I am usually not one to cry conspiracy. Occasionally, however, there are so many coincidences that even I can be driven to a Glenn Beck-inspired mental meltdown, wherein I scribble random names and lines on a chalkboard until things start making sense.

Researching the budget package proposed by Wis. Gov. Scott Walker has pushed me further and further towards this breaking point.

As you have probably heard, the proposed budget would strip the collective bargaining rights of many public employees in a supposed attempt to balance the budget.

Never mind the fact that part of the “budget crisis” is due to Walker’s cutting corporate taxes or the fact that state employees have unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the governor by making the sacrifices, both in terms of pay and benefits, that he has called for.

You can even ignore the fact that a recent, statewide poll conducted by Building a Stronger Wisconsin shows that about 66 percent of the 600 residents polled oppose the budget package.

The most disconcerting reality to emerge from the ongoing fiasco is Walker’s complete unwillingness to budge on the issue. If he really wanted to balance the budget, the sacrifices that the state employees are willing to make would be enough.

Instead, Walker is using the budget issue as a political front for dissolving the labor unions. Why would he want to do that?

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, half of the top ten campaign contributors in 2010 were labor unions, which give the majority of their donations to Democratic campaigns.

If he is successful in going after the unions, Walker will be taking a first step down a path that chips away at the financial base of the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, tends to get the majority of their donations from corporations.

Coincidentally, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of removing the limits on corporate and labor donations to campaigns.

While this ruling allows for unlimited campaign funding for unions as well, the fact that Walker is attacking unions and cutting taxes for corporations is a calculated affront to the balance that the ruling was intended to sustain.

It also bears mentioning that Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court justices who voted in the case, participated in a political retreat organized by Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch industries and regular Republican campaign donors.

In case you’re thinking the name David Koch sounds familiar, it may be due to the fact that liberal blogger Ian Murphy posed as Koch in a prank phone call to Scott Walker last week.

In the phone call, Walker talks to “Koch” with the familiarity of old friends about things like possibly planting disruptive protestors in the Madison protests to show them in a negative light, being unwilling to negotiate under any terms and even tricking the 14 Democratic senators hiding in Illinois into coming back so the budget plan could be pushed through.

This is the point where I start looking like a disheveled lunatic holding what’s left of a piece of chalk and staring at a chalkboard that looks like something out of “A Beautiful Mind.”

Something stinks in the heartland, and it’s not the cheese factories or abundance of cow-released methane gases.