What has happened?

Wisconsin and Ohio lost in the wilderness?
by Max Johnson

I was inspired by what took place in Egypt and Tunisia, and the largely peaceful change in the Middle East. These brave citizens finally spoke up, and said, "Why can't we vote for our leaders? Why don't we have the same rights as the citizens of Israel, Turkey, South Africa, and the Philippines?" The United States now has to re-evaluate every one of our relationships with all these ruthless authoritarian leaders in the world.

Now, we move from the Mid East to the Midwest, and find days of rage in Ohio and Wisconsin. What happened to these states? Wisconsin was the cradle of the progressive movement in the United States and now it is dominated by the Party of Platitudes. How did we allow our government to fall into the hands of arch conservatives? These guys are masters at campaigning is the only think that I can think of. They are great at identifying enemies and pointing blame at some boogie man. They campaign on "small government" no matter if they preside over the largest expansion of government in history like they did in the 2000s. Their only motto is "lower taxes" no matter what the situation. In good times they want to cut taxes, and in bad times they say we can't raise taxes. They tell people what we want to hear and people vote for them. The are the elementary school class president candidate promising pizza everyday for lunch, fruit punch in the drinking fountains, and no pop quizzes ever.

Their skill is finding ways to win elections when you are lost with the war of ideas. But I am not sure this is what Ohioan and those living in Wisconsin thought they would get when they threw out the Democrats. Did they vote for an attack on teachers, firemen, and police officers? There is a lot of anger toward unions, but did they want the legislatures to destroy 50 years of hard fought worker's rights to go up in flame in the first 30 days of these two new administrations? Did they imagine that we would give hundreds of jobs to other states with the canceling of infrastructure improvements in the high speed rail projects. We shall see what voter intent was in 2012.