A Wisconsin Conservative Turns On The Tea Party Republicans

by Dick Mac

A marketing ploy of the right-wing (Americans who like to refer to themselves as "conservatives" even though they are anything but) is accusing Democrats of being dishonest and running bad government. It isn't graduate=level research needed to find that most of the corrupt, unethical, anti-taxpayer, anti-family, anti-worker, unChristian, immoral political practices of the past generation have been almost exclusively the gift of the right-wing and their minions in the Republican Party.

Wisconsin is the current poster child for immoral Republican governing, where a newly-elected governor has decided to destroy worker rights and government services, just as he did in Milwaukee by firing unionized security guards at the County courthouse, then privatizing the jobs. Not only did the Wisconsin citizens lose their jobs, he then contracted the jobs for $1.1 million per year to a private contractor who then imported workers from out-of-state to take the lower-paying jobs!

In early 2010, when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, he fired 26 union security guards who worked at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. They were public employees and were represented by a union, but he fired them anyway, in favor of hiring private security guards. The county board opposed Walker's security-outsourcing move, but he pressed ahead with it anyway, claiming the action was needed due to a budget crisis, to help ameliorate a potential 2010 year-end deficit of around $7 million. After firing the guards, Walker hired private security contractor Wackenhut G4S to provide security services at the Courthouse, as well as two other venues in the county, under a $1.1 million contract.

See, Walker's M.O. and Past Privatization Disaster Revealed

Scott Walker doesn't care about Wisconsin, he cares about big business! Privatization never saves money, it just ensures that a small number of right-wing businessmen profit from our tax dollars by providing less services for more money.

One of the unions being destroyed by Walker is the Corrections Officers union. These are the public employees with, perhaps, the most dangerous job in every state.

One of these corrections officers is a life-long Republican, a man who has supported the Tea Party movement. He wrote an open letter to Wisconsin lawmakers about the state of affairs, and the impact right-wing greed is having on him, spiritually and politically. He is a man in a crisis of conscience: the people he has supported his entire life have turned on him and are jeopardizing his security.

I encourage you to read the entire letter. I particularly liked this paragraph:

To all you Democratic lawmakers, I apologize for voting nothing but Republican all these years. They are not who I thought they were!! Don't you Republicans see the protests throughout the state? Hey, I'm a taxpayer too!! Don't tell me that you're protecting the taxpayers. This is simply a way to attack some of the finest middle class workers and I for one am considering moving out of Wisconsin as I am so distraught at the lack of honest wholesome government.

See, Letter to the Wisconsin Republicans From a Conservative Prison Guard

One might say that this prison guard gets what he deserves for even using the words "Honest," "Wholesome," and "Government" in the same sentence, especially in reference to Republicans; but we will ignore that for the time being. We night say that everyone who supports the tea party movement deserves the results they will get - and it won't be pretty for any of them.

What is refreshing about this letter, is that perhaps there will now be some realization among all Americans that the pro-business, supply-side economic and political policies of so-called "conservatives."

What is happening in Wisconsin is exactly what every Republican voter has promoted since 1980.

Those of us who think that destruction of collective bargaining and workers' rights will save the government money are misinformed. Whatever it costs to run our government today is a deal compared to what it is going to cost when the Republicans privatize everything.

Fortunately, there might be other voters like this prison guard who begin to see that Republicans have only the interest of the very rich at heart.