Unions and Democrats dangled a shiny promise in front of voters so that they'd pass Proposition 25.  Legislators would not be paid if they didn't pass a budget. Voters took the bait and passed the initiative, the real purpose of which was to lower the requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds to a simple majority. Some weren't fooled.

As opponents of Prop 25 predicted, Democrats passed a sham budget on time to so they could get paid. At least Controller John Chiang and Governor Jerry Brown saw it for what it was and rejected it. Legislators lost some pay before quickly passed another budget that was still bad but not quite as awful.

Proposition 25 was hailed as a success for incentivizing Democrats for finally passing a budget, although the credit probably should go to Chiang who unilaterally decided the original budget was bogus. Without him, Proposition 25 would have been unable to stop Democrats from passing fake budgets on time just so they could get paid.

That's not the worst part of the initiative. By lowering the budget-passing requirement to just a simple majority, Democrats no longer need Republican input on the budget, unless they want to raise taxes. Any other trailer legislation the Democrats wanted to tack onto the budget bill would be A-OK and take effect with the governor's signature. Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee writes:

That legislative loophole, this column and other analysts pointed out, would make it easy to push major pieces of policy legislation through the Capitol with little or no public notice. And that's exactly what has happened.

The last piece of the Democrats' June 28 budget package, placed before legislators only minutes before the vote, revised school finance to benefit the California Teachers Association and make it more difficult for school districts to manage cuts in state school aid.

Who supported Proposition 25? That's right, the California Teachers Association! Walters continues:

Democrats were so proud of their newly minted budget hegemony that they did it again Monday by drafting and quickly pushing through the Assembly another major trailer bill with no hearings and virtually no notice.

This one gathers idle funds from the state's two major university systems into a special pot from which the state could borrow for cash flow purposes.

There was no rational reason for the bill to be done so secretly or hurriedly. Seemingly, Democrats did it just because they could -- thumbing their noses not only at Republicans but also at the larger public.

The voters can be criticized for being fooled by the no-pay provision. But the real villains are those who knew exactly what Proposition 25 would do behind the scenes. Its major supporters included the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the California Faculty Association, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Nurses Association, the League of Women Voters, and the Los Angeles Times.

Who saw through the scam? The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Taxpayers' Association, and the Small Business Action Committee, and the Ventura County Star.

Well, well, well.

A 26-year-old teacher admitted to e-mailing death threats to Republican senators in Wisconsin for their position on collective bargaining for public employees, according to police.

"We feel that you and your Republican dictators have to die," the email stated, adding, "we have all planned to assault you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head."

If we applied the Left's standards to this matter, any talking head that supported the unions in Madison would have to be taken off the air. That sort of hateful rhetoric and vitriol should not be allowed, right? Left-wing pundits should all be held responsible for this nut's actions--isn't that how it works?

That's what the Left tried to do after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Progressives blamed it on Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Fox News--and the crime wasn't even committed by a conservative!

The teacher's motives for the alleged threats are pretty clear. CNN reported that she was "apparently enraged over the new state law that limits collective bargaining for government workers."

Oddly, she hasn't even been arrested yet.

Will the Left now call for people like Ed Schultz to be fired and MSNBC taken off the air? Of course not, and neither should conservatives. The Left wants to limit speech by holding high-profile Republicans accountable for every action taken by any nut who happens to be on their side. Nothing is more despicable, and we shouldn't play that game. 

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a self-proclaimed militant Marxist group, is getting more attention from conservative thinkers in light of their support for protests in the Middle East as well as for unrest domestically, as in Wisconsin. The fact that hard leftists are playing a prominent role in the street is hard for some to admit, but it's undeniable.

There aren't fly-by-night operations, either. The PSL, which has offices across the country, has a pretty robust website with high-quality writing, holds regular classes and seminars (mostly on the evils of capitalism), and even has its own Droid app.

The PSL recently sent organizers to Wisconsin who wrote about their experience.

This writer, a member of the Illinois Education Association union and a Midwest organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, joined the protests this week, along with dozens of other PSL members.

He's in a teachers' union and a revolutionary Marxist group, and is taking a part in a union protest. This stuff isn't hard to dig up, folks. The case that hard leftists are mixed up in protests from Egypt to Wisconsin makes itself.

A significant portion of the handmade signs at the protests referenced the Egyptian revolution. From talking with the students and workers on the ground, it is clear that the example of Egypt is very much on people's minds. It has had a material impact on the Wisconsin struggle.

The PSL fashions itself as the anti-Tea Party and is flying high over the Wisconsin protests.

When the right-wing, anti-worker Tea Party decided to mobilize explicitly for the purpose of taking away the basic right of collective bargaining, many people around the state saw the danger and the necessity of coming to Madison. With 100,000 people on the side of labor and a dismal fraction of that with the Tea Party, one thing was clear: the active and conscious people of Wisconsin want to move forward, and not backward 100 years.

In the PSL and the Tea Party, we can see two polar opposite worldviews express themselves. One wants global Marxism spread by violence and chaos. The other wants unfettered capitalism secured by peaceful protests.

Time to take sides.