This article provide more direct evidence for the idea that the plutocracy is intent on destroying the last bastion of unionism in America -- public sector employees. Their strategy is to employ the politics of resentment to pit one segment of the middle class (read working class) against another, in this case, private sector employees most of who are not unionized against public sector employees where 1 in 3 are members of unions such as the AFT.
The propaganda talking point is to suggest that public sector employees who enjoy decent benefits they struggled to get over many decades of tough labor negotiations are somehow responsible for the fiscal problems many states are now facing. The real cause of the state deficits, of course, is the Great Recession, which public employees had no role in producing.
It was produced by greed, lax government regulation of the financial services industry, and the economic ideology known as "market fundamentalism". According to this winners-take-all mentality, there must be no part of the economy that is not subject to corporate rule. That is why the Republicans, who are an entirely owned and controlled subsidiary of Corporate America, are now attacking public sector unions, public broadcasting, public radio, and indeed any social formation that is not directly subservient to corporate control.
But truth has no bearing on this political strategy: it is driven by the idea that one can gain political support among private sector workers by making them resentful of the slightly better benefits that some public sector workers have. This is a classic "leveling-down" strategy of class warfare; the goal is to break public sector unions by convincing non-union workers that their plight is caused by there fellow workers, not by the corpocracy that runs America (and much of the rest of the world). If this campaign is successful it will mark the final triumph of the investing class over the working class and will ensure that income and wealth inequality will not be effectively challenged by the labor movement.
Here is how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker expressed this divide and rule strategy:
“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”
This is utter rubbish. Government workers -- civil servants -- are taxpayers too. They are also voters: the latter is what rankles Governor Walker because as voters they did not support him in the election. So this is also political payback: if one wants to ensure that Republicans control even more of the state governments than they presently do, bust the labor unions which (usually) support the Democrats.
However, as the demonstrations in Wisconsin are showing, these union workers are not going down without a fight. Now is the time for solidarity, not only with the demonstrators in the Mideast, but also those in the Midwest.
