On Wisconsin, part one.

This week, Catalan at Heart presents 'On Wisconsin', a multi-part look at the budgetary imbroglio Wisconsin finds itself in.  By tracing the who, the how, the why and everything between, we will offer a seemingly tangential, always empirical and ultimately definitive look on the crisis.  With snark.

As far as Wisconsin political theatre goes, the drama from fourteen Senate Democrats refusing a call to quorum and escaping to Illinois to avoid a sure-to-lose vote on Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill" is without precedent.  While the resulting schism is not starved for analogues to earlier affairs -- race relations, the original turmoil over unions, Bush/Kerry, Laverne and Shirley ending -- the connectedness of today's society has artificially amplified the fervor to a new critical mass.

While feasible to have avoided or compartmentalized earlier affairs, one click of the mouse or opening of a vibrating phone or button press of a remote control assaults one with instant news and faster commentary.  With tweets and status alerts and wall postings now the stuff of nightmares, a relentless force hunting and chasing regardless of the speed undertaken to get away or the tactics performed to elude its clutches.