What do we get with corporate-backed politicians?

Recently, I’ve had an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song rattlin’ round in my head:

You load 16 tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.

I think that pretty well describes working America – a country I often feel like the masters of the universe in Washington D.C. (and our state capital) have forgotten.

And then I live through periods like this first week in June and I have to wonder, “Do working Americans recognize themselves in Ford’s song?”

Of course I am referring to Wisconsin’s recall election, in which voters retained a governor who made it his mission to break state public employees’ unions.

Never mind these unions had already conceded to pay a larger share of benefit costs and to limit pay increases. Walker’s goal was not to ease Wisconsin taxpayers’ burden, but to do away with collective bargaining and worker protections for public employees, and thus for all workers.

Walker’s efforts were bankrolled by a handful of multi-billionaire business owners, led by the Koch brothers.

And they outspent Democrats by a ratio of 7-1 to retain Walker.

Their funds allowed saturation advertising and publicity designed to question the democratic nature of a recall election petitioned for by hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters.

Yet by the time the election rolled around, voters suddenly felt recalls should only be held in the case of criminal wrongdoing.

John Nichols outlines events in “Framed: How Redefining Direct Democracy as Anti-Democratic Won Wisconsin.” http://www.thenation.com/blog/168335/framed-how-redefining-direct-democracy-anti-democratic-won-wisconsin?rel=emailNation#

I’ve never been a big believer in advertising, but I’m disappointed to say it worked this time. Walker’s corporate funders managed to manipulate voters into keeping their man in office.

Why? Because big business profits when workers can’t organize. It is no coincidence that since President Reagan broken the air traffic controllers’ union, workers’ wages in this country have stagnated.

And it’s ironic for those Wisconsin voters who cast their vote for the principle that recalls be held only for criminal wrongdoing. They may get it yet because investigations of Walker continue.

But what capped a strange confluence of events was the death of Ray Bradbury the same week. Bradbury was the author of Fahrenheit 451. This prophetic science fiction novel tells the story of a future in which firemen no longer put out fires. Instead, they start them – to burn books.

In this futuristic America, people sit enthralled to their interactive television screens, now three full living room walls.

Meanwhile, the government sends firemen to destroy books and historic documents that would encourage free thinking.

But, one day the book’s main character opens a book perched on the pile for the next bonfire. And it changes his life.

He begins to read and discovers radical texts like the Bible and our founding documents, and he finally questions what he is doing.

He sees his wife mesmerized in front of her TV screen and walks away from his old life.

I keep wondering when we will. Americans must wake up to the fact that government is our responsibility.

Until then, the company store owned by the Koch brothers and their colleagues will continue to buy our government and own our souls.

As they did in Wisconsin and are already doing in the general election, they are flooding the airwaves with ads and appearances by paid representatives for their candidates (chiefly Republican) who will blindly push through policies to benefit them.

So unplug the TV and radio. And before it’s too late, start reading and asking questions. It’s our job, and if we don’t do it, that sixteen tons will never get any lighter.