Wisconsin

I can’t say that I’m surprised by what just happened in Wisconsin. I expected it earlier but I think the Republicans were trying to make the Democratic senators who went to Illinois look bad. When that didn’t work they gave up any pretense that this was about the budget.

Since the polls have been against them there wasn’t anything left for the Republicans to gain, so they did what they wanted to do. They passed a bill (if what they did was legal) to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees. Well, from public employees who didn’t support the Governor in the last election, anyway.

It doesn’t save the state any money. It just attacks the unions. It can’t be a budget bill because they don’t have a quorum for that. Even though the argument before was that this was a fiscal provision, now the argument is that it isn’t fiscal so they can vote without more Senators present. The Senate majority leader even said on camera today that the real reason for this was to try to keep unions from supporting Democrats. So apparently it’s OK to attack public servants as long as you can score some political points.

I’m not from Wisconsin. What I know about the people there is what I read and see on TV. They seem mostly to be reasonable people. This doesn’t look like the kind of thing that they would support so I don’t see how this helps anyone at all. Pyrrhic victory, anyone? Hey, I can dream.