Making sense of Wisconsin's union showdown

Steven Pearlstein has a good thought experiment:

...consider the mirror image of what is going on. In this case, you'd be asked what the reaction would be from Republicans and business interests if a newly elected Democratic governor and legislature proposed to deal with a budget deficit by first raising unemployment benefits and then pushing through a big corporate tax increase for all but the Democratic-leaning tech sector. For good measure, the package would also contain a ban on corporations making political donations without getting the permission of each shareholder, lest they use their power to repeal the tax increase and push the budget out of balance.

This is analogous, of course, to what Gov. Scott Walker has proposed for dealing with Wisconsin's budget gap: the tax breaks for businesses, the benefit cuts for all state employees except Republican-leaning police and firefighters, the automatic decertification of all public-sector unions and the stripping of their right to bargain anything but wages. Looking at Walker's reflection in the political fun-house mirror makes it abundantly clear that the governor has a more ambitious agenda than merely closing a modest budget gap.

Kevin Drum has your read of the week: Plutocracy Now: What Wisconsin Is Really About--how screwing unions screws the middle class.

Also over at Naked Capitalism is a rundown of one of the other bad ideas Walker has proposed.... Wisconsin’s Walker Joins Government Asset Giveaway Club