Wisconsin or Waterloo?

Voice of the Vast Minority

Today, the Wisconsin State Legislature passed a contentious bill curtailing the rights of public servants in collective bargaining after weeks of absence by Democrats, who fled to neighboring Illinois to stall a vote in the Assembly. Apparently, these Democrats did not consult a parliamentarian before they decided to embark on their ill-conceived embargo.

Since their absence prevented the requisite quorum for a vote, the Democrats assumed that avoidance would be sufficient to stop the Republicans from acting. Little did they realize, however,  that the quorum rule applies only to fiscal budgetary votes. The Republicans, tired of waiting for the Democrats to stop holding their collective breath while stomping their feet, stripped that portion of the overall bill, and voted on the collective bargaining aspects thereof.  Call it an "epic fail" on the part of Democrats.

The move caused the simmering pot of union discontent to boil over, and now the angry have become the incensed and violent. Not that their tactics while "merely cross" were much better. In that state of emotion, they carried signs of Governor Walker as Hitler, others that called for the impeachment of the Republicans, and generally accused the governor and the right side of the aisle of lying. Fail, fail, fail.

To begin, it must be pointed out these union thugs make up a paltry eleven percent of the population, and a small portion of the middle class they allege to represent. Most of the middle class are either hard working people who pay the salaries of the union workers through confiscatory taxation, or honest people desperately seeking jobs which will add to the pool of taxpayers.

In Scott Walker's campaign for governor, he telegraphed his intent to do precisely what he is doing, and he won the election by a six-point margin. That is a clear indication that the union folks did not have the votes to stop it. Now they want to force Walker and the Republican legislators out to achieve their goals, all the while claiming the mantel of "Democracy". Sorry, the folks who did get their votes ran away when the battle was brewing.

So the labor movement enlisted Representative Mark Pocan (D- Madison) to "look into" the budget of Wisconsin and, not surprisingly, he "found" that the $3.6 billion deficit cited by Walker was "bogus". Incredibly, Pocan claimed, “For this year’s budget, any shortfalls are a direct result of Walker’s policies." Since Walker has been Governor for exactly nine weeks, that is highly debatable, if not downright absurd.

Before the vote, Democratic Assemblymen predicted that the bill would ultimately be overturned because it violated the state's open-meetings law, which requires 24 hours notice before meetings. Republicans countered that they had waited long enough for the missing Democratic Senators to return. Seriously, to whine about not being present for a vote when you've fled to another state altogether - and for weeks - is an embarrassing fail.

Add to the ineptitude of the elected in this drama the machinations of the peripheral cast, and things get uglier. As union protesters became more frustrated, they became more rambunctious, storming the Capitol building and climbing through windows, prompting a temporary lock-down of the Capitol. Others, inside the building's rotunda, chanted, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Scott Walker has got to go," and, "This is what democracy looks like."

No. Democracy looks like elected representatives who bother to show up for work casting their votes on behalf of their constituents. Those who opt out have no business complaining. For the Left in this case to believe that they have engaged in the democratic process and, by extension, won any level of sympathy have succeeded in nothing more than...say it with me..."failure".

As long as the mainstream media doesn't recognize the losing aspects of this play and drop the coverage like a radioactive isotope, what the progressives believed was a winner for the cause will turn into their undoing, just as Napoleon found at Waterloo.

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