In countries ruled by despots, if you want change you
demonstrate until you get it. In Wisconsin, you send a
mob to the state capitol to prevent the legislature from doing its
job.
Several thousand teachers, clueless students and an
assortment of thugs did that in Madison last week to prevent the
legislature from voting on a bill to require teachers to pay into
their retirement program and to increase the minuscule
amount they pay for their health care plan. The bill also would
restrict collective bargaining by their union to wage
issues.
The new Governor, Scott Walker, was elected last November
on pledges to do the very thing he and the legislature have been
doing the last week or so. The voters returned Republican
majorities in both houses. It’s fair to assume all have been
carrying out the wishes of the voters with this
legislation.
The Democrats, now in the minority in the state senate,
didn’t agree with that assumption. All of them took a powder last
Friday, fleeing across the state line to Illinois. Since Wisconsin
law requires at least one member of the minority party to be in
attendance to form a quorum, business was stalled. Clearly, these
Democrats believe in majority rule only when they are in the
majority.
On Thursday, more than 1,000 teachers called in sick. What
kind of message does it send for a teachers to call in sick when
she is not sick? Most people call that lying. Furthermore, is it
not fraud when they call in sick while spending the day shouting
and carrying protest signs at the state capitol and being paid sick
leave by the taxpayers?
The numbers are revealing. Wisconsin teachers average
$89,000 a year in salary and benefits.
The average U.S. private sector worker gets $61,000. The
Wisconsin proposal is to raise teachers’ contributions to their
health care plan from five percent to 12.5 percent and to
contribute half of their monthly pension plan deposit. By contract,
private sector workers with 401(k) plans, pay in 100 percent. Their
employers may (but are not required to) supplement this, usually at
the end of the year when profit and loss figures are toted
up.
In Washington, the president chimed in by saying he
thought the state’s proposed legislation amounted to “an assault on
unions.” It is, of course, none of his business, but then, once a
community organizer, always a community organizer. Saul Alinsky
would have loved the scene in Madison.
The Democratic National Committee and the National
Education Association (the umbrella teachers’ union) probably
connived in the planning of the disruption. If not, it certainly
had their tacit approval.
Meanwhile, in California, Governor Jerry Brown has
submitted a budget with some cuts, but the center piece of his plan
is to call a special election to let the voters decide if they want
to extend certain taxes scheduled to “sunset.” If vote they “no, ”
Brown has made a list of draconian program cuts that would follow.
This is a smart ploy. He must get two-thirds approval from the
legislature to put these items on the ballot. Some Republicans
threaten to vote against it. If it goes down, Brown will blame them
for (1) refusing to let the voters vote and (2) move directly to
the draconian cuts and blame the Republicans.
Meanwhile, there is not a peep out of him about reforming
the state’s overly-generous public employee pension plans. They are
unsustainable and he is the one person who gets the unions to
swallow reform. Perhaps he is waiting to see the outcome of the
special election matter before showing his hand. Ironically, it was
he in his first stint as governor in the Seventies who issued the
order to permit public employee unions to engage in collective
bargaining.
