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This might well be the rallying cry for public employee union members hitting the streets in Madison, Wisconsin. Their mob-like action foreshadows reactions to budget crunches in other states caused, in large part, by out-of-touch state pension liabilities and rising health care premiums unwilling to be shared by state employees.

The showdown pits state-employed "have's" -- at least those with the well-paying jobs -- versus lesser beings, also known as private sector employees. Those toiling in the private sector are forced by fiscal realities to help fund their own pension programs and health premiums. Imagine that!

Recall thrilling days of yesteryear when these were called "fringe benefits"? Now, to most union members, these are inviolable "core benefits," payable, in effect, by full-bore taxpayers for public union folks. In effect, it's taxpayers vs. public employee unions.

In Wisconsin, legions of teachers abandon their classrooms, violating contracts, take fraudulent excuses from doctors, to participate in a de facto wildcat strike. This forces classes to be canceled, some schools in Madison to be closed. Their mission: Stop the democratic process from working whereby a duly-elected majority finally deals with a state budgetary crisis. .

Meanwhile 14 craven Democratic Party legislators flee the state to avoid voting on the issue, halting, at least temporarily, the legislative process. Fleeing state senators go to Illinois, thus to be untouchable by Wisconsin law enforcement. Ingenious, no? Cowardly, yes.[[In-content Ad]]

Their departure is termed by Republican Governor Scott Walker, "...disrespect for the democratic process and for the very institution of the Legislature." It's all of that, and more - a slap in the face of voters. After all, they expected their elected representatives minimally to show up for duty.

In response, not really a reply, the hide-n-go-seek legislators sneer at the governor's plea to return to jobs they were elected to perform. Party first, duty later? And they say they are doing the "people's business"? Well, the public union employees' business for sure. Plus, who dares bit the hand that feeds their political campaigns?

With bogus excuses signed by willing physicians, teachers take to the street and the Capitol. They've called in "sick," a move they would not sanction of their students. Double standards? Sure. Think of life's lessons for their formative-year students: So it's okay to lie? To break a contract? (To cheat and steal, too?)

Those with long memories will recall the air traffic controllers' strike. President Reagan, himself once a union president (Screen Actors' Guild), fired en mass those irresponsible enough to walk away from their well-paying, duty-bound federal jobs. Oh, that too, was against the law. President Reagan fired the whole bunch. Later a crop of newly-minted air traffic controllers, eager for well-paying jobs, had the air traffic lanes humming again.

One wonders if such a mass firing occurred in Wisconsin. Jobs vacated by the lying teachers calling in "sick," would be filled quickly with sub teachers and other wannabe public servants, now unemployed or underemployed, eager for a shot at a well-paying jobs. They'd stream into Wisconsin from all over the nation.

School-skipping teachers hurled boos and hisses at Republican legislators as they came to the Capitol to do their public duty. What a screaming mimie bunch of malcontent teachers it was, mob-like, chanting, some with placards comparing Gov. Walker with Hitler, replete with swastikas.

Next, will it be, for the Republicans, body guards? Shields? (Death threats already have been leveled at them.) Will mainstream media get it right about the REAL issues in Madison? That the proposed legislation does NOT take away - or "strip" -- collective bargaining arrangements over wages, only covering what once were called, "fringe" benefits: Such as, say, contributing to one's own pension plan (yikes!) and helping to pay for their own health plans, same as lesser beings in the private sector.

Putting public employees on a par with private sector employees? Who would stand for that?

It recalls George Orwell's Animal Farm's howling satire: "Some are more equal than others." To hell with state budgetary concerns, billions in deficit. Let someone else pay all the freight. All hail to the swaggering public employees' unions and their mandatory dues to PACs to pay off the doting legislators.

If so, an anti-democratic revolution will have taken place. Ordinary citizens working their tails off to pay taxes and share in costs of their own benefits, will have lost control of government of the people, and by the people. It will be a government of the privileged, for the privileged public union members, their dues paying off lawmakers who kowtow to their demands. Corruption never had it so good.



Larson is a retired newspaper and business magazine editor in Arkansas who spends summers in the Brainerd Lakes area.

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