Scott Walker's America?
by digby
Perlstein's on the ground in Wisconsin, his home state. And he's scaring me:
A truck stop. A pleasant woman's voice over an AM radio station: "... the corrected numbers show large job job gains ... the reforms made job creators more confident .... Wisconsin is getting back to work ..." The ad's sponsor is the "WMC Foundation," as in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's largest business organization, who have scored the neat trick of simultaneously blanketing the state with misleading pro-Walker ads and mainlining into the media an ostensibly objective survey in which its membership overwhelmingly affirms that thanks to Walker's "reforms" they'll be hiring more ... soon.
Wisconsinites meanwhile pulled out their phones and saw texts reading, "Tom Barrett is a Union Puppet who will give Union Thugs everything they want. Call & ask why 414-271-8050." That's Barrett campaign headquarters – whose switchboard was promptly shut down by the deluge of calls.
Welcome to Scott Walker's Wisconsin – and, if Wisconsin fails to do the right thing today, Scott Walker's America: dirty tricks and intricately nested corporate-sponsored lies, states competing with one another to out-Dixie Dixie, glittering simulations of democracy on TV commercials paid for by cruel lying billionaires, passed on verbatim by reporters too lazy to care.
Unfortunately, that vision of Walker's America is all too real. As I get older I realize more than ever that things can (and often do) get worse.
It's immensely difficult to beat the kind of relentless corporate backed propaganda and lies that have been blanketing Wisconsin. But if anyone can do it, Wisconsin progressives can. Fingers crossed ...
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