Hats off to economist Dean Baker for putting into perspective Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attempts to decimate family-supporting wages and benefits and take away state employees’ freedom to bargain. Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes today:

You have to give Gov. Walker and his wealthy patrons credit. Here we have a situation where Wall Street fat cats wrecked the economy—people like Richard Fuld, Robert Rubin, and Angelo Mozilo—and they’ve  somehow managed to blame schoolteachers and the highway patrol.

Democratic members of the Wisconsin state legislature will stay out of the Capitol until Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators drop their assault on workers, reports Greg Sargent on The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog.

A new analysis shows workers in states with laws like those proposed in Ohio and Missouri, which supporters misleadingly call “right to work,” have lower wages, whether they belong to a union or not.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) is fighting to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees—but private-sector workers know darn well an attack on middle-class jobs hurts all workers in the state.

MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” will air from Madison, Wis., tonight, where Ed Schultz will cover what he calls “the most important story in our country right now….I intend to stand up for American workers.”

Just got a report from some of our folks on the ground in Columbus, Ohio: more than 5,000 people—firefighters, teachers, small business leaders, community members and other public-service workers—filled the statehouse again today to show their opposition to Senate Bill 5 which would  eliminate collective bargaining rights for all state workers, including faculty and staff at Ohio state colleges and universities.

Law enforcement officers have been sent to hunt down Wisconsin Democratic state lawmakers who are boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attempts to gut pay and destroy bargaining rights for state employees. Walker earlier threatened to call the National Guard on public employees and their allies if they protested or went on strike against his attacks on the middle class.

This just out from Talking Points Memo:

Writes Brian Beutler:

Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public workers’ collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.

This in from Organizing for America‘s Jessie Lidbury, live from Madison, Wis.:

“Protect our state!” came the cry from the Capitol streets. They were lined with workers, students and rights activists who hope that Gov. Walker and our state legislature will hear their voices above the noise of their own interests.

Just got off the phone with the Frank Emspak of Workers Independent News (WIN) labor radio and he says it looks like today’s crowd in Madison, Wis., to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attack on workers could grow bigger than yesterday’s 30,000. About three blocks from the main plaza by the Capitol, the streets are jammed. In fact, there are so many people, cell phone coverage is spotty at best.

Check out WIN’s latest from Madison here.