Kudos to Governor Scott Walker and Republican in the state Senate for standing up to the obstructionist Democratic legislators who have decided that the best way to serve Wisconsin is to flee to Illinois.  Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald is playing hardball, saying that

. . . his chamber would meet Tuesday to act on non-spending bills and confirm some of the governor’s appointees even if the Democrats don’t show up — a scenario that should outrage their constituents.

Senate Democrats acknowledged that the 19 Republicans could pass any item that doesn’t spend state money in their absence. The budget-repair bill they have been blocking requires a quorum of 20 senators to pass, while other measures require only a simple majority of the chamber’s 33 members.

Of those 33 members, 17 were elected last November to a 4-year term, 11 of them, Republican and 6, Democrat.  The remaining 16, 8 Democrats and 8 Republicans, will be up in 2012.  Republican challengers are going to have an easy time crafting campaign ads against those 8 Democrats.  They’ll just remind voters that when the chamber to which they were elected voted on important matters facing the state, the Democrats were hiding outside the state.

Come 2013, look for an even more Republican Senate in the Badger State.

In a post linked by Glenn Reynolds, Robert Costa posts this picture:

In the post linking Costa, the Blogfather reports something else:

KIDS? EDUCATION? THE HELL WITH ‘EM: Madison schools will close again on Monday — the 4th school day in a row — to accommodate teachers protesting at the Capitol. They don’t care about your kids. They care about themselves, and about money, and political power.

It’s not Governor Walker closing schools and preventing the children from getting an education.  These folks would rather engage in politics than teach the children.

Perhaps, Wisconsin would be better served if those marching on the state capital found another line of work.

UPDATE:  ”If this” were really “‘about the kids’,” Doug Ross writes, “rather than about the greed and arrogance of the public unions, teachers would be in the classroom teaching instead of fraudulently calling in sick, with help of doctors aiding and abetting that fraud.“

So said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin on Fox News Sunday:

“My hope is that cooler minds will prevail,” Walker said. “Democracy is not about hiding out in other states.”

Walker acknowledged that his battle against the public-sector unions has “large ramifications” for the rest of the country, especially as fellow governors grapple with their own budget gaps. “For us, we have to do this,” he said. “For decades, we had leaders who pushed off the problem.”

Jerry, are you listening?  (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE:  Stacy McCain places before us the common sense of the matter in terms so plain and simple as to command the assent of all but the most dogmatic of liberals:

The union protests in Madison — and the flight of Democratic lawmakers — are an effort to overturn the election, to maintain the power of state employees union in contravention of the expressed will of the majority of Wisconsin voters.

UP-UPDATE: Wisconsin voters knew (or could have easily learned) what they were getting when they elected Scott Walker last fall: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has history of going up against unions.

So says Moe Lane (via Little Miss Attila) in a short post that’s well worth your time.  Seems the unions know they’ve lost and are trying to find a way to save face.

Guess to the “milk cartoon” Democrats, elections are only over when Democrats win them.

Oh, and the concessions have caused Stacy McCain to quip,  ”So after all this protesting, now the unions want a ‘compromise’? Yeah, they’re losing this battle and they know it.”  (Via Instapundit.)  Just a reminder, they may have lost the battle for people’s hearts and minds, but they still haven’t lost it legislatively.

Recall that on Main Street USA, Democrats lost the health care battle, only to win it on Capitol Hill.  Still, a high school friend of Glenn Reynolds wonders if this is, “the high water mark of Liberal America? Will their push be broken? Is the tide turning? All eyes seem turned to the Wisconsin Capital, waiting for a result.”

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Louise B nails it:  ”The only reason the unions are agreeing to the financial cuts now is because they know if they keep the collective bargaining, they can reverse the financial cuts later.”

UPDATE:  Apparently, Wisconsin voters were aware of Scott Walker’s stands on unions when they elected him to office:

He has never tried to disguise his stance on the issues of the day, and if it can be said that “[u]nions have always been his piñata, over and over,” then one can hardly be taken by surprise by his stance on unions in general, or on public sector unions in particular.

And despite–or because of–this stance, the voters of Wisconsin elected him Governor in 2010, with a 6 point, 124,000-plus vote margin between himself and his opponent. Not a landslide, but not inconsequential either, especially given the fact that Walker has not shied away from stating clearly his public policy views. In doing so, the voters not only elected Walker, they endorsed his views, views he clearly articulated throughout his career in public life.

The relevant discussion did indeed take place last November.  Via Instapundit.  Read the whole thing.

As Glenn Reynolds would say… SAVE THE EDISON LIGHT BULB!  FASTER, PLEASE! (via The Red Dog Report)

On Thursday, Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming introduced legislation to reverse a 2007 ban on incandescent light bulbs that is scheduled to take effect January 1, 2012.

The Better Use of Light Bulbs Act (BULB) is intended to repeal the amendment that was attached to a comprehensive energy bill signed by President George W. Bush in 2007.   The ban on incandescent light bulbs was intended to save energy and limit pollution.

Now, Enzi and other lawmakers are attacking the ban as a measure that limits choices for Americans.  “I think it’s fine if someone wants to fill their home or business with the light from the new bulbs,” said Enzi in a statement.

“I also think it is fine if someone wants to buy an old-fashioned bulb because it works better for them,” he added.  “If left alone, the best bulb will win its rightful standing in the marketplace.  Government doesn’t need to be in the business of telling people what light bulb they have to use.”

RedDog rightly notes: 

Let me see if I have this right… The government gives you a choice when it comes to ending the life of a child, But not when it comes to deciding what type of light bulb you use?

As trivial as this may sound, many people — including yours truly — are now hoarding the Edison Light Bulb before it vanishes into the dustheap of history.  Call your Senator and stop the Global Warming Hoax Madness from gaining any more traction in the way the Government rules our lives.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

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Since, as Michelle Malkin informs us, “The Runaway Senate Dems remain AWOL — and wire reports say they could be on the lam ‘for weeks’“, it would be nice to know who’s footing the bill of their accommodations in Illinois. Hotel rooms don’t come cheap.

Democrats on the run in Wisconsin avoided state troopers Friday and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks, potentially paralyzing the state government in a standoff with majority Republicans over union powers for public employees.

It costs money to paralyze state government, not just, at least in this case, providing security for the state legislators who have been receiving death threats, but for those fleeing their home state and their own homes to remain in hiding.

According to my recent search, a room at the BestWestern ClockTower Resort in Rockford, IL (where some of the obstructionist Democrats have been spotted) runs $119 a night.  (Rooms in Chicago likely cost a bit more.)  If they’re going to be on the lam for just weeks, we’re talking about $1,666 (less if the legislators bunk up, more if they go for more deluxe accommodations).  And that doesn’t include food, dry cleaning and entertainment.

Are the public employee unions paying to keep them comfortable or perhaps the Democratic National Committee?

Calling it “a sad moment for liberalism, for the Democratic Party, and, really, for the whole country“, Charles Lane (no conservative he) takes the Democratic, public employee union and their allies to task for their angry antics in Madison, Wisconsin:

Yet today in Wisconsin, anger and vilification are once again the order of the day — and the incivility emanates from the progressive end of the spectrum, including, no doubt, many of the same people who blamed right-wing vitriol for creating a climate of violence in Arizona. Union-backed demonstrators, furious at Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s plans for reining in public-sector unions, equate him with Hosni Mubarak and Adolf Hitler, in disgusting mimickry of some Tea Party members’ inflammatory linkage between Obama and the evil dictators of history. (See Photo no. 10 in this gallery) or Photo 13 in this gallery .

Meanwhile, progressive voices in the media fanned the flames,spreading misinformation and outright falsehoods with a zest that would make Glenn Beck blush: Gov. Walker wants to crush unions with the National Guard; he manufactured a budget crisis to justify his attack on unions; he proposed cutting union workers’ pay 20 percent. Neutral sources have debunked it all, but as far as I know only Ezra Klein among these tribunes of truth has seen fit to correct the record. . . .

This is hypocrisy on an epic scale. I can’t think of a more overwhelming refutation of the claim that incivility is the unique province of the American right

Read the whole thing.

Now, to be sure, I quibble with the accuracy of his descriptions of the Tea Party, but that grassroots movement never obstructed any legislative process — or children’s education — as these protesters are doing.  That said, his jaundiced view of the Tea Party helps establish his bona fides as a man of the left (indeed, on the whole, Lane embodies the sensible center-left), making his critique all the more telling.

Awesomeness!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Unbelieveable…. and illegal!

As tens of thousands of public employees skipped work this week to attend protest rallies outside the Wisconsin State Capitol, many wondered if they would face any disciplinary action for unexcused absences.

On Saturday, a group of men and women in lab coats purporting to be doctors were handing out medical excuse notes, without examining the ‘patients.’

“I asked this doctor what he was doing and he told me they were handing out excuses to people who were feeling sick due to emotional, mental or financial distress,” said Christian Hartsock. “They never performed an exam–he asked me how I was feeling today and I said I’m from California and I’m not used to the cold, so he handed me a note.”

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Via National Review Online:

As Gov. Scott Walker (R., Wis.) battles the public-sector unions, Cain says Madison has become “ground zero for the rest of the nation.”

“For the last couple of days, America has heard from ten percent of the workforce. It’s now time for them to hear from the [other] 90 percent of the workforce,” Cain told the crowd. “Maybe the ten percent has forgotten that we pay the bills.”

The more I hear of Herman Cain, the more I like his prospects in the 2012 GOP Presidential race.

UPDATE:  Here is a photo of the Tea Party rally crowd today in Madison, WI (h/t – The Other McCain)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

A number of conservative blogs have posted a lot of thoughtful commentary on the legislation Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker introduced to reform his state’s relationship with its public employees and the angry reaction of said employees and their allies in the Democratic Party.

As many have noted, their protests hardly represent a grassroots uprising, with union officials instructing their members to take off work and come to the state capitol to protest, including missives to unionized government workers in other states to come to Madison to “show solidarity with Wisconsin workers”.  So, while ABC News’s Devin Dwyer contends that these rallies “bear some similarities to grassroots displays by Tea Party members who voiced deep dissatisfaction with lawmakers ahead of the 2010 elections”, in reality, they’re far different.

Unlike those rallies, he reports

. . . the latest are being fomented by the national political establishment — including President Obama and the Democratic National Committee — who have directly interjected themselves into the state-level debates.

Organizing for America, Obama’s campaign arm now under the umbrella of the DNC, has been mobilizing union members and supporters to rally against a proposed Wisconsin budget measure that would strip workers of collective bargaining rights and force them to contribute more for benefits. . . .

DNC Chairman Tim Kaine also reportedly spoke with Wisconsin union leaders and state legislators ahead of the protests, the Huffington Post reported, signaling his direct involvement in coordinating the effort.

Emphasis added.  Kudos to ABC News for reporting that these efforts are being ginned up by national Democrats.  Fascinating how they would intrude so aggressively in state issues.  Does seem that this time the word is getting out that these rallies are anything but grassroots.  I think Nancy Pelosi had a word for what they are.

And that’s not the way these rallies resemble the left-wing take on the Tea Parties.  As Stacy McCain observes, in his must-read analysis of the situation: (more…)

A Powerline reader alerts my friend John Hinderaker about something the MSM failed to report:

BTW…in no MSM coverage I have seen is there ANY note that the crowd is “predominantly white”…. Why is that?

Guess, they were just too busy looking for those fourteen missing Democratic state Senators, you know the folks who skipped out on their duties.  I mean, normally those in the media notice such things.  John, however, isn’t quite sure why they forget to notice the race of the protesters:

We all remember how liberal news coverage of tea party rallies rarely failed to note that they were “predominantly white.” Somehow, that is no longer a salient fact when the same outlets cover illegal sick-outs by Wisconsin teachers. Why would that be?

UPDATE: Similarly confused, Tigerhawk is asking the same question as John:

Compare to MSM coverage of the Tea Party, which dissected its demographics to the point of an obsessive compulsion. What can possibly account for the mainstream media’s disinterest in the diversity of pigmentation in the pro-union crowds demonstrating against Republicans in Wisconsin? I am baffled and mystified, and cannot imagine why this question would not be of great interest, just as it was during the summer Tea Party rallies.

Pelosi says she’s ‘proud’ of Wisconsin Democrats who fled:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she supports the Democratic state senators in Wisconsin who left the state to stop a vote on curbing collective bargaining rights for unionized public employees.

UPDATE: Remember when the Democratic leader had “concerns about some of the language that is being used” by a handful of Tea Party protesters. Wonder if she has similar concerns about the language her ideological allies have been using in Wisconsin.  And now that she’s expressed support for the antics in the Badger State, we can soon expect her colleague Barney Frank to call on her to “differentiate” herself from the hateful signs comparing the Governor Walker to Hitler.

Americans Say Reagan Is the Greatest U.S. President:

Ahead of Presidents Day 2011, Americans are most likely to say Ronald Reagan was the nation’s greatest president — slightly ahead of Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. Reagan, Lincoln, or John F. Kennedy has been at the top of this “greatest president” list each time this question has been asked in eight surveys over the last 12 years

While Democrats, both nationally and in the Badger State, are pulling out all stops to thwart Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s necessary — and fiscally responsible — reforms, they are showing themselves to be the real opponents of democracy and responsible governance.   State Sen. Jon Erpenbach whines from Chicago (a city which, by the way, is not in the state in whose legislature he was elected to serve) that it’s the governor’s “responsibility to bring the state together. The state is not unified. It is totally torn part.”

Yet, it is Erpenach, his fellow partisans and their union allies responsible for tearing the state apart.  They orchestrated the angry rallies.  They walked out of the legislature, expressly in order to prevent legislators from doing their jobs:

“I’m starting to hold [Democratic Minority Leader Mark] Miller responsible for this,” [Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott] Fitzgerald said. “He shut down democracy.”

The protests have attracted teachers, grade school children, college students and other workers over four days. Police report they have been largely peaceful, with only nine people cited for minor acts of civil disobedience as of Thursday night.

The school children did not show up of their of their own accord, but were dragged there by their teachers who walked off their jobs in order to protest the policies of their elected representatives.  The majority leader of the Wisconsin Senate is right, with the apparent blessing of the national party, his Democratic counterpart is shutting down democracy.  Even some liberal pundits agree.  On Time’s Swampland blog, Joe Klein reminds us:

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. . . . .

But we’ve had far too many state legislatures, of both parties, that have been cowed by the political power of the unions and enacted contracts that force state and city governments to be run for the benefit of their employees, rather than for their citizens. This situation is most egregious in far too many school districts across the nation. The events in Wisconsin are a rebalancing of power that, after decades of flush times and lax negotiating, had become imbalanced. That is also something that, from time to time, happens in a democracy. (more…)

Seems instead of coming up with solutions for our nation’s dire fiscal situation, Democrats are tearing a page from the last successful Democratic president’s playbook and playing politics instead.  Jonathan Allen reports in the Politico that a “high-ranking aide to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Democratic chiefs of staff that a government shutdown is more likely than not“.  This squares nicely with his boss’s recent statement:

Yesterday Pelosi told reporters that if there is a government shutdown, responsibility will fall on Republicans’ shoulders.

“It is a failure. It’s really a failure to say we have taken the leadership of the Congress of the United States and the first thing we’re going to do is shut down the government to the detriment of our people, to our security and to our country’s future,” she told reporters.

A government horizon is only at present on the very distant horizon and already Pelosi is starting to blame Republicans.  While some conservative organizations have called for a government shutdown, most of the talk of such a shutdown comes from Democrats.  Seems that they’ve run out of ideas on how to address our nation’s problems, so they’re resorting to old political tricks.  Or perhaps they know their solutions don’t find favor with the American people, so they need make Republicans looks like big, bad meanies who are even worse than they.

Hey, it worked in 1995-96.

All eyes in the nation have been on Wisconsin the fast few days as public employee unions (and their allies in the Democratic Party) have thrown a temper, trashing the state’s capital and smearing its elected officials, even threatening them with death.

The stakes in the state couldn’t be higher. “As Wisconsin goes,” Michelle Malkin writes, “so go the rest of the nation’s bankrupt and near-bankrupt states.”   What we’re seeing in the Badger State, we need to be seeing in the (once-)Golden State.  And when it happens here, what we’ll see in Sacramento will make the goings-on in Madison seems like a a rather sedate affair.

But, confronting the public employee unions is a necessary first step to fixing the underlying structural problems behind each state’s impending insolvency.  What the editors of the Wall Street Journal observe about Wisconsin is also to be found here in California, but to a much greater extent:

Unions are treating these reforms as Armageddon because they’ve owned the Wisconsin legislature for years and the changes would reduce their dominance. Under Governor Walker’s proposal, the government also would no longer collect union dues from paychecks and then send that money to the unions. Instead, unions would be responsible for their own collection regimes. The bill would also require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of all members. Imagine that: More accountability inside unions.

The larger reality is that collective bargaining for government workers is not a God-given or constitutional right. It is the result of the growing union dominance inside the Democratic Party during the middle of the last century. John Kennedy only granted it to federal workers in 1962 and Jerry Brown to California workers in 1978. Other states, including Indiana and Missouri, have taken away collective bargaining rights for public employees in recent years, and some 24 states have either limited it or banned it outright.

And for good reason. Public unions have a monopoly position that gives them undue bargaining power. Their campaign cash—collected via mandatory dues—also helps to elect the politicians who are then supposed to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those same unions. The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table. This is why such famous political friends of the working man as Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia opposed collective bargaining for government workers, even as they championed private unions. (more…)

If there is one moment which shows how unfit Barack Obama is to serve in the times he does, it was when he proposed $53 billion for high-speed rail.  Anyone proposing such spending when crafting an annual budget with a deficit higher (in constant FY 2000 dollars) than the entire national budget in 1990 simply can’t be serious about confronting our fiscal mess, particularly given polls showing an increasing concern with the federal government’s spending binge (and the concomitant explosion of debt) and the results of last November’s elections.

The president’s budget budget, as Karl Rove wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, “is not a serious governing document. It’s a political one, designed to boost his re-election chances.”  And new kinds of politicians seeking to change the way Washington operates are supposed to put governing ahead of politics.  Or so I thought.

High-speed rail may be a fine (and dandy idea), but, well, as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie understood, in nixing a similar idea which could also facilitate travel, you shouldn’t build something you can’t afford.  And we don’t have the money to pay for the numerous programs the federal government has long supported.

House Speaker John Boehner recently got into some hot water for calling it like it is:

Over the last two years since President Obama has taken office, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. . . . And if some of those jobs are lost in this, so be it. We’re broke. It’s time for us to get serious about how we’re spending the nation’s money.

If you’re going to get serious about addressing the nation’s fiscal problems, you’re going to need to make tough choices.  And not proposing new spending initiatives when the federal deficit is larger than the economies of most nations.

UPDATE:  Calling the president’s enthusiasm for high-speed rail “serious case of  policy delusion“, Joel Kotkins says his advocacy of more federal spending on this initiative shows just how out of touch he is with our nation’s fiscal reality and the national mood: (more…)