In Wisconsin, Apparently Public Workers Are Threatening Enough To Call Out The Guard

Governor Scott Walker rode the GOP wave in 2010 to the Wisconsin Governor's mansion. Now that he's there, he's attacking public-sector unions, scapegoating them for the state's budget problems- rather than admitting that tax revenues took an enormous hit during the recession. He's now seeking legislation to take away most of their rights to collective bargaining, and threatening to call in the National Guard if they attempt to strike, or commit any other acts to cause unrest. Yes, he's going to send in the military to take on state workers if they do something we've honored as a right for the entire modern history of the world.

This is just the latest act by a Republican Governor to turn the public against union labor, and to treat them as a menace to our society, but it's the most extreme one too. "Budget Warriors" like Walker, Chris Christie, and others around the nation are attempting to tell the public that their state budget woes are the result of people making $50,000 a year as a teacher, cop, fire fighter, sanitation worker, or any other government job. They point at the state employee, at 15-20 years in, making $100,000, and they say, "that's the problem." They don't point at the 40% drop in the market in 2008, causing huge drops in property tax revenues and income tax revenues alike, or the millionaires paying the same rate as a waitress at the local diner, or the companies they've given billions in loopholes to, or the sweet-heart deals they've handed out to exclude some industries from taxation. None of that is the problem to them. It's the average guy who has a contract that guarantees him regular raises, health care benefits, vacation time, sick time, and a retirement plan. That average guy needs to accept the garbage deal that the private sector does, or worse, since Christie and Walker think that public sector workers are bottom of the barrel. These awful people who need the National Guard to set them straight also need to accept the norm of the private sector: pay cuts, no benefits or reduced ones, less and less vacation time, a crappy or non-existent retirement plan, and longer hours, but less overtime pay. The sad thing is, unlike in much of the world, many Americans agree with these backward thinking Governors. They think that since their bosses are sticking the screws in them and their pay-checks all the time, these people teaching their kids, policing their streets, and picking up their garbage need to accept the same awful deal. They don't contemplate that they deserve better too, even as workers in the rest of the industrialized world demand better. This is exactly the kind of backward thinking that leads us into the recession we're in today.