Ryan Streeter
Wisconsin's new Republican governor, Scott Walker, has decided to take a big dose of Chris Christie bravado and go after public employee pensions and benefits in order to close a $3.6 billion budget shortfall. The state is broke, and public employees currently enjoy benefits in excess of what the private citizens paying their bills enjoy.
And public employees saw fit to take a big dose of Cairo fever. It's not just that they got organized and turned out in droves to protest the Governor (Paul Ryan made such a comparison today), it's that the protestors are even trying to pretend their causes are somehow linked.
MSNBC just interviewed a Wisconsin school teacher who enthusiastically said, "This bill is disguised as a spending bill, but it's not, it's about curtailing rights. This is about democracy." (I paraphrase...not sure that's verbatim)
Um, no. It's actually about the state of Wisconsin not having money to pay its bills.
Let's wish Gov. Walker success. Madison is a hotbed of liberal enthusiasm. So these protests may be more colorful and inflammatory than anything we've seen Chris Christie have to confront.
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