Scott Walker's real agenda in Wisconsin: Opening up the state to a corporate asset-grab

Scott Walker's real agenda in Wisconsin
The Republican governor's budget plan would open the state up to a corporate asset-grab not seen since robber baron capitalism
By Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers
March 10 2011

Fast-forward to Scott Walker today. Representing a new breed apart from Wisconsin's earlier Republicans, he is seeking to re-open the asset-grabbing Gilded Age style. A plague of rent-seekers is seeking quick gains by privatising the public sector and erecting tollbooths to charge access fees to roads, power plants and other basic infrastructure.

A peek into the 144 pages of Governor Walker's so-called "budget repair bill" reveals a shop of horrors that is just the opposite of actually repairing the budget. Among the items listed for selloffs are state power generation facilities – in no-bid contracts notoriously prone to insider dealing. The 37 facilities he wants to sell off produce heating and cooling at low-cost to the state's universities and prisons. Walker's budget repair bill would unload them at a low price, presumably to campaign contributors such as Koch Industries – and then stick the bill for producing this power at higher rates to Wisconsin taxpayers in perpetuity. (And this is all being sold as a "taxpayer relief" plan!) The net effect will be a subsidy to the privatisers. And politically, it would remove a "bad example" (of public ownership working too well to be acknowledged in today's free-market textbooks).

The budget bill also plans to tear down the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS). This is not New Jersey, where a succession of corrupt governments have underfunded (read: stolen) the state pension system in order to shift resources to pay for budget shortfalls in general revenues caused by tax breaks for the rich. The WRS is one of the nation's most stable, well-funded and best-managed pension systems. Although Wisconsin is not a big state, the WRS has amassed $75bn in reserves, and pays out handsome pensions to its public retirees, without needing new public subsidy. The Walker bill has language providing for tearing down this system, raiding its assets to pay for further tax cuts for the rich (especially property owners), and then throwing Wall Street a meaty bone as public employees would be shifted to 401k plans handled by money managers on commission.

So Walker's war is not only against the Democrats and labour, it is against Wisconsin's Progressive Era institutions. His policy threatens to pauperise the state and deal a coup de grace to Progressive Era institutions and impoverish the state's middle class. Contra John Maynard Keynes's gentle suggestion of "euthanasia of the rentier", it is the middle class that is being euthanised – throughout North America and Europe.

Read the full article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/10/wisconsin-usa

Naturally, this level of actual analysis is from a foreign source. But have no fear, the LA Times always finds room for Jonah Goldberg's mindless spewings every Tuesday!

:eyes:

Snyder just rammed through a bill that says he can take over any city, fire everyone, put one of his financial cronies in charge at any salary they choose, and sell off municipal assets. Koch Bros. will be first in line. It's like a Monopoly game to them.

I believe Walker; knows he's toast in Wisconsin but believes he can steep tea bags, suck corporate monetary teat and obtain plenty of corporate media propaganda stroking nationwide for all its' worth.

Thanks for the thread, Better Believe It.

are out full-force from what I can see in the comments to that article. Somebody is making a living propagating swill today.

unless there's something more there than those heat/power plants.

They're next to worthless. In fact, with the polution they produce and upgrades that a potential buyer would have to perform... they may be worth LESS than worthless.

I'm not saying that it isn't a consideration, but it isn't CLOSE to the "real agenda" when compared to the union busting.

Then why were there ads being run in Wisconsin newspapers for people to run them?

Can you say monopoly on heat and power?

Why would running ads trying to find someone to run the plants mean that they hold any capital value?

A private entity owning those same plants (not just "running" them) would be required to bring them up to environmental standards that the state isn't always required to meet.

There's ever indication that doing so would cost more than the plants are currently worth. Even if that's exagerated, we aren't exactly talking about a potential goldmine here. The state may not even get a bid.

Can you link to something listing other assets that are covered?

study the fact that there are wetlands (and what they offer) as well as glacial formations, rock structure, you will find plenty. I have spent a lot of time studying the areas around the Lakes because at one time I wanted to live wither in upper WI, or Upper MI. I also live in MN.
Then you need to look at the fracking pattern in ND and the map of the whole Country to see where they haven't been and where there is shale deposits. Then you need to think transport and costs. There is a lot out there and this bodes very poorly for the Planet if indeed they succeed.

Randi Rhodes has been doing a good job talking about this.

They used the Iraq War to try to create the perfect free market economy, of course only so far as it would benefit the corporate benefactors.
Create a crisis and move in to take over a country's economy, and now the states' economies.
Iraq fought back against it though they dod not win entirely against the oil companies.

First up: Privatizing the Ohio Dept. of Development. Replaced with a private corporation of HIS CREATION, staffed with his benefactors and funded with start-up money from the STATE TREASURY. Now the good old boy repukes can stuff our money into their fat wallets in secret without any accountability nor any of those pesky open records laws.

Next up: Privatizing the Ohio Lottery, Turnpike, schools and anything else that they can stuff their fat wallets with.

You seriously cannot make this stuff up!