“This is war,” Michael Moore declared last night on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” The porcine propagandist referred to the Wisconsin Senate’s 18-1 vote earlier in the evening in favor of legislation, supported by Gov. Scott Walker, that would strip politicians of the power to reward government employee unions for their political support by committing taxpayer money to their members’ extravagant pensions and other fringe benefits.
The near-unanimity of the vote belied the controversy over the legislation. The Wisconsin Senate has 33 members: 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats. Only Republicans participated in yesterday’s vote. The Democrats–beneficiaries of the scheme through which government employee unions funnel taxpayer money to political campaigns–had fled the state for Illinois. Their absence denied the GOP the three-fifths quorum required under the Wisconsin Constitution to pass a budget. After a weeks-long stalemate, the Senate enacted the ban on so-called collective bargaining as a stand-alone bill, requiring the presence of only a simple majority of 17 senators.
