Washington Post columnist dubs Walker 'Cheesehead Pharaoh of the Middle West'

[DearAbby]

You knew it was only time before the national press started hammering on Gov. Scott Walker for his extreme plan to eliminate most collective bargaining rights of public employees. But under the headline, "Workers toppled a dictator in Egypt, but might be silenced in Wisconsin," Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson lets it rip.

Like many protestors Tuesday at the state Capitol, Meyerson compares the situation in Wisconsin unfavorably to the recent success of pro-democracy forces in Egypt. "As workers were helping topple the regime in Cairo, one state government in particular was moving to topple workers' organizations here in the United States."

Meyerson lays into Walker for proposing the measure without first negotiating with public-sector workers and for threatening to call in the National Guard if workers threatened walk-outs or failed to perform their duties: "It's a throwback to 19th-century America, when strikes were suppressed by force of arms. Or, come to think of it, to Mubarak's Egypt or communist Poland and East Germany."

Meyerson notes that Democratic governors in other states, including California's Jerry Brown and New York's Andrew Cuomo, have come up with other options to address their significant budget gaps — including cuts in pay and benefits — but steered clear of going after workers' right to bargain. But he says newly elected Republican governors may follow Walker's lead and "use the recession-induced fiscal crisis to achieve a partisan political objective: removing unions, the most potent force in the Democrats' electoral operation, from the landscape."


More: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_f900e46c-3999-11e0-9456-001cc4c03286.html?mode=story

[virgogal]

1. Maybe I'm blind but I didn't see the "cheesecake" comment in the link.