Tsunami in Wisconsin?

Sorry for the horribly crass use of the devastation and loss of life in Japan (and my wife and I watched the footage of the tsunami in Sendai live on Thursday night and had to stop at a certain point, as we couldn't take the loss of life any longer...), but I thought I'd try to get your attention on the issue of the broader implication of what just occurred in Wisconsin...

How does the common person stand up to the huge multi-national corporations that seem to be the status quo of international business in our world today?  How much money does the average person in the U. S. have to send to the various organizations that might stand up to their corporate bosses and lobby for their own interests?  I think the answer is that the average person cannot possibly stand up to the power of the unlimited corporate dollars that can be spent to influence either an election or to lobby for their interests, particularly in light of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case.  So who can the average person expect to stand up for their rights?

My father, who was born in 1910 and died in 1988, was a carpenter, what's known as a "formwork" carpenter.  That is, he built the wooden frames that concrete is poured in to for construction of large structures, everything from warehouses to freeways.  They built the framework, the concrete gets poured, they rip the framework off and toss it.  He was born in a very small rural town in Oklahoma and became an orphan at 10, after his mother and father died within 6 months of each other.  He and his older sister and younger brother were tossed from extended family member's households to households, 'til they finally landed with their Uncle Jim in Washington State.  It was a very tough life, but he worked hard, he learned his trade, and with the help of his union, he was able to rise into the middle class of America.  There were years where we barely clung to the lowest rung of the "middle class", but it would have been so much worse for us if he didn't have a union that established a fair wage for his labor, and safer working conditions.  When there was an accident on a job site, and he fell 30 feet, he was fortunate enough to have insurance and worker's comp, thanks to union efforts.  If it hadn't been for his hard work, and the union that stood up for him in collective bargaining with contractors and CalTrans, I am quite confident that our lives would have been substantially worse.

When I was born, one in four workers was in a union.  Now, it's down to one in eight, and just recently, public sector employees became the majority of union members.  And while it might be disputable that there is a connection between the two, economic inequity has seen one of the most dramatic rises in the modern era.  In 1980, the top 10 percent of American families earned a third of the nation's income.  Now, it's almost 50%.  The top one percent is getting 20%, twice what they did in 1980, and the top one-thousandth of Americans have seen even more dramatic increases in income.  In a little over that period of time, union membership went from 15 million to a little over 13 million, even though the workforce has almost doubled.  It was union membership, in many ways, that allowed the prosperity of the post-WWII years to be shared by the burgeoning middle class.

And now?  I hear so many people looking angrily at the public sector unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere with what strikes me as being jealousy.  What makes them think they're so special?  Why do they deserve decent pension programs or fair wages?  We've fallen so far in this country that these things are no longer a norm:  they are the exception to the rule.  Sure, we're in a very tough place economically, and looking at public sector wages and benefits to try to find some savings doesn't seem unreasonable at all.  And I would further acknowledge that unions are by no means blameless for the situation we find ourselves in now.

So what's the answer?  Well, Gov. Scott Walker has certainly made it clear that the new law he signed has NOTHING to do with trimming the budget, as the union already agreed to those cuts long before he went after their collective bargaining rights.  And I DO consider it a "right".  What is it that he has in mind?  I think it's quite clear:  to tear down the unions and destroy their power base.

In 2008, of the top 5 non-political party contributors to political campaigns, 2 of them were unions.  In 2010, after the Citizens United ruling, only 1 union remained in the top 5, and it was number 5.  Isn't it clear what's being done here?  There is an attempt here, a naked attempt, to permanently change the nature of our more-or-less-two-party-system by ripping the heart and guts out of the unions, who are the single largest contributor to Democratic Party causes.  And who are the top 4 of the top 5 contributors?  Pro-Republican business groups and PACs.  Without the unions, the Democratic Party will be outspent by the billions by corporate interests.  Clearly.

The unions are maxed out at this point:  they simply don't have the resources to put more money into political causes.  And the corporate interests on the Republican side?  With record profits, they have plenty of money.

Does this seem like a good idea?  Selling the American political dream to the highest bidder?  Permanently unbalancing the two-party system?  Doesn't seem like a good idea, and it certainly doesn't seem very "American" to me....