"Unions aren't to blame for Wisconsin's budget" - nails it

Unions aren't to blame for Wisconsin's budget
By Ezra Klein

Let's be clear: Whatever fiscal problems Wisconsin is -- or is not -- facing at the moment, they're not caused by labor unions. That's also true for New Jersey, for Ohio and for the other states. There was no sharp rise in collective bargaining in 2006 and 2007, no major reforms of the country's labor laws, no dramatic change in how unions organize. And yet, state budgets collapsed. Revenues plummeted. Taxes had to go up, and spending had to go down, all across the country.

Blame the banks. Blame global capital flows. Blame lax regulation of Wall Street. Blame home buyers, or home sellers. But don't blame the unions. Not for this recession.

(snip)

Public employees aren't being asked to make a one-time payment into the state's coffers. Rather, Walker is proposing to sharply curtail their right to bargain collectively. A cyclical downturn that isn't their fault, plus an unexpected reversal in Wisconsin's budget picture that wasn't their doing, is being used to permanently end their ability to sit across the table from their employer and negotiate what their health insurance should look like.

That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste: You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective. In this case, permanently weakening public-employee unions, a group much-loathed by Republicans in general and by the Republican legislators who have to battle them in elections in particular.

The rest: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/unions_arent_to_blame_for_wisc.html?hpid=topnews

Well worth the full read.

:kick:

Now can we get the MSM (Corporate TV) to report as honestly?

by all who would like to know what is exactly going on.




:toast: :toast: :toast::kick: :kick::toast::toast::toast:

-edit-

Please, please Ezra, for love of country and for the sake of struggling middle class Americans everywhere, please make these points on "Morning Joe." He uses his show as a propaganda platform for all the predictable GOP talking points, completely ignores the whole collective bargaining grab or the reason for the state budget deficit, and you and Barnicle let him do it for two hours before Gene Robinson comes on air, Joe, I guess, goes off-set to take a leak, and finally some truth is spoken. I'm praying for you that you will find the courage and opportunities to share truth with a wider audience when you're on teevee. Thanks for your great reporting and your service as a journalist to our country.

Posted by: prairiepopulist1 | February 18, 2011 10:09 AM |

-edit-


Thanks for posting. Now pass this along to Joe, Mika, Mike and the other GOP mouthpieces.