…Between property, sales, income, vehicle, and a seemingly endless array of other taxes, we can’t stop paying state employee unions. We are forced consumers of state services…
Joseph Ashby
American Thinker
2/18/2011
Demonstrators in Madison Wisconsin are eerily similar to recent protests abroad. The public employees holding signs and chanting slogans outside the state capital seem to recognize a parallel. One protester’s sign, referring to newly elected Governor Scott Walker, read “Walker: the Mubarak of the Midwest.” A second sign displayed a photo of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on one side with the words, “One dictator down.” When the protester rotated the sign, it revealed a picture of Governor Walker and the words, “One dictator to go.”
Clearly the Mob in Madison sees themselves as a reincarnation of the Crowd in Cairo. Not the reporter-raping part of the Egyptian protesters of course, but rather the dedicated, Jeffersonian, small ‘d’ democrats that we all hope (but aren’t really sure) exist in Egypt. The public employees’ desire to align themselves with the angels notwithstanding, their protest is more Greece than Egypt.
It wasn’t very long ago that Greece’s streets were filled with government employees running amok over the EU-forced austerity measures. Many conservatives predicted that the unrest was a look at America’s future in ten years. As it turns out, it only took ten months.
This time Wisconsin is set to pass “austerity” measures. Fiscal necessity has forced the governor and state lawmakers to do what politics has prevented for decades — stand up to public sector unions. As in Greece, the Badger state’s employees aren’t about to cede the ground…
Read the rest at American Thinker.
