All of these questions, and numerous others, are pieces that don't fit with the narrative.There are no good answers for them that logically address all three truths presented: 1) Wisconsin is broke. 2) We are in an immediate budget emergency. 3) Drastic financial action is required. Many of the drastic actions being suggested do not help an immediate budget emergency. Some of the immediate actions have nothing to do with Wisconsin being broke. What we're seeing here is a puzzle that we are being assured is about money when clearly it is not.
My contention through all this remains a practical, simple one. It asks readers to place the puzzle pieces we have – these and many more – on the table and to look carefully at the real picture being suggested. This is not about a budget emergency. This is not about Wisconsin being broke or fiscal responsibility. Attempts to fit the pieces of this puzzle into that image require mental gymnastics or open denial of huge swaths of the Walker administration behavior that suggest that he and his leadership are either blindingly incompetent or stupid.
This is about ideology. Scott Walker and the current Republicans are very much aware that they walked into power in a position of unprecedented strength. But the intent from the outset was not to fix Wisconsin's budget and reign in government. It was bigger than that. It was to reshape the landscape of the State's government entirely. It was to realize the nearly libertarian ideological dream of restoring a purely capitalist society. This new reality would place business at the helm of everything in Wisconsin from education to security to power to prisons. The eventual goal would be to remove any social construction by the government, and leave the State almost entirely in the hands of private enterprise. Labor unions, public education, social services, welfare, and state run medical care are inconsistent with that vision and are being cut as deeply as possible without creating immediate economic chaos as a result. Once in jeopardy from these bone deep cuts, an opening is created for private organizations to step in and do the job better despite the fact that in many cases poor performance by the state run service is being created by the state's own cuts.
If you hold this final image as the picture portrayed by the puzzle we're trying to build, then issues raised by the questions above make perfect sense. The 'budget emergency' is both a cover and self-fulfilling prophesy. It has just enough fiscal legitimacy in light of the economic downturn to keep people focused on the buzz words and not the substance of the administration's actions. THESE Republicans believe that the final product of their social transformation will be better for everyone, but they know the steps from A to B won't be popular, and in certain cases they will be downright alarming.
The bottom line seems to be that Walker is seeking to create a performance emergency for government – or at least the perception of one - that private enterprise can step in and 'save' it from. The abstract war of whether to privatize can be waged between economists all day long, but if the public sector is reduced to a barely functioning wreck by cuts, there will be little question that it could be done better by just about anyone with money. It coverts the abstract battleground two equally supported methods of managing government to one concrete solution made practical by the financial assassination of the other.
Take this above statement no matter what you believe and go look at the facts. What you'll find is that the puzzle comes together much more smoothly than this strange assertion that we're in a budget emergency that requires action. Once you're there, ask yourself why and when you volunteered to become the test case for a purely privatized Wisconsin at the expense of some of the nation's most effective and successful public services.
Most of the conservatives I know who voted for Walker voted for nothing of the kind.
Critically evaluating patterns in politics is how one achieves clarity. As officials make choices, you look at the information you have like jigsaw puzzle pieces handed to you day by day. You then look at the explanations provided by those political leaders as an assertion of the puzzle will look like when completed. If pieces don't fit, then you start to vary your idea of what the puzzle is really about to include those shapes and colors. Eventually, if you are diligent about accuracy and completeness, the image portrayed by the puzzle transforms and shifts until you stat to see the final image. If your politicians are honest, then the picture matches their description. If they're not, the picture you begin to see starts to resemble something very different.
My contention over the last month or so has been that there has been a growing disconnect between what the Republican party says they are doing and what the policy and priority choices they advocate have been starting to show. This sense of wrongness comes from the process discussed above. It comes from trying to understand first what the Republicans said they wanted to do, then looking at Republican behavior in pursuit of those goals. Whenever I try to take Republicans at their word for what they say they are trying to achieve – namely handling a budget emergency and unsustainable state financial situation, a great many pieces of the puzzle no longer fit. In order to make those pieces fit again, the emerging picture doesn't look at all like what we are told it is supposed to look like.
The core premise is that Wisconsin is broke. The State is in a financial emergency that requires drastic action to remedy, action that will hit every aspect of our lives. In order to balance the budget, we must act now.
Here are some of the strange puzzle pieces that don't quite fit that model and fit less and less every day.
140M in tax cuts in the first month. Even Republicans know that tax cuts are incentives. They are a long range attempt to lure business. But there is no direct or immediate fiscal return on tax cuts, and, in fact, it hurts short term income long before jobs provided would expand the tax base so even conservative leadership generally won't cut taxes during a time of fiscal emergency. Governor Walker gave tax cuts before he released his budget emergency bill.
Collective bargaining has everything to do with the immediate budget emergency until collective bargaining has nothing to do with the budget at all. Explain that. Every fiscal explanation used to cover this has been dropped by the Walker administration, particularly after they passed it as a non-fiscal measure at the end of the battle with the departed Democrats. The only one remaining is as a 'tool' for local districts to manage deep budget cuts. If it is a tool related to the budget, why isn't it in the state budget bill instead of this emergency measure?
Why didn't Walker take the union offer for financial concessions? Walker's legislative strength is unprecedented. He could have walked into those offered negotiations from a position of near dictatorial strength and held them to this offer and even legislated against work-arounds.This would have ended the protests, kept the removal of unions on the table for discussion in the actual budget bill, and dealt with the budget emergency in one fell swoop months ago. No explanation for why this deal wasn't taken makes sense in light of a budget emergency. The best I've heard is that the offer was a sham, but we'll never know because Walker never even entertained it. This fact alone flies int he face of the idea there was a BUDGET emergency that required a fast-pass bill.
Why aren't temporary tax increases on the table? Is this an emergency or not? Republicans are against tax increases as a long term POLICY response to government expansion and economic growth, but they have always been willing to use taxes in the short term when necessary. Reagan increased income taxes 9% his first two years. A .5% sales tax with a two year sunset clause requiring a 2/3rds majority to overturn would have been a Republican friendly short term response 'tool' to help Walker handle the emergency without bone deep cuts. This wouldn't be a policy of tax increase, it would be a temporary tool that would help extend the amount of time Walker would have to roll back spending so as not to disastrously impact existing state functions. Why wasn't it even talked about?
What happened to the bonding requirement that would have saved Wisconsin 163 million dollars? It was the critical motive – the key refinancing – that was urgently on the table and the core reason why Walker said the budget repair bill was necessary at all. What happened to it? Walker stopped talking about it entirely. If the Wisconsin 14 had actually caused the State to lose that money, one would think he would have been trumpeting that all over the press – but no. It was a dire threat motivating the need for drastic action until … it wasn't. It was simply dropped.
Why did Wisconsin Republicans declare procedural war on the state to get collective bargaining removed from state employees; A rushed midnight bill. A 4 minute vote in the Assembly at 1 in the morning. A surprise Senate sub-committee meeting without notice breaking the law to bifurcate the bill and pass the collective bargaining elements. Exploiting a procedural loop-hole to publish the bill despite a restraining order in place to block it. These are not the actions of civil politics. These are the actions of political war where everything important is at stake. These kinds of action create outrage among constituents and the minority party.
All of these questions, and numerous others, are pieces that don't fit with the narrative.There are no good answers for them that logically address all three truths presented: 1) Wisconsin is broke. 2) We are in an immediate budget emergency. 3) Drastic financial action is required. Many of the drastic actions being suggested do not help an immediate budget emergency. Some of the immediate actions have nothing to do with Wisconsin being broke. What we're seeing here is a puzzle that we are being assured is about money when clearly it is not.
My contention through all this remains a practical, simple one. It asks readers to place the puzzle pieces we have – these and many more – on the table and to look carefully at the real picture being suggested. This is not about a budget emergency. This is not about Wisconsin being broke or fiscal responsibility. Attempts to fit the pieces of this puzzle into that image require mental gymnastics or open denial of huge swaths of the Walker administration behavior that suggest that he and his leadership are either blindingly incompetent or stupid.
This is about ideology. Scott Walker and the current Republicans are very much aware that they walked into power in a position of unprecedented strength. But the intent from the outset was not to fix Wisconsin's budget and reign in government. It was bigger than that. It was to reshape the landscape of the State's government entirely. It was to realize the nearly libertarian ideological dream of restoring a purely capitalist society. This new reality would place business at the helm of everything in Wisconsin from education to security to power to prisons. The eventual goal would be to remove any social construction by the government, and leave the State almost entirely in the hands of private enterprise. Labor unions, public education, social services, welfare, and state run medical care are inconsistent with that vision and are being cut as deeply as possible without creating immediate economic chaos as a result. Once in jeopardy from these bone deep cuts, an opening is created for private organizations to step in and do the job better despite the fact that in many cases poor performance by the state run service is being created by the state's own cuts.
If you hold this final image as the picture portrayed by the puzzle we're trying to build, then issues raised by the questions above make perfect sense. The 'budget emergency' is both a cover and self-fulfilling prophesy. It has just enough fiscal legitimacy in light of the economic downturn to keep people focused on the buzz words and not the substance of the administration's actions. THESE Republicans believe that the final product of their social transformation will be better for everyone, but they know the steps from A to B won't be popular, and in certain cases they will be downright alarming.
The bottom line seems to be that Walker is seeking to create a performance emergency for government – or at least the perception of one - that private enterprise can step in and 'save' it from. The abstract war of whether to privatize can be waged between economists all day long, but if the public sector is reduced to a barely functioning wreck by cuts, there will be little question that it could be done better by just about anyone with money. It coverts the abstract battleground two equally supported methods of managing government to one concrete solution made practical by the financial assassination of the other.
Take this above statement no matter what you believe and go look at the facts. What you'll find is that the puzzle comes together much more smoothly than this strange assertion that we're in a budget emergency that requires action. Once you're there, ask yourself why and when you volunteered to become the test case for a purely privatized Wisconsin at the expense of some of the nation's most effective and successful public services.
Most of the conservatives I know who voted for Walker voted for nothing of the kind.
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