Yevgeny Shrago
Ohio and Indiana have followed Wisconsin into the Randian dream of breaking public sector unions by stripping them of dearly bought collective bargaining rights. Although most Americans (when polled by someone other than a Republican quasi-operative like Scott Rasmussen) oppose Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan, don’t expect this to be the sort of issue that drives votes outside of these states in 2012. Lowunionization rates, compounded by the last Congress’s failure to pass the Employment Free Choice Act, means that the battles this month may be the last stand of American labor unions.
The larger issue here, however, is the Republican crusade to cut government by eliminating “waste” and “fraud.” In this case, waste involves the salaries and jobs of teachers, firemen and police officers, not to mention the thousands of other providers of important public services. At the federal level, there was only one nod to the burgeoning problem with entitlements in the latest grand bargain budget plan: cuts to the Social Security Administration’s administrative apparatus. The people ensuring that claims aren’t fraudulent and being disbursed as effectively as possible are apparently the “waste” and “fraud” we’ve been looking for.
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