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Gov Scott Walker, Grown-Up, Spanks Occupy Chicago Children
By John Ransom  
November 4, 2011 

Don’t count me as very sympathetic to Occupy Chicago. 

They aren’t a symptom of a problem. They are the problem. Not just for Illinois, but for the nation.   

But finally a grown-up has shown up and slapped around the brats at Occupy Chicago. While the union-led protestors march and chant and clap in unison over their own spilled milk, the rest of us are trying to get the country back to work.  

Governor Scott Walker chastised union-led Occupy Chicago protestors who interrupted his speech yesterday with chants of “union-busting is disgusting” at Chicago’s Union League Club. The Union League Club is a civic organization in Chicago that came together after the Civil War to promote good citizenship. 

Walker, 44, is facing a union-led recall vote in his home state of Wisconsin, after he single-handedly pushed through reforms that brought the state back from the brink of bankruptcy. The state was facing a shortfall in large part because of out-of-control union benefits and perks. 

Walker gave the lead to other states to enact similar measures curtailing union benefits, earning the lasting enmity of progressives.   

“With all due respect to people of Illinois, I’m going to use Illinois as a good example [of bad economics],” Walker said, according to the Chicago Sun Times. Walker taunted the protestors inviting them to come back to help their union brethren on the recall effort “as tourists.” 

Makes you proud to see a governor put his state first.   

In contrast to Wisconsin, Illinois raised income taxes and sales taxes 66 percent and 46 percent respectively this year but still has not closed the state’s budget deficit that started at $15 billion. 

The state still faces about an $8 billion shortfall, including $8 billion in unpaid bills. The state also has unfunded pension liabilities of close to $80 billion, the largest deficit in the country. That’s not bankruptcy; it’s much, much worse: It’s Greece. 

I’m expecting any moment that Illinois will be announcing that they have opted out of the Eurozone.   

Companies headquartered in Illinois including Caterpillar, Motorola, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Jimmy John’s have threatened to quit the state over the tax increase. 

And who led Illinois down that path of the Union of Workers’ Paradise & Bankruptcy? Most of those folks are either sitting in the White House or have some connection to it. 

Go Chicago Community Organizers! 

Illinois has seen a sharp rise in unemployment this year, going from 8.7 percent-below the national average- to 10 percent- well above the national average.  

Walker appealed to the business leaders who generally make up Union League meetings saying, “Any of you looking to grow and expand your business and get to a safer state, come on up” to Wisconsin, according to the Sun Times.  

The crowd was friendly to Walker in a city Obama once owned, applauding the governor’s characterization of the union/Occupy Chicago protestors as out-of-towners who came up for the protest in the spring that occupied the Madison state house at the cost of $700,000 to the state.   

Union ranks account for about 12 percent of the workforce in the United States, with 37 percent of government workers unionized- thank you Democrats- and about 8 percent of private jobs unionized.  That’s why public workers get fat benefits for less money compared to private workers. Politicians owned by unions have made the rest of us pay the way for public employees. 

“Phillip Johnson, a retired tool and dye maker from La Crosse and a lifelong union member,” writes the Wisconsin Reporter, “said he doesn’t understand why teachers and other public workers can’t pick up a bigger share of health-insurance and pension costs like private-sector workers in these economically taxing times “’Everybody else is taking a beating today,’ he said. ‘(Schools) seem to have all kinds of money that don’t pertain to education.’”  

Yet the Tin Ear Orchestra of the Religious Left bravely marches on, out of step, out of tune and out time.  

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