It seemed an unlikely place. But then so was Gettysburg. If you asked anyone at about the time the Tea Party started if Wisconsin would be a major battleground, I don’t think they would have agreed. But in the last few days, a new Republican governor has taken on the public unions and they have fought back with a vengeance. It is a battle they can little afford to lose.

Wisconsin is facing a budget shortfall this year of $137 million for the current fiscal year and $3.6 billion for next year. Like many states around the country, and the federal government too, there is no time for small steps. The governor wants the public sector unions to pay more for their retirement and medical care and he also wants to end collective bargaining on anything but wages, and those to be increased no more than the Consumer Price Index. In return there will be no layoffs.  The battle lines were drawn.

Let’s be Civil

After Tucson, the main stream media and Democrats were all over the airwaves admonishing us (conservatives) to be civil. My Congressman came to my daughter’s high school to give a ten minute lecture on civility and how we have to be nicer to politicians who are trying to do their job. This is the same Congressman who ran for reelection primarily by calling his opponent a liar, and running from his own record. Very civil.

There were the numerous references to Hitler (just what is it with the left’s Hitler fetish anyway?). Posters with the Hitler moustache painted on Governor Walker, a picture of the governor with crosshairs drawn over his face. So much for the outrage after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

Fakin’ It

Many teachers called in “sick” so that they could abandon their students and classrooms to protest in Madison against the governor’s proposals. Since everyone knows that virtually all of these sudden “illnesses” are bogus, some teachers started to worry about covering their tracks. Not to worry though, doctors or doctor impersonators were on the scene to hand out fake sick notes. No mention of any illness or disease is necessary. They were handing them out like candy on Halloween.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjFbMDp5Pg8

The doctors or doctor impersonators should be tracked down and charged with fraud. If they are doctors, they should lose their license. If they are not doctors they should be charged with practicing medicine without a license.

A couple of relevant tweets illustrate the differences between the union organized protestors and the Tea Party. From a union supporter, “Tea Partiers protest on the weekends – which were won for them by unions.” The claim about weekends being won by unions is dubious, but even the union supporters acknowledge that the Tea Partiers don’t steal their pay from their employers by calling in sick, they wait until they are on their own time. I can’t say if the union supporter is mocking the Tea Partiers for being ethical or not. From a Tea Party supporter, “Gov. Walker, sorry we’re late, we work full time.”

Organizing for America

According to our federal form of government the states and the federal government are both sovereign entities, meaning one is not subordinate to the other. Instead of focusing on getting the federal budget in order, President Obama is taking time to weigh in on Wisconsin. Not only that, but there is an organization called Organizing for America that is actively involved.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkc-diFmcb8 

This political arm is encouraging teachers to violate their contract. So let’s take a step back. The unions are outraged that the governor wants to curtail their collective bargaining rights. The unions negotiate a contract with the government and then violate it with impunity when it suits their ends. The unions want to hold the state accountable but they don’t want to be accountable.

Dereliction of Duty

To help their union supporters, all of the Democrat Wisconsin State Senators fled the state to prevent their being a quorum to vote on the measure curtailing union power. These senators took an oath to do their job and they are hiding out in Illinois. The far left web site Daily Kos is actively raising money to help these senators violate their oath. This is an excerpt from an e-mail sent to their supporters: 

Even though you don’t live in Wisconsin, there’s a way you can help. The 14 Democratic state Senators who kept the fight alive are on Act Blue, and we’ve put their party committee on our Orange to Blue 2012 page.

Please, contribute $14 to the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic committee, $1 for each of the heroic Senators.

Republicans hold a 19-14 edge in the Wisconsin state Senate, but 20 Senators are needed for a quorum. So, in response to a Republican attempt to pass a bill making public sector unions virtually illegal, all 14 Democrats simply left the state. If even one of these Democrats had remained in Wisconsin, then s/he would have been rounded up by the police, forcibly brought to the state Capitol, and the bill would have passed. At great personal and electoral risk, these 14 Democrats are protecting workers’ rights and making resistance to the Tea Party the top news story in the country.

When the Democrats held the House, Senate and White House and rammed through ObamaCare despite polling showing the American people were opposed, did the Republican members of Congress flee to Canada? No. They fought at the ballot box to elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts. They fought in the Senate using Senate rules like the filibuster. They lost the battle and ObamaCare passed, but they stayed and did their duty representing their constitutents.

They fought at the ballot box again winning big in November 2010. Among those wins was both houses of the state government in Wisconsin and the governor. Now, with the tables turned, the left shows their true colors. Instead of fighting within the system, they lie, violate contracts, cheat with fraudulent sick notes, they abandon their responsibilities to hide out in another state, while still claiming to hold their office. This is the left’s vision of America, and all the while holding signs equating the legitimate government to Hitler, Mubarak, Cairo, Bahrain, etc. It pretty much speaks for itself.

If the senators do not go back to the state house to do their jobs, then the only alternative to balance the budget may be to fire about 5,000 state workers.

Public Sector Unions

The issue with public sector unions is collusion. Unions collect dues from their members. Their members, like the general public come from all parts of the political spectrum: Democrats, Republicans, Independents and even people not registered to vote or who don’t vote. Parts of those union dues are steered toward political activism which in short means electing as many Democrats as possible. The amount of money raised and spent is staggering. The Democrats that get elected are then in a position to negotiate contracts with those same unions and reward them for their support. As long as those Democrats are out of office before the bill comes due, they are happy to oblige.

What is happening in Wisconsin is ending that collusion. An alternative would be that public sector unions are not allowed to collect any dues for political purposes or participate in any political activity. In the private sector, unions don’t appoint the management that they eventually negotiate with for their contracts, why should it be different in the public sector? In the private sector if a company negotiates a lousy contract with the unions and it bankrupts them, they go out of business. In the public sector, if the government, generously helped into office by the unions, negotiates a lousy contract with the unions, the government doesn’t suffer, the taxpayers are stuck with the bill.

In Wisconsin those taxpayers said, “enough,” and turned out the Democrats and elected the Republicans to fix the problem. The Republicans are trying to do what they were elected to do.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

The Trick

You may have heard the Obama Administration touting the number of jobs they have saved or created through the stimulus and other economic policies.  I am reminded of the old comedy routine:

Comic: (Stands alone on the stage snapping his fingers, then whistling while he clasps his hands and wiggles his fingers)

Straight man: (Walks on stage as if to pass the comic, sees him and stops) “What are you doing?”

Comic: “Keeping away the elephants.”

Straight man: “There isn’t an elephant within miles of here.”

Comic: “See, it’s working.”

There isn’t an economist around who knows how to count a job saved.  There appears to be an informal survey among those who receive stimulus money to report how many jobs were saved by them receiving the funds.  Do you think they may be encouraged to tell the government what it wants to hear?  Here is my take on Obama’s performance.

Obama:  “If we don’t approve this stimulus package immediatelywe’ll be in deep tapioca.”

Citizen: “What are you doing?”

Obama: “Saving jobs.”

Citizen: “It’s impossible to measure a job saved.”

Obama: “See, it’s working.”

The Treat(?)

Third quarter economic growth came in at 3.5%.  That’s the good news and Obama is quick to credit the stimulus package that has hardly been spent.  But if you look more closely at the numbers a large portion of the growth comes from:

• A sharp slowdown in inventory reduction.  In other words, businesses don’t have much inventory left.
• “Cash for Clunkers” program which is over and whose stimulative effect will not continue
• The crushing effect of the debt that Obama is blissfully piling on has not been felt yet

Is it a real treat to a double dip to come?

BOO!!!

There is panic in the ranks of the left this Halloween.  In today’s Times, Frank Rich, does his level best to whistle past the graveyard, but the fear is clear.  He astonishingly titles his piece, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”  I guess they feel the Hitler moniker has lost its zest, so the leftists resort to calling those on the right, Stalinists.  Their disorientation could not be more palpable.

What has them in such a tizzy?  It centers around the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.  The local Republican party bosses chose a candidate, Dede Scozzafava, who would never be mistaken as a conservative, although Mr. Rich actually called her, “a mainstream conservative by New York standards.”  That’s like saying David Letterman is chaste by liberal standards, as if these things are measured on a relative scale.  But that’s the way liberals and statists think.  If your neighbor is more promiscuous than you, then you must be celebate.  If you want to make Nancy Pelosi a moderate, move her to Cuba.

Ground Shift

What has Mr. Rich and his cohorts nervously clearing their throats, is that the uprising against the entrenched statists, led by the Tea Parties, actually delivered results.   Ms. Scozzafava is pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-Obama stimulus package, pro-card check to make it easier to form a union without a secret ballot election, and supported by ACORN.  This is what Mr. Rich calls a conservative, “by New York standards.”  What sticks in his craw is that the election was a win-win, for him and his friends.  Elect the Republican or the Democrat and it doesn’t matter much, they both hold the same basic views.  Then along came Doug Hoffman.

Doug Hoffman threw his hat in the ring on the Conservative Party line.  By this Saturday, with support pouring in all across the country from true conservatives, Hoffman was in a dead heat with the conservative and the Republican Scozzafava was fading fast.  So she decided to suspend her campaign, and Mr. Rich and company hit the panic button.

So how does Mr. Rich frame his argument?  Well he starts by saying Hoffman has no grasp of local issues.  Uh, the position is United States Congressman, not city alderman.  He well understands the issues at the national level and how the policies of the Obama Administration are bankrupting the country.  Those policies will negatively affect the people in his district.  But leave it to Mr. Rich to scoff at Hoffman, because he doesn’t know how much pork barrel spending the district needs. A true patriotic Congressman, like John Murtha, finds a way to build an airport in the district that nobody uses and hands the bill to people in other districts like, well, New York’s 23rd.  He’s going to Washington to fight those who are bleeding the Treasury dry.  So Mr. Rich fights that by calling Fort Drum, home to the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, a “pork-dependent military base.”  Hmmm…the last time I read my copy of the Constitution, it specifically required providing for the national defense.  I couldn’t find in my copy where it required building airports no one needed so that John Murtha could get re-elected in perpetuity.  I understand it is a fine distinction, but I would have thought someone employed by the New York Times would be able to make it.

Frank Rich’s Happy Talk

Mr. Rich oddly calls the developments in New York as good news.  With a recent Gallup Poll, showing that for every self-described liberal there are two self-described conservatives, Mr. Rich says the ideologues that brought about the events in New York’s 23rd, may then start picking off other conservatives and destroy the party.  Does he mean conservatives like Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snow, Susan Collins, Charlie Crist, oh my!  With 73% of GOP voters saying that Congressional Republicans have lost touch with their base, this is not good news for Mr. Rich and company.  What he believes is that a small cabal of conservatives will put unelectable candidates on the ballot that voters will reject and the Democrats will gleefully reap the rewards.  In reality, the GOP leadership has for too long put weak candidates on the ballot that Democrats easily beat because the Republican base cannot get excited about them.  McCain is a war hero and worthy of our admiration, but just look at his signature legislation:  McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy.  He was not a conservative on many fronts. 

Nixon was a conservative, Ford was not.  Reagan was a conservative, Bush 41 was not and  Dole was not.  George W. started more conservative than not, but then drifted to become a big spender.  McCain was not a conservative.  Do you see a pattern here?  Conservative Republicans win.

With Obama’s approval rating going down in a virtual straight line, Mr. Rich confidently proclaims that the only politician Obama has to fear is Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.  By all means, Mr. Rich, you keep telling your pals that.