In my own version of Roger Rangers Standing Order # 4, Our General Order # 1 is "Never Lie to the Public, Ya all can Lie all ya want to the Corporations and Government Men because they lie to us all the time, but never lie to a civilian, because there is a citizenry out there who depends on us for accurate information"!
Close to a thousand marchers from Wisconsin and Detroit Occupy and Labor movements marched today in protest to the General Electric Corporation, the largest manufacturing firm in the United States, and which has become a national symbol for tax avoidance. Many of the protesters were also part owners. Some had purchased a single share. This allowed them to send a message just the Shareholders Meeting started. While that group delivered their message, a large crowd assembled in the nearby Hart Plaza. After assembling, they marched along the riverfront along the back of the and then around to the front of the Marriot briefly closing East Jefferson Avenue.
The march and overall political action had been in the works for some time. Hundreds of participants traveled from Wisconsin to participate, and took part in much of the planning and organization. Individuals from Occupy Wall Street movements throughout Wisconsin took part, primarily under the leadership of Wisconsin Jobs Now. The video that accompanies this report mostly covers the first day of one busload of Wisconsin activists on the trip to Detroit to participate in the Action. Look to a more detailed video report Friday.
Should single parents have the right to raise their children without government interference? Some think not, and you may be surprised as to who would would like to see government employees (remember, you pay their salaries) come into your homes, take your children, and, in the long run, turn them over to a corporation that has a no-bid government contract to raise and educate them.
As a result of this a group of Wisconsin citizens gathered Sunday in Manitowoc, WI at the local Holiday Inn to protest a proposed bill that would be the first step in this process. Senate Bill 507, would classify single parenthood a contributing factor to child abuse, if passed into law. SB507 would require the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to emphasize that non-marital parenthood is a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. The bill is being sponsored by State senator Glenn Grothman, an admitted opponent of the social welfare establishment that he believes encourages women to have children out of wedlock, but as I have begun to explain, there are others who will be served by this bill, and they are firmly members of the 1%. One would think that conservatives who speak of less government interference in the lives of the American people would be firmly against this. But in this era of the Hidden Agenda and the privatization of government services, this could be a huge money maker for private interests, as well as those who who fund the pro-corporate agenda of the GOP. Remember, corporations, IE money, is free speech.
And that could amount to a lot of free speech. Not only would this be a spectacular conservative bonus for those who serve the corporate agenda, it would also place the education (creation, not evolution … no such thing as global warming … etc.) of these children in the hands of those who wish to educate not with science and/or fact, but with ideology and history re-written to their liking. Texas is one state that has been questioned as to the accuracy of the the history and science (or, non-science) they teach.
Here in Wisconsin, Single parents make up a third of Wisconsin parents, the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports. According to a 2009 report from the US Census Bureau, there are approximately 13.7 million single parents across the U.S., with single mothers outpacing single fathers five to one. That does indeed amount in the long run to a huge amount of free speech, to be made at the expense of the tax payer and once again only for the benefit of the corporation. It is a standard GOP practice of recent to create a situation where only the heroic corporation that has been quietly waiting in the background to suddenly come to the rescue and save the day. Remember the Iraq War. A war to remove WMD that they knew didn't exist so the likes of Halliburton, Blackwater, and others could see a big pay day. They were upset we had a war in Afghanistan and they couldn't make any money off of it because a bunch of hippie warriors (the only ones ready) took out the Taliban government in a few months on horse back with the help of the USAF. But that is a different story.
In this case, thousands upon thousands of children that have been removed from their homes due to single parenthood child abuse and neglect. A system of referral that will not be able to handle the sudden massive increase in “clients” will surely result in the state quickly having to find a way to deal with this sudden increase of “clients”. Enter the Corporation and the emergency no-bid contract.
It is unlikely that State senator Glenn Grothman would be forthcoming on this aspect of the issue. But by looking at the distant as well as the recent past, with corporations running prisons filled with those who broke the laws that were often written by and for the sole purpose of protecting the profit margins and interests of the corporations (IE, the Marijuana Laws), it is not hard to see what is waiting just over the horizon.
