Published: The Huffington Post 2011.02.28
You are a Wisconsin State Employee who is maxed out. Every month you do the financial ballet. It flows in sync because you are a responsible steward of the family's finances. Your spouse is working, the kids are in school, but you can't take a second job to make ends meet (that working for the State thing).
Forget about shame for being in this position. You are playing by the rules.
You live in a district served by Representative X. Rep X is one of those GOP members who voted with Scott Walker to cut your pay and is going after your ability to bargain. It is not hard to see that Rep X's vote means your household financial ballet has come crashing to the ground. I am referring to this person as Rep X because I want them devoid of human qualities; just like they think union members working for the state are just numbers.
You are going to have to move out of Rep X's district. It is coming because you cannot afford it. You can hang on for a while, but its coming. Rep X's vote offered you no protection against the mortgage company that isn't going to cut you a break. (Didn't we cut those guys a break last year?)
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that Rep X valued giving tax breaks to businesses before he valued the people he directly works with. Rep X was supposed to be your boss and manager. Rep X's vote means that he doesn't get the most valuable resource to a company is the people who work in it. Rep X likes other companies and their people better. In the corporate world, this is like having someone on Coke's board helping the people at Pepsi.
Maybe it is time that Rep X feels some pain with you. You know when he goes to the store or Walmart or Target or the barber shop, or the dry cleaner or church -- he needs to be buttonholed by you. Feel free to get in his face. You are an American and have the right to redress grievances. Rep X IS your Rep.
Elections have consequences, but so do individual votes. Make sure you make him feel good about himself. Because his ego has already been stroked by his GOP echo chamber of commerce, insulated from people's problems and pain.
When you put your house up for sale -- make sure that you put a sign up saying that Rep X is the guy who did this to you. He represented somebody else's interests before he represented yours. There are going to be enough houses in the neighborhood going through this. When Rep X did this vote he affected enough of the population to cause a depression in real estate prices from stressed selling. It is just another little way that Rep X -- and his warped economics have rooked you and all your neighbors.
I hope your spouse is coming with you when you have to move out of the district. Finances are a major cause of divorce. Rep X has used government policy to destabilize your family. Are those the real GOP Family values?
Maybe when Rep X's spouse is out and about a piece of your family's mind can be delivered to them in the grocery store or the hair dresser or the PTA meeting.
Thinking about the PTA and the kids... hmmm. Is it that cold to subject Rep X's kids to indirect comment? Your kids are going to have to leave the school they have been attending, so what happens at the good-bye parties? What about Little League when your kid has to leave the team, should there be a big party with the reason you are leaving underlined?
You know how you would coach basketball or soccer in the community, or ran with the fire company? Rep X has created those holes in the fabric of the community too.
What about church? Why not organize "Walker Parties" at your church (named for the guy Rep X likes more than you). We know you or other members of the congregation are going to be moving on, so why not say good-bye properly? This becomes a lesson about one's brother's keeper. I hope you have a preacher who gets it.
It is clear this guy does not value you or your family or really the immediate community he lives in, is it so bad to let him know that you hear him loud and clear?
No comments:
Post a Comment