While Rush Limbaugh equates Wisconsin teachers’ unions with the Muslim Brotherhood because they shut down schools for a few days to protest the Republican governor’s plan to strip away most of their collective bargaining rights (no, I don’t get it either), and other commentators (some of whom earn dozens of times more than even the best-paid government workers) fulminate about “privileged” public employees, a substantial majority of Americans stubbornly refuse to buy into the anti-union hysteria.
[A] Gallup/USA Today poll taken amid the standoff [in Wisconsin] finds that most Americans would oppose a similar measure in their own state.
In the poll, 61% of adults nationwide said that they would oppose a law that would take away some collective bargaining rights for state employees, including teachers. Only one third, 33%, said that they would support that measure if it were proposed in their state.
While the poll does not specifically mention Wisconsin, the results are a fairly strong repudiation of Walker’s efforts. Walker’s proposal would roll back almost all collective bargaining rights for state employees except for law enforcement personnel and firefighters.
What’s the matter? Don’t they understand that greedy and indolent public employees need to be taught a lesson?
Limbaugh, whose heart doesn’t usually bleed for inner-city kids, raged:
The Education Brotherhood, which is a branch of the Government Unions Brotherhood, has already shut down public schools for how many days is it now? Three days? Three or four days? No end in sight, and yet all they really care about is “the children.” [In fact the teachers have gone back to work.] That’s all they care about, children. They shut down the schools. They are robbing inner-city kids of precious schooldays that would help make America more competitive.
In fact Limbaugh is so concerned about education for inner-city kids that he called for emergency funding to prevent the shutdown of half of Detroit’s public schools, which will cause class sizes to bulge to 60.
Ha ha. But seriously…
Update: Rachel Maddow on Gov. Walker, Republicans and union busting:
(Hat tip: Andrew Murphy)
