More Scenes from the Class Struggle in Wisconsin

* At right: a picture of the protest from within the state capitol.

* Paul Ryan: it’s “like Cairo has moved to Madison these days.” You say that like it’s a bad thing.

* John Nichols on Democracy Now!:The fact is, Wisconsin is not broke. The Fiscal Bureau of Wisconsin just said in January that it will end this year with a $123 million surplus. So the fact of the matter is that this is not being done because of a lack of money. This is being done because political forces, conservative political forces, would like to disempower public employee unions and remove that voice for a strong public sector. That’s what austerity really translates as.

* State legislator on the lam tells all: “We’re going to be staying away until we hear that they are taking the right to organize seriously,” Larson continued, referring to Republicans. “They’re going after 50 years of history in one week. Until they take that off the table, it’s a non-starter.” Larson is on Twitter, too: “For those looking for us, we are right here, standing with the people of Wisconsin. #solidarityWI” Watch out for the state police, Chris.

* Are Wisconsin public employees over-compensated?

When comparisons are made controlling for the difference in annual hours worked, full-time state and local government employees are undercompensated by 4.8%, compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. To summarize, our study shows that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.

* An open letter to the people of Wisconsin.

* Voices from the Wisconsin protests.

* Divide and conquer: why are police, firefighters, and state troopers exempt from the union-busting in Wisconsin?

* Wisconsin and the Tea Party takeover.

Some of these links were via the surprisingly good MetaFilter thread. The rest I’ve picked up from the usual blogs and on Twitter.