University of Wisconsin Medical School Launches Investigation of Doctors’ Fake Sick Notes
By Publius
“BigGovernment.com has learned that the University of Wisconsin medical school is investigating reports that its physicians handed out fake medical excuses to union teachers who were planning to call out sick this week.”
By Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN)
“Governor Scott Walker is making the tough choices needed to avoid financial ruin in Wisconsin. Like most states, Wisconsin is facing a budget deficit caused in part by excessive pay and benefits for public employees. Governor Walker is tackling this problem head on, rightly proposing to bring public employees’ compensation in line with the private sector.”
National Review
“Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has put a sensible proposal on the table to improve his state’s alarming fiscal situation – and the Democrats, who are largely to blame for it, have run for the hills.
To put it charitably, there is an enormous disparity between the economic situation that the people of Wisconsin must endure and that of the Democratic-union apparatus that has long lorded over them.”
By James Sherk
“‘It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.’
That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany — the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O — in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.
The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this ‘unthinkable and intolerable.'”
Battle of Wisconsin threatens unions’ political might
The Washington Examiner
“The strikers are doing so much better than most of Wisconsin’s private sector workers that their complaints evince a gross disrespect for taxpayers, who on average make much less. The average single-income family in the state brings in $40,500, and the average worker pays 20 percent of his employee health plan. Wisconsin’s state workers are not exploited.
Their union has become far too politically powerful and now feels threatened, and that’s the real reason union leaders called for the protests. Obama, who as usual has reflexively taken the side of unions, should be ashamed for trying to crush reforms that are long overdue in Wisconsin and virtually every other state in the nation.”
By Peter Wehner
“[If Governor Walker] holds shape and doesn’t back down (and I rather doubt he will back down) – [he] will eventually benefit from this collision. Government unions, on the other hand, will suffer badly. The hysterical reaction to Walker’s reforms – comparing the governor of Wisconsin to (take your pick) Mubarak, Mussolini, or Hitler – is going to go down very poorly with the citizens of Wisconsin. Many of the public-employee protesters come across as pampered, childish, selfish, and overwrought.”
Fixed labor game is ending in Wisconsin
More states already are battling union bosses for democracy
By Iain Murray and F. Vincent Vernuccio
“Across the nation, public-sector unions realize the game is up, and they aren’t happy about it. They’re doing everything in their considerable power to stop newly elected governors and legislatures from doing what they were elected to do: bring state finances under control by revoking the union privileges that have strained state budgets for years. The question now is, ‘Who governs America?’ If the unions win, the answer will no longer be ‘the people.'”