A few days ago, I wrote a little about the anti-tax rally held in Madison by the conservative fringe group Americans For Prosperity, as well as the counter-rally held by members of AFSCME, Wisconsin’s largest government employees union. I noted then that the number of AFSCME members was almost double the number of folks attending the AFP rally, even despite the AFP’s efforts at busing folks in for the rally.
Shortly after the rally ended, conservative bloggers were quick to denounce the members of AFSCME for their boorish, disruptive, and thuggish behavior, despite my having heard no reports of any arrests or citations for any illegal behavior on the part of the folks from AFSCME. Folks on the conservative end of the spectrum, including Fred Dooley from “Real Debate” Wisconsin, were also quick to assert AFSCME’s interest in organizing a counter-rally had little to do with their members expressing support for getting a budget done, but instead was nothing more than, “getting more money for their members.”
What I found most interesting wasn’t necessarily Fred’s post itself, which is pretty standard anti-union garbage that most conservatives love to spout, but rather his comments section. Mixed in among his comments were a few choice comments by Cathy Stepp, a former State Senator who was mired in ethical issues as the result of her authoring legislation that would benefit her special interest benefactors, since she was firmly in the pocket of special interests in the building, construction and real estate industry who contributed more than $80,000 to her election campaign. Stepp is also notable for her attempts to sell out her constituents during the last round of budget negotiations, when she supported a Republican-proposed budget that would have cut state aid to Racine-area school districts. In her comments, Stepp uses some pretty fuzzy math (to put it mildly) to assert state employees somehow aren’t regular taxpayers like John and Jane Q. Public. Stepp said:
The 42% of us in the private sector (aka “Real World”) pay the salaries of the 58% in government jobs.
Now obviously I was more than a little taken aback at Stepp’s assertion that government employees don’t pay taxes, because it defies logic that someone who spent four years in the Wisconsin State Senate can’t seem to master the most basic principles of mathematics. After all, Cathy Stepp seems to think 42% of folks in Wisconsin who are in the “real world” pay the salaries of the 58% in government jobs, which is curious, because as one of the aforementioned 58% who are government employees, I get taxes – both state and federal – taken out of each and every one of my checks. This is a talking point I’ve seen at more than one conservative blog – the assertion that the salaries of lazy, no-good state employees are being paid by hardworking folks in the private sector – as if state employees don’t pay taxes too. Conservatives are quick to demonize state employees as leeches off taxpayers, but the simple concept that they fail to grasp is that state employees pay taxes too, so in essence, state employees help pay their own wages.
It’s exactly this kind of dishonesty that’s going help the Republican Party lose even more seats in the Senate and the Assembly in 2008, which promises to be a very bleak year for conservatives in the State of Wisconsin.
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