See larger cartoon below

When I hear of politicians working for more money to the rich by taking services away from the needy and working class I wonder how long it will be before people wake up and rebel. The war machine that benefits the rich continues to get more money while the poor and middle class get poorer. The Wall Street businesses that were the cause of the recent depression have all recovered and making more money than ever while the rest of us continue to suffer. We are always told to fear persons wanting a redistribution of wealth while the same persons who tell us to fear them are redistributing the wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.

The cartoon on the side and below speaks to one aspect of this move—giving voucher school money that was only given to families in need to the rich. It was called the choice program since it gave poor families a choice of where to send their children to schools. Now the rich who already have a choice will get subsidized if this new budget measured gets past in Wisconsin.

Every day in Wisconsin we hear about a new measure in government budgets that will distribute more money to rich and hurt the poor and working class.

In Wisconsin we came very close to a State wide strike until the politicians who said they are on our side said no and asked us to get out the vote.

As Howard Zinn, Catholic Worker’s and others including our founding fathers pointed out real change only comes from nonviolent civil disobedience. Howard Zinn said “Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

In Jesus’ time, the thinking was there are only limited resources and wealth. So the rich were considered selfish, greedy and despised. Jesus talked how hard it was for the rich to get to kingdom of God and urged rich to give money and resources to the poor and needy. Now we believe that there are unlimited resources and those who have great wealth are held up as American heroes who made it.

But perhaps our wealth and resources are limited and helping the rich get richer is not such a cool idea.

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