Monday, January 22, 2024

Walker “Wins”: Neo-liberal Structural Reforms on Tap for Everyone… They have a Mandate Now (archive)

(archived from June 6, 2012)

by Scott Creighton

Give the people what they want. They want you to steal from them and make you pay for the excess and the crimes of the financial elites of the country so by GOD let’s give it to them. Diebold says so. It must be so.

Union busting, privatizations, looting pension plans, unelected technocrats being appointed as mini-Me dictators in various cities and townships, the controlled demolition of that evil social safety net, rolling back any regulation that threatens a precious nickel of profit for the mega-corporations, erasing the Civil Rights Act and Child Labor Laws and the minimum wage act, grand mothers eating out of garbage cans, real hunger games running non-stop on Current TV… it’s all on the table now folks, coming to a “democracy” near you ‘cus that’s what the people want. Right?

Savage, genocidal, austerity measures here at home.

The Great Wisconsin uprising has ended via a Diebold “election” and surprise surprise, the neo-liberal poster-boy, Scott Walker, has “won”. Couldn’t have seen that one coming, could we?

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton calls on an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts for the super wealthy. Guess the people “want” that as well.

 

Scott Walker is the first U.S. governor to survive a recall election. He may actually be the first to have his recall votes counted on an electronic voting machine as well but I have to look into that. There have only been 3 recall elections for governors in our nation’s history as far as I can tell.

Yet Tom Barrett conceded faster than John Kerry did back in 2004 earning him a slap in the face from a supporter.His concession ensures that there will be no vote recount, no matter what discrepancies turn up in the next few days. I wouldn’t expect the neo-liberal national Democratic Party to contest the election results either after seeing what they did during the Alvin Greene farce. The Dems know which side their bread is buttered on especially when it’s the “Right” side. A little trick they learned from the Clintons.

The woman who slapped Barrett after his early concession should have seen it coming a long time ago.

Barrett, who won the Democratic primary and became the party’s candidate in the June 5 vote, had actually made extensive use of Walker’s anti-worker law to impose $19 million in wage and benefit cuts on city employees in Milwaukee. The Democratic candidate largely downplayed the issue of collective bargaining rights and sought to distance himself from the unions, boasting in one debate that he had not been their choice for the nomination. Patrick Martin

Despite long lines at the polling stations and early reports of large turnouts for this election, Barrett only received 1.15 million votes compared to Walker’s 1.33 million.

That’s odd to say the least because back in January of this year, recall supporters released their final tally of signatures on the recall petition and they had over a million signatures, they say close to the number of votes the Scott Walker received in the original election a year and a half ago.

“Democrats said they submitted almost as many signatures as the votes that Walker received – 1,128,900 votes, or 52.3% of the vote in 2010 – and about the same amount as his unsuccessful Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who got 1,004,300 votes, or 46.5%. The 1 million signatures amount to about one-third of the 3.3 million registered voters in the state and one-quarter of the 4.4 million Wisconsin residents eligible to vote.” JS Online

We are supposed to believe that slightly less people actually turned out to vote Walker out of office than signed the petition to force the election in the first place.

But they had a narrative for that bullshit story-line already in place on election night. According to reports, the republicans put out a robo-call telling petition signers that they didn’t need to vote since they signed the petition.

Like anyone would believe that. But that is supposed to answer the question of the discrepancies in the numbers of signatures verses votes: stupid union members.

Also part of the losing narrative is the fact that Barack Obama didn’t go to Wisconsin to stand with Barrett against the neo-liberal austerity measures being forced on the people of Wisconsin, as if that’s a surprise. The last thing he wanted to do was put his popularity on the side of Barrett, God knows it may have made it harder for anyone to believe the numbers of the final vote count. It’s said he did take the 30 seconds to send a Tweet Monday night though. I guess that will be enough for his apologists to rationalize that he is on the side of the middle class and working people of America.

The far-right, the “centrist” left, the neo-cons, the NewDems, the Libertarians, they’re all taking this as a referendum on the will of the people giving the neo-liberals a mandate to crush unions, privatize everything, raid pension funds, cut social services, and basically turn each state of the union into a mini-Greece in the process.

Walker told a raucous crowd at his election night party that his survival was an affirmation of political “courage.”

“Tonight, we tell Wisconsin, we tell our country and we tell people all across the globe that voters really do want leaders who stand up and make the tough decisions,” he said…

“Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington, D.C.,” Romney said in a statement. “Tonight’s results will echo beyond the borders of Wisconsin.” MSNBC

Oh yes, it sure is “courageous” to force the working people of America to pay for the criminal activity of the bankers and their corrupt politicians who helped them set off their weapons of economic mass destruction. Sure it’s “courageous” to side with the massive financial giants and their friends sitting at the heads of both the Democratic and the Republican parties. A little less “courageous” when you figure they also own the vote counting system, but there you have it.

As you can see for yourself all across the “internets” these neo-liberals intend to use this “election” as a launching pad for more of their crippling economic reforms across the country.

One would think that the people in Wisconsin who put all that work into this effort would have realized the very serious flaw in their plan. But of course, electronic election fraud is just a conspiracy theory isn’t it?

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