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You and I have been hearing over the past few weeks about the communist Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s ongoing attempt to bust the public-workers unions because of the state deficit which he and the state assembly created with some tax cuts that they created for businesses. We have heard all of the media take by American media, but what about the thoughts from overseas?
Le Figaro, France
Republicans: The Red
Scare Is Back
By Jean-Sébastien Stehli
Machiavelli could never have imagined this.
Translated By Zachary Hebert
23 February 2011Edited by Patricia Simoni
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
The United States and the USSR were at odds for 45 years, but during that time, the two superpowers had many things in common. Today, the USSR is no more, and we suddenly are witnessing a strange phenomenon. The dream of American conservatives is to create an oligarchical system similar to the one that ruled over Russia: power for a few, deconstruction of regulation, and privatization of all that could be sold. That is the ideal of the GOP and its tea party allies. The Wisconsin story, seen as that of a courageous governor’s refusal to accept the shameful advances of unions, at a time when the entire country has to tighten its belt, is a huge farce and an untruth. Here’s an explanation.
For over a week, Wisconsin’s civil servants, professors among them, have been on strike. The state’s governor, Scott Walker, wants to increase the percentage of civil servants’ salaries that goes toward their retirement pensions and to increase their contributions to their health insurance premiums, two propositions that do not at all please the unions, but which were accepted. But the governor, who is close to the tea party moment, wishes to limit unions’ negotiation power and obligate them to accept a system in which employees would annually vote to say whether to continue to be union members.
In reality, what is going on in Wisconsin has nothing to do with the official reasons invoked by the governor and his supporters. As Nobel Prize for economics winner, Paul Krugman, highlights, what Scott Walker is “trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.” The hypocrisy is flagrant: Although the governor admits that it is necessary to reduce the deficit, he is trying to pass tax cuts for a portion of the population (always the same one), which does nothing but exacerbate the deficit.
The governor, elected six weeks ago — thanks to the financial help of the super-conservative millionaire Koch brothers, financiers of the tea party, in the hope that the movement would abolish pollution regulation — simply wants to erase the unions and, above all, their ability to speak on behalf of the employees of an industry. Above all, the unions that do not think like he does, because he is not as hot-headed toward the unions that are closer to the Republicans.
The political system that Scott Walker and his allies want is not American democracy, in which the rule is one person, one vote. The political system admitted by the new GOP darling is one in which some powerful entities have all the rights. The irony is that those who, like the tea party, claim to speak on behalf of the scorned people, wish to eliminate the power that truly speaks on behalf of the poorest and the middle class: the unions — whether or not unions should be agreed with is a different issue.
Another irony, this one a little crueler, brought up by Paul Krugman: It is precisely this oligarchy that, in pushing for more and more deregulation, has provoked the very financial crisis that America is facing today; it was not the unions. And now, the oligarchy is using the pretext of the crisis in order to eliminate the modest forces of opposition that continue to be against such a form of government. Machiavelli could never have imagined this.
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