So, Scott Walker Supporters, What's For Lunch Today?

I have just the thing.  Come on, gentle reader, don't you know what is best in life?  Watching the unhinged Walker-haters freak out and wail and spit with rage is pure comedy gold.  Anyway, do also check out the intrepid Professor Althouse, who live-blogged the recall election that saw the clear vindication of Governor Walker.  Note too that Wisconsin independents favored him over his opponent, and this mattered greatly since everyone else voted heavily on party lines.  Are we looking at a portent of November?

Nerd News: University of Wisconsin Professor In Trouble for His "Firefly" Posters

You have got to be kidding me.  More here.  The "dirtbag" and "behaving badly" tags refer not to the professor, but to his persecutors.

Public Service Announcement: Reverse Discrimination Is Still Discrimination

I'm looking at you, University of Wisconsin!  And yet ... is anyone really surprised who knows anything about higher ed today?

Government Workers Vs. Taxpayers, Says the ... Washington Post?!

Hmmmm.

Public Sector Unions, Absconding Politicians, and the Flight From Reality

Read this.  So it's not only a gross abdication of responsibility, Brave Sir Robin?  Pathetic.

Quote of the Day: "a gross abdication of responsibility"

Read this commentary on Wisconsin's runaway politicians.  Anyone else thinking of Brave Sir Robin?

A Liberal Cartoonist on the Wisconsin Protests

The protests have turned him off, and he's got the personal integrity to say so.  The whole mess about the public sector unions shouldn't be about Left and Right, liberal and conservative.  I quote from his commentary:

This debate over Gov. Scott Walker's budget bill has been difficult for me. I have progressive values. I believe in gay marriage, I believe in mass transit, I believe in global climate change, I believe in abortion rights, I believe in urban planning and I believe in a single payer health care system. But on the issue of public employee compensation and the role that their unions play in our government, I find myself siding with conservatives. 

I don't have a problem with unions in the private sector. Private sector workers should have a chance to collectively bargain for a greater share of the profits they generate. While public sector workers perform valuable services that make society livable, they don't generate profits for the state government. When public sector unions negotiate, the entity on the other side of the collective bargaining table isn't some greedy corporation, it's us, the taxpayers. 

I believe that public employees should be well compensated for the valuable work they do. In fact, exceptional public employees should be exceptionally compensated (something that most unions have fought against in favor of pay based on seniority). But like the rest of us in this economy public employees need to make sacrifices.

Now here is his fabulous cartoon.  See also this.

Get Schooled: One Teacher's Perspective on the Wisconsin Protests

Read this.  Interesting.  Remember, "teachers' unions" (and their union bosses) are not the same thing as "teachers" or "education."  To oppose the first thing is not the same thing as the opposing the latter two.

Quote of the Day: Public Sector Unions vs. Taxpayers

Take a look:

In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful. But there's no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions' target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer. 

At bottom, this is the unions versus the people. 

For much of the Left, though, this about protecting the power of labor. Again, this ignores the fundamental difference between public-sector unions and private-sector unions. Even Franklin Roosevelt said, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." 

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, campaign contributions by government-sector unions, collected through mandatory dues, help elect the public officials who are then supposed to negotiate with them: "The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table."

Read the whole thing.  Note how it makes the important distinction between private sector unions and public sector ones.  It's a distinction all too often lost in the current debate in Madison.

Quote of the Day: FDR on Public Sector Unions

Hmmmmmm:

Roosevelt's reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation's workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt. 

But only for the private sector. Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions. 

"The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

Nerd Analysis: 2 Law Professors on Wisconsin and Public Sector Unions

I had previously linked to a prof's take on the Wisconsin showdown here.  Two other professors (both in law) weigh in here and here.  The second one is short enough to quote:

Quote of the Day: The Wisconsin Budget Protests, Part 2

A professor considers:

Despite the terrible impression created by irresponsible teachers in Madison fraudulently calling in sick and hauling children down to protests they do not understand, and despite tactics that have further damaged the already poor image of public sector unions, these working people and their families are not wrongdoers or parasites.  But they have allowed themselves to be deceived by the false promises of demagogic and irresponsible politicians and they now stand in the way of inevitable, necessary and ultimately benign changes in the way our society works.

The whole thing is worth a look.

Quote of the Day: The Wisconsin Budget Protests

From Powerline via the Insta-Prof:

A common theme of the union demonstrators in Madison today was that Governor Walker is a “dictator.” This showed up on sign after sign. It sheds light, I think, on how public union members in particular, and liberals in general, think. What is going on here is that the voters of Wisconsin have elected a Republican Governor and–overwhelmingly–a Republican legislature, precisely so that they can get the state’s budget under control. 

What the Democrats don’t like isn’t dictatorship, it is democracy. That is why the Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate fled the state en masse–they prevented a quorum, so that a vote they were going to lose couldn’t take place. Once again, it is democracy they are trying to frustrate, not dictatorship. 

One could make the point more broadly about the organized labor movement. The unions’ top priority is to eliminate the secret ballot in union certification elections. Why?

Hmmmm.   

Unrest in Wisconsin

Ann Althouse, a law professor based in Madison, Wisconsin, is right at in the middle of the current uproar over public sector worker unions, the state government, and Wisconsin's budget troubles.  Madison is starting to look like Greece, for goodness sake.  I've been inside the lovely state capitol building before, and it's a whole lot lovelier when it's not jammed with angry protesters.  As for Wisconsin's budget ills, I hate to say this, but it's not alone, and it might be only a matter of time before we see similar public sector worker unions' temper tantrums in other states.  The states are broke.  

UPDATE 1: On the news video footage, I saw multiple protest placards depicting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker as Hitler.  You know what that means: the group using the Hitler accusation automatically loses.  Twice.

UPDATE 2:  An interesting op-ed from the Chicago Tribune, of all places.