News headline on major local TV station right now:

"SEARCH CONTINUES FOR DEMOCRATS"

The police have been dispatched to locate them and bring them back to the capitol to actually do their jobs.

Protest crowds are getting bigger in Madison.

This is getting big....

I imagine the are already out of the state, they would have to know that by doing this they could be drug back by the troopers if they stick around. Probably went to Chicago to recruit some union muscle :P

Agree with everything you said...except the bolded

The dems fleeing the state is pretty fantastic.

Dozens of out-of-state buses unload more protesters.

How does the Dems walking out deprive the 3/5th majority? They can't hold a vote without them there or something?

By law, you need 20 warm bodies in the chamber to call a vote.

There is a 19-14 republican majority. They need to hunt down one democrat to sit there and pout while they pass the bill, but they've all fled to Iowa.

19 Republicans out of 33 total is ~57%

that's easy... there's a political party that sides with business against unions who spend a lot of time badmouthing them and painting them as enemies.

Its no more or less interesting then finding that people following certain parties are more likely to think Obama is a secret Muslim or that there was secret WMD programs that were shut down.

While there is certainly plenty of things to attack different unions about, it doesn't really matter what's legitimate or not since we have a political system that motivates its base by constantly demonizing the opposition.

That alone is enough to explain why unions might be disliked more then corporate fatcats. Propaganda.

I hadn't read where they went yet are they for sure here in Iowa?

Search Rjoe's house??
Silly. There's tons more anti-fatcat propaganda out there. People just deal with the frustration of having to deal with government and union workers much more often than they have to deal with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Denying the republicans a quorum is pretty damn funny. I think Senate leaders should be able to fine them for skipping work though.

No, I just threw that out there.

In reality, they probably fled to IL because it would have been a faster drive from Madison.

I've said absolutely nothing at all about the equity of teachers' pay. In fact, one of the reasons I became a teacher was the level of starting salary(in Texas, if it matters).

I don't pretend that a teacher's job is harder than, say, a steelworker's. Ignoring the fact that teachers are expected to either teach summer school or engage in professional development during the summer, I don't think that teaching is especially difficult. However, it is not just play-time, either...it's a real a job as the other ones that I've had.

My objection to your condescending, blowharding post was the erroneous notion that the difficulty of class size is a myth, as you call it. Your suggestion that simply raising teacher pay for the best 70% of teachers not only ignores that fact, but also ignores the fact that pay is not a motivator, but is rather a hygiene factor.

Simply put...raising pay doesn't equate to better results. You could keep pay the same if you could increase the cultural and familial buy-in. However, I will agree that many teachers (if not most) are union flunkies...Lord knows I was one of the few holdouts to joining the union when I was a teacher.