Revolution Watch---Wisconsin

I live in Wisconsin and I love the place. I write about it in a way that, I believe, demonstrates that. In truth, I also like it for what is going on right now. We are pissed because there is a broad move across the nation to take advantage of the middle class. We as a people (all Americans except the very rich) are being hit over the head by the fact that the standard of living is dropping very quickly---and it is visible.

All of us have seen our incomes hit in one way or another, we have seen friends loose jobs, we have heard of others whose benefits have been downgraded, library have had their hours cut, schools have removed programs and teachers (never football) and the list goes on. All of this is a drop in our standard of living and all of it is being caused, believe it or not, by resource depletion. We are living beyond our means and the bills are coming due---or maybe we will pass them on to our children.

Many people have seen this coming for years but when it shows up, one never knows how it will represent itself, how it will play out. Well, this is one of the plays we are now seeing in Wisconsin and it is not going real well.

The reason is not so simple but I believe it goes like this. There is a process called the Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) that was first proposed by Milton Friedman from the Chicago School of Economics. The jest of it is to wait for, or cause, an upheaval in a country, be it economic or political, and then move in and take away freedoms and insert corporations to run everything at a profit. It can be violent and always aggressive (Economic Hit Men) but the idea is to privatize everything and mostly get rid of the governments. It has been done many times throughout the world, Iraq being the most recent (think privatized army). The idea is based on the concept that free enterprise is better at doing everything---ultimate capitalism.,

It doesn't take much to realize the number of deaths this has caused, but human life is just collateral damage in the eyes of capitalism (Remember Atlas Shrugged). One does not have to look too far to see there is an effort here to do just that (Paul Krugman NY Times Sunday 3/6/11)---but this is Wisconsin and all hell is about to break loose---and it should. I will be there.