'On, Wisconsin!' - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
‘On, Wisconsin!’
by

The madness in Madison has suddenly supplanted Cairo as the cable-news mob scene of choice. Yesterday, MSNBC loudmouth Ed Schultz broadcast his show live amid the clamor in the capitol, clearly hoping that the union goons are as successful in their uprising against Republican Gov. Scott Walker as the Muslim Brotherhood was against Hosni Mubarak.

The Walker-Mubarak comparison made frequently by the protesters, as well as comparisons of the Republican governor to Hitler, inspired University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse to muse: “After all those efforts to paint Tea Partiers as using violent images and rhetoric, these pictures from Madison have got to hurt.” Quin Hillyer’s observations about the Obama-led “thugocracy” illustrate the yawning chasm between the intimidation tactics of the Left and all the prattling about “civility” liberals dished out last month.

The still-greater chasm is the economic gap between the striking government employees and the taxpayers who pay their salaries. Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard points out that the average teacher in Wisconsin receives $77,857 in total compensation, when the value of their generous benefit package is added to their salaries. Given that the median household income in Wisconsin is just above $50,000 (and the typical household has more than one wage-earner), this means that the striking teachers are earning substantially more than the people whose taxes pay their salaries. Furthermore, the basic bone of contention between them and Gov. Walker is his plan to make them contribute a larger share toward their pension and health benefits.

Michelle Malkin has more eye-opening facts about the economic realities of the Wisconsin strike. It is obvious that if voters and taxpayers pay attention to the facts, Walker wins and the srikers lose, as I said this morning:

The unemployed, the under-employed and regular folks trying to pay their bills aren’t likely to have a lot of love for people who (a) have jobs, (b) work at taxapayer expense, (c) get paid more money than the average taxpayer, and (d) go on strike because they don’t want to pay a dime toward their own generous benefits.

Gov. Walker is being compared to Calvin Coolidge, and that’s an enormous compliment. President Obama and Democrats have placed themselves squarely on the wrong side of the issue.

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