If you want to get national attention as a governor these days, don’t try to be innovative about solving the problems you were elected to deal with – in education, transportation and health care. No, if you want ink and television time, just cut and cut and cut some more.

Almost no one in the national media is noticing governors who say the reasonable thing: that state budget deficits, caused largely by drops in revenue in the economic downturn, can’t be solved by cuts or tax increases alone.

There is nothing courageous about an ideological governor hacking away at programs that partisans of his philosophy, including campaign contributors, want eliminated. That’s staying in your comfort zone.

The brave ones are governors such as Jerry Brown in California, Dan Malloy in Connecticut, Pat Quinn in Illinois, Mark Dayton in Minnesota and Neil Abercrombie in Hawaii. They are declaring that you have to cut programs, even when your own side likes them, and raise taxes, which nobody likes much at all. Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee has warned of possible tax increases too.

Indeed, to the extent that Quinn received any national press coverage, he got pilloried in conservative outlets in January when he signed tax hikes that included a temporary increase in Illinois’ individual income tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent.

Despite all the commotion around whether the federal government will shut down, the clamor in the states may be even more important than what’s happening in Washington, which is missing in action on the moment’s most vital fiscal question.

What states are doing to ease their fiscal agonies will only slow down our fragile economic recovery, and may stop it altogether. The last thing we need right now are state and local governments draining jobs and money from the economy, yet that is what they are being forced to do.

As the last three monthly reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed, an economy that created a net 317,000 private-sector jobs lost 70,000 state and local government jobs. Cutbacks are dead weight on the recovery.

“Pointing to his larger-than-expected victory over Republican Charles Baker and independent Timothy Cahill, Patrick said Obama’s team, which overlaps with his own, should derive lessons from the unreconstructed-Democrat approach that Patrick projected. That would be a far cry from the centrist overtures the president has made in the last few months.

I think they’ve learned a lot from us, and we’ve learned from them,” Patrick said. The 2006 campaign that made him Massachusetts’ first African American governor drew from Obama’s successful 2004 Senate bid, Patrick said, a two-year learning cycle that repeated itself when Obama ran for president in 2008 and Patrick for reelection last year.

Patrick said Obama should not turn his back on the ground-up campaign structure that propelled both men to historic wins and helped power Patrick to reelection, a template he believes could sustain Obama next year.

“I believe strongly it’s important not to underestimate the power of the grassroots,” said Patrick, who throughout his first term expressed regrets about not doing a better job of involving his grassroots election supporters in governing.

It is not clear whether Obama has any similar regrets.

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.

Anyone following the developments in Wisconsin knows that this is a result of a falsely created budget deficit and an excuse to eliminate the freedom to contract by public workers – something that has absolutely no impact on the current budget. Indiana is going through a similar assault on public employees with legislation targeting collective bargaining. And no sooner was Andrew Cuomo elected as Governor in New York that he attached public workers.

In New Jersey – a state whose public schools are consistently in the very top tier of the country, Governor Christie has attacked and demonized teachers unions, skipped out on the state’s pension plan payment in order to “balance” his budget last year, while cutting taxes for those earning over $400,000 and costing the state $1 billion in revenue. Most ironically here, Christie talked about “two classes of citizens” but instead of talking about those who can afford such things as heat, food and medicine all at the same time and those who can’t, he focused on health and pension benefits. Even more ironic is that these are the same people who either don’t think anyone should have “rich health benefits” or that you should only have if you can afford to pay for them. On top of this, while Christie is being hailed by those who don’t know any better, he too is looking to raise the estate tax exemption in NJ and give more tax breaks to the wealthy.

On the Federal and state level, “budget and spending cuts” merely translate to slashing of services that are needed most at this time – all in the laughable name of responsibility – coming from the same Republican Party that is directly responsible (maybe that is why they are using that term) for the economic ruin that many Americans face now. The key element of this “blueprint for disaster” is the job killing tax cuts (which clearly didn’t work for the Bush tax cuts) and the cutting of services.

Couple this with massive income tax breaks for the top 1-5%, a reduction in social security tax payments at the same time a manufactured “crisis” is trotted out (with the help of Obama administration), and the reality is that even if every single public worker is fired, the structural problems that directly relate to the lowest income and estate taxes in history on those who need it least while vital services to everyone else are drastically reduced will only lead to a widening of the already overwhelming wealth gap between the small number of “haves” and the huge and growing number of “have-nots”.

This is precisely what the Republicans want. This is precisely what they have done in the past – pick a scapegoat to distract from their real agenda of killing jobs and killing the middle class, all while lining the pockets of the super rich that keep them in power. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This time, hopefully Americans are on to this deadly game and will recognize this for what it is – a direct assault on the economy, since an economy can’t function without a robust middle class. When even Goldman Sachs sees danger in the Republican blueprint for disaster, you know it is serious.

In the news this week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker “ginned up” a budget crisis, then introduced legislation that removes collective bargaining rights from public employees, and over time effectively destroys their unions. Similar measures have been introduced by Republican governors or legislatures in several other states.

This legislative attack on public employees follows more than a year of “preparing the ground” with a coordinated campaign from conservative organizations to convince the public that public employees are overpaid and that their pensions are “bankrupting” state governments — not the effects of the recession.

In the news soon, the coming strategic “shutdown” of the federal government by Republicans. After decades of forcing through tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, again and again — most recently just a few weeks ago — Republicans and corporate conservatives are engaged in a national campaign promoting the belief that there is a “deficit crisis.” Their solutions involve gutting the things government does for We, the People like consumer, health, safety, labor and financial, retirement and income protections, while keeping things the government does for corporations and the wealthy “off the table.”

We see variations of the same formula over and over. Here is how it works:

1) Cut taxes for the rich and corporations (corporate stock is mostly owned by the top 1%); big deficits result.
2) Claim a deficit emergency and use their domination of corporate-owned media to whip the public into a panic, creating the appearance of demand for corporate-approved “solutions.” Manipulate the appearance of consensus.
3) With taxes and military “off the table” push through cuts in the things government does for We, the People.

Repeat as often as needed to create a plutocracy.

Today’s “debt crisis” is the culmination of the long-term “starve the beast” strategy from an organized corporate-conservative movement. By cutting taxes for the wealthy they have starved the government, created massive debt (guess where the interest payments go) gutted the infrastructure, and put our country on the road to third-world status. This conservative movement has an agenda, and is not interested in working out “bipartisan” compromised.

In an example in the news this week, a hoax call, purported to be from David Koch, one of the billionaire-industrialists helping fund the conservative movement and major funder of efforts to make it appear that Wisconsin is having a budget crisis. In the hoax call, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker clearly understands that he and Koch are in engaged a joint effort, describing a Democratic Senator who could work with him as “not one of us.”

Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?

Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.

Koch: Goddamn right!

Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—

Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.

Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…

Elsewhere in the call Walker and faux-Koch talk about whether “planting troublemakers” would “work” or not.

In another example of the self-awareness of this strategy: On public radio’s Marketplace, February 22 Vincent Vernuccio of the Koch/conservative movement/corporate front-group Competitive Enterprise Institute discusses how the real agenda of the state actions is to destroy unions and their ability to fight corporate power politically, not to solve budget problems. (Note, he was not identified on the show as funded by conservative/corporate interests and Koch.)

VINCENT VERNUCCIO: Union bosses want to inflate these budgets so they can get more members, so they can get more dues. And in turn, they take that dues money they have and give it to politicians who are going to give them more favors in the future.

Several states are considering bills that would allow workers to opt-out of a union. Again, Vincent Vernuccio.

VERNUCCIO: The main focus of this isn’t just the budget cuts. It’s actually giving workers the right to say no to the union if they so choose.

Professor Bruno also sees broader implications for the debate. Since union money helps support the Democratic party, he argues changes in collective bargaining could shake up the political landscape far beyond the Midwest.

These are just two small examples, in the news on the same day, showing the difference between the public pronouncements of concern for the country and a private agenda to fool the country. It is one thing when responsible leaders disagree on the best way to solve the country’s real problems. It is quite another thing when organized wealth pursues a strategy to scare the country into handing over our remaining wealth and power.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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