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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49457)	2/29/2012 1:54:59 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Keep them bussy fighting the will of the people. Great Strategy. Thank you Tea Party.

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49457)	3/29/2012 10:42:38 PM
From: greatplains_guy	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Watch Wisconsin By Bruce Walker March 29, 2012 Republican Governor Scott Walker, Lieutenant Governor Kleefisch and two Republican state senators will face a recall vote in Wisconsin and the date of that election, with the likely date of the recall vote being June 5. A fifth Republican, Senator Pam Galloway, who was also going to face a recall election, has resigned from the state senate. This leaves the Senate tied 16-16, so the recall vote in June will determine which party controls the Wisconsin Senate. So is the left winning there? Wisconsin is a left-leaning state, the sort whose general support Democrats need if they are going to rule America. If Democrats fail in these recall elections, then the left will have suffered a strategic loss which may unravel its long dominance of American politics. The putative reasons for this recall election are three changes enacted by Wisconsin Republicans when they took over state government last January: (1) public employee union bosses cannot bargain for benefits in contracts any more, (2) union dues for public workers are no longer automatically deducted from paychecks, and (3) Wisconsin now has a statutory photo ID requirement for voting. The first reform has worked, and the second reform has also worked. Public employees now get to keep more of their paycheck -- in some cases, this means an extra $1,000 a year -- and union bureaucracies have been trimmed, as this Washington Examiner article nicely explains. Implementation of the photo ID law has been enjoined by Judge Flanagan, who before issuing his ruling neglected to tell the parties that he had already signed a petition to recall Governor Walker, which made him, by the limpest ethical standards, unqualified to hear the case. Flanagan is only part of the seamy abuse of judges to fight Wisconsin reforms. I noted last April that the left's blatant (and failed) attempt to defeat Judge Prosser in his re-election last spring was based solely on using the state bench to thwart laws passed by the people's representatives. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law. Now it appears that twenty-nine sitting Wisconsin state judges, 12% of the judges in the state, have also signed petitions to recall Walker and other Republicans. The New York Post reports the pathetic excuse given by Judge Warpinski when confronted with signing the recall petition: "I wasn't advocating for any political party. I was advocating for the recall process, which I thought was completely separate and apart." The judge, of course, is lying. We also recently learned that twenty-five journalists covering state news also signed recall petitions. Gannett Media Group has also announced that twenty-five of these "journalists" violated the ethical standards and will be disciplined. The efforts to stop Walker's reforms include: (1) Democrat state senators fleeing to Chicago, that Mecca of Good Government, to deny their chamber a quorum, (2) mobs of angry state employees trying to bully legislators, (3) trying to defeat Judge Prosser to get a more favorable judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, (4) trying to recall enough Republican state senators to give back control to Democrats, (5) litigating the new labor law as "unconstitutional" and failing, and now, (6) trying to recall the governor, lieutenant governor, and three Republican state senators. The left has pulled out all the plugs to thwart Governor Walker. In the recall election for six Republican state senators last August, the left spent about $30 million, much of it from outside the state. But money for this sort of campaign is drying up. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, which discharged forty percent of its staff when dues reduction became voluntary, spent $500,000 in the August 2011 recall elections. The left is expending more than just money. It is frittering away credibility and the power of intimidation. When the state judiciary appears blatantly ideological and hostile to any change proposed by Republicans, then it will be not David Prosser who may be facing tough elections in the future. At a time when local news media need to win as large an audience as possible to survive, clear bias will lose their bosses revenue. Most of all, if the left throws every single weapon it can at Wisconsin Republicans and yet cannot prevent a conservative agenda from becoming law, then the left must know that it is vulnerable everywhere to conservatives who do not back down. If this last desperate effort of the power-mongers of leftism fails, then their whip may become a wet noodle, and the whole corrupt syndicate of leftism may completely unravel. Watch Wisconsin. americanthinker.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (49457)	4/17/2012 8:33:54 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

A Wisconsin Vindication Property tax bills fall as Scott Walker's reforms start to kick in.. April 16, 2012, 7:13 p.m. ET The public employee unions and other liberals are confident that Wisconsin voters will turn out Governor Scott Walker in a recall election later this year, but not so fast. That may turn out to be as wrong as some of their other predictions as Badger State taxpayers start to see tangible benefits from Mr. Walker's reforms—such as the first decline in statewide property taxes in a dozen years. On Monday Mr. Walker's office released new data that show the property tax bill for the median home fell by 0.4% in 2011, as reported by Wisconsin's municipalities. Property taxes, which are the state's largest revenue source and mainly fund K-12 schools, have risen every year since 1998—by 43% overall. The state budget office estimates that the typical homeowner's bill would be some $700 higher without Mr. Walker's collective-bargaining overhaul and budget cuts. The median home value did fall in 2011, by about 2.3%, which no doubt influenced the slight downward trend. But then values also fell in 2009 and 2010, by similar amounts, and the state's take from the average taxpayer still climbed by 2.1% and 1.5%, respectively. In absolute terms homeowners won't see large dollar benefits year over year, but any hold-the-line tax respite is both rare and welcome in this age of ever-expanding government. The real gains will grow as local school districts continue repairing and rationalizing their budgets using the tools Mr. Walker gave them. Those include the ability to renegotiate perk-filled teacher contracts and requiring government workers to contribute more than 0% to their pensions. A year ago amid their sit-ins and other protests, the unions said such policies would lead to the decline and fall of civilization, but the only things that are falling are tax collections. The political lesson is that attempts to modernize government are always controversial, but support usually builds over time as the public comes to appreciate the benefits of structural change that tames the drivers of a status quo that includes ever-higher spending and taxes. The Wisconsin recall donnybrook in June will test whether voters value their own bottom lines more than the political power of unions. online.wsj.com