Walker won, but the Middle Class lost

     Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) won Wisconsin’s recall election. His victory is the latest chapter in the continuing irony of Wisconsin’s middle class voters: Scott Walker won the recall election because the middle class voted against their own best interests. In other words, they suppressed their instincts, intuitions, experiences, and knowledge; and instead, they relied on Walker’s promise of moving Wisconsin forward. It also means that they succumbed to the fear implanted by the Republican Party attack ads against Mayor Tom Barrett, and the political spins Governor Scott Walker used to play-down his social, economic, and lawful failures. Most importantly, however, it means that the undemocratic, un-Christian social and economic policies that are prevalent in the southern republican-controlled states have spread to Wisconsin, like chronic deceases.

     The symptoms of these chronic deceases are easy to observe: 1. Workers begin to work longer hours for less pay and less benefits; in fact their salaries become stagnant. 2. Workers become more vulnerable to exploitations and unsafe working conditions. They become more powerless, in the absence of “collective bargaining” unions, to argue for higher wages and better working conditions. 3. Equal opportunity and protection laws, like the laws requiring equal pay for women, are abandon. 4. T.O.R.T. reform laws, or those laws that gives private citizens the rights to seek justice in court against corporations,  for damages inflicted on them and their love ones, are rolled back. 5. Local communities are not invited to share in the decisions concerning mining, waste management, the privatization of state-owned land (currently used for hunting, fishing, camping, etc.), and quality management of air, water, soil, and other environmental issues. 6. Although the number of jobs increases and the employment picture appears brighter in southern republican states, they often hide the fact that a huge percent of the jobs created pay minimum wages – and an increased number of the workers are living below the poverty line; and 7. Education, innovation, quality of life, and standard of living sharply decrease, as hopelessness, disunity, and the gap between the rich and the poor increases.

     Yes, Scott Walker won an election. His victory will make wealthy Americans wealthier. Corporate profit will increase, but the middle class will not share in his victory. Instead, they will continue to bare the entire economic burden, while loosing social and economic ground -- because they voted for him!

     God help us!

By

James A. Porter