Revolution?

With the recent and continued protests in Egypt, Libya, and now, Wisconsin, it comes to mind that the world is getting more messed up every day. Tensions are high, the economy is still bad (and might be getting worse), and nobody has had a solution.

Libya is on the verge of a civil war, which is disheartening because oil prices have decided to rise. During Egypt’s ordeal, oil prices were rising but within the past two days oil has now hit over $100. You better believe that we’re heading for $4 or $5 a gallon for gas.

As the looming threat of the increasing gas prices continues people across the country are finally understand that things need to change. For instance, Wisconsin is taking steps to restore fiscal sanity to their budget. Their Governor, Scott Walker, seems to be not backing down on reducing the budget deficit by $300 billion of the next two years. How is he doing? Going after the unions. This has made a lot of people upset, especially the teachers union. Mr. Walker is asking for teachers to pay 12.3% into their healthcare. Makes sense, it’s not free someone needs to pay for it and not the tax payers. Apparently the DNC is helping gather protesters. Obviously, they have not looked at the recent polls that show about half of the American public supports Mr. Walker.

Wisconsin is not the worst of it. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats are fighting about the national budget. Republicans are threating to shut down the government, which is an interesting concept and a completely different blog post (stay tuned!). Here is a good article. Last week, Congress voted to cut $100 billion in spending. However, Republicans seemed to take back their “Pledge to America” with 92 Republicans voting against the spending cuts. A big surprise was Congressman Allen West of Florida voting against the spending cuts since he was voted into office by the Tea Party wave. I would venture to guess he voted against the spending cuts because there was a lot of military spending cuts in it, but still very unacceptable from someone who was the Keynote speaker at CPAC.

The main point of the post is: what is going to happen here as the economy is still in shambles? One Democrat, Michael Capuano of Massachusetts, is urging the unions “to get a little bloody." I am not suggesting that we as a nation get violent like Egypt and Libya; that is not our style. However, when more and more states start to follow Wisconsin (and New Jersey) people are going to have to sacrifice a bit. It could get a bit messy. But, if this works, it could be good for our economy in the long run and we could become a stronger nation. All of these events are making for an interesting 2012 presidential race (Chris Christie, please run!) and if Wisconsin works, the federal government shuts down, and gas prices go to $4 or $5 a gallon, we might have a Republican president after all. Overall, this is a very interesting era…