Are there no teachers, police officers or fire fighters in Wisconsin who disapprove of this behavior and are courageous enough to say so? While Mr. Schneider lends a humorous spin to this disgusting display, we know that's not how the left would react if the target was a liberal politician and the beer-pourer was a conservative. The fact that an elected representative of the American people - paid by all taxpayers, not just union members - believes it's appropriate to lend his support and influence to this kind of event is indicative of the ideological dysfunction that exists in Washington and, in particular, in Congress.

Uhhhhh...not maintaining collective bargaining for benefits is NOT the same as "stripping away benefits."

Do you count on all Corner readers being stupid?

No, that's not correct at all. The only reason to calculate a "cash equivalent" of their benefits is if you're comparing one job receiving benefits to another job with no benefits (i.e. should I take this full time job vs. this consulting job).

But often, you can't count benefits as part of your hourly wage because benefits don't cost the same accross the board. Health benefits are extremely expensive at a small business filled with older employees (or women of child bearing age), but not as expensive as a larger company that self-insures. Besides (again), unless you're comparing one job with benefits vs another job without them, how much the benefits *cost* doesn't mean anything. How much it costs you out of pocket does.

You also can't quantify what a pension does to your hourly pay relative to what a matching 401k will do to your hourly rate. It will all be dependent on how long you live, what your rate of return is, etc.

One should take into account the benefits at a company: What's my health premium? What's my deductable? What's my max out-of-pocket? What are the odds I meet my deductable and/or max out-of-pocket?, etc. etc. But wages and benefits are, in fact, two seperate things.

Doesn't have a thing to do with what he said. Why don't you re-read the actual words of his post and figure out how you got it wrong?

In the south, say Alabama or Texas, these guys would be pounded to sand. I guess that's why they hang out in Madison.

@notexactlyhuman
Okay, first of all, compensation is a large set, comprised of two smaller ones, namely wages and benefits. They are obviously and manifestly NOT the same thing.
In the instant case, the difference is highly relevant because wages are paid in real time, and a large percentage of benefits (i.e., pensions) are not. Also, recall that about 80 percent of unionized workers these days are PUBLIC SECTOR. This is a problem because it allows unions to negotiate (with Democrat-controlled governmental entities) enormous sums while keeping the cost of same hidden for decades. So the negotiation takes place between Democrat pols who are beholden to unions for large contributions and volunteers at election time, and union bosses who supply those things. Notably absent from the table are, um, TAXPAYERS, i.e., the ones who will pay for those pensions (or, at least their progeny will).
One last thing. You wrote: "Strip away my benefits package and I effectively make $10 or more less per hour." Leaving aside the mangle syntax, you have demonstrated here that you do, in fact, understand that wages and benefits are not synonymous, revealing your other post as rank sohphistry. But you also reveal that you and your ilk grasp the bait-and-switch aspect of the whole arrangement that led to gold-plated pension and benefits packages in the first place. What part of the 14 trillion dollar hole we're in do you not understand? And that number does not even contemplate the unfunded liabilities of states that have been run to ruin by Democrats and their union cronies -- like CA, NY, IL, and until recently, WI and NJ.
Not terribly bright, indeed.

Ah. Yet another angry troll reduced to spewing insults. Very good choice of screen name, then.

Pouring beer on someone who is minding their own business hardly puts this half-wit in the same league with genuine civil rights activists. In the 1960's, when such leaders were needed, brave men and women rose to the occasion, and most of them acted honorably (Bill Ayers and his brand of idiocy stand in stark contrast).

Somehow this guy has it in his head that he's marching on Selma when he dumps a beer on a legislator. Is this assault supposed to be akin to Rosa Parks refusing to step to the back of the bus?

What a joke that he is a hero to himself.

I see the socialists are still trying to claim that the only reason we aren't all paid pennies per hour, is because of unions.

I've never had much respect for socialists, but even that low bar has been lowered in the last two years.