Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Wisconsin governor Walker has used the nuclear option. The stalemate is broken as the Republicans passed the bill without the fiscal issues, thus making a 20 person quorum unnecessary. So all along it was not so much about balancing the budget today, but more about busting the union. They should be man enough to admit that all along. As I have said before, I am for busting the public unions. I don't think that it is fair to the taxpayers who are paying the public employees to have unions back politicians who give them what they want. No less of a Democratic authority than FDR felt this was wrong! To be fair, no less of a Republican authority than Eisenhower, warned us about the military-industrial complex! Well, I digress. As I have said before, I don't begrudge a cop or a teacher for making $50,000 a year. What I think gets regular taxpayers mad is the crazy benefits unions got from politicians. For example, a police chief in a nearby town retired this year in his 50's. He got a pension of $200,000 a year. He then got a job as an assistant chief at the county sheriffs, and is being paid over $200,000 for that job. So he is making $400,000 a year! It is this kind of absurdity that gets people mad. Ironically, a Republican district attorney of L.A. lost the state attorney general election when he said he deserves to be able to double dip if he is elected to be attorney general and get the D.A. pension at the same time.

So what happens now? There will be lawsuits, of course. There are going to be attempts to recall lawmakers from both sides. I don't know what the majority of people in Wisconsin think but I have a feeling that even if the majority believe that Walker was right in the first place, I don't think they like him to use the nuclear option without any negotiation. Somebody on a talk show think that this is a plan for Republicans to defeat Obama in Wisconsin next year. I think that is far-fetched. The Republicans won big last year there because of the frustration over the economy. I think people of Wisconsin will have regrets about voting out people like Russ Feingold who was one of the best biparisan politician in the country. Even though the unions are defeated now, I think they will be energized for the 2012 campaign because they know that another defeat will mean the end of the road for them. The Democrats can campaign that the Republicans made the middle class the scapegoat for the economy and that the people who caused the financial crisis, the rich Wall Street folks, not only that none of them are in jail but most are making more money than before. So it will be interesting to see how that shakes out.