If only there was a high-speed rail to run Walker out on

[ultranos]

I spent a good amount of time the last few days (since about Wednesday night) explaining to friends the context for what's happening in Wisconsin right now. See, my mom's a public school teacher and my dad's an administrator for the same district (MPS), and the net result is that after living 18 years under the same roof, I know far more about the intricacies of operating an urban public school district and the politics involved in contracts than I have any right to. (Because I'm an engineer, not an economist.) Not only that, but when I called my dad yesterday after I found out that MPS closed due to teacher absences, he told me that it was the teachers from my high school who were spearheading the MPS contingent at Madison.

So it's rather unsurprising where my loyalties on this issue lie.

The Metafilter thread I linked is long and winding, and has a lot of information coming out as it happened (and possibly things that were later proven false). I stopped reading it after about 200 comments because I was fielding questions of my own for people, and it wasn't giving me much information I didn't already know.

Salon has some decent context for some things:

Historical context for labor vs. the state
A summary of the actual realities of Wisconsin politics (this is something I've had to explain many, many times. There's a big divide in the political leanings of people in the cities [Madison and Milwaukee, namely] and everyone else.)

I am deeply worried about the situation, because it does directly impact my family. My parents both have a few years before retirement, and right now, their current livelihood and future pensions are on the line. Because right now, it's for state workers, but everyone knows that city workers are next under the axe.

(Probably doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway: I will field questions/comments to the best of my ability on this.)