A Test of Civility

The Wisconsin State Senate just passed a law that strips some collective bargaining rights from the teachers’ unions in that state … having removed any budgetary provisions that have blocked its passage for the last three weeks (see: Wisconsin Bill Passed.) Now the 14 Senate Democrats who fled the state in order to keep such an event from happening have acted in vain.

As we have previously indicated in this blog, collective bargaining for government employees is the root cause of most of the budgetary problems that exist in Wisconsin and in many other states across this nation. The federal government, in the main, does not permit collective bargaining for its employees, nor do a few states such as Virginia and (most recently) Indiana. Although collective bargaining for government employees sounds like a good idea, it has proven to be recipe for disaster. This is because unions fund politicians’ elections (mostly Democrat) who then turn around and collectively-bargain for big benefits for these very unions. A “sweetheart deal” is putting a kind spin on such collusion.

Now a crack has appeared in this public-employee union buttress and, I’m certain that all unions and their Democrat feeders will not take this lying down. I think that a volcano is about to erupt in Wisconsin and across this nation. It is very easy to give benefits to unions, but it is another thing to take them away. However, this time the state governments have little choice. It is either this route (of shucking collective bargaining) or declaring bankruptcy (which would give them the right to abrogate all their union contracts). So we will now see how New Jersey, Ohio, California, New York, Illinois, and the other in extremis states deal with the opening that Wisconsin has provided them. And we will also see to what degree that the Democrats (and the pet unions) are willing to heed President Obama’s recent call for civility. I think we all know that it is going to get very messy.