Legal Commentary

I've always found it an interesting wrinkle that five of the top conservative/libertarian law prof bloggers are public employees: Glenn Reynolds,  Ann Althouse, Eugene Volokh, Stephen Bainbridge, and Larry Ribstein.  I would imagine this status would create some ripples between one's ideological beliefs and personal economic interests.  Back when the UC system had furloughs in 2009, here was Professor Bainbridge's reaction:

Ann Althouse has been fairly critical of the Wisconsin protests, based on the language and tone of some of the signs, as well as the conduct of the protesters.  But she also has some interesting thoughts on the conflict between the personal and political:

It really is odd that Wisconsin became ground zero, because we didn't have the budget disaster that was going on conspicuously in some of the other states. I'm really trying to understand this. Why Wisconsin? A distinctive thing about us is how good our public employees' benefits are. The cut we ? I'm one of them ? are being asked to take is severe. (I'm looking at a loss of more than $10,000 a year, myself.) But it's hard to complain and appear sympathetic, because we're only being asked to go from paying 0.2% of the payments into our pension fund to 5.8%, which probably looks astoundingly low to outsiders. We're being asked to pay more for our health insurance, but the coverage is extremely good, and the annual hit will be about $2,500.



So maybe we public employees in Wisconsin are a great target ? a great starting place for what is a national movement by the Republicans. I'm trying to understand the party politics. Tell me if this is correct: There are vast numbers of public employees, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Once elected, the Democrats create more and more public jobs with greater and greater benefits, and, consequently, more voters who are even more locked into voting for Democrats. This is a cycle that approaches political graft, and the Republicans, to win, must overcome all those passionate, self-interested Democratic voters. Why wouldn't the Republicans embrace a strategy hostile to the public employees? Why wouldn't they drive a wedge between the public employees and all the other citizens in the state?



So I see 3 questions: 1. Is this what the Republicans are really doing? 2. How good a political strategy is it? and 3. Is it a good idea to reduce the political and economic power of public employees? 



The 3 questions are interrelated, but they should contemplated separately... but who is capable of doing that? I'm trying to be fair, and it's possible that I'm in as good a position as anybody. I voted for Walker and support many of the things the Republicans are trying to do, but this budget plan ? as I said ? will cost me more than $10,000 a year.