Obviously there's no one who could possibly understand the greed of Wisconsin's rather modestly compensated public sector workers quite as acutely as a beltway columnist who gets paid to write 700 word columns repeating an argument you read on a blog last week. This sort of maddening, paternalistic commentary about Wisconsin, infantalizing people who actually work for a living as nothing more than a bunch of dirty hippies who need a Real American Hero to stomp them in the face, has given me stronger feelings about the role of unions than I think I've ever had before.
One thing that I have noticed while reading the coverage on the blogs of the showdown in Wisco is that Governor Walker's nakedly transparent power grab has really motivated people to side with labor who were never big labor backers before (not that they were anti-union, it just didn't register). But Walker has not even tried to cover his tracks here and, I think, on the heels of the Hacker - Pierson book which was widely read in the liberal blogosphere you are seeing people really connect the dots between workers rights, unions and the broader liberal movement.
Ezra Klein has done great work recently, Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias as well. Kevin Drum has been absolutely on fire, he has had no less than a half-dozen wonderful posts on the topic in recent days as well as a fantastic article in the next edition of Mother Jones, that you can read here.
And my friend Sir Charles has had his usual tremendous output on the importance of labor as well - here, here, and here.
No comments:
Post a Comment