My first post here at Dirty Hippies was about the terrible [anti-]journalism at the National Journal. So it’s only fair that my second should revolve around a truly excellent piece of journalism there, Bait and Switch? Walker’s budget plans don’t fix what he says is the crisis. By Tim Fernholz.
Tim’s starting point of analysis is similar to mine in my story “Democracy Comes to Wisconsin” for the current issue of Random Lengths News: There’s a very simple, non-controversial, but time-sensitive fix for the short-term $137 million deficit Walker identifies, and his controversial actions have nothing to do with that. In my story, I go into some detail about how this was clearly laid out in Walker’s Feb 11 press release, for anyone who read it critically, particularly this line: ““The budget repair will also restructure the state debt, lowering the state’s interest rate, saving the state $165 million.” My story goes into more detail about screwing the workers, and Walker’s move as an example of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine in action, and that’s perfectly appropriate, given the frontal assault on workers’ rights and the fact that we serve a strong working-class constituency (our biggest drop-off point is inside the ILWU union hall, the only non-labor publication distributed there).
But Fernholz takes a more comprehensive look at other things going on in Walker’s budget as well, and Mike Konczal at Rortybomb has followed up with a piece, “Walker’s Budget Plan is a Three-Part Roadmap for Conservative State Governance” that includes this handy-dandy graphic showing just what’s up:
Here’s Konczal:
There’s a three-prong approach in Governor Walker’s plan that highlights a blueprint for conservative governorship after the 2010 election. The first is breaking public sector unions and public sector workers generally. The second is streamlining benefits away from legislative authority, especially for health care and in fighting the Health Care Reform Act. The third is the selling of public assets to private interests under firesale and crony capitalist situations.
Spelling things out a bit more explicitly, this is from Fernholz’s original story:
The bill includes a provision that would allow the state to sell or contract out the operation of heating, cooling, and power plants without a bidding process and without consulting the state’s independent utility regulator. Democratic legislators worried aloud that the process would attract abuse, and Jon Peacock, director of the Wisconsin Budget Project, called the no-bid approach a “red flag.”
The bill also employs “emergency” powers that would allow the governor’s appointed health secretary to redefine the foundations of the state’s Medicaid program, Badgercare, ranging from eligibility to premiums, with only passive legislative review. The attorney in the legislature’s nonpartisan reference bureau who prepared the bill warned that a court could invalidate the statute for violating separation of powers doctrine.
The legislation, the lawyer wrote in a “drafter’s note” about the bill, would allow the state Department of Health Services to “change any Medical Assistance law, for any reason, at any time, and potentially without notice or public hearing… in addition to eliminating notice and publication requirements, [the changes] would leave the emergency rules in effect without any requirement to make permanent rules and without any time limit.”
“Our basic point is, why do that in a bill that’s being rushed through the legislature in a week’s time that could really stand a more deliberative review?” Peacock says. “We need to find ways to reduce the cost of Medicaid, [but] we expect legislators to make those decisions and be accountable to their constituents for those decisions.”
This is, in short, a massive attempt to restructure the state’s power-relations permanently and fundamentally away from a republican form of government, in which all sectors of the society have a say in how society is governed and back toward a form of feudalism, in which the property relations of the most powerful actors dominate virtually every aspect of public–and even private–life. This neo-fuedal model was first popularly treated by the cyber-punk writers of the early 1980s, just as Ronald Reagan was laying the initial foundations, and what we see in Walker’s “budget repair” bill is the clearest outline seen so far of just how this transformation is intended to be carried out.
The good thing about this is that it’s all so out-in-the-open. The bad thing is that it’s still so poorly understood. That’s why we need to start pushing beyond simply focusing only on the union-busting aspects of the bill, as morally repugnant as they may be. We need to be focusng on all of the inter-related power-grabs in the bill that take power away from the citizens in general, and central that power in the governor’s hands for the purposes of punishing his enemies, rewarding his friends, and acting in perpetuity as a modern-day feudal lord.
This is, of course, also yet another example of the iron law of conservatism: whatever they accuse liberals of doing is projection of what they themselves are up to. So it is that the baseless accusations that Obama is trying to transform America into an alien form of government antitherical to American values reflects the reality of what conservatives are actually up to. What once was difficult to prove, necessitating a careful bringing together of many different pieces of evidence can now be demonstrated by simply pointing to a single document, and reading it carefully.
Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg is not a dirty hippy. He bathes once a month, whether he needs it or not. An erstwhile programmer, he was a freelance op-ed and book review writer from 1994/96 to 2002, and has been a staff writer & editor at Random Lengths News, an alternative bi-weekly in the Los Angeles harbor area from 2002 to date. His October 2002 story “Iraq Attack-The Aims and Origins of Bush’s Plans” shared the Project Censored #1 Censored Story award for 2004.
11 Responses to Walker’s Wisconsin Blueprint for Neo-Feudalism
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Ah, found you, thanks to the old OpenLeft crew at Site to be Named Later.
Life is good.
Indeed!
And I’m not even sure I’ve found myself yet!
Hi Paul.
You’ve defined “teachable moment” with this bit:The good thing about this is that it’s all so out-in-the-open. The bad thing is that it’s still so poorly understood.
Yes. What we need is politicize this, not in the sense of distorting for partisan gain, but rather making connections between issues and people. That depends on not merely opposing what the are doing, but on offering an positive alternative. Sadly, it is a job elite Democrats are ill suited to play.
As Robert Reich said (my emphasis):
Agreed
The Democratic Party elite are possibly the last people on earth to look to for leadership here. Fortunately, it looks like we might finally have a strong enough movement from below to start producing a new wave of leadership for the future.
It won’t happen overnight. But the longer the Democratic Party leadership stays AWOL, the more certain that new leadership will emerge.
Bravo!
You know, we really need to coin a name for this:
This is, of course, also yet another example of the iron law of conservatism: whatever they accuse liberals of doing is projection of what they themselves are up to
Hypocrite’s Razor perhaps?
The Solipsism Principle?
The Cynical Criminal’s Conjecture?
Your point about Walker’s plans for Wisconsin’s budget -
I Think You’re 100% Right, Michele
None of these guys is the least bit warm or cuddly. They just know a sure loser when they see it, and have so many other things on their to-do list that it doesn’t bother them a bit to move on to the next items.
Whassup
So you got a new blog – and I like the ‘title’ even there are probably no ‘dirty’ Hippies anymore -(as you mentioned – in this century they are all ‘washed’ and probably smell like aftershave) – But why are you hanging out here all by yourself? -(I’m talking about ‘writingwise’?) – Let’s say you put a second ‘line’ up on your blog for real’unwashed’ writers – where they can try out some stuff – and create traffic for you – and interest – and do all these things the ‘good people’ of Wisconsin did – by showing up in ‘numbers’.
You know that’s the big ‘secret’ nowadays -(or it always ways) – You GOT to show up ‘in numbers’! Not this lonely ‘individualistic’ stuff anymore – That get’s you nowhere -(and isn’t ‘UNISON’ the major lesson from Wisconsin anyway?) – I know it’s hard – this ‘we do it together stuff’. At the ‘sitetobenamedlater’ we even didn’t manage to come up with a name yet – while you just sat down and decided: ‘I call my blog’: The dirty Hippie!
And here it is!
But I just don’t get what ‘really’ is going on in the homeland. I mean there is the so called left ‘wrecking’ it’s brain how to beat back idiotic conservativism -(or ‘what’s after Wisconsin’) – and one of the most obvious resolutions is avoided in the strangest way: F… UNITE! TALK TO EACH OTHER! Why do you – and hundred of other ‘progressive’ bloggers have to have their own f… individualistic blog? Why can’t they be ONE -(it probably would turn into the most powerful progressive blog on the Web) – and I mean – if it is about ‘the money’ – that problem has to be able to be solved -(The good Glenn found an arrangement with the useless Salon – Right?) –
AND isn’t it true that there are thousands of unemployed writers and journalists out there – What’s about doing something ‘solidaric’ for THEM? -(and thus for yourself) – - Give them a ‘stage’ on your -(our?) blog. And I hate to repeat myself – but a blog with a few hundred writers would even give the Huffpost ‘a run for the 300 Mill. – and you – me and ALL THE OTHERS could own it TOGETHER – (let’s see… 300Mill divided by a thousand that’s…?) – So are you the ‘the one’ who will do that ‘unification- thing’? – Or do I have to leave – and come back again in 30 years after the lesson from Wisconsin finally has ‘sunk’ in?
Paul, been waiting to see where in bloglandia you would land. Thanks for the always insightful writing.
Just want to add that I attended “the People’s Legislature”organized by fightingbob.com here in Madison on Saturday where the upcoming state supreme court race in April was a major topic.
JoAnne Kloppenburg may have a real chance at unseating the conservative Walker supporter David Prosser, flipping the bench to a 4-3 “progressive” majority. Hope this gets national attention because there will no doubt be a ton of outside right-wing cash poured into that race.