On Wisconsin

Who'd ever have thought that the land of Bucky the Badger might be the spark of the next restorative phase of American history.

Of course everyone knows that Wisconsin state public employees, especially teachers, are engaged in vigorous protest in Madison and Milwaukee.  The protesters have obtain leave from work by lying about illness.  Duplicitous and weak school districts are cancelling school because so many teachers have used illness as an excuse.  All of the elements of a real battle for fundamental control of the political direction of the country exist in Bucky land.

The issue is stark.  The Republican majority want to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees and require such employees to contribute roughly 5.8% of their income to fund their own pensions, rather than we, the taxpayers, further fund the pensions.  Since public employee pensions are of tottering, if any, solvency right across the country this issue is going to arise in almost every state, including Iowa in the foreseeable future.  As a result, people all across the nation have a stake in the outcome.

The issue and events create a bright line distinction between the ideological premises of the two parties and the interests of their respective constituencies. 

Democrats and their protesting public labor alter egos insist they are protecting their "right" to collectively bargain.  Collective bargaining  for anyone, much less an employee of the general public and not a private entity, is not a right founded in the Constitution but a privilege that was created by legislation  and common law and can be modified or extinguished in the same manner.

The conduct of the labor protesters in Wisconsin also demonstrate how truly "special" are the interests of Wisconsin public labor (and their brothers and sisters in every state).  Wisconsin has a large budget deficit, a problem that adversely affects everyone in the state.  The public employee pension system is running upside down, a problem that only adversely affects the ultimate  beneficiaries, the public employees and their dependent spouses, who constitute a very small percentage of the population.  The striking and protesting by the liberal progressives in Wisconsin abundantly demonstrates that liberal progressive exaltation of social justice and equity over self interest doesn't mean the sacrifice of the liberal progressive self interest.

The protesting labor activists and their Democrat supporters in Madison, Washington and the national media are not only willing to sacrifice the greater public good of state solvency for their narrow personal interest, they are choosing a vehicle of protest that is designed to hurt the very public whose sympathy they hope to evoke.   For example, every public school that closed because of the political flu experienced en masse by its faculty caused hundreds of parents to miss work, and probably loose pay, to suddenly care for children whom were reasonably expected to be in school.   

Yes, that is as selfish as it sounds; you the taxpayer for whom the public employee works is expected to not only pay for the absurd employment and compensation policies imposed by organized labor on the public through your tax dollars, but to take even more out of your pocket so as to allow the public labor to protect their personal stake in your money and your future at your even further expense (and frankly, on my time as well, Mr. Hand).  Hopefully every single mom in Milwaukee and Madison who has lost two or three days and counting of badly needed income while staying home with their children when they should have been in school will remember this painful lesson in hypocrisy.

But the pure selfishness even further demonstrates the liberal's commitment to their self interest truly knows no bounds.  Why do schools have attendance policies?  Why are government social workers so adamant that the wards whose lives they control keep all appointments?  The benefits of structure and learning are sufficiently important for you to provide two thirds of your state tax dollars to education alone but not sufficiently important for the liberal progressive union activist to even delay their protests to a weekend day on which the public would have no expectation that the protesting workers would perform their official duties for the public, as they are currently contractually obligated to do.  Again rules for you the taxpayer but special rules for the special people who apply the rules you must follow and fund.

The Democrat legislators further demonstrate the complete disrespect liberal progressives have for the democratic process itself.  After eight years of liberal progressives at the highest level rejecting the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, and two years of Democrats and their media allies triumphantly postulating that "elections have consequences" the Democrat legislators fled Wisconsin so as to further prevent operation of the government. 

Finally, the public on both sides are angry.  Decades of the agonizing anger of the left and its shrieking anti-war, anti-Nixon, anti-Reagan, anti-Gingrich, anti-Bush, anti-Palin, anti-global warming, anti-G20 protests and hate speech has grown so offensive, so personal, so dangerous to the general welfare and so enraging to normal Americans that normal Americans, who belong to no special interest, are mobilizing in not just the Tea Party movement generally but are now going to Wisconsin to counter demonstrate in support of the public and the Republican solvency plan.

What will happen when Richard Trumpka (AFL-CIO) and Andy Stern (SEIU) send in the goons.  Images of Egyptian style riots.  The liberal media will spin the lie that conservatives have started violence.  Conservatives will be further angered (no one has yet claimed that reward for producing video or even audio of any Democrat Congressmen being racially slurred at a Tea Party rally) by the monstrosity of the lie and continuous stream of personal invective, hate and blame by which liberals, at their highest levels of leadership in politics and the media,  slur any who disagree on almost any topic, much less one as existential as collective bargaining for public employees.

The 21st Century version of Bloody Kansas?