Patrick McIlheran, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is on the John Batchelor Show right now, talking about Scott Walker, the protests in Madison, and the situation in Wisconsin.
Simon Constable and Amity Shlaes are hosting tonight's show.
Listen online here.
John Batchelor Show podcasts are also available if you're interested in listening later.
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Read McIlheran's latest column: Sincerity just isn't enough
The state genuinely is out of money, legislative accountants certify, and all our opposition party has done is crawl on various political ledges with no idea how to get back down.
"They've boxed themselves in," contends state Sen. Leah Vukmir, the Wauwatosa Republican. Indeed, the 14 vanished Senate Democrats were reduced to sending communiqués from Illinois that they'd return only if Gov. Scott Walker gave up his central means of controlling future government labor costs, a limit on collective bargaining. They offered no alternative means of cost control.
In the Assembly, the Democrats' plan was to drag out debate for 61 straight hours before a vote they always knew they'd lose. When that inevitability came, they shouted theatrically at the surprise of it.
In the rotunda Thursday, the diminished crowd was drumming and shouting as it had for days. People took turns with a megaphone; at one point, a man in his early 20s started in about "bottled beverage companies." He led the crowd in shouting, "This is democracy! Not a plutocracy!" His neck muscles bulged with rage and his voice broke.
Very sincere, but it was no plan. The drummers, like the Democratic lawmakers, have in place of a plan an unshakeable feeling of moral justification.
...Nothing wrong with thinking you're right, but their self-evidently moral cause consists of, first, insisting public servants should get compensation most of us can only dream of and, second, asserting a right to pit their own interests against the public's in collective bargaining. If the fourth-hardest taxed population in the country doesn't grant this, they feel justified in shutting down schools in protest.
In fact, if moral rightness asymmetrically rests with unions, you have to wonder why their cause must excuse so many little supporting lies. From doctors signing fake excuses to the lie of calling in sick to get a day to protest, deceit has a central role. A group of disabled people mobbed the Republican HQ last week; one told cameras that she was informed by a state senator the budget bill would cut off her chemotherapy. A spokesman for state Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) called it unlikely he'd have said that. But either way, someone fueled a moralistic rage with a supposed fact that wasn't true.
..."Even these people who are here," Vukmir said, referring to shouting protesters outside, "we represent their interests, too, and protect their jobs." They're taxpayers who need a staffed, solvent government, and 14 of Vukmir's colleagues ran away from the responsibility of providing it. The rotunda drummers haven't the least clue about solvency and apparently believe it's wrong to think about it. I think it's immoral not to.
One quiet block from the Capitol, I saw a woman, maybe 60, dressed for the office. She carried a sign that read, "Resist!!! Boycott!!! Protest!!!" as if extra exclamations conferred sincerity. As if sincerity was a plan to pull the taxpayers out of a $3.6 billion hole.
It's time for the protesters and the Democrats to be realistic and grow up.
It's time to be part of the solution and not the problem.
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