On Wisconsin!

[captainsblog]

There's nothing about it on the front page of our local paper.  Google News Top Stories include financial crises and Tottenham (which are important, don't get me wrong) but also Tiger Woods, Jay-Z and Diana Nyad swimming without a shark cage (which are not), but not any pre-election coverage on the recall elections today in Wisconsin.

This is important stuff. It's the first test, that voters were able to get scheduled, against The Narrative. A newly-elected "reform" minded Republican governor rammed through a package of tax breaks, then copped a plea of poverty when the state budget went out of balance as a result, permitting him to invoke "emergency" powers to change state public employment laws. I don't mind (and neither did the employees in question) that he asked them to contribute relatively small percentages to their health care and pensions. That's fair; what's not fair is that he went way beyond that and used the manufactured crisis to strip away basic provisions of collective bargaining from all public employees in the state.

Today, the balance of power in the state's legislature will be determined. The monied interests are panicked, spending millions in targeted ad campaigns to put forth their narrative (including one, spotted by Stephen Colbert and apparently nobody else in the media, where they sent out "sample ballots" into Democratic-leaning districts with the wrong election day on it), but nobody else in the media seems to care.

I'm equally sure that tomorrow's headlines have already been written in the offices of Roger Ailes and Grover Norquist:

If the recalls fail: WISCONSIN VOTERS BACK SCOTT WALKER'S REFORMS

If they succeed: BUSSED-IN UNION THUGS INFLUENCE OUTCOME OF TOO-CLOSE-TO-CALL ELECTION

And tomorrow night, I fully expect that Colbert will find more truthiness in the whole business than anyone else. Just wish I (and some of you) could be there.

Comments

[bktheirregular]

Oh, yeah, that "register for the election by August 11" thing, with the election on August 9. That's vote fraud, right there, and if there were any true justice in the world, the perpetrators of that one - the ultimate perpetrators, not the cut-outs they undoubtedly used to give themselves deniability - would go to prison for it. And I mean like Shawshank, not Club Fed.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

CNN has it on the front page.