Wisconsin Families Still Leading the Way, One Party Is Helping

Dedicated people in the Democratic Party are listening. The Wisconsin Democratic Party is listening.

Robert Kuttner has a typically insightful piece, A More Perfect Union in The American Prospect, noted this morning in the Democratic Strategist.

The Strategist concludes:

Kuttner's piece clarifies, without saying it, why the public workers of Wisconsin and Ohio have fought so hard to protect their collective bargaining rights. As Kuttner explains, 'In the end, this story is all about power, and power used responsibly.'"

Observers like the Strategist are calling Obama's speech a "Game-Changer," in the political power games in America, akin to something between ratification and democratic elections.

Power, the capacity to determine social arrangement and how decision making in our society is accomplished, is Democracy—why the Occupy and the 99 Percent movements have been being abused in the streets of the United States to deafening silence of politicians of every stripe.

Yesterday, echoing these citizens movements, President Obama [not soon enough for many] delivered this message in Osawatomie, Kansas:

In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. I’m not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I’m saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.

Dedicated people in the Democratic Party are listening. The Wisconsin Democratic Party is listening.

The instant they stop listening, the instant the Party becomes a collection of bureaucrats and group-think, robotic careerists sucking up money; in a manner of speaking: The time then will come for blowing down that Democratic Party house and then re-building.

For now, the Democratic Party is our best ally against the likes of Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Reince Priebus and the bunch of flaky, Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues feasting their eyes on our Social Security, Medicare and veterans benefits.