Fnding out the hard way: democracy is not a wind up toy

©Jennifer Cannard

Only a few evenings ago, California's City of Bell voters cleared the slate of their municipality's corrupt council, who are alledged, along with City Manager Robert Rizzo, to have padded their salaries and siphoned city funds in excess of five million dollars.

And just yesterday, Wisconsin's legislature succeeded in passing a bill to strip the state's employee unions of most of their bargaining rights--defying the will of fourteen Democratic state senators who refused the upper chamber the quorum necessary to pass the original union-busting budget; as well as ignighting the opposition of tens of thousands of union members and supporters who massed in Madison over the last three weeks in protest.

State Sen. Bob Jauch, one of the fourteen senators who temporarily frustrated Gov. Scott Walker's anti-union scheme, stated aptly, "I think we have to realize that there's only so much we can do as a group to make a stand.... It's really up to the public to be engaged in carrying the torch on this issue."

So true; the turmoil of Middle Eastern countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, et. al. remind us of democracy's cost--whether citizens take to the streets or take arms to stand against abuse of power and to oppose the burdensome privilege of the elite few at the expense of the many.