Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wages war on middle class

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial board is waging an unrelenting attack on Wisconsin's middle class.

While supporting an extension of all of the Bush era tax cuts, including for those making over $250,000, it continues to demand more cuts in Milwaukee County workers' very modest wages and benefits.

In a recent editorial the editorial board opinied: Private employees have been required to take pay cuts, furlough days, cuts in their companies' contributions to retirement benefits and have made other sacrifices. They see no reason why public employees shouldn't feel some of the pain. That's one of the messages voters sent Tuesday. Union leaders and county supervisors who fail to recognize that have blinders on.

Surely the MJS editorial board knows that County workers are already saddled with 26 furlough days, an avergae salary cut of $5,000 annually.

And surely the editorial board knows that more than one thousand middle class County jobs have been eliminated, including 65 layoffs last year, contributing to Milwaukee's soaring poverty rate which the board routinely bemoans.

It is gross dishonesty for the MJS editorial board to imply that County employees and other public sector workers haven't made sacrifices because they have.

The MJS editorial board has consistently supported demands for employee concessions by firms like Mercury Marine and Harley Davidson without ever exploring whether the firms' financial position requires these concessions. Now that private sector employees have been forced to accept the destruction of their middle class wage and benefit structures that took generations to build, the editorial board is using these concessions to whipsaw public sector employees into even more concessions.

But to imply as the editorial did that County workers haven't made concessions is either dishonest journalism or misinformed reporting.

Either way, the MJS editorial board is waging a dishonest and one-sided class war against the state's hard working, middle class while urging tax breaks for millionaires.

How much do middle class workers need to give up to satisfy the MJS editors?

How much of a pay cut is enough?