Just how badly did the public employee unions miscalculate in Wisconsin? About as bad as bad can be. What they accomplished:
- Spent 10s of millions of dollars in a losing cause
- Exposed their extortion scheme to taxpayers everywhere
- Put Wisconsin in play in November
- Lost membership
- Damaged their brand both locally and nationally
- Proved that they are not invincible
- Exposed their true identity (it's not all about the kids - it's about me)
Before John Gotti's rise, the mafia in New York purposefully kept a low profile because it was 'good' for business. They knew that in order to continue their various racketeering schemes they needed to keep their activities out of the eye of John Q. Public. You see the plan was simple - Bribe a few judges/politicians/police, threaten/kill any local yokel who starts to raise a stink and everything would be groovy.
Sounds like a good plan, however, when John Gotti Jr. took over the Family he made every effort to flaunt the fact that not only was he breaking the law but getting away with it as well. Because of his greed/ego more and more of the public began to take notice of the Family's activities and this forced public officials, who in the past turned a blind eye, to take notice as well.
The same can be said for the public unions in general and Wisconsin in particular. For 40 plus years, the public unions have quietly gained more and more access to the treasury. Their racket was not that dissimilar to the mob's. The dues forcibly collected from their members (read protection racket) were in part doled out to politicians sympathetic to their cause (i.e. getting more money through no bid contracts, ridiculously high tax funded wage/pension/health insurance for their members, etc.).
This scheme works out pretty well until the economy takes a downturn. That's when state and local officials have to tighten their budgets and the one glaring liability on the balance sheet is of course the lavish outpouring of taxpayer dollars to the PEU.
