Pay attention to Wisconsin

From American Thinker:

Wisconsin conservatives and Governor Walker have some work to do between now and June 5 when the recall election is held. A Rasmussen survey shows a majority of voters in Wisconsin favor the governor's recall.

Washington Examiner:

A new Rasmussen poll finds that Republican Wisconsin Scott Walker is in trouble of being recalled June 5, with a majority, 52 percent, saying they will vote him out less than two years after he took office and immediately went to work to cut the power of public service unions.

The poll revealed a remarkable shift from February when 54 percent of Wisconsin voters said they would vote against the recall. In today's poll, just 47 percent said they would vote against recalling the governor. Details will be released at 1 p.m.

Worse for Walker: 53 percent disapprove of his job as governor with a whopping 46 percent saying they "strongly disapprove" of Walker. Majorities of both men and women now support his recall. Rasmussen found that his support among Republicans and conservatives remains strong.

With outside labor union money pouring into the state, and near hysterically energized opponents, Walker is going to have to develop an awesome ground game to see his way to victory. He did it before during his election battle in 2010 when his organizational muscle triumphed over his Democratic opponent Tom Barrett - who he might face again.

There's still time to flip those numbers and Walker, an experienced campaigner, will no doubt make good use of it.

If Governor Walker loses the recall election it will signal that the public employee unions own the state of Wisconsin.  This would be a very bad thing for Wisconsin and if it signals any kind of national trend a very bad thing for the nation as a whole.

There was a time when government workers did not have the right to unionize.  They earned a bit less money than their private sector counterparts but they had civil service job protection which meant that it was almost impossible to fire them and they had the perk of early retirement with an excellent pension.

That began to change in the Kennedy administration.  JFK signed legislation allowing public sector workers to organize and collectively bargain.  Since that time Congress and state legislatures have watered down or eliminated most of the old civil service protections that public workers once enjoyed.  The reasoning was that since they now had unions to protect them they no longer needed the legal protections they once enjoyed.

That worked very will for public sector workers for a while.  Government workers at the state level no longer earn less than their private sector counterparts.  And they have lifetime pensions and lifetime healthcare all paid for from the public treasury.  And they have retained the right to retire at a younger age than private sector employees as well (although Social Security doesn't begin paying them any earlier than any other citizen).

The problem is that the bill has now come due.  The nation is flat broke.  No it is worse than that.  As Mark Steyn points out if God himself were to shower Washington DC with 15 trillion dollars worth of gold bricks all that would do is make the nation flat broke because that would only cover our indebtedness.  That is correct, a 15 trillion dollar windfall to the federal treasury would leave us with exactly nothing.

Government at the federal, sate and local level has grown massively and now consumes around half of the nations productive output.  How far would you get going through your day with a dead body almost exactly the same size as you strapped to your back?  That is the situation that the private sector faces every day carrying the dead weight of government.

The system is nearing the point of collapse.

We cannot go on spending money that we do not have to finance government that we do not need.  Not only do not need but that actually makes things worse.

America's government workers for the most part do not care about the overall health of the nation.  Any more than the Greeks rioting in the streets to bring back lost benefits that their government could never have afforded to pay them care that they are demanding that the citizens of Germany and France loan money to their government which will never be paid back to finance the comfortable lifestyles that they have become accustomed to.

If the nation is to be saved it will take leaders like Scott Walker and citizens willing to stand behind them.

Wisconsin is a referendum on whether the United States of America can survive and whether it deserves to survive.