Wisconsin House Republicans pass public worker union bill
There’s been a lot of theater so far in the Wisconsin public worker union budget fight, and last night there was even more drama, as Republicans in the House ended the lengthy Democratic debate and forced a quick vote in the wee hours of the morning.
The result was a foregone conclusion: the bill passed. The real problem has always been in the Senate, where a quorum of 3/5 is necessary and Democrats have gone AWOL to avoid giving Republicans the opportunity to vote on the bill and pass it.
That’s still unresolved, and no doubt the quick action by the Republicans last night was to show that Republicans can play tough, too. The play continues…
This and Obama’s refusal to enforce DOMA and the ABA’s organizing “talking points” against citizens legislative initiatives against Sharia law and Obama not staying Obamacare and how many other examples need we have until some threshold is passed.
The wonder and astonishment of it all is that the tea party continues to use peaceful measures despite the slander and provocation and even violent measures of the left.
“… until some threshold is passed.”
I’ve thought about that concept quite often these past 2 years…. how does one know when rebellion is the only alternative to eventual serfdom? 🙁
I saw on Michelle Malkin today that moveon is organizing rallies in all states tomorrow:
“On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, we are organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin. We demand an end to the attacks on worker’s rights and public services across the country. We demand investment, to create decent jobs for the millions of people who desperately want to work. And we demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.
We are all Wisconsin. We are all Americans.”
Is it just me or does that remind anyone else of the standard CPUSA talking points? I know they are out there in those rallies, just when do we actually get to see them? I know, stupid question. 🙂
Parker: The trick is to call “it” what it is: enforcement of the Constitution. Merely because rebels have become elected does not change the Constitution.
The threshold has been passed and we are not rebels or lawless.
Gingrich has lately taken the right attitude. He is calling for the impeachment of Obama for not enforcing the law.
I once worked as an assistant to a plant manager. Talk about politics! In fact, I was initially hired as a floor worker so that I could get hands on experience which I couldn’t get as management because it wasn’t allowed.
“Give em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves,” was my boss’s guide. And it worked.
This is the type of fight that is winning.
A majority of the members of the Tea Parties (plural, please; the movement is decentralized) are age 60-plus. That is sad but true. These folks have the wisdom but no longer have the muscle. Unlike unions, whose members must conform to diktats, whose incomes depend on their leaders, and whose dues are formidable, the Tea Partiers are all doing it from conviction, pure conviction. Many of them can’t cough up the $700-1000 annual union dues as paid (deducted from their paychecks) by the WI teachers.
That’s why collective bargaining is so critical in those states without right-to-work laws: A WI teacher need not be a union member, as I understand it, but union dues WILL be deducted from their pay, too, because them’s the rules under collective bargaining.
Curtis & Tom,
I’m 63. I’m “not as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was”. Wisdom (should, but not always) comes with experience. Millions of us are wise enough to know that we are at a crossroads, we either make a drastic change to rein in debt or we all go bust.
I’m hopeful that enough voters know the importance of this crucial issue and 2012 brings about a determination to face the problem head on. I see signs that this is the case. I’m optimistic but I’m wise enough to know it is a 50/50 proposition at best.
The real question is can the feds be put back into the box originally created by the restraints of the Constitution? I don’t know the answer, but I want to make the attempt to restore sanity to our society via the ballot box.
The 3/5 quorum rule does not apply to everyday legislation. It is restricted to budget bills.
A fifty percent + one vote is all that is required for ordinary business, and the Republicans have that — easily.
Parker:
The trouble with sanity via the ballot box is that the Constitution has been eroded, nearly eviscerated, in a 100 year process. We do not have 100 years to spend on the fix. Add our unfunded Federal and state liabilities to the mix, and, man! we don’t hardly have any time left at all. It is very, very hard to claw back when one has just about pissed both liberty and hard assets away.
Based on extrapolation of present patterns, I read that in 15yrs entitlements and national debt interest will consume 91% of the Federal budget.
If we don’t do major surgery soonest, in the next 5yrs at the latest, the patient is doomed.
Don’t forget either that we have 4 leftists, plus one maybe, on the SCOTUS. It is all a mighty thin edge.
Tom, A WI teacher need not be a union member, as I understand it, but union dues WILL be deducted from their pay, too, because them’s the rules under collective bargaining.
Exactly. I’m a teacher. I refuse to join a union. However, I still have to pay (have taken from my salary) what is called an “agency fee,” supposedly my share of the union’s costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment. Basically I pay a few hundred dollars less per year than the cost of union membership.
It’s outrageous, that I’m forced to pay for something I do not want to participate in, but that’s the law here in CA and WI and in all but the 22 right-to-work states.
An obvious way to proceed is to root for right-to work legislation in all states that have not yet such laws. Monopoly of unions at work-force market should be abolished. This does not mean that unions as such should be destroyed, but their bargaining power should be cut to size, so that it do not distort balance of power between society as a whole and some segments of society. Anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws are necessary for proper functioning of any market, labour market included.
Again, McCarthy was right.
yup he was…
but we forget that the reason he has the image he has today was that he defeated the LaFollette progressives and turned it into a third party marginal nothing until today, with the neo versions of the same thing.
funny… the state that this all happened in, in 1940s, was wisconsin…
Moscow-Finkelstein pattern
http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=475
NINETEEN FORTY-SIX WAS A YEAR OF TRIUMPH for McCarthy. It brought him to the national scene as the destroyer of the La Follette dynasty and the Progressive Party, returning Wisconsin to two-party politics, and it brought him to Washington as a senator.
“It will be my utmost desire to help defeat the Champion Faker La Follette from Fairfax [C]ounty, Virginia. How can any American of German extraction support a senator who toyed with the New Dealers to remake America according to the Moscow-Finkelstein pattern?” A. J. Langholfe, president of the Lutheran Altenheim Society of Wisconsin
if you read the history of america then, and you read the history of germany then (and not the progressive ones), you will quickly find that it was religion, and others who actually were the ones that prevented the success… we like to credit the soldiers, but in truth, they would have failed had it not been for all these regular people like termites participating.
its why mccarthy is so hated… and so reviled, and so much revisionism… he prevented the US turning into a state like soviet union…
Since they believe people are stupid, because they are not sociopathic and paranoid enough to protect themselves from the likes of those who beleive they are superior (through inferiority with collusion), the mistakes they make is usually when the dumb people dont act dumb…
for instance.. they dumb people were supposed to rise up and overthrow their capitlaist slave masters… as they said… and nothing happened… the people were not stupid enough to actually do what they wanted without fail. their natures protect them (for in the past the combinations that succeeded ended up in dead populations and failing ones. if Russia existed in the old times without our revisioned morals to idiocy, they would have died out a long time ago and been replaced)
Ten days before the primary, Young Bob La Follette arrived in Wisconsin as if the nomination was his by birthright. He didn’t seem to care whether he won reelection or not. When McCarthy asked for a debate, Young Bob ignored him. Nationally known reporters who disdained to take a close look at the primary took it for granted that La Follette would win. James Reston of The New York Times wrote on election eve that Young Bob “is expected to prove tomorrow . . . that a man can bolt the Republican party and get away with it.” But in La Follette’s absence, 1,000 Young Republican volunteers, who called themselves “the Flying Badgers,” had distributed McCarthy campaign literature to every town in Wisconsin of more than 500, blanketing the state in 200 cars and three airplanes.
the result was the end of the progressives (for a while).
McCarthy won the primary by the thin margin of 207,935 to 202,557. Young Bob’s defeat was blamed on labor’s defection, for he was beaten in the labor strongholds of Milwaukee, Kenosha, and Racine, dotted with big factories like Allis-Chalmers and employing many foreign-born workers. The story was floated that CIO Communists helped elect the arch anti-Communist McCarthy, but the CIO News ignored both La Follette and McCarthy. The Flying Badgers and La Follette’s flabby campaign were more to the point.
same players…
how can it be that its the SAME players, the SAME families, the SAME ideology, the SAME goals, and yet i cant get anyone to pay attention to it as its all different and not repeating as if its following a script.
a script that REQUIRES one side to be ignorant so that they react the same way at the same things, and differently on the refined things that they learned from.
that is, if you did X to the people they respond… later if you try X, they respond differently for having experienced X. but if you do X on people who have never experienced it, they respond the same as the first way. social engineering core. so if you want to win in history, do the same things but where you made a mistake before, you correct it so this time your better than last time. but you have to wait till the people forget and the young think they know it all again, so that the young do it all again.
A changed history is as informative as no history. so its the same as forgetting.
we can understand how a IBM remains an IBM from the 1800s onwards, but cant understand the same is with the unions?
It was in his campaign against McMurray that McCarthy first came to grips with the issue he would make his own: communism. He called his opponent “communistically inclined” and a “little megaphone” of the “Communist-controlled CIO-Political Action Committee.” He was not going any further than conservative newspapers such as The Appleton Post-Crescent, which wrote in an editorial in October: “The Democratic Party has made love to these commies, sloppily kissed them in public.”
Ted Morgan, who has won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, is the author of Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, recently published by Random House, from which this article was adapted.
and today? what is the heads of the afl cio and others saying? hear, listen to andy stern..
“[By pulling out of the AFL-CIO and proposing to start an organization, Stern and his Teamster ally James Hoffa — other unions may join them — are embarking on a laboratory test.] Our world has changed, our economy has changed, employers have changed, … But the AFL-CIO is not willing to make fundamental change.” Andy Stern
i said… they havent changed, and andy stern says they havent changed, and only useful idiots tell me they have changed. (same with race and gender, each of the 5th columns).
“when you dance with the devil, the devil does not change, you do”
its really from…
when you look into the abyss the abyss looks into you
“If we cant use the power of persuasion, we will use the persuasion of power. Workers of the world unite.” Andy Stern
“We are not trying to divide the labor movement, we are trying to rebuild it,” Andy Stern
because the progressives were knocked out from any meaningful place once we knew what they were and wanted… (and as pointed out above, never ever deviated from)
“Today, we have made the decision to disaffiliate from the AFL-CIO. We believe in fundamental change, not incremental reform.” Andy Stern
“Sustainable Development” is a new code for communism, as social justice is an old term for socialism, and progressive, fabians, etc are also other terms for the same…
Executive Order 12852 duplicated the “Sustainable Development” program of agenda 21 from the US by doing an end around the senate which wouldnt ratify it.
from UN documents
“Social Justice” assures the right “to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment”
equal distribution of wealth: what communism promises, but never delivers
“Social Justice” assures that “every worker/person will be a direct capital owner” (dictatorship of the proletariat in different words, same meaning)
“Sustainability” means that “individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.”
we no longer are free, and any who attempt to act free, or be free, will be a cancer on the body politic. (to use the old phraseology, which is kind of like speaking with a 60s lingo. dig it? got a watch out for the man)
“Public/private partnerships” = fascism the state picks winners and losers, like GM, and makes large monopolies… (the people pretending to fight against the future of a kind of corporate factory state, are making that).
“Public/private partnerships” and grants for “sustainability” are features of the Kennedy Serve America Act… the one with the civilian army as large as the military Obama promised…
remember it was father coughlin who had the nazi rally for liberty, and preached “social justice” which was ALSO the name of his newsletter paper…
is this social justice any different than the social justice that invented the shoa? does it dislike the same and more, or different?
what is the eventuality if there are no countries that believe otherwise…
food for thought for a weekend…
Tom:
From the Gallup PollTea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics
Sorry Tom, what you claim is NOT true. This Gallup Poll is also good cannon fodder against those who claim that the Tea Party supporters are all from White Bread City and from the Wealthy Class. Check it out.
Esteemed Gringo:
Mea mea culpa. I was speaking of my local TP, of which I am an active member.
So Gallup says 47% of polled Tea Partiers are age 50 or greater. That does not really refute my essential point and concern, i.e., Tea Partiers to a large extent are not spring chickens. Compare to teachers’ unions, Acorn, etc. The Gallup says only one in six TPers are below the age of 30, and that ain’t good.
The MSM will continue to ignore or demean the TPs. That will not change. So much for “good cannon fodder.” Facts work for you and me, but not them.
After voting for any candidate except a Republican for 20+ years…I voted Republican for the first time in the past Presidential election…and again in the most recent mid-term election. HOWEVER, since the attack on the unions and the lies perpetrated by the Republican Governor of WI..I am definitely leaving the party I so recently embraced. NO I Won’t Go Back and Vote for Democrats. I am still disgusted by the freeze on the wages of federal employees, the cancellation of the COLAs for SSI recipients, OBAMACARE and the $800+ Billion TARP that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8.5%…which were instigated by Obama and the Dims. Might have to go back to writing in Ralph Nader for President again. WE ARE WAY OVERDUE FOR A THIRD PARTY.
Tom
The Gallup says only one in six TPers are below the age of 30, and that ain’t good.
18 to 29 years 16% Tea Party Supporters
18 to 29 years 17% All Adults
What’s so bad about that?
BBF says, “…. lies perpetrated by the Republican Governor of WI…”
Could you be specific and list the lies? (I look forward to knowing the truth.)
Gringo,
I am heartened by the (Gallup) age percentages you have quoted. If only 1 out of 20 ‘youngsters’ recognizes their peril (they are the ones who will spend their entire lives paying off the debt) it is a positive change. Plus, chances are the young ones with their eyes open will be motivated to vote for fiscal conservatives in the future.
Perhaps one difference between Tom’s having seen a disproportionate proportion of oldsters at Tea Party meetings, and the poll results, is that oldsters are more involved in politics than younger people are. IOW, younger people will tend to be passive supporters more than older people will.
On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, we are organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin….
I don’t know if that’s boilerplate CPUSA, but it’s sheer nonsense, and Americans are smart enough to know that.
I mean, Moveon et al. are not standing “in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin”: they are standing in solidarity with the public employees of Wisconsin — that is, the employees of the people of Wisconsin — who are demanding the continued privilege of forcing their neighbors to pay them whatever they want, sovereign bankruptcy be damned.
Geesh.
Gringo:
Thanks for the comparative data. Modestly comforting. But if the TPs can’t turn on the young, which is what your data in fact show, we conservatives are in trouble.
Poor BBF. He’s a cork bobbing in the political waves. I too await his news of anti-union lies by Gov. Walker.
The way this is dragging on, there may never be any Democratic Party representatives in attendance this year in the Wisconsin Senate. In one sense that will be a good thing: no legislation passed the entire year.