op ed review 6/10
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker survived his recall race, walking away with a seven point victory
over Democratic candidate Mayor Tom Barrett. But that's a 'close race,'
according to the front page of the Washington Post.
Mitt Romney: “I congratulate Scott Walker on his victory in Wisconsin. Governor
Walker has demonstrated over the past year what sound fiscal policies can do to
turn an economy around, and I believe that in November voters across the
country will demonstrate that they want the same in Washington, D.C.”
“Scott Walker won for a simple reason: He did what he
promised to do as a candidate and it worked. Walker’s 2010 campaign focused broadly on
fiscal responsibility and balancing the state’s budget. One of the first things
Walker did as governor, long since forgotten,
was to return some $800 million in federal money designated for high-speed rail
in Wisconsin.
His argument was not complicated: The state doesn’t need it, and taxpayers
cannot afford it.”
“Kill Scott Walker”: Angry liberals flood Twitter with death
threats after Wisconsin recall defeat
The spin from the left on the morning after their disastrous
Wisconsin recall election failure is that
Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), who walked away with the election, did so because
he spent oodles of money. “Outspent 7-1, Democrats couldn’t beat Scott Walker
with a strong ground game.” Not so fast. As it turns out, labor unions spent an
additional $21 million on the recall election.
An election night that began with Wisconsin Republican Gov.
Scott Walker winning his recall election grew progressively worse for
public-sector unions as California
voters approved steep pension-cutting measures in two major cities. Voters in San Diego and San
Jose overwhelmingly passed ballot initiatives Tuesday
to reduce retirement benefits for city workers by switching from traditional
plans to 401(k)-style contribution plans. San
Diego voters also approved a second proposition
allowing the city to hire non-union labor on construction contracts.
President Obama’s
popularity in Michigan
has slipped in recent months. Romney now leads Obama 46%-45%, a reversal from
the last EPIC poll in April which showed Obama ahead 47%-43%.
For the first time this year, Mitt Romney’s campaign has
bested President Obama’s re-election effort in a one-month fundraising period,
outraising the Democrats by more than $16 million in May.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/romney-campaign-outraises-obama-by-16-8-million-in-may/
The Florida Department of State has responded to the Justice
Department’s demand that they stop their efforts to clean ineligible voters,
particularly illegal aliens, from their voter registrations. Florida Secretary
of State Ken Detzner issued a statement saying the program would continue.
Washington’s gay marriage law was blocked
from taking effect Wednesday, as opponents filed more than 200,000 signatures
seeking a public vote on the issue in November.
??? The media crusade to redefine marriage has taken a
radical turn. Media outlets have put a spotlight on the narcissistic practice
of “self-marriage,” in which a person marries himself or herself in a formal
ceremony.
_______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Charles Karuathammer
6/7
Tuesday, June 5, 2012, will be remembered as the beginning
of the long decline of the public-sector union. It will follow, and parallel,
the shrinking of private-sector unions, now down to less than 7 percent of
American workers. The abject failure of the unions to recall Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker (R) — the first such failure in U.S. history — marks the Icarus
moment of government-union power. Wax wings melted, there’s nowhere to go but
down.
The ultimate significance of Walker’s union reforms has been largely
misunderstood. At first, the issue was curtailing outrageous union benefits,
far beyond those of the ordinary Wisconsin
taxpayer. That became a nonissue when the unions quickly realized that trying
to defend the indefensible would render them toxic for the real fight to come. So they made the fight about the “right” to
collective bargaining, which the reforms severely restricted…..But as the
recall campaign progressed, the Democrats stopped talking about bargaining
rights. It was a losing issue. Walker
was able to make the case that years of corrupt union-politician
back-scratching had been bankrupting the state. And he had just enough time to
demonstrate the beneficial effects of overturning that arrangement: a huge
budget deficit closed without raising taxes, significant school-district
savings from ending cozy insider health-insurance contracts, and a modest growth
in jobs.
The real threat behind all this, however, was that the new
law ended automatic government collection of union dues. That was the
unexpressed and politically inexpressible issue. That was the reason the unions
finally decided to gamble on a high-risk recall. Without the thumb of the state
tilting the scale by coerced collection, union membership became truly
voluntary. Result? Newly freed members rushed for the exits. In less than one
year, AFSCME, the second-largest public-sector union in Wisconsin, has lost more than 50 percent of
its membership…….
The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They
set out to make an example of Walker.
He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary
liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth,
power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought
politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later
these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work
rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican
governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.
Why did the unions lose? Because Norma Rae nostalgia is not
enough, and it hardly applied to government workers living better than the
average taxpayer who supports them. And because of the rise of a new
constitutional conservatism — committed to limited government and a more robust
civil society — of the kind that swept away Democrats in the 2010 midterm
shellacking. Most important, however, because in the end reality prevails. As
economist Herb Stein once put it: Something that can’t go on, won’t. These
public-sector unions, acting, as FDR had feared, with an inherent conflict of
interest regarding their own duties, were devouring the institution they were
supposed to serve, rendering state government as economically unsustainable as
the collapsing entitlement states of southern Europe.
Public sector unions have reached their high water mark. Let the cleanup begin
as the red ink recedes……..
Walker’s
message is clear: The key to bringing balance back to public sector labor
relations and balance state budgets is to break the iron triangle of
closed-shop mandatory unionization, compulsory dues collection, and oversized
campaign donations to politicians that promise to do the unions’ bidding. If
other governors take his cue and take up the cause, that giant sucking sound
you hear will be the air coming out of union bosses’ bloated political action
budgets….
The power of private sector unions was long ago broken by
many heavily unionized companies going bankrupt. While this was painful for
both workers and shareholders, the economy motored on as nimbler non-union
competitors picked up the slack. This approach is problematic for the public
sector because bankrupt state and local governments cannot be replaced by
competitors waiting in the wings…...
Chicago
machine candidate Barack Obama rode into office to the tune of Hail to
the Chief, promising the unions that backed him the gift of card check
elections, ending the secret ballot that shields employees from union
intimidation. He may well ride into retirement to the tune of On
Wisconsin as the era of closed shop unionism comes to an end.
Edited from a longer column, read it here:
_____________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"Walker
won because his reform program is popular, and because it is working. ... Walker won because he
represented the taxpayer, while his opponent represented the groups whose
livelihoods depend on bilking the taxpayer. Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett served as less of
an alternative than a vessel for Big Labor's unmoored wrath. ... And, most of
all, Scott Walker saved his job by being the adult in the room. While Democrats
in Washington seem to be relying on their
belief that the United
States government is 'too big to fail' to
justify a program of taxing and spending our way out of debt, the states don't
have such a luxury. And so, across the country, in states red, blue, and
purple, they have turned to men like Scott Walker -- and Chris Christie, and
Mitch Daniels, and others -- to close structural deficits, stabilize
out-of-control spending, and break the death embrace between Big Labor and Big
Government"
-National
Review
"[T]he political left were trying to demonstrate
that power and privileges once granted are eternal. They wanted to run Mr.
Walker out of Madison
as an object lesson that trying to limit collective bargaining and mandatory
dues collection for government unions will end your political career. ...
Public unions are never going to cede their dominance over taxpayers without a
fight. And it's worth recalling how brutally they fought. They occupied the
state capital for weeks. They harassed GOP lawmakers and their families, tried
to recall state Senators and defeat a conservative Supreme Court judge, while
Democratic lawmakers abdicated their legislative duty by fleeing the state.
They lost in the end because Mr. Walker and Republicans rode out the storm,
passed their reforms, and are now able to show Wisconsin
voters the beneficial results. The longer-term impact of Mr. Walker's
vindication will depend on the lesson other political leaders take from
it."
-The Wall
Street Journal
"Scott Walker
never lacked courage. It took steely determination not to buckle in the face of
militant unions who 'occupied' the stately Wisconsin capitol in Madison when Walker's
reforms were first voted on. For two years, leftists have been howling. One of
their speakers at a get out the (union) vote rally actually compared Scott
Walker's reforms to the 9/11 attacks on our country. And this is the crowd that
is forever lecturing us on civility."
-Ken
Blackwell
"Government
debt in Greece
is 160 percent of gross domestic product. The other percentages of GDP are 120
in Italy, 104 in Ireland and 106 in Portugal. ... Here's the question
for us: Is the U.S.
moving in a direction toward or away from the troubled EU nations? It turns out
that our national debt, which was 35 percent of GDP during the 1970s, is now
106 percent of GDP, a level not seen since World War II's 122 percent. ... I am
all too afraid that Benjamin Franklin correctly saw our nation's destiny when
he said, 'When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will
herald the end of the republic.'”
-Walter E.
Williams
___________________________________________________________________________
BOOKS
It’s clear David Limbaugh isn’t writing books with the goal
of being honored in the salons of the liberal media. He doesn’t mince words
with the media. His devastating new book on Barack Obama is titled "The
Great Destroyer: Barack Obama’s War on the Republic." It’s a bracing
antidote to the intoxicated oozing of the "mainstream" press.
Maggie Gallagher discusses her new book, "Debating
Same-Sex Marriage," co-authored with Professor John Corvino.
__________________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
1930s photos show Greenland
glaciers retreating faster than today…”But nobody thought it was a big deal”
___________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Liberal radio host Bill Press announced on his show that he
was “embarrassed every time” he hears the National Anthem and was on a “major
crusade” to “get rid of the Star-Spangled Banner.” “It’s an abomination.” Among the
abominations Press cited were that the Anthem is not singable because it is two
octaves, contains “military jargon” like “bombs bursting in air” and “rocket’s
red glare.” Press was also bothered by the phrase “home of the brave.”
School is letting
out around the United States,
but for George Soros, education never stops. Soros has given more than $400
million to colleges and universities; including money to most prominent
institutions in the United
States…..don’t expect the American news
media to make it a big issue, even though they have done so for the Koch
brothers.
Obama’s Third-Party History: New documents
shed new light on his ties to a leftist party in the 1990s.
Ayers and Obama: What the Media Hid
Last week, President Obama rejected the world's most
powerful living symbol of anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and victory in the
Cold War. The White House declined to have Lech Walesa stand in for the late
Jan Karski, who posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Our
president spurned Walesa, first president of free Poland,
who had once risked everything to courageously join Ronald Reagan and Pope John
Paul II in keeping Solidarity alive in Poland.
____________________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
From Time Magazine: “With five months until Election Day, Barack
Obama faces a grim new reality: Republicans now believe Mitt Romney can win,
and Democrats believe Obama can lose”
Come on now. Is Obama really a “psychopathic
megalomaniac”? I learned of Obama’s problems today. Not from Ron Paul
supporters. Not from Glenn Beck…. I read about Obama’s psychosis from left wing
Democrats.
Mitt Romney’s reputation with US voters appears to be on the
rise. That’s the implication of a new CNN poll, anyway, which shows that Mr.
Romney’s favorable rating has jumped from 34 percent in February to 48 percent
today.
The failed effort to oust (Scott Walker) sent reverberations
across the labor movement and the Democratic Party, signaling that one of
President Obama’s most powerful constituencies is politically vulnerable and
may not be able to help him
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
“It’s still early Friday morning, and so there’s plenty of
time for more things to go wrong for the Left before sundown today, but it’s
already been another
horrible, no good, very bad week for the Left. First, there’s obviously the Wisconsin result. If the “Progressive agenda” hits the wall in Wisconsin
(and let’s keep in mind the local results on public employee pensions in San
Diego and San Jose, too), then times are truly bad for the Left….Second,
there’s the CBS/NY Times poll finding that two-thirds of Americans want the
Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare…. Third, there’s the news out this morning
that the Romney campaign raised more money than the Obama campaign in the month
of May. How could Romney possibly do
this? He didn’t have George
Clooney! You can’t possibly outraise The
One without George Clooney… Then there’s NBC’s flagship news program Meet the
Press, which just notched its lowest ratings in 20 years. And if all of this
isn’t cheery enough, the Guardian reports that the big UN Earth Summit
in Rio is at serious risk of collapse… It’s
almost looking like a Mayan calendar week for the Left.”
The Obama administration is no friend of farmers, and the
recent stunt involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sending spy
planes over the state of Nebraska
to keep an eye on where cows drop their patties is the latest example of
overreach by an administration that is bent on controlling every aspect of our
lives, but farming in particular.
“What the Media
Choose Not to Know about Trayvon”
“Dangerous misreading of the Constitution Liberals invent the power to consign our
children to involuntary servitude”
"The bottom line; the burden of job loss caused by
increased minimum wage falls disproportionately on those who can least afford
it-low-skill workers, such as young adults just entering the work force.
Experience in Washington
State bears this out - we
have the highest state minimum wage in the nation at $9.04 per hour. We also
have one of the nation's highest youth unemployment rates..."
“The partisan divide in the United States may be past the point
of no return. It could well be a symptom of greater changes in the American
polity that herald the advent of potentially revolutionary change…America may
be “on the verge of a new upheaval, a ‘fourth revolution’ that will reshape
U.S. politics for decades to come.” The previous three upheavals - the War for Independence; the Civil
War; and the changes that attended the Great Depression, New Deal and World War
II - were inflection points in American history after which the country began
moving in a new direction. Those fundamental changes take place every 70 to 80
years. The sudden and growing divisions in the country may be precursors to
another tectonic shift.…There is opportunity in transformative periods. The
political values that took root in the 1930s - such as using government to
address all national problems - could be swept away in favor of less expensive,
decentralized bureaucracy and greater personal freedom. If so, the Obama years
will be remembered as the last hurrah of runaway liberalism before the return
to fundamental American values.”
____________________________________________________________________________
NOTEWORTHY WEBSITES
This should be viewed by every American. Pass it on.
Daisy the beagle is fast becoming an internet star after
video of her ecstatically greeting her soldier owner on her return home to the
U.S. was uploaded to YouTube. The beagle
and her master, Amanda, had been apart for six months as Amanda served in the
military. The video begins with Amanda outside her home as she prepares to open
the front door to be reunited with Daisy.
Currently, as the
chart shows, debt per American is at (or around) $50,000. Just four years ago,
in 2008, the year President Obama was first elected, debt per person was at
$35,000. In 2037, if things stay relatively the same, debt per American will be
at $147,000.
__________________________________________________________________________
LATE NITE:
Leno: The No. 2 guy
in al-Qaida has been killed. Who says Obama isn't creating job openings?..... Unemployment's
still looking pretty bad. In fact, the White House has a new slogan on jobs
creation — "Hope and Change the Subject."…….The unemployment numbers
are higher than President Obama was in high school……..Congratulations to our
new national spelling bee champion. Her name is Snigdha Nandipati. Over the
weekend the 14-year-old from San Diego
won the award after she correctly spelled her own name.
____________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
"God [gave] mankind virtually unlimited gifts to
invent, produce and create. And for that reason alone, it would be wrong for
governments to devise a tax structure or economic system that suppresses and
denies those gifts."
-Ronald Reagan
"The
multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and
entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the
pruning knife."
-Thomas Jefferson
posted by gary at
8:15 AM
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