The Egyptians lived for decades under the rule of an authoritarian socialist. Their grievances? No food, no jobs, a corrupt police state, and almost no say in their own governance. While their revolution had its own problems, their rebellion was a response to a true threat to their well-being. Wisconsin too had been under the thumb of a dangerous regime for years: that of high-spending politicians. Years of taking out credit to pay for handouts, special projects and entitlements have left Wisconsinites owing over $43 billion in combined state and local government debt.
The true response to the tyranny in the Wisconsin statehouse came on November 2nd of last year, when voters elected overwhelming Republican majorities to both branches of the state legislature, and put a fiscal conservative, Scott Walker, into the governor’s mansion.
Addressing the concerns of the citizens and the need to prevent the impending bankruptcy of a U.S. state, Walker proposed the first of many budget and spending cuts necessary to get his state’s finances under control. Democrats across the country have since exploded.
Their grievances? Walker has proposed a measure to limit public-employee unions from asking for more benefits, and require public school teachers to pay a bit into their own retirement funds. For this, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Madison, smugly nodding into the cameras as they call Walker: Mubarak, corporate shill, enemy of democracy, stinky cheese boy, classist, fascist, imperial, plutocrat, anti-union, anti-education, uneducated, un-American, anti-labor, evil, crazy, unintelligent, the second coming of Hitler, and every obscenity under the sun.
Now, what exactly does this evil measure propose? A limit to collective bargaining means a stop to public employees demanding higher salaries (They will still be allowed to negotiate for higher wages), more benefits, and more perks (from taxpayer money). Placing limits on collective bargaining is basically a way for the state government to control what benefits it is willing to give its workers the same way the federal government does. Federal workers cannot negotiate for better benefits or wages. It has less to do with the rights of unions to organize than the fact that the government has caved to their bully tactics time and time again. This is why the average Wisconsin teacher’s total compensation is over $80,000 according to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, while the average household income in the state is only $50,500. It is not as if thousands and thousands of public employees are being fired – which is what will happen if state debt continues to grow uncontrolled – they are being asked to pay for 12% of their own health care premiums (half of the national average rate), and about 6% of their income towards funding their own retirements, which are now entirely funded by the government.
So, a six percent pay cut? Teachers would still be walking away compensated to the tune of about one-and-a-half times Wisconsin’s average salary.
As for the opposition to this bill, there has never been a more immature response to a legitimate political action. There has been the aforementioned slander against Governor Walker, not to mention the bevy of childish Koch-related jokes, the subjects of which seem to have recently become the embodiment of the liberals’ shadowy corporate demons. Just weeks after the shootings in Arizona were blamed on a lack of “civility” in the nation’s (read: Republican’s) political rhetoric, there have been made some of the most violent statements and calls for atrocities, like the shameful U.S. Congressman Michael Capuano (D) of Massachusetts telling union supporters in the street to, “get a little bloody when necessary,” and multiple documented physical attacks by union heavies on the tea party supporters. Teachers have taken sick days to attend union rallies, shutting down schools and depriving the children they claim to represent of the education they claim to be providing them. In perhaps the most unethical act yet there have been doctors forging medical notes to cover for these teachers, who if they worked in private industry would undoubtedly have been fired for their disgusting abuse of privilege.
Yet they are all unrepentant.
The political response? Rather than participate in government as they were elected to do, the Democratic state senators have fled, making it impossible for the senate to vote on the bill. The voters of Wisconsin elected a Republican government, and with it, the Republican agenda of smaller government, a balanced budget, and fewer taxes. The Democrats, though, are not even trying to play politics; they are making a mockery of the democratic process. And yet the protesters continue to compare their “struggle” to the revolutions occurring in the Middle East, where the citizens of Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt, are being killed for the mere chance to even have something like a representative democracy. The Wisconsin protesters are fighting to keep ours from functioning.
There should be outrage. There should be coverage and condemnation of these actions and of this behavior on every news channel. But there is not. Why? Because the country is now at war, and there are two sides; one fighting for fiscal responsibility, the other for entitlement. This is a war we must win. And it has just begun.
