At Balloon Juice, Kay has an update on the Ohio referendum to kill the union-busting law. She thinks that some of the firemen who have joined the effort probably are Republican voters, because they don’t complain about “Republicans” or “Kasich,” just “politicians.”

Too, the fireman spoke with what sounded to me like a real sense of betrayal and that’s another common theme I’m hearing. He said he never imagined that teachers, police officers and firefighters would somehow end up as “the problem” because everyone, at one time or another, has relied on a teacher, a police officer or a firefighter. He said “I didn’t know I was next”. At that point, a UAW member in the crowd shouted “I always know I’m next!” and everyone laughed.

I’d say the one thing American voters had better get through their heads is that they are expendable. The right-wing machine will turn all of us into a “problem” sooner or later. If the Right continues to control Congress, sooner or later they’ll find a way around the 13th Amendment’s ban on indentured servitude.

Elsewhere — Bobo wants the people to know that the government cannot protect them from “their” sins, meaning that government has limited power to cushion them from things like financial crises.

Over the past decades, Americans have developed an absurd view of the power of government. Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. Then they get angry and cynical when it turns out that it can’t.

Matt Yglesias says,

That something along these lines has become something like the conventional wisdom in Washington is, to me, maddening. Here’s a story about bus drivers in Clark County, Nevada getting laid off as a result of state/local budget woes. Are those soon-to-be-unemployed bus drivers really suffering for their sins? …

…Governments around the world have immense power to protect people from negative consequences. And they’re using that power. Nobody, thank god, is starving to death in the United States of America. But the government has done immensely more to protect creditors, shareholders, and managers of major banks from the negative consequences of their sins than it’s done to protect bus drivers.

Next?