Where my respect for Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein is bleeding away..

You can read these crapfests from uber-Villager Joe Klein and Deficit-Sorched-Earther Andrew Sullivan if you want. I won't stop you. Their pieces both show they haven't a clue as to why the Public Employee Unions are upset, and fighting back as hard as they are.

To do that, they would have had to take five minutes, and read Ezra Klein's piece:

Walker proposes that the right to collectively bargain be taken away from most -- but not all -- state and local workers. Who's left out? "Local law enforcement and fire employees, and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from these changes." As Harold Meyerson notes, these are also the unions that happened to be more supportive of Walker in the last election. Funny, that.

Walker tries to sell the change in collective bargaining as modest. "State and local employees could continue to bargain for base pay, they would not be able to bargain over other compensation measures." But that's not really true. Read down a bit further and you'll find that "total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on the consumer price index (CPI) unless approved by referendum." In other words, they couldn't bargain for wages to rise faster than inflation. So, in reality, they can't bargain for wages and they can't bargain over other forms of compensation. They just can't bargain.

The proposal doesn't stop there, though. "Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until the new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues." These rules have nothing to do with pension costs or even bargaining. They're just about weakening unions: They make it harder for unions to collect dues from members, to negotiate stable contracts or to survive a bad year.

It's one thing to disagree with the Public Employee's Unions stance. At least there, I'll just think you're a heartless bastard. but at least you've looked at the issue, and taken a stand.

But for Klein and Sullivan foist this level of bull@#$% on the American public, when you have a platform, shows not only that they didn't do their homework, they didn't give a @#$^ about doing it.

My readership of both these men is starting to come into question.

UPDATE: 2:41pm Pacific: Andrew's Readers (at least) let him have it.