Politics as budget policy

If you're following the situation in Wisconsin right now you're probably feeling a surge of emotion. Most likely you feel a surge of sympathy for the state workers who are unfairly being targeted as the source of all the state's budget woes.

Or you are excited by the crusading Governor who's going to reign in those unions and right the ship!

Well, hang on. Let me illustrate for you how this is nothing but a power grab and will do a little, but not much to help fix their budget.

First, this is nothing more than a chance to essentially destroy the unions in Wisconsin that primarily vote Democrat. By stripping unions of the power to collectively bargain on anything but wages, taking away their right to collect dues, and forcing them to apply for recertification every year they are pretty much saying "We want you to go away."

Interestingly enough, the police, firefighter and state trooper unions aren't going to be effected under this law. Those unions tend to vote Republican in higher numbers. Oddly though, those are the unions that also wrack up the most money in overtime as teachers and most state employees (outside of DOT employees and a few others) generally do no get paid any overtime at all no matter how many hours they work.

Second, this smacks in the face the Republican ideal of "people's rights to make decisions." There is no effort being made to go to the unions and work with them and letting the union's members speak. Its an all out assault on them, stripping away what was agreed too, rightly or wrongly, without actually attempting to work out the issue.

Remember back when everyone was upset the AIG bankers were still getting their multi-million dollar bonuses as AIG was bailed out. But Obama said that they couldn't break the contracts? Well, apparently Wisconsin has no such qualms. And this isn't about multi-million dollar bankers. This is about average everyday people. People who are being unfairly targeted by those jealous that the economic situation hasn't struck them as hard.

Are certain state contracts stupid? Yup. 30 years and then you can instantly start collecting your pension doesn't work. (Note, that's not teachers, who work as hard if not harder than pretty much anyone outside of law enforcement. They have to work between 35-36 years to get their full pension.) However, making radical attacks on these union contracts (and actually the unions themselves) with no attempt to negotiate is 100% political, because let's get to the numbers.

The Republicans claim that by doing this they will be saving the state 300 million over the next two years. Ok, that's nice, but the financial concessions are being accepted this goes way beyond that.

Let me put this out here: Wisconsin, Illinois, many states, and our federal gov't, are in ugly financial condition. The states even more so as they have fewer options on what to do about things.

The "budget cutting" in Wisconsin is every bit as much a political ploy as the Texas redistricting of 2003. However now, it directly effects people's lives, every day working folk, simply because a legislature wasn't able to control itself in the past.

Now, I'm not blindly pro-union. They too often are ancient behemoths, out of touch with reality. They need to reform themselves to the new way of the world. But we the worker NEED them. We need them as almost as badly as we did in the 30s. This blatant political assault on public unions is a BAD THING and sadly just another case of the two-party system utterly failing its constituency.

*Edit:Fixed a numbers mistake