The inimitable Paul Krugman's latest column is up at the New York Times. Wisconsin Power Play gets right to the heart of the matter:
For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
more below the jump
There's little need for me to add more here. Krugman's own words are more than sufficient. Go read the whole thing of course, and then pass it on.
What Krugman is saying is what needs to be said. The fact that there are so few voices at the national level who dare even hint at it shows how far down the road to oligarchy we are.
There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.
emphasis added
Listening to the budget tripe coming out of DC, the sheer rapacity and viciousness coming from the Republicans - and the feebleness of the response from the Democrats - we had all better hope and pray that Wisconsin will be a turning point. Real Democrats are fighting for their lives and ours.
God bless them all.