Thursday Thoughts

She did it. You did it. We did it!

It is official: There will be a Wisconsin recount. The ballots cast in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race will be counted in every county, from Racine to Eau Claire to Milwaukee, and yes, Waukesha. The undervotes will be analyzed. The wrongly invalidated ballots will be validated. The surprise announcement of 14,000 additional Waukesha votes will be investigated. The credit goes to courageous Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, who today filed a recount request with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board. The credit also goes to the literally thousands of Wisconsinites and other Americans who in just the past 24 hours stepped up to insist that every vote be counted by hand.

this was from Wisconsin Wave

So, the game is afoot! Cool, I'm in! This happened in large part because of efforts by grassroots organizations, like Wisconsin Wave, who just yesterday called for another rally at the capitol to demand a recount. Yes! So many groups are keeping the pressure up and making sure We The People know what is happening. Thank goodness for them!

While this has all been happening, I have also been doing some reading on CEO pay - you know, the Koch brand of salary/bonus packages because isn't that what we've been talking about? Where the money comes from and where it goes and who has a lot more and what it buys out there? Verrrry interesting and revealing! Take a look.

from Executive Paywatch
2010 Average CEO Pay at S&P 500 Companies

Salary $1,093,989
Bonus $251,413
Stock Awards $3,833,052
Option Awards
$2,384,871
Nonequity Incentive Plan Compensation
$2,397,152
Pension and Deferred Compensation Earnings
$1,182,057
All Other Compensation
$215,911
TOTAL
$11,358,445

When did your pay go up last? As Working America says "How many firefighters, nurses, teachers or office workers does it take to equal the pay of one CEO today?"

The conversations seem to hover around public workers and some perceptions by repubs that public workers are greedy and lazy but those follow-the-leader conversations neglect the outrageous sums of money that get showered on corporate honchos, Wall Street robber barons and banking moguls. Why is that? Sometimes I think it has everything to do with class-type perception. We've all learned it's the Way of Things never to attack or question the men at the top. After all, in the workplace you could get fired for that! Bad things can and do happen to common people when they raise their heads, speak out and point research at the privileged, pull away the curtain and declare that, indeed, the princes of power are naked. When The People stand for their rights and say they refuse to be treated as wage slaves beholding to the whims, decisions, vagaries of the over-wealthy, well, then anything can happen. Hopefully a recount will happen!

We are at an edge. Of what is unclear but it is an edge that will produce immense growth for the community of humans who call Earth home. What The Common People will do with our voices and what we will do with our quest for freedom is, as yet, unknown. We do know and can see that the sound is rising from every corner of the human family. Will we retreat from the streets? Will we stay out in them, encouraging our brothers and sisters to join us? Will we tell the corporate powers and the people who suck dry the Commons that we no longer wish them to determine our lives for us? Will we tell them to eat cake?

I remind myself that, as we make these momentous decisions, there are other lives at stake. Others besides human. We are all connected to the whole and those whose voices we do not recognize and whose language we cannot speak, are still here and still count and still have meaning and still must be consulted in the light of massive change. It's good to sit by the river and ask what it needs for surely it doesn't need more power plants clogging its life blood with smoke and waste. Surely the ocean doesn't need more toxic fallout from more nuclear power plant meltdowns. Surely the hawks that fly over my house and the songbirds nesting in the thicket do not need more pesticides to alter their DNA. And surely the shore birds and water life in the Gulf do not need more suffocating oil coagulating their breeding grounds and spoiling the beauty of their home.

We must make connections with our brains and hearts - corporations like those funded by people like the Kochs do not care a rip about pelicans and robins and hawks. They don't care about rivers or toxic waste unless We The People shout loud enough for them to hear above the din in the money house. Even then it's damn tough to get through all that privilege and all that wealth. In Wisconsin, if things do not change and the Koch Boys are allowed to proceed with their draconian plans, our power plants, already toxic polluters, will be bought off by private money and all oversight will disappear for all purposes that matter to us and our non-human relatives.

We truly must listen to our hearts, gather our courage and sound off. We are at an edge. It is, as it always is, up to us to determine what kind of growth will come of that. Balance and return to life or chaos.

Say a prayer for JoAnn Kloppenburg and The Great Recount!

Power To All The People

p.s. I know, I can't pass up the p.s's! But you'll love this from The Center for Media & Democracy. Be sure you read down to the point about hippies and hippie-wannabes.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/10607

and speaking of CEOs, check this out:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/10580