One man, one vote. One millionaire, one million votes.

That's what you might conclude from some of the hysterical comments from "experts" with whom I might normally agree.  However, the mess in Wisconsin in which public school teachers are conducting a fit has most commentators becoming irrational.


If Wisconsin eliminates or reduces the bargaining rights of public service workers it will not be the end of democracy.  It's a bit analogous to term limits.  My position is that we have had term limits all along.  They're called elections.  However, to protect us from ourselves many people believe that we need to limit the ability of an individual to run for the same office too many consecutive times, lest his/her constituents actually vote for that person again and again.


State legislators and governors are the ones to blame for public service workers having such lucrative deals.  The state legislators and governors cave in pretty much every time they are threatened with a loss of services by public school teachers, fire fighters and police officers.


In 2010 the traditionally liberal state of Wisconsin voted for conservative Republican state legislators and governor who are now trying to do what Wisconsin voters should have expected.  What to do?  How about voting them out next time and insisting that their replacements replace the union rights taken away in 2011?  The solution is not a panic attack.


The power of the ballot is not going away, so everyone should just calm the heck down.


A commentator whom I usually respect is Paul Krugman of the New York Times.   Krugman is also a teacher.  Consider this from Krugman's column today:


what (Republicans) are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy...


On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.



Krugman is correct that wealthy people have disproportionate power in the United States.  That's because they are active.  Contrary to Krugman's assertion that we need to codify the power of working people what is needed to counter one millionaire using one million dollars to influence public policy is for one million people to contribute one dollar to work against that position.


So why doesn't that happen?  It's because the American people are dumb and lazy.  Like the basic problem in the housing scandal, people do not have the right to be stupid.