Rally at the Statehouse, Saturday 26 Noon

This "taxpayers vs unions" mentality you're carrying is paradoxically incomprehensible. You've bought into the garbage from the corporations and Republicans who are attempting to pit the middle class against the middle class while they reap the benefits.

The "bloated union contracts" for public employees were okayed BY THE LEGISLATURES. That's your representatives and mine. It's not like the unions had some kind of great leverage or made their own contracts up. The "excessive giveaways" just DON'T EVEN EXIST. The pensions in Wisconsin (and most other state pensions) are a percentage of the BASE SALARY of the employees being put aside to be collectively invested by the state so that they can get it later during retirement. It's money these people ALREADY EARNED. Their pensions are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT their money just loaned to the state and now the state is claiming they have to "pay more"...which doesn't even make any sense.

Forbes magazine (yes, conservative FORBES magazine!) puts it in plain English for you: states weren't putting what they promised aside, they were investing so poorly (on investing advice from guys like Goldman Sachs...who then bet AGAINST the states' investments!!), they promised more compensation but didn't budget for it in future budgets, and promised retiree healthcare but didn't fund it either.

Any of that sound like it was the employees' faults?? The TAXPAYER wasn't paying attention while their elected representatives were screwing up the state's budgets. I'm all for the taxpayer but WE screwed up...so how is THAT the union members' faults? THEY worked for their money. They paid their taxes too. They should expect their just compensation that they've been promised by the people we put there to make these decisions who are now trying to ignore and back out of what WE taxpayers promised them. The whole thing is a monumental cock-up by pretty much everyone involved...except one group: the union members. What have they done wrong?

Hell, in Wisconsin, they're even willing to take a few lumps for the team...but their ability to bargain in the future has NOTHING to do with the current budget issues. Why should they give up their right to come to the table?

I'm not a union member. Most of my entire family isn't in any union of any kind. But I am intelligent and capable of forming my own opinions based on the facts and not what some Republican jackass like Walker has to say. You don't seem like you've actually examined a single fact. You just want to paint me with a brush that you're familiar with..if I'm just a pro-union crony then you can safely ignore me, right? Because that doesn't fit your world view that these union people are some how draining us all dry without thinking about the rest of us, right?

Well, wake up, Sparky. The only people bleeding the rest of us dry are the ones at the top who keep taking our money, paying less and less in taxes to compensate for the size of their financial footprint on the rest of us, and the entire middle class is having to shoulder their burden as a result. If you refuse to realize what's going on outside of your cloistered bubble of artificial reality, you're part of the problem that got us here. They used their money and clout to raid our government funds (because we were already drying up in every other way due to their removal of industry and jobs overseas). We didn't do anything about it. We just bought the corporate-run media who kept us pre-occupied with nonsense and lacked any depth of coverage on the real direction we've let ourselves be led in. You think this is about "unions" vs. the "taxpayers", but it's really about the powerful vs. the rest of us. You're in the same boat as the rest of us, so wake up and stop trying to drill holes in it, asshole.

Name one "lavish benefit" a Wisconsin teacher gets or shut the hell up.

And it better be torch and pitchfork worthy.