The tyranny of the left in action yet again ... Wisconsin Collective-Bargaining Law Struck Down (Updated) Dane County judge Maryann Sumi today struck down Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s new collective-bargaining law, arguing that its passage by the state senate on March 9 violated the state’s open-meetings law. Sumi’s decision (PDF) isn’t a surprise, though the timing was surprising in that it came earlier than expected. Sumi argues that the state senate violated the open-meetings law by failing to provide 24 hours’ notice of a legislative meeting — in this case, the conference committee meeting that forwarded the bill to the full senate. Yet, in her order, she doesn’t address the clear exemption to the rule provided in Senate Rule 93, which allows for no notice of proceedings for conference committee bills. The state statutes clearly give precedence to legislative rules in the case of conflict; Sumi simply believes no conflict exists, ignoring the fact that the bill was, in fact, a conference committee bill. Naturally, unions and their legislative allies are celebrating. Assembly minority leader Peter Barca called Sumi’s ruling “a huge win for democracy in Wisconsin.” Of course, in this case “democracy” is when two duly elected branches of the legislature pass a law, the state’s popularly elected governor signs it, and then it gets struck down by one of 17 judges in one of 72 state counties. (In the decision, Sumi laughably casts herself as a champion of taxpayers, haranguing legislative leaders for “the needless expenditure of taxpayer money to continue this lawsuit.”) Sumi’s position was never really in doubt — she repeatedly denied all attempts to discard the lawsuit, and issued a restraining order to keep the law from taking effect. Her order today is simply an appetizer to the inevitable supreme court battle ahead (which made the election of conservative justice David Prosser last month so critical). Otherwise, legislative leaders could add the invalidated provision to the pending budget bill and re-pass it — an option they have not ruled out. — Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. Update: This might explain the timing of Sumi’s ruling. Just yesterday, the state Department of Justice wrote a letter to Sumi warning her that they may seek her recusal based on a brief she had filed with the state supreme court last week. In her brief, Sumi argued an act of the legislature can be voided through a violation of the state’s open-meetings law — an issue which was before her court in the collective-bargaining lawsuit. DOJ attorneys charge that judges should recuse themselves from a proceeding in which they have made a public statement that “commits, or appears to commit” the judge to any issue or controversy in the case. By issuing her ruling today, the issue of her recusal is moot. |
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wisconsin back in the news - activist judge
Monday, March 28, 2011
After Wisconsin, Riots in London ... Leftist crybabies
They were cleaning up the mess in London yesterday -- replacing the windows at the Ritz, fixing the wooden façade at Fortnum & Mason and attending to a vandalized Trafalgar Square in the wake of Saturday's protests -- and riots -- by trade unionists and anarchists.
Think it can't happen here? Think again.
The British press reports that up to half a million people took part in the demonstrations, 200 were arrested and more than 160 injured -- including 84 police officers, 11 of whom had to be hospitalized.
Why? Because Prime Minister David Cameron announced a $130 billion cut in public spending and this is how the infantile left reacts when its I've-got-mine-Jack gravy train is threatened.
The weekend demonstration was led by Britain's powerful Trades Union Congress, whose leader, Brendan Barber, has been warning for more than a year that "industrial unrest" would greet any Tory government that dared attack Britain's sky-high social spending.
Addressing the gathering in historic Hyde Park was Ed Miliband, the Labor Party's new hard-left leader (his father was a prominent Marxist), who likened the protesters to the suffragettes, the US civil-rights movement and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Which ought to tell Britons all they need to know about their prime-minister-in-waiting.
In the aftermath of the all-too-predictable violence -- in Trafalgar Square, the words "fight back" and "Tory scum" were scrawled on the bronze lions and red paint was splashed on the 2012 Olympics countdown clock -- there was the usual tut-tuting.
Barber, the union chief, said he "bitterly regretted" the violence, then added, "I don't think the activities of a few hundred people should take the focus away from the hundreds of thousands of people who have sent a powerful message to the government today." Right. The government had better get the message -- or else.
Expect more of this in the coming months and years, as countries finally face up to the fact that the money has run out and that tough choices must be made -- not just nickel-and-dime decisions about which programs to cut but the harder issues of whether certain programs should even exist.
We've already seen it, on a smaller scale, in Wisconsin, during the recent battle over Gov. Scott Walker's plan to rein in the public-employee unions. In Madison, the capitol was occupied by hordes of protesters and the lives of some Republican state legislators were threatened.
This is no way to run a democracy. Peaceful protests are one thing, but massed force and ominous warnings about dire consequences are another. Throw into the mix the free-floating anarchists who routinely show up at such events -- most recently at the G-20 summit last year in Toronto -- and you have a prescription for serious trouble.
Yet, all too often, any attempt to open a civil discussion about the future is met with the same dreary charges that "hateful" conservatives want to kill old people and steal candy from babies.
For some on the left, too much is never enough -- because, by definition, it can't be. They operate on a modified version of the old Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated that once a country went communist, it could never go back: Once a government program is in place, it can never be cut or rescinded, only fattened. It doesn't even matter whether it's effective. The self-interested and the self-deluded have too much to lose to give up the fantasy of the perfect nanny state.
The problem is, we no longer have that luxury. "Progress" need not be the exclusive province of the so-called "progressives" -- and thuggery should have no place in our political system.
People of good will on both sides need to stand strong against intimidation and violence and insist that such questions be settled at the ballot box -- and that the results be respected. In any contest, there gets to be two teams on the field, not just one, and the game can only be played if both sides follow the rules.
When one doesn't -- well, just take a look at Trafalgar Square, then brace yourselves.
Michael Walsh, a former associate editor of Time, is the author (writing as David Kahane) of "Rules for Radical Conservatives."
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Wisconsin Fleebagger Update -- Dems Lose, Protest continue
As Brian notes, the Wisconsin Senate Republicans have passed an amended version of the budget-repair bill by a vote of 18-1 (wobbly GOPer Dale Schultz fell over).
It’s a Stage Five political cliche to say of your opponents that they “rammed through” a piece of legislation. But in this case it’s especially stupid. “Ramming” implies resistence, like a running back taking the ball up the gut and into a defensive line. But you can’t ram it through a defense that’s not even in the stadium. If anything, the Republicans floated the bill through. Positively waltzed it.
There’s already a lot of crowing about the Republicans using an amended version of the bill to get around the 3/5 quorum needed on fiscal measures. But the Wisconsin legislature’s nonpartisan version of the CBO/CRS — the Legislative Fiscal Bureau — gave the maneuver a clean bill of health, and I’m sure a GOP lawyer or two checked the subsections and clauses twice and thrice for good measure.
As for the quote from Matt Miller. . .
Thanks to this bill — which doesn’t touch any of the civil service protections afforded public workers, nor any private-sector unions — public sector workers will have a choice over whether to join a union. Thanks to this bill, public workers who elect not to join a union won’t be forced to pay dues anyway. Thanks to this bill, elected officials won’t be negotiating away taxpayer dollars the people who finance their campaigns. So, naturally, the Democrats call it the the undoing of fifty years of “civil rights.”
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Unions are Disconnected from Reality (Wisconsin, etc.)
Richard Trumka was given a large space in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to make his pro-union case. Let’s go point by point and see how far off the reservation Trumka is. I am sure this summer at the union country club, they will be slapping his back while he plays 18 with someDemocratic politicians. You can bend the facts as much as you want, but sooner or later they have a way of slapping you in the face.
Trumka asserts that workers have been given a choice. Give up their rights or get laid off. His first mistake is to assume collective bargaining is a “right”. It’s not a right. Nowhere in Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent elucidation of the “inalienable rights” to man, was a carve out for collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is a point that was won at a bargaining table, and now is being lost at a bargaining table. Remember, they did have an election in Wisconsin and it was no secret what the Republicans wanted to do. Collective bargaining is better classified as a privilege, like a drivers license.
There is a side point here too. Unionized collective bargaining for public employees is a giganticconflict of interest. It’s not at all like a union negotiating with a private firm-which can be advantageous for the firm.
His second straw man is the assumption that unions built the middle class. That’s totally false. The middle class was built by entrepreneurs. They developed great businesses and hired workers for them. As a matter of fact, many times unions impede the development of more innovation within many businesses depriving people of innovative jobs. They also add to the cost of doing business, making the economy less efficient.
Trumka goes on to cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“It’s also recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This right ensures that there is sufficient spending power to drive the consumer demand, which makes up two-thirds of our GDP.”
Of course, that’s not a United States concept, we already codified that in our Constitution back in 1778. This is that beacon of liberty and hope, the United Nations paradigm. You know, the UN, where Libya sits on the Human Rights Council. If I followed all the commands of the UN, I get the feeling I’d wind up in a gulag somewhere.
Trumka then characterizes the Republican governors as radical evil emperors, seeking to destroy people.
“a group of radical Republican governors is working overtime to export the most short-sighted private-sector labor practices into the public sector. Not only are they demanding steep cuts in wages and pensions for public workers, they also want to take away workplace rights, so that workers can no longer bargain for better compensation and benefits”
In fact, these guys aren’t radical at all. They are just asking that employees contribute a little more toward their benefit packages. Trumka also cites a poll that has been proven to be biased in the way it asks questions about collective bargaining and workers. Rather than be objective, Trumka shades the truth.
He goes on to say that government budgets are in trouble because of the recession. Well, he is correct that because of higher unemployment there is less tax revenue to pay for things. However, the core reason government budgets are in trouble is because of the medical and pension liabilities they are liable for in the future. Additionally, many of these governments used a fallacious net present value discounting factor to put these liabilities on their balance sheets, understating the amount by billions of dollars. The federal government has also understated it’s liabilities by trillions by keeping Social Security and Medicare off balance sheet. It’s not the recession stupid, it’s the true cost of the future liabilities that is breaking the bank.
If they were publicly traded corporations, they’d be in jail.
Trumka advocates for tough rules and doesn’t specify what they would be. I assume a higher wage, trade barriers, more restrictions and regulation, and mandatory division of cash flows. For a peek at how that works out, just look at the economic development in the US over the past two years.
ECONOMIC UPDATE
If one takes a peek at year over year unemployment numbers, Trumka makes even less sense.
Weekly earnings are up $18 year over year for a 2.3% rise. Hours worked is up. Overtime is up. Of course, the labor participation rate is down to it’s lowest point in years at 64.2%.
CPI excluding energy and food is up only 1.6%. Energy was up 13.4%, and food was up 2.1%. These are January 2011 numbers so you know that the energy component will be up significantly in February.
If Trumka really wanted to help his workers, he would advocate for three changes in public policy
- End the ethanol subsidies. This would bring food prices down tremendously.
- Allow for exploration of all energy resources, no strings attached. Allow nuclear plants to be built. Cost of energy would plummet.
- Make the corporate tax rate a flat tax of 15%, and end all subsidies to corporations.
The American worker would find a job as our economy exploded.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Incivility of the Left on Display Again - In Wisconsin
And who is leading the charge -- why its the Democrats and Obama's own "Organizing For America". A Streak of Castroism in Wisconsin Someone wrote me that the “public employees” in Wisconsin reminded her of Chávez and his goons in Venezuela. Actually, they remind me of Cuba. There, the dictatorship sends its loyalists to the homes of those suspected of not being loyalists. They scream, beat on things, denounce, and threaten. The idea is, the “disloyal” Cubans are supposed to quake in their homes, and they do. These tactics are called actos de repudio — “acts of repudiation.” They are a mainstay of the regime. In Wisconsin, the schoolteachers and other “public employee” beauties are going to the homes of Republican lawmakers, screaming, denouncing, etc. The situation has gotten very bad. We know where you live. Yesterday, I had a talk with Sen. Randy Hopper, recordedhere. Republican lawmakers have received threats, and credible ones: threats to their physical well-being. They are not disclosing their movements, whether they are sleeping in their own homes. They are working with law enforcement on how best to protect themselves and their families. I admire these Republicans, for persisting in the face of these threats, for continuing to do the job that the voters elected them to do. It’s not easy. It would be more comfortable to give in — to give in to the screaming and violent minority. And I don’t know about you, but I never want to hear from the Left about “civility” again. Ever. One more thing: Years ago, I left the Left, after experiencing some of life, after thinking things through. One of the main reasons I left: It was clear that, if things didn’t go their way, they wouldn’t mind violence at all. They may not commit it; but they wouldn’t mind it. There was no respect for process — democratic process. All that mattered was, “My way.” Idaho has a “superintendent of public instruction,” and his name is Tom Luna. He has proposed some measures that the teachers’ union doesn’t like, at all. And his opponents have made sure that he feels good and threatened. Someone went to his mother’s house — his mother’s. Someone slashed his tires and spray-painted a threat onto the door. As reported in this article, Luna has said, “Family and personal property are off-limits. You don’t cross that line . . .” Oh, yes, you do. At least some do. I will repeat what I have already said this morning: I don’t want to hear from the Left about “civility” for the rest of my life. The public-employee unions don’t own this country. They may think they do. But we all do. Right? I hope people all across the country, even those who disagree with him, will back Tom Luna: back his right to operate unmolested. P.S. Following events in Wisconsin and elsewhere, I think of a phrase from The Wizard of Oz: “and your little dog, too.” That’s the malevolent spirit these union jerks are expressing. I gave my take on events in Wisconsin — and Obama’s role in them — a bit earlier today in “Who’s Polarizing America?” And you’ll find Jay’s great stuff on Wisconsin if you scroll through yesterday’s Corner. But what about the Left? There’s a fascinating debate on Wisconsin going on between Harold Meyerson and Charles Lane at the Washington Post. It’s of interest that Meyerson is a proud socialist, while Lane appears to be a Democrat unhappy with the left-turn his party has taken of late. At any rate, this debate is well worth following. Here is Meyerson’s initial op-ed, followed by Lane,Meyerson, Lane, and Meyerson. John Boehner’s Got Scott Walker’s Back: Don’t ‘Demagogue Reform-minded Governors’ Speaker John Boehner Friday accused President Barack Obama and his political apparatus for “inciting” protests in Wisconsin’s captal, saying that the president is trying to “demagogue reform-minded governors.” Boehner was referencing Obama’s deployment of his political operation, Organizing for America, to Wisconsin, where public-sector workers are protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strip them of collective bargaining rights. Boehner said that OFA is “colluding with special-interest allies across the country to demagogue reform-minded governors who are making the tough choices that the President is avoiding.” “This is not the way to begin an ‘adult conversation’ about solutions to the big challenges facing our country,” Boehner said in a statement. “Rather inciting protests against those who speak honestly about the challenges we face, the president and his advisers should lead.” It’s the second statement the speaker made in response to the uproar in Wisconsin. This time he took it a step further, and likened the protests in Wisconsin to the Greece debt uprising, but noted that it is “fueled by President Obama’s own political machine.” “Rather than trying to ‘win the future,’ the president’s political allies are trying, desperately, to cling to a failed past by fighting reforms our nation needs to liberate our economy from the shackles of debt and create a better future for our children and grandchildren,” Boehner said. “The President should make it clear to his friends that the people of Wisconsin, and states across America, can handle their own affairs without Washington special-interest money and meddling.” |
Child’s Play: Wisconsin Teachers Recruit Their Students to Save Union Jobs Madison — On Valentine’s Day, over 100 students in tiny Stoughton, Wis., marched out of their classrooms and into the unseasonably warm air. They had decided to protest Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s new bill to require higher pension and health-care contributions from state and local government employees. As a student “union” leader barked into a megaphone in the background, one high-school junior expressed his concern for his teachers. “A lot of my teachers have been really concerned about this — they don’t know if they’re going to have jobs next year or not,” he worried. Two days later, schools in Madison canceled classes so teachers could join 20,000 people in picketing the capitol building. A 700-student entourage from Madison East High School, urged on by their teachers, marched the three miles from their school to the capitol. Wisconsin’s MacIver Institute, armed with a video camera, asked one of the students what the group was there to protest. “We’re trying to stop whatever this dude is doing,” he eruditely explained. This “dude” is trying to fill a $3.6 billion hole in the state’s budget by requiring state and local government employees to pay 5.8 percent of their salary towards their pensions (most currently pay nothing), and increasing their share of health-care premiums to 12 percent (double their current share). Governor Walker’s plan would also eliminate collective bargaining for almost everything except salary for government employees. Some of the responses to Walker’s plan from legislative Democrats made our friend from Madison East High look like Winston Churchill. One state senator said the plan instituted “legalized slavery.” (Apparently Wisconsin’s benefits aren’t quite as lucrative as the slave pension plan.) A Democratic assemblyman compared Walker to Hosni Mubarak. On Thursday, with a vote on the full bill scheduled in the Senate, 14 Democratic senators delayed the vote by fleeing to a hotel in Rockford, Illinois. Before he ran for the border, Democratic senator Jon Erpenbach posted a single word on his Facebook page: “Democracy.” In the meantime, the capitol was packed with thousands of government employees, many of whom had staged a “sleep-in” the night before. One sign-wielding protester approached a tie-wearing GOP staffer and sneered, “You must be a Republican.” He turned and asked, “Because I’m working?” The raucous, drum-beating crowd was mostly made up of teachers, high-school kids, and University of Wisconsin students. On Thursday, school districts all over the state began canceling classes as their teachers called in sick en masse — government-employee strikes are illegal in Wisconsin — and teachers continued to bring their students to protest with them. Of course, what the kids don’t understand is that Walker’s plan is intended to save their teachers’ jobs. Without the modest employee contributions required in the bill, Walker estimates he will have to fire up to 6,000 public employees. The teachers are in effect choosing massive job losses over moderate concessions. In fact, that might be the silver lining in this whole imbroglio: If teachers and their students manage to succeed in killing Walker’s bill, the next government employee demonstration will be half as big. — Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. The Many Paradoxes of Barack Obama When President Obama called for a new civility, I was somewhat confused. In 2004–7, the uncivil demagoguery of the Left damaged Bush; immediately after Obama’s call for civility, someone wrote an “I hate Joe Lieberman” column; now, Governor Walker–Nazi signs have appeared in Madison. Given that the country polls center-right, the hysterical style is something that the modern Left uses to counteract public opinion; Obama has condemned a methodology that is predominately embraced by his own hard-core base. (Indeed, swarming someone’s private home, or using terms like “enemy” and “punish,” are not unknown to either the younger or older Obama.) The result is the hypocrisy of condemning the incivility that will only become more useful to the Left as the election nears In the Middle East, Obama seems not to grasp the central paradox, analogous to Jeane Kirkpatrick’s in the Cold War: The relatively pro-American authoritarians (in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and the Gulf) are more vulnerable than the anti-American and far more savage totalitarian regimes (Iran, Syria, Libya, etc.), at least for now, because the latter are more willing to blockade the international media and to use brutal force to crack down on popular protests. Not only has the administration not appreciated how this paradox may change the strategic map of the Middle East to the detriment of U.S. interests, but it almost seems to consider the more anti-American regimes more sustainable, untouchable, and authentic, and their protesters tainted with Westernization. I don’t know how else to explain the administration’s otherwise inexplicable failure to support Iranian dissidents in 2009, or its harsh attitude toward Mubarak versus its mild treatment of Ahmadinejad, or its efforts to reach out to a rogue Syria while pulling back from a democratic Israel. At some point, Obama will have to see what Gov. Jerry Brown here in California has already realized: Out-of-whack public-employee compensation and pensions drain the treasury and preclude grandiose green projects and other dubious liberal programs. To put it rather crassly, the liberal calculus often works out as mostly older white guys wanting their unsustainable pension and benefit payouts while the “other” and the more needy are shorted from receiving proper public attention. Since the states cannot print money and often lose population to other states when they raise taxes, the reality is that the well-off are enjoying perks that younger and private-sector workers lack while social services and the green visions of an Al Gore or a 2008 Obama are defunded. Finally, what distinguishes Obama’s homespun platitudes about public-sector jobs from state governors’ more honest worries is just that ability to print cash — together with the fact that Americans cannot migrate to a kindred but lower-tax nation, in the fashion overtaxed Californians flee to Texas or Utah. But pass a law that the U.S. must balance its books like the states must, or have something like a workable, low-tax Singapore off our shores, and Obama would start sounding like a Governor Brown, Christie, or Walker. I wrote today about how extraordinary it is to have a reformist Republican governor taking on public-sector unions in Wisconsin, the intellectual breadbasket of American progressivism. A couple of points made by friends via e-mail: 1)“What Walker is doing isn’t unprecedented—18 states deny collective bargaining rights to some classes of public workers, or allow municipalities to do so. Virginia and North Carolina have outright bans on public sector collective bargaining. And nearly every state has some sort of restrictions on the scope of collective bargaining– for example, in New York, pension benefits are an excluded subject from collective bargaining.” 2) “Boosting pensions is an especially attractive way for unions to increase members’ overall compensation because pensions are commitments that come home to roost far in the future, when the politicians negotiating them will no longer be in office. Getting wage raises is harder because the must be factored into budgets immediately. So, reducing collective bargaining to wages only is a big deal.” |
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