The biggest issue I have with the conflict between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the teacher’s union is a bewilderment anyone in the public sector should have a union in the first place. Their salaries are paid for by taxpayers. Therefore, taxpayers are paying for these unions to extort more money from themselves. Talk about self-defeating. Why the heck would any private, taxpaying citizen support these protests? Are Wisconsin taxpayers so satisfied with the public school education their kids are getting, they want to fork over as much money as can possibly be squeezed out of them by teachers? One would think not.
I also marvel at the power these public sector unions have over the Democratic party. There is no counterpart for the republicans. As much as detractors would like to believe the GOP is under the control of the religious right, the NRA, Wall Street, defense contractors, or whatever other usual suspect paranoid progressives care to name, the fact is republicans have never and will never skip out en masses from a legislative session to avoid crossing any of thiet alleged puppet masters, even as a last resort. For Democrats, when it comes to public sector unions, running away is their first course of action.
Citizens take note--there is a a double whammy being suffered here. Public sector unions are using money we give them to force more money out of us in spite of the damage it may cause to other public services without any guarantee of any increase in quality of their provided service to justify the increased spending. Duly elected Democrats, fearful of their power to extort this money without any increased results, ignore the will of the people who elected them in order to protect the public unions’ continued racket.
The bottom line is that Wisconsinites are paying public unions more and more to get less and less other than screwed over at the same time they are paying Democrat legislators to run off and not do their jobs. Wisconsin is only the place where this circumstance is currently in the news. It is happening everywhere. A light just has not been shined on every case yet.
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Ideally, this will serve as a wake up call to the rest of America.
I think Walker and Wisconsin is getting the bulk of the coverage because of the hamfisted way Walker went about trying to bust up the unions collective bargaining. Lying that he was just interested in controlling the budget, he got caught in that disception. Then, that call with the fake "Koch" guy - revealed another level of pure stupidity, actually hinting about infiltrating the protestors. Protecting the unions which supported his election (police & fire), just made it look even more partisan.
Look, unions are going to have to adapt in the 21st century, but Walker's approach came out of nowhere for a lot of people. (He didn't exactly run on this plan a few short months ago while running for office). And, let's face it, Walker is a political neophyte and has made some pretty stupid errors in the way he is trying to go about this.
That is why Walker and Wisconsin get the coverage... because this is the place where the unions and Democrats can actually win over public opinion the easiest, because of the mistakes of the Republicans and Walker in particular. Even other Republican governors are being forced to back away from Walker's position, even criticizing him.
I should add that some initial polling seems to bear out what I am saying. The majority of Wisconsin voters are against Walker's bid to remove collective bargaining.
Walker failed to properly "sell" his program, and forcing it down people's throats is exactly the sort of thing that many complained about in regards to the healthcare reform bill just a couple of years ago. It is not surprising that people are rebelling against the same sort of action being taken in Wisconsin.
I guess you could argue that Walker is ignoring what the people want, because he thinks he knows whats best. Well, the same could be said for all of the Democrats who claimed to know better when they passed healthcare.
It is not at all surprising that his actions are hurting Walker politically.
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