This is a---bash Unions and Teachers smear agenda--that regular folk are led to believe as the cause of the budget problem. Almost all the states are in debt due to the over spending of our governments led on by economic expansion. Governments all over are slow to cut their spending for political reasons so most are running huge debt now. For the Governor of Wisconsin to lay this thing on the UNIONS as the culprit is very wrong. He is getting the concessions necessary to move forward with a sound budget and yet he is letting this UNION debacle continue. Think about it.

What I find amazing is the relentless drive that we all have equality of the lowest standard. People are enraged that these public employees have decent (not Wall Street type) salaries and good benefits. The lower and middle class is eating their own by stating that fair salaries and good benefits is way to high of a standard; that these standards should not be achieved or sustained. All the while we are giving the top 1% (the wealthiest) tax breaks while we are fighting multi-trillion dollar wars. It isn’t the tax breaks and war that is bankrupting our country though, it is the evil money grubbing teachers. I can understand why the top 1% continues to inspire politicians to give them more money and fool the rest of us into thinking this is the American way, Patriotic. Their off-spring will always be well off when they don't have to compete in Princeton and Yale anymore with us lower class citizens on student loans. Their off spring won't have to compete in the workforce when there aren’t any other educated people to compete with. Let's all keep fighting against ourselves about how the real American thing to do is lower our standards of living. Long gone is the greatest generation. I hope that Koch at least lets me get a crumb or two that falls from his table.

I am a teacher in North Carolina. I have a Masters degree and I am Nationally Board Certified. I have been teaching for 20 years. I am really sick of all the teacher hating, negative, and just plain incorrect comments that get made. Just out of curiosity does anyone out there know any wealthy teachers? Rand Paul on GMA erroneously stated that teachers make in excess of 86,000. The national average is 42,000. Teachers have been given a mandate to fix society. If a kid misbehaves...school's problem, if a kid is hungry.... school’s problem, homeless...Mckinney Vento (schools problem), Comes to school unprepared...school's problem, no support at home so they don't graduate...school's problem. So far this year, I have been threatened twice and assaulted once...both of these "kids" are still in my class sitting next to your kids. When I blink and they threaten and assault your kids, I guess that will be the schools fault as well.

I don’t exactly agree with everything that unions do or stand for but at least in the states that have them the teachers are compensated according to the conditions that we have to work in. A lot of people don’t understand that teachers in most states are on the same educational level with people with law and business degrees, but are often compensated at a level that is just a little higher than those with high school diplomas, especially at the beginning of their careers.

Don’t get me wrong, most kids are good kids, but in our society the only other professions that deal with what we deal with are prison guards and mental health agencies. Most people don’t realize this. Today, I have paid for three kid’s lunch, bought one kid track shoes, broke up one fight, got cursed out by one of their parents, and had to wipe the tears from another child because their drunken mom (notice no dad) didn’t come home last night so she didn’t have clean clothes and was being bullied/picked on. This is in addition to the work load and ever increasing student load. We were also informed that next year class sizes would increase again to an average of 32 (this is multiplied by 5 classes).

Radical idea - how about if all of the special interest groups from both sides were to put all of money spent on lobbying and ads toward the budget instead - problem solved.

Time for everyone to go back to work. All those opposed to the legislation knew the bill would eventually get through the assembley and it will continue until it is the law of the land. All the protests did was stall the inevitable and create some huge bills for added security and house keeping. And by the way WI is still BROKE!! So your demonstration cost money the state does not have.

hitler abolishes unions 1933 headline.

walker abolishes unions in wisconsin at the direction of the hitler twins, the kosch brothers, who turn wisconsin into a large corporate enterprize. profits soar and wisconsins are left for dead. headlines 2011.

Its about time someone did something responsible regarding the blatant fleecing of the American public by organized criminal syndicates like government job unions that enforce massively over bloated wages and benefits that the average employee could only dream of. If that collective "bargaining force" doesn't get its way (wages and pensions that look like hitting the lottery) then with the weight of 900 lb gorilla, they will simply walk off the job, allowing the country to grind to a halt and create mayhem, all within their "rights" of being represented through the union they belong to.

Unions were created as a response to unfair labor practices by calculating and conscienceless wealthy employers that exploited everyone in a given town, demanding the workers put in long days for absurdly low pay. Now, we see the full matured version of that remedy of the union voice being applied to government business that never needed it. But since there was so much power behind such a force, it naturally found its way to the inner sanctum of the collective coffers of the innocent, hard working tax payers and moves about with autonomy, eating as much money as it can stuff down its insanely greedy throat like a lion in a herd of caged-in sheep.

The whiny voices of the parasites here, looking to quell the movement to take back our country from the abusive unions are thinking of their own lotteries that are now in peril and to hell with everyone else. How nice it has been for them to fleece their neighbor all these years and how fun it was to know that each time their boss, the American people, came to them with hat in hand, asking for help balancing budgets and getting the job of running the country into a cost effective perspective, they had the collective "bargaining power" to jam that thought right up his tailpipe and counter with rather than lowering wages and pensions to a fair level, that the wages would now go up even higher and if the boss didn't like it, then the entire production of business would grind to a halt starting tomorrow morning bright and early while the union called for all their minions to call in sick. How nice it has been for them to dictate how much they would earn more than their neighbors who paid those wages. How nice it has been for them to go to the doctor's office and get any medical help they needed and not pay anything for it. How nice it has been for them to fly past toll booths across the country with complete anonymity and zero accountability at the cost of the taxpayer, just because they are a public servant and therefor fall under the special protection of Homeland Defense and get to drive around with license plates that are untraceable, so terrorists can't possibly find out who they are and hurt them - and no one else can either, so they can just rack up millions and millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets and unpaid toll booth charges while taxpayers once again pick up the tab.

And now when we ask to take a look at an overall budget that is not just failing, but has gone so far upside down that either the unions give up some of the pork they have been vacuuming up for so long or the entire state will shut down, the parasites go ballistic. I have a suggestion for all the democratic, money-hungry, selfish, abusively greedy little 'gimme everything for free' union workers who don't want to see their "collective bargaining power" secede to reason in the face of the biggest financial crises of US recorded history: Why not go out and create your own income then, if this wage isn't enough for you? Why not be a part of the solution to restricted cash flow and create a product that everyone needs but no one is making it? Why not go and employ people to help the machine fight back again the Asian steamroller that is eating America's lunch?

Yeah, like they will really do that.

No.

They certainly will NOT be a part of the answer, not when they can continue to sit on their privileged overweight (typically morbidly obese) butts and whine about not getting to lay the wood to the taxpayer as deep and as hard as they are used to. Whine about having to give some of their own money for their own medical services, when others who work 5x as hard as they do go without medical coverage completely because the cost is simply not possible to meet, since that industry is also plagued with abuses not dissimilar to those of the municipalities across the country, where everyone wants to drive Escalades and in live in Mc Mansions and work 22 hour work weeks (the average hours the typical 40 hr per week employee actually works).

Good for Walker. Good for the Republicans. Good for the return of some version of sanity in a world that has been devoured by greedy, unionized powerhouses filled with corruption and insatiable diets of taxpayer's hard earned dollars spent at will without regard for the welfare of their own fellowman.

First you have to shut down Koch Bros.Then call a national strike let the bastards simmier in their own filth.

This is not about the well above market share benefits the union employees receive. This is about power and the unions ability to continue to fund the same polititians who pay them back with unaffordable benefit packages. Walker's bill will make it much easier for people to opt out of paying dues...and that is why the union caved so quickly on what the workers will actually give up but are fighting so hard for what will actually effect the union.

Why don't people see that a goverment job is much different that a public sector job since...1. it is a basic monopoly and 2. it is funded taxpayer with no other choice unlike a private sector company that has competition. The people elected the governor and the legislature and now the group that sees a personal loss as an inevitability has decided to remove themselves from the process to keep the will of the people from happening. Very sad and a poor example for all to see. I don't blame the union people for peacful protest...that is their right...but the gutless polititians who ran to another state deserve to be stripped of their authority.

This is for all of the people like Texas Observer who don't understand where money comes from and the fact that businesses have choices.

Ten men go out for beer. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. He said, "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80."

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men -- the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four

continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He

pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!!"shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2 ? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important.

They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

This is the best thing for Wisconsin and the country. We need to work to get rid of Unions. They destroyed our automotive empire and are threatening our economy in general. They were needed in the 1940s yes! When there were not any laws to help the average worker. Now there are laws federal and in each state that benefit and watch the rights and needs of the the average worker. More over when you look at the thing in whole unions create a different class amounst themselves. I have to fund my own retirement and pay for almost all of my healthcare why dont you union workers????? Pensions are a thing of the past and are unsustainable which is why 80% of the companies in this country and others have got rid of pensions and moved to 401ks. In terms of jobs 3-4 union jobs equal 10-13 non-union jobs. This is a no brainer.... Get America to work, get the people to save for themselves, raise taxes, and stop the waste. This is the only way the USA will get out of debt and our financial situation. Then and only then can we look to revamp our system (ie healthcare, social securitry, medicaid,etc) and then and only then can we truly put money into our own economy (ie inovation and manufaturing)

Lastly if you like any of what i said also take a look into green crude and write your politicians and force them to start backing this inovation that will create a sustainable low pollution energy source. No more gas, oil, or pollution. Oh and the best part it works in our cars already. This itself will create thousands and thousands of jobs across the nation.

Has it occurred to any of you "True Americans" that public workers actually pay their OWN salaries? How many of you corporate dudes do that? Get over yourselves!! Go Unions!!

And those in favor of public worker unions did you already forget about detroit and what the UAW did to the automotive industry???? Thats what will happen over and over again.

For the last 30 years Republicans have had a singular agenda - Return to American Oligarchy- the kind we had in the 1900's until the oppressed and exploited workers had enough. Thousands died in protesting unfair wages and life threatening working conditions. It is thanks to these brave and determined human beings that every worker owes a debt: A 40 hour work week; paid vacations; paid sick leave; safe working conditions; the right to be compensated by their employer if they were injured on the job. They created the American Middle class because they insured that each worker was paid a just wage. With the erosion of private unions we have CEO's and upper management of Corporate America making 500 x the wage of the average employee. There is no Economic Justice in that!

American Business and Corporations have always wanted to crush workers rights and own our government. The Republican party has taken up their battle cry! Since Reagan came into power all Organized Labor became a target for every Republican official. Organized Labor has protected the rights of working Americans. Republican administrations created trade treaties and corporate incentives to move American jobs overseas.

When Republicans scream about big government what they are saying is "We want to privatize government services and use American tax dollars to subsides their profits". That's how Halliburton and Blackwater made their billions in profit from the public purse. Our disaster relief operations are now contracted out! That means that all these companies delivering services are profiting from our tax dollar. It used to be handled by government employees. We are deep in debt not because of Organized Labor or the cost of Labor in our country - we are in debt because the Republicans orchestrated two wars of choice based on lies for the expansion of the profit margin of American Corporate power abroad and the funneling of billions of tax dollars to Halliburton and all their subsidiaries who get no bid contracts from our government. As the Unions are stripped of their bargaining rights so will every American worker be stripped of their employee rights. Some say that private sector unions are better because their primary commitment is the welfare of the Corporation. That is why it is becoming increasingly impossible for the majority of the American people to earn a living wage.

What about making a national commitment to Economic Justice for All. Right now our country's commitment is to Tax Payer support for the wealthy and rich. Sales in luxury goods have been exponentially climbing while sales at Walmart and other discount merchandisers is falling. Since Reagan and his Republican Corporate hacks have been in power their policies have set the exponential decline of the American Middle class in motion. Today the Republican Agenda is to set the poor and the middle class into free-fall.

The Republican plan is to take our tax dollars and use it to privatize our government. They intend to: Contract out Social Sec
Contract out Police and Fire Services;
Contract out Education; etc.etc..

In the same bill that Gov. Walker wants to strip the Unions of their rights he is also consolidationg his power to be the sole arbitor for the sale of Wisconsin's public utilities. It is no coincidence that The Koch Brothers have opened their offices in Wisconsin on January 5th, right after Walker was sworn into office.

It was under a Republican majority that for profit private colleges became legal. They are growing themselves fat and rich on student loan money without delivering an education that leads to jobs. All they are doing is graduating thousands of people in debt. This is how Republicans understand the free market. That is the Republican Plan! Wake up America before your country is sold out from under our feet. They are dead serious about their agenda. The Republican agenda is a dire threat to the future of all working Americans.

Oh and I know republincan bad halliburton bad....... but you forget that the many many many democrats had stakes in fannie mae the the democratic national parties pensions was heavily invested in fannie mae...... who kept fannie mae afloat thank you nancy pelosi who herself had a very large stake in fannie mae.

From the events in WI, the Dems are stating:

Vote when you have the votes for the Party outcome; "Run forest Run" and hide when the votes are not in your favor......

my union brothers 90% of vote rep. have seen the light...white males white males police and fire...the reps. have comitted sucide by this. you'll lose ohio in the next presidential mr. true american...because of this my brother and sisters have been riding buses to columbus everyday you want to fight you picked the wrong people...police and fire against teaparty....you lose and the president has to win ohio...maybe your proof that we need to pay teachers more because dude your math sucks....obama had one problem working class white males...these guys are pissed and they don't forget...good luck and work on the math..all the other slight of hand really doesn't matter because 2012 is going to look like little big horn and gov. george custer walker led you there.

You know we have many problems, ironicaly enough, all about money. Those with all the money convince politicians to legislate in a way so that they get more money, unfortunately it is at the expense of 95% of America. The saddest part is that our party politics do not work. I wish we could elect a person, not a party to govern the people. All of the money spent on campaigns and lobbying could be used to give all candidates equal time, local media first, reduce the number of viable candidates, district wide media next, reduce once more and go to vote with the top five people not the top two parties and a bunch of poor schmucks who lacked the billionaire backing and could never win without an (R) or (D) next to their name. Senator Cowles (R) Wisconsin is a perfect example of why - I'm told (so take this with a grain of salt and do your own research) he wanted to originally run as a Democrat, but didn't have the party support, knew he couldn't win as an independent and sought the Republican nomination, earned it, and was elected. He is now torn (as I'm sure many informed caring legislators are) on this vote but cannot vote against the party or risk losing their support.