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Breakfast Scramble (Wednesday)

DavidL's Breakfast Scramble
Scott Walker for President, from George Will, Journal Sentinel [1]:

[Wisconsin Governor Scott] Walker’s calm comportment in this crisis is reminiscent of President Ronald Reagan’s during his 1981 stand against the illegal strike by air traffic controllers, and Margaret Thatcher’s in the1984 showdown with the miners’ union over whether unions or Parliament would govern Britain. Walker, by a fiscal seriousness contrasting with Obama’s lack thereof, and Obama, by inciting defenders of the indefensible, have made three things clear:

First, the Democratic Party is the party of government, not only because of its extravagant sense of government’s competence and proper scope but also because the party’s base is government employees. Second, government employees have an increasingly adversarial relationship with the governed. Third, Obama’s “move to the center” is fictitious.

Klubbing Klein, from Ezra Klein, Washington Post [2]:

You can’t separate public and private unions

One of the themes some commentators have adopted is that private-sector unions are fine — important, even — but public-sector unions have to be stopped. Or at least it’s all right if they’re stopped. The difference, as Joe Klein puts it, is that “Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed … of the public?”

[…]

And let’s let go of the idea that the public is on the hook for unions made up of government workers but not for unions made up of janitors in Las Vegas hotels. If private-sector unions negotiate higher wages that lead to higher corporate costs, those costs are passed on to the consumer. If public unions negotiate higher wages that lead to higher taxes, those taxes are paid for by the taxpayer. If public or private unions negotiate work rules that stifle innovation or impede good service, the public bears the brunt of that, too.

Well maybe Klein can’t but I can.    If a union contract jacks up the price of Ford’s labor and hence the price of their cars, the consumer can, and did, switch to buying a Toyota.    However if the teacher’s union drives up the cost of teacher’s salaries, the taxpayer is stuck with the bill.   In a private market the consumer has a choice.   In the public market he does not.

More, from Morning Journal [3]:

We, the people, are the employer of all those public sector workers. Do public workers need union protection from us? Are we a threat to their well-being? Will they be starved and their families driven into the streets if they don’t have collective bargaining? No.

In the private sector, what little union bargaining remains, takes place within the bottom-line realization that the business must keep its costs in control so it will remain competitive and viable. Otherwise, the business fails and everyone is out of work.

Wage and benefit demands in the public sector are made on what is assumed to be a bottomless well of taxpayer funding. The government is in no danger of going out of business.

Michelle Obama is fat Digby is all upset at Ruch Limbaugh for calling attention the fact that FLOTUS, to wit Fat Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama is fat,Hullabaloo [4]:

That’s very cute, and he was being exceptionally careful, but the message comes through loud and clear: Michelle isn’t “lithe” like a Sports Illustrated model or someone Alex Rodriguez would date so that proves there’s no evidence she’s following a healthy diet. In other words, she’s fat — you can even see her eating ribs (chuckle, chuckle.)

Fat people like Michelle Obama [5] has utterly no business telling other people how to eat.