When the institutions that protect our freedom
are at risk of bankruptcy
Only an engaged electorate will make it Right
I want you to look at any American government as a business for a moment... state, local etc.
Governments are started locally to serve in securing a free and lawful community. We choose to educate all our children as a public service to ensure the community prospers.
When these governments hire, they essentially take profit from business and people's production, in order to fund the common safety, education and transportation (roads) necessary for those profits to grow.
With that, any government that does not execute those services efficiently is failing, because that efficiency keeps taxes low and in the hands of consumers and the market that funds each government. The business is failing.
Wisconsin is a blue state, electing a Democrat for president each year since 1984 and Reagan. They generally voted for Democrat run local governments as well.
In 2010 though, the voters found that these governments were not being efficient. The state's debt had swollen to $3.1 billion dollars! (small compared to California, New York or Greece, but still big...)
The electorate voted for Republican Scott Walker to fix the problem. He had a "business" plan to make the state government more efficient than the Democrat governments of the past.
Instead of just raising taxes on everyone, he asked his employees (state workers) to pay more into their own health and pension fund (up to a percentage still half the national average).
Here are the stats if you are curious.
It is a plan that worked... and nobody was laid off! Just as any struggling company has to do, Scott Walker (R) argued on principle and didn't compromise... he saw a system failing and made the corrections necessary for it to survive.
He is a hero of the Tea Party, because he balanced the government budget to keep taxes down. Failing businesses often need outside help to restructure and re-focus...
The American Enterprise Institute calculates that even after Act 10, the source of so many accusations of oppression, the average state worker receives wages and benefits of $81,637, versus $67,068 for a similarly skilled private sector worker. X minus Y equals (gulp) $14,569.
Here is how those state workers reacted to this change:
Now if these workers panic over an increase in healthcare and pension costs due to the reality of the market, they need to look at Greece, where public workers are soon to be paid in I.O.U.'s... or France where the new Socialist party in power has reduced the retirement age to 60, which is essentially a tax on future generations in France.
Would your company run well if the employees voted for their salaries, and threw a massive strike to fire you if they didn't get their way?
GM was bailed out because the union pension promises were so large that they almost went bankrupt as it came time to pay up. Sure the union did a great job of negotiating amazing benefits, and the GM ownership was crazy to make such promises, but they almost brought down the entire company... along with their jobs.
(Only instead of a company like Bain and Romney going and investing in GM and re-organizing it, Obama bailed them out on borrowed money and lost 11 BILLION in the deal.)
Government employees are NOT the cause of the problem, but they need to understand the solution, along with the left as a whole.
The Tea Party message is working in Wisconsin, and more people should start listening to them for some other solutions they are proposing. It is not radical... its common sense.
George Bush over spent... "Republicans" over spent... Obama and the Democrats ARE overspending...
The Tea Party is telling them all, it is wrong!
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