Big news coming out of Wisconsin today: Republican state senator Pam Galloway, targeted in the recall elections coming up has resigned effective immediately!
state politics
3 posts
It’s no secret that state budgets across the United States are ‘in crisis’. The tumbling tax revenues resulting from a combination of high unemployment rates and tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals, coupled with the expiration of federal stimulus funds, has left states in the unenviable position of closing significant budget gaps.
In fits of ignorance rage, voters in several states have tasked Republicans with the arduous task of filling their budget holes. Across the country, right-wing governors and GOP-led legislatures are looking for private sector solutions to public sector problems, and looking to operate the government in a more business-like fashion.
Like any good business, the answer? Fire sale, motherfucker! Eliminate those long term revenue streams in exchange for a lump sum payment up front, increased cost of services to your citizens, and a likelihood of decreased wages for the workers providing those services. In the case of selling an asset, like Ohio governor John Kasich plans to do with its prisons or Scott Walker’s plan to pay back Koch Industries with no-bid power plant sales, that asset is GONE. Off the balance sheet. No longer an asset to the state.
The money up front, of course, is nice. Lump sums help close holes in 1 and 2-year budgets. However, two years from now, when a new budget is due to the state, and these governors are still in charge (barring a recall, which, sadly, in Ohio, doesn’t exist), similar gaps will need filled again. What to sell then? Roads? Parks? The Lottery?
Well, in Ohio, those things are slated to be leased out to private companies. The parks for natural gas drilling, the turnpike to get the maintenance costs off the state’s back, and the lottery? Well, there’s just a lot of money to be made that could be much better utilized by someone who’s already rich than the schools it was originally intended to support. If you’re already leasing out a car, you can’t exactly turn around and sell it to someone else. So, close that door.
Nope, you’ll either have to raise taxes on folks who can afford it (HA!), or cut more services. Schools in the Midwest don’t need heat, do they? If we cram 60 kids into a classroom meant for 30, the body heat alone should be enough, right? I’m not a scientist, but that sounds right.
Admittedly, I haven’t seen some of the numbers associated with these efforts yet. Like any good used car salesman, the politicians associated with these actions like to wait until the last minute to disclose the details of the sale.
However, I’m having trouble with the math on some of these things. In the case of the turnpike, it’s likely that the company that leases it from the state will lay-off and reduce the wages of toll and maintenance workers, raise tolls (see Indiana), and possibly scrimp on certain aspects of maintenance/safety. Wait, that never happens, right?
So, what you likely have: Reductions in tax revenue from workers, a further erosion of the middle class way of life, an increase in real costs to the citizens and businesses that use those resources, and a share of revenue that could go directly to state coffers redirected as profit to a private firm (whose taxes your state probably just cut, helping to exacerbate said budget deficit).
But, those are only leases right? If they don’t work out, the state can always just take back control and operation of the asset.
Sure, except, your state has now disbanded the departments, cut those costs from the budget, and would have to re-create the infrastructure needed to resume operation of the asset in question. That costs money. Real money. Who’s going to pay for that?
Not guys like Kasich, Walker, or their friends and supporters. Believe that.
Pun Intended.
So apparently white people ain’t foolin’ around no more. White people be pissed off and they don’t care whether the facts support their rage or how straight up stupid, evil and nineteenth century they sound when they open their mouths. Shit’s gettin’ real out there in the suburbs ya’ll. The Ford Explorers are gassed up and the sequined American flag sweatshirts are ON. White America is in revolt. They are standing up for their God-given right to be the HBsIC and brown and black people better get out da way…NOW.
Recently, CNN posted a story that released some startling data about that rare and vulnerable animal: The American White Person.
Apparently 44% of American White People think they face racial animus that is just as or more severe of a problem as the animus faced by black people or other minorities. 56% of white Republicans and 61% white Tea Partiers share that opinion. Colleges are beginning to offer “Whiteness Studies” courses (because all those European and American history and literature courses really gave white people the short shrift) and there is a rise in scholarships exclusively offered to that rarest of college students: the White Male. Prominent white activists are even leading marches on Washington to reclaim their right to own everything, live where ever they want, be the standard of beauty and be the only flesh color crayon in the crayon box. Times are tough and the movement is on the streets!
This trauma is something that brown and black people could never understand. We’ve never been in power, so we can’t imagine what it must be like to see black people taking our jobs ( Yeah Mr. President, that means you), stealing our women (Taye Diggs couldn’t you find a sista to rub your gorgeousness on?) and men (Heidi Klum, bitch don’t pretend I’m not looking at you). Not to mention that brown and black people have the temerity to reproduce at a rate that is kicking white people’s birth control using ass (my great grandma had thirteen kids and all their kids have all been prolific breeders- pretty sure we could double the population of Wyoming if we so chose. Watch out Wyoming! ).
So, given all that, I’m pretty sure what I’m about to say should get me registered with the Southern Poverty Law Center for committing a hate crime against a vulnerable minority group.
Oh well, let the Haterade fall!
In the last couple months, the Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour, has been fighting the good fight for White America. He’s belittled the trauma of the civil rights movements and defended “citizens councils” in the South. It shows how committed white people are to this movement that this guy is STILL in the running for the Republican nomination for President. I’ll say this about White America, they do a good job of promoting from within. And let’s be honest, he deserves that promotion. I know Nazi comparisons are persona non grata but in all seriousness the White Citizens Councils of the South were the closest this country has ever come to the S.S. and it was really, really close. They killed, raped and pillaged the black community with impunity and did a masterful job covering it all up for decades. But, according to Barbour, they were the “good” guys in the civil rights movement. Ok, and my ass isn’t a work of art that I carved with thousands of lunges and carb deprivation.
Not to be out done Governor Paul LePage of Maine (whose picture you will see if you look up Good Ol’ Boy in the dictionary) 
informed the local chapter of the NAACP that they should “kiss his butt,” for having the temerity to question his decision to blow off Martin Luther King Jr. day celebrations. Sounds like this guy is channeling the supernatural to distinguish himself from the pack of average, ho hum, white racist dudes. Perhaps he was channeling the late, infamous Governor Faubus of Arkansas? The WHITE frosting on top of this WHITE cupcake? The man also thinks that women growing beards (not to mention tumors) as a result of exposure to BPAs is also no big thang.
I believe that for every ten actual racists, there are two people who are just too dumb or mentally imbalanced to understand the meaning behind the adjectives, nouns and verbs they string together in front of a microphone. GLoM may just be one of those individuals.
Moving right along, on the Stupid Things Governor and Former Governors Say Express, we have another southerner acting the fool. Former Governor Mike Huckabee (who lately is giving Governor Christie of New Jersey a run for his lunch money for the illustrious title of Governor Sandwiches) decided that President Obama, who was raised in Kansas and Hawaii, was influenced by madrassas as a child. Because there were so many schools that teach a “fundamental” extremist interpretation of Islam in Kansas and Hawaii in the sixties and seventies. Of course, because the President’s absentee father happened to be from a mostly Muslim country and the President has a name other than George, Bill, or James he MUST have been influenced by a world view that this country did not even regard as a threat until the man was an adult and employed by the state of Illinois.
President George W. Bush spent a lot more time hanging out in the Middle East and entertaining Middle Eastern visitors than President Obama and yet no one has a word to say about his influences. Possibly because most of us recognize that the man is too damn dumb to be capable of absorbing information from sources that don’t come with illustrations.
But I digress.
My last little example to support my reasons for building a bunker and starting my own little Black Panthers chapter, is the fine 
state of Texas (isn’t it always Texas?). I may look black on the streets, but I’m a Mexican in the kitchen (and you know, genetically) and as a Mexican I want to fly down to that state and smack state Rep. Debbie Riddle upside her, “let’s find a convenient loop hole around the thirteenth amendment so I can keep my gardener and maid, treat them like shit and possibly not pay them” head. Rep. Riddle would like to criminalize the hiring of illegal immigrants, punishable with jail time, UNLESS those immigrants are employed as household staff. Immigration debate aside (and trust, that issue is chock full of plenty of awful all by itself), this would (once again in the Eternal Return of the Same that perfectly encapsulates the current state of American political discourse) create an underclass of brown people who are open to exploitation, abuse and whatever special hell lurks around the corner for people who are completely dependent upon employers for their financial, social and legal welfare.
Despite the incredible disconnects from reality that make each of these incidents individually, darkly hilarious, this trend is actually a fairly terrifying. If you study ethnic conflicts, the first step to conflict (and by “conflict” I mean wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of minority groups) is the dominate racial or ethnic group starting and sustaining a victim narrative that they use as impetus to pass laws that protect their privileges at the expense of the basic rights of minority groups. We’ve seen this in New York, where mostly white people sought to deny Muslim people their right to have a community center in order to protect their privilege to not have to be confronted with people practicing a religion that they find somehow distasteful.
Chris Rock tells a story about moving into his wealthy suburb in New Jersey. There are only four black people who own homes in his neighborhood, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z, Eddie Murphy and Rock himself. Two of the best stand-up comics in the game today, one of the greatest R&B singers ever and a hip hop mogul. Who is Rock’s next door neighbor? A white dentist. Rock’s point? “Black people (and all non-white people) have to fly to get someplace that white people can walk to.”
It is troubling that, in 2011, 44% of White Americans either can’t or don’t see this.
This is your racism trend report for March 2011.
Gotta go refill my glass of Hate Hate Juice.
Peace. Love and WHITE chocolate chip cookies.
