Sunday, February 27, 2011

Here goes

Welcome to Politigootch. Right off I have to tell you this blog's title is something of a misnomer.  While started up originally to vent my spleen on matters political, I feel I also owe it to my readers to bestow upon you my insights on many different topics as well. So if you stay with me you can also expect to read posts about our social and cultural environment, movie and book reviews and all manner of thoughts on the arts, visual and performing. Just don't expect them to appear with any regularity. I might have something to say about sports once in a while too but I have to confess I'm not so knowledgeable there. The blog's title comes from a nickname my father used to call me when I was a small child and he wanted to scorch my ass. Feel free to leave comments or whatever but I don't know how to do this and I don't know how fair I have to be so I'm not making any promises. 

Oh, and I'm not putting my real name anywhere yet until I see just what kind of snakes and spiders come out of this hole.

First, there's this business in Wisconsin. I've been reading online articles by Paul Krugman at the New York Times (Wisconsin Power Play February 20, 2011) and on the Huffington Post (Wisconsin Protests: Tens Of Thousands Turn Out In Madison Against Anti-Union Proposal) and their comments, and I think these merit my own column and since I'm now a blogger, here it is:

On the Thursday, February 17th, edition of MSNBC's Hardball program Wisconsin Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman, when explicitly asked by Chris Matthews, bluntly and unequivocally stated his opposition to public labor unions having even the right to collective bargaining. The question was asked and answered within the context of establishing the core issues at stake in the state's current budget crisis. The fact that a Republican legislator can advance that opposition in such a matter-of-fact manner with no subsequent reaction anywhere in the media afterward is an indicator of just how far the country has veered toward rule by an elite upper class oligarchy.I can remember Reagan era Republicans repeating the "rising tide raises all boats" platitude as an underpinning for their anti-union, deregulatory, tax cutting "trickle down" philosophy. This was a morally bankrupt self-serving lie then and now. Every time workers, unionized or not, have tried to better their condition and share in the soaring corporate profits of the past thirty years, they've been vilified as greedily blocking growth and hampering economic development. Meanwhile the corporate beneficiaries of loosened regulations and tax cuts have systematically dismantled our nation's manufacturing base and shipped it and what had been up until then, our capital overseas.

As if their intention had ever been to "raise all boats."  

I tried posting the bit below on Keith Olbermann's new FOK News site but I didn't make the cut. It's ok, he's still a hero to me.

For over thirty years (since Reagan’s first inauguration speech, actually) corporations have exploited legal and ethical loopholes to transfer thousands of jobs and billions of dollars offshore avoiding taxes and accountability to the American public. (Just think Michael Moore's debut film Roger and Me from 1989 and multiply that by every corporation in America.) The CEOs who run these companies are lionized as savvy businessmen, exemplars of Free Market Capitalism, deftly outsmarting an overreaching government bent on stifling creativity and growth. But according to some of the comments on the articles mentioned above when the local garbageman figures out how to game the system to doubledip on his chickenshit*  $48k a year job he’s declared a harbinger of socialism, an enemy of the state out to cripple the economy and bring down the Republic. 
*that is, compared to, say, Goldman Sach's bottom line

Time was when the real crime in America was getting caught. Now it seems the only criminals are those who simply think too small.

And by the way, those bloated pension funds that Scott Walker and Chris Christie are crusading to relieve taxpayers from pissing away their hard earned money into? They're not paid into by any taxpayers. Except for the Union members themselves.

4 comments:

  1. Dear Gootch,
    Though the "cheese-heads" are "mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it anymore", nationally, the proles have not yet had enough. Starting with the bros. Koch, what we need across this fair land of our'n is a good old fashioned revolution that speaks truth, justice, fairness, and equality to those that would sell our nation "down de ribber" in pursuit of their own greed-headed desires.
    BTW, is this epistle making its way to Ohio?
    All the best in the new enterprise . . . hoping you go where no blogger has gone before!
    G.Russ

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  2. Thanks Gordon. Someone -- maybe Bill Maher? -- has already mentioned that you can tell these people are serious precisely because they're not wearing Cheeseheads. I'm not sure but I think I could be prosecuted for saying some of this in at least certain parts of Ohio. Ironic innit? And can you tell me anywhere that no blogger has yet to go?

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  3. You have a way with words Gootch - and we all need to stir that anger within us, stand up and speak out. Right now we are heading down an incredibly slippery slope.

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  4. Thanks Cathie, I'll keep trying for a while at least.

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