The Altantic Wire has a collection of reactions to the unsuccessful recall of Scott Walker from overseas. Here are a few of my favorites which American newspapers would never print.
"Wisconsin is not France," reads the headline of Pierre-Yves Dugua's article in Le Figaro, France's conservative broadsheet. "Scott Walker's admirers speak of courage worthy of Margaret Thatcher. His critics talk about unprecedented reactionary duplicity. What is certain is that [neither] Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac, or even Le Pen would have dared do what Scott Walker has succeeded."
Italy's long-running socialist newspaper, Corriere della Sera, meanwhile, described the GOP campaign as "illegal" saying that its effect "impoverishes all industrialized countries." The article notes that in the U.S. private sector unions are "already demolished" amounting to only 7 percent of the workforce. Unions are starting to "collapse even in the public sector," bemoans the piece.
"Illegal." "Impoverishes all industrialized countries."
Unfortunately it's not illegal, thanks to Citizens United, but it certainly impoverishes.
Granted, Europe has its own set of unique economic problems right now, but their relationship between employer and employee does not involve the absolutism seen in the average American workplace.