The one piece on what's happening in WI you must read

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022406520_pf.html

*Rubicon: A river in Wisconsin*
>
>  By Charles Krauthammer
> Friday, February 25, 2011;
>
>  The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio,
> Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a
> fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled,
> gridlocked, allegedly broken politics<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021803413.html>have yielded singular clarity.
>
> At the federal level, President Obama's budget<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021705270.html>makes clear that Democrats are determined to do nothing about the debt
> crisis, while House Republicans have announced that beyond their proposed
> cuts in discretionary spending, their April budget will actually propose
> real entitlement reform. Simultaneously, in Wisconsin and other states,
> Republican governors are taking on unsustainable, fiscally ruinous pension
> and health-care obligations, while Democrats are full-throated in support of
> the public-employee unions crying, "Hell, no."
>
> A choice, not an echo: Democrats desperately defending the status quo;
> Republicans charging the barricades.
>
> Wisconsin is the epicenter. It began with economic issues. When Gov. Scott
> Walker proposed that state workers contribute more to their pension and
> health-care benefits, he started a revolution. Teachers called in sick.
> Schools closed. Demonstrators massed at the capitol. Democratic senators
> fled the state to paralyze the Legislature.
>
> Unfortunately for them, that telegenic faux-Cairo scene drew national
> attention to the dispute - and to the sweetheart deals the public-sector
> unions had negotiated for themselves for years. They were contributing a
> fifth of a penny on a dollar of wages to their pensions and one-fourth what
> private-sector workers pay for health insurance.
>
> The unions quickly understood that the more than 85 percent of Wisconsin
> not part of this privileged special-interest group would not take kindly to
> "public servants" resisting adjustments that still leave them paying less
> for benefits than private-sector workers. They immediately capitulated and
> claimed they were only protesting the other part of the bill, the part about
> collective-bargaining rights.
>
> Indeed. Walker understands that a one-time giveback means little. The
> state's financial straits - a $3.6 billion budget shortfall<http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/115501969.html>over the next two years - did not come out of nowhere. They came largely
> from a half-century-long power imbalance between the unions and the
> politicians with whom they collectively bargain.
>
> In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with
> the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public
> sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at
> stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands,
> the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largess in the next
> election. It's the perfect cozy setup.
>
> To redress these perverse incentives that benefit both negotiating parties
> at the expense of the taxpayer, Walker's bill<http://legis.wisconsin.gov/JR1SB-11.pdf>would restrict future government-union negotiations to wages only. Excluded
> from negotiations would be benefits, the more easily hidden sweeteners that
> come due long after the politicians who negotiated them are gone. The bill
> would also require that unions be recertified every year and that dues be
> voluntary.
>
> Recognizing this threat to union power, the Democratic Party is pouring
> money and fury into the fight. Fewer than 7 percent of private-sector
> workers are unionized <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm>.
> The Democrats' strength lies in government workers, who now constitute a
> majority of union members and provide massive support to the party. For
> them, Wisconsin represents a dangerous contagion.
>
> Hence the import of the current moment - its blinding clarity. Here stand
> the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang
> on to the gains of their glory years - from unsustainable federal
> entitlements for the elderly enacted when life expectancy was 62<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_21.pdf>to the massive promissory notes issued to government unions when state
> coffers were full and no one was looking.
>
> Obama's Democrats have become the party of no. Real cuts to the federal
> budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and
> fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state
> governments? Hell, no.
>
> We have heard everyone - from Obama's own debt commission<http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/news/moment-truth-report-national-commission-fiscal-responsibility-and-reform>to the chairman
> of the Joint Chiefs of Staff<http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/105301-mullen-reiterates-threat-excessive-debt-poses-to-nation>- call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched
> Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been:
> When will the country finally rouse itself?
>
> Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin -
> Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at
> the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the
> debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting
> the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?
>


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

*“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have
inside your head.”
Attributed to Teresa Nielsen Hayden*

-- 
dadl-ot mailing list
http://mail.thehood.us/mailman/listinfo/dadl-ot_thehood.us
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.music.dadl.ot