The city that shows how it's done!

If you can't find me at my digs, maybe I've moved to Madison, Wisconsin! That's a city where people know how to get shit done!

In northern Kentucky where I'm from, when some right-wing nutball politician does something crazy, we usually see dissenters rightly criticizing them on newspaper websites and blogs. But where's the infantry to take it to the streets? Lots of folks around here feel the same way I do about right-wing excess, but precious few are willing to put their money where their mouth is like I did when I confronted the teabaggers and the Pathwaste cult.

But Madison, Wisconsin, isn't about mere talk. It's about action! It's like a city full of 200,000 of me.

The Badger State's new right-wing Gov. Scott Walker has already managed to alienate Wisconsin in general and Madison in particular. It came to a head this month when Walker announced he'd end collective bargaining for state workers. When this plan received criticism, the self-serving shit-eater announced he'd call in the National Guard to violently put down workers and their unions if they went on strike.

Fact is, it'd be illegal for the National Guard to intervene against the workers. The employees have a natural and legal right to strike. This trumps Walker's orders. But the people of Madison are standing by the workers, and they're conducting massive public protests against Walker's mind-boggling temper tantrum.

Madison residents are protesting with such gusto that right-wing Rep. Paul Ryan whined, "It's like Cairo has moved to Madison these days" - a reference to recent protests in Egypt. I guess so, since Walker is at least as corrupt as Hosni Mubarak.

And Wisconsin has real Democrats in its state legislature. It's not like Kentucky where the Democrats' main job seems to be to try to rubber-stamp as many Republican class-baiting bills as possible. No sirree! Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate have rightly skipped town so the Republicans don't have quorum to pass Scott Walker's evil budget. The GOP wanted to play hardball, and now it's blown up in their stupid faces.

Now it turns out that Wisconsin's budget shortfall was actually engineered by Walker just so he'd have an excuse to end collective bargaining.

This month's events came after Walker's announcement that he was killing high-speed rail. Walker's decision cost the state over $800,000,000 in federal stimulus funds. Ohio's right-wing Gov. John Kasich pulled a similar stunt in his state. Kasich was once known for constantly bringing a hatchet into congressional meetings and waving it around to prove what a budget cutter he was. People laughed, so it musta been funnay. But now - like Walker - Kasich has cost his state a fortune in stimulus dough by killing the rail plan.

Because Walker rejected high-speed rail, a train manufacturing company closed its Milwaukee plant - and took 40 jobs with it.

But in the minds of Madison's hard-working citizenry, Scott Walker is damaged goods, and they're not bashful about letting the world know. The protests we're seeing in Madison now could be the start of something big.

Every American city should have been doing 15 years ago what Madison is doing now. If that was the case, we'd be living in a much safer world today.