A Couple of Inconvenient Truths About Wisconsin

From David Cay Johnston at tax.com:

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan.

So basically, Walker has been lying from the get-go about the "benefits" -- it's all about taking out the unions. We should have known that -- he's a "Conservative" and lying has become the default position among Conservatives because their real agenda is repellent to most Americans.

And Johnston is absolutely correct in faulting the media coverage. I mean, we expect crap from Fox (and catch this one, too), but take a look at this piece from Glenn Greenwald about the massive failure in ethics in journalism as a whole. Greenwald focuses on the pushback on the "psy-ops" reporting from Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, but it doesn't take much extrapolation to make the connections -- anyone notice the stories on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange?

I wonder how Walker feels about that now that the ones that supported him -- the police and firefighters -- have joined the opposition?

(And late item: it looks as though at least one Republican state senator has withdrawn his support for Walker's bill.)