Who says Fox News isn't balanced? Leave it to liberal pundit Juan Williams to have to set the record straight when discussing Wisconsin teachers unions with Fox News' other liberal, Shepard Smith. Shep, who I lost respect for when he freaked out in New Orleans and reported every bit of innuendo and rumor as fact during Hurricane Katrina, gets hysterical and fails to tell the truth again, this time blaming Wisconsin's current battle over public sector unions on the Koch brothers.
"This is 100% political... This started with the Koch brothers, right? The Koch brothers were organizing... I'm not taking a side on this. I'm just telling you what's going on... The Koch brothers were organizing, among others, to try and bust labor. That's what big business wants to do, this isn't a new thing. So they started getting organized, they gave a bunch of money to the governor's campaign. The governor's campaign is over and away we go! We're going to try and bust this union up... This is political!"Only one problem. Governor Walker's legislation to limit collective bargaining on health care compensation and pensions - but not on salaries - only addresses public sector unions. How that benefits the business of the Koch brothers is uncertain and Shepard Smith fails to provide any reason it would. As private business owners, the Koch brothers would deal with private unions. The Wisconsin teachers unions work for the taxpayer, not private business. So the effort to paint this bill as payback to big business for a $40,000 campaign contribution to bust unions rings hollow. In fact, it's completely fictitious. Fortunately, Juan Williams, also a Democrat, is there to correct Shep's spin.
Perhaps Shepard's been doing his research at Media Matters or maybe he was just fired up after finishing his diary entry for the Daily Kos, but he also erred in reporting that 7 of the top 10 contributors in America were Republican. That's flat out false as this chart, courtesy of opensecrets.org, details the largest campaign contributors since 1989. You won't find the Koch brothers anywhere on the list and in fact, 8 of the top 10 (and 16 of the top 20) contributed heavily to Democrats. Powerline has more on this.
Ultimately what we have in Wisconsin is the most important union in the nation, that of taxpayers and voters, flexing their collective muscle and telling their elected officials to get control of the runaway public unions. After all, many taxpayers are having trouble saving for their own retirement. Why should they see their taxes go up or have to sacrifice opportunities for their families in order to keep funding the entire pensions of union members? They shouldn't. This is democracy in action and the people, not the union bosses, are winning.
The ugly truth is that over the past two decades the Democrats have abandoned the people for their special interests - public sector unions, trial lawyers, and wall street bankers. It's been a very lucrative racket for them with more millionaires coming out of "public service" than ever before, but as it turns out these parasitic groups feed on successful companies in America without producing any wealth of their own. They require other people's money to enrich themselves and that's devastating the economy, something the people of Wisconsin and Joe Taxpayer are finally waking up to.
Exit Question: Is Shepard channeling Olbermann?
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