"Governor Walker has demonstrated over the past year
what sound fiscal policies can do to turn an economy around, and I believe that
in November voters across the country will demonstrate that they want the same
in Washington, D.C. ... Tonight voters said ‘no’ to the tired, liberal ideas of
yesterday, and ‘yes’ to fiscal responsibility and a new direction," Gov.
Romney said last night after the Wisconsin recall election in which the
incumbent won. "I look forward to working with Governor Walker to help
build a better, brighter future for all Americans."
Last night was a victory for big money, the conservative
right in America and those who rely on the gullibility of low information
voters who are the central actors in the politics of the States today. The
incumbent Gov. Walker won 53% to the democratic contender’s 46% while four of
the five GOP senators won their recall elections and the fifth race was close
enough to have a recount giving the lie to a reported close race so this counts
as a serious win for the Republicans and their Wall Street supporters in a
traditionally democratic and union state. This doesn’t auger well for President
Obama in the November presidential elections with this result in the swing
state of Wisconsin that he handily won in the last election. The recall
election campaign was the swan song for organized labor and will have broad social
implications for the future of the working class including some unexpected ones
as I will discuss in this post. The
major effect will be a legitimization of the Republican legislatures’ rollback
of women’s rights, elimination of collective bargaining for public workers and
the privatization of state assets which will be a reward for the financial
efforts of the Koch brothers. Walker also got 47% of women’s votes in spite of
his repeal of the 2009 equal pay for women’s act, elimination of sex education
in Wisconsin schools and banning of abortion coverage in insurance policies so
this is a good example of the low information voter syndrome that seems to be
in effect everywhere in American politics. Another bill, SB 507, currently in the
pipeline which was sponsored by Republican Senator Grothman on February 14,
2012 makes non martial parents of children guilty of a felony conviction for
child abuse as a contributing factor solely on the grounds that they are single
parents or LGBT parents so thirty percent of Wisconsin parents would be liable
to jail time of up to one year based on this one act.
The people of the state of Wisconsin,
represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows:
Section1. 48.982(2)(g)2.of the statutes is
amended to read:
48.982 (2) (g) 2. Promote statewide educational and public awareness campaigns and materials for the purpose of developing public awareness of the problems of child abuse and neglect. In promoting those campaigns and materials, the board shall emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.
This fits in neatly with the prison privatization bill that
Walker introduced in the Wisconsin legislature in 1999 but failed to pass
during the democratically controlled assembly. Now that he is still in charge ,he
will be able to fill future private prisons with all the inmates that he wants.
A similar scenario
played out in the “common sense revolution” of the Ontario conservative victory
of Mike Harris in the late nineties and the effects are still being felt today.
The video above is a
35 minute overview of the Walkerton tragedy that took place in the rural
community of Walkerton, Ontario starting on May 15, 2000 in which out of a
total population of approximately 5000, over 2300 residents became sick and
seven died from E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria contaminated drinking water. The town
well (#5) was drilled in fractured bedrock and was shallow which made its water
susceptible to surface contamination and this occurred after heavy rains
beginning on May 8, 2000 washed fecal material containing E. coli and
Campylobacter jejuna from an adjacent dairy farm. Cattle manure is a well known
source of these contaminants. Although the proximal cause was criminal
diligence including false lab result entries
on documentation, mislabelling of water samples for analysis and lack of
appropriate action after receiving
adverse results on the part of the town public works employees, Ministry of the
Environment budget cuts during a prior
recession, privatization of water analysis laboratories without proper regulatory reporting regimes
for adverse results and the deregulatory enthusiasm of the Mike Harris, conservative government
were contributing factors. An inquiry
lasting two years by the Honourable Dennis O’Connor was published and it can be
read here.
This is a perfect example of neo-liberals in
their search for ideological perfection who are oblivious to larger societal
risks especially when it doesn’t affect the economic elites who stand to
benefit from financial rewards associated with privatization of public
goods. Laureen Snider, a Professor of
Sociology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario wrote a paper entitled
“Captured by Neo-Liberalism: Regulation and Risk in Walkerton, Ontario”
with the following abstract:
This paper examines E coli contamination of the public water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, which caused 2300 illnesses and seven deaths in 2000. This disaster was made possible, if not inevitable, by the downsizing and deregulation agenda undertaken by the Province of Ontario. Having described the events at Walkerton and how the risk management program of the Ontario government and the Ministry of the Environment failed, the paper asks why it failed, highlighting the decline of the power and inclination of nation-states to oversee and control the private sector. The case study shows how, in a quest to cut costs, downsize government and eliminate regulation, dramatic new risks to human health and safety were generated.
After a total cost of about $150 million for the entire post
crisis clean up and compensation to victims, one would think that the neo liberals
would have learned their lesson but conservatives have short memories when it
comes to implementing their pet theories so it came as no surprise when I read
on June 2, 2012 that in the scientific journal, Environmental Health
Perspectives, a paper was recently
published showing a strong correlation between the titer of drinking water
viruses and human illness in a variety of locations in the State of Wisconsin.
Last year and wasting no time since their installation the new Republican
controlled legislature in the state with their appetite for universal
deregulation rescinded a previous act requiring the treatment of all municipal
drinking water and this year over sixty Wisconsin municipalities have stopped
water treatment in order to save money and balance their budgets which were
partly placed into deficit positions by cuts in state transfer payments to the
local authorities. Eight democratic legislators have asked the federal EPA to
act but the body has decided to make compliance with safe water statues voluntary.
The EPA is a favorite target for Republican budget cuts and there is a bill on
the floor of the house (H.R. 2018) to make water quality regimes purely a state
function and restrict the right of the federal EPA to intervene even in extreme
circumstances. The really big worry is the E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria which was
implicated in the Walkerton event and has cow manure as its primary source.
Don’t forget all the dairy farms in Wisconsin. They call themselves cheese
heads for a reason. I did a little research and sure enough on September 14,
2011 there was an E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak in Greene County, Wisconsin where
eight people became sick and one died from hemolytic uremic syndrome which is an
infrequent but fatal complication of this bacterial infection.
The source of the bacterial outbreak was not stated and the
story soon forgotten but it’s only a matter of time before a Walkerton level
event occurs in the state. The moral of the story is that neo liberals are
limited in their cognitive functions and legislative actions to implementing
the catechism of revealed truths – all deregulation is good and the market is
the final arbiter of the public good, ever smaller government and the shift
from public to private sourcing for common needs, endless tax cuts -without
considering the real world consequences of provision realignment. Some of these
are unexpected. The British government in the second half of the nineteenth
century implemented a series of public health acts to improve the health and welfare
of its poorest citizens because they discovered during the Crimean War that the
laissez-faire capitalism of the industrial revolution debilitated the male
working class of England to the point where the military recruiting officers
couldn’t find enough fit males among the people to serve in the army and
maintain the force at the level required by the conflict. The American
conservatives want a strong and robust military but only a quarter of the
potential recruits from the inner cities met the minimum requirements for
physical fitness and half of those failed the minimum educational requirements
so they had a problem meeting their recruitment goals in spite of the recession
which reduced employment opportunities in the civilian sector. Magical thinking
requires a cognitive dissonance between cause and effect as well as the idea
that a symbol has an effect on the real world and that by invoking the name of
the symbol we can bypass known realities and ignore expected consequences.
Republicans in election mode (Kris Kuksi) |
Interestingly enough when it comes to election campaigns,
the right certainly doesn’t rely on Magical Thinking. While the left considers
elections to be politics, the right understands the campaigns to be war and the
left is puzzled when it loses after bringing a knife to a gun fight. A good
example is the use of voter suppression techniques by the conservatives. In the
Canadian federal election of 2011, conservative party workers used “robocalls”,
automated voice mail, to misdirect
probable liberal supporting voters which had been identified during their canvassing,
to incorrect locations for voting booths in Guelph, Ontario in order to
suppress illegally the opposition vote and this is a violation of the Elections
Act. The same story in Wisconsin yesterday as anonymous “robocalls” from
republican friends of the incumbent were sent to self identified anti Walker
voters explaining falsely that if they signed the recall petition then their
vote had already been recorded so they didn’t have to vote. The Walker campaign
committee has so far denied any complicity or awareness of the suppression
technique but Prime Minister Harper also denied any involvement by the
Conservative party election apparatus in the event until it was proven later
through phone records that the phone calls originated with one of his party`s
workers.
Depressing, but true and a great post. Hi.
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