Post Recall Thoughts

A few things to consider now that the will of the people has prevailed.

I know the lefties think they are speaking for the people, but the voters have now had their say, and have given the state a mandate. Despite your desperate screams, it is still OUR HOUSE! And this is exactly what Democracy looks like, the majority rules!  You basically got your wish, so please learn some restraint, it just so happens the majority believes differently than you.

1. Leftists love to demonize their opponent, calling them every name in the book. We are NOT demonic, we are just like you, trying to not run out of money before running out of month. We have taxes to pay, car payments, mortgage payments/rent,  and utilities payment. We are the middle class, and we are not dumb hicks or yokels, many of us have more education than the elite. For you to pretend that we are somehow too unsophisticated to understand how you think things should work is not making you look all that good anymore.
2.  We do NOT want "dirty air and dirty water", we are just as much concerned with the environment as you. We are more concerned with not allowing thousands of people to starve to death than about whether a moose might have to change his mating habits. We have different priorities, saving the world means taking care of our people, not worrying about whether the atmosphere will get heated up by 1 billionth of a degree by my light bulb.
3.  You do NOT care about the poor and down trodden any more than we do. Just do some research on who (conservative or progressive) gives more charitable donations before you try to brow beat us with your compassion (or something). I also do NOT understand why it is acceptable to allow violence in the inner city neighborhoods and think that somehow you are being non-judgmental by giving them stuff like free cell phones? Let's not deal with the violence issue, lets just give them more stuff.  How is giving a fish a day more compassionate than getting them jobs and teaching them how to fish to sustain themselves?
4.  We have NOT been lied to by big corporations, we have not been bought by the Koch brothers. We think for ourselves and know that spending money we don't have is not fiscally responsible. No we did not balance the budget on the backs of the middle class, the Doyle budget was already destroying the middle class. We want responsible spending, not austerity measures (which will happen if spending isn't gotten under control).
5.  We are NOT terrorists for not allowing the President to raise the debt ceiling, we are not Nazis for taking control over corrupt unions,  and we are not fascists for cleaning up the fraud, waste and abuse in government.
6.  Death threats are illegal, and we are NOT afraid to stand up to bullies (Mitt Romney is NOT a bully, nor is Scott Walker). Scott Walker stood up to the union thugs and we had his back. Recall that!
7.  Voter ID is NOT suppression, and the investigation into Eric Holder is not a witch hunt because he is trying to stop Voter ID. The election process is a sacred trust, and by not allowing the people to ensure its purity is nothing short of criminal.  There is no concerted effort to disenfranchise anyone (except the dead), in fact, voter ID will have the opposite effect by making sure that everyone is allowed only one vote.
8.  There is NO conservative "war on women". Where in the world did you get this ludicrous idea? Birth control/abortion is not a right (I will change my mind if you can find those words in the Constitution). We are not anti-abortion...we are pro-life.  We have been accused of caring only for the baby, but guess what, again, you are completely wrong; we care about both parties, mother and baby, we just don't think taking the life of either is acceptable.
9.  If you have voluntarily become a dependent on government, don't complain when they change what they decide to give you. It is NOT your money to begin with, it is not owed to you for any reason, and taxpayers like a little thanks from time to time. Just because you want free health care, doesn't mean it is free. Somebody has to pay for it, and if it is not you......then who?
10. Justice ceases to be justice when it is NOT applied blindly and equally. Forcing every newly passed piece of legislation through the courts is not justice. And refusing to acknowledge the wrong doing of one party and blindly hate the other party for doing the same things is not just. Either stop pointing fingers or start holding your own party to the same standard.
11. Wall Street is NOT the problem, overreaching government is the problem. We do not need more government, even if that government seems to be compassionate. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, what makes you think it will work with soda?  We will keep our laws off your body if you keep your laws off my Smith and Wesson.
12.  If you believe that companies need to be forced to provide benefits to their employees, and that employees need to unionize to get respect from their managers, you are most likely a Walker hater. But if you think that business owners are also humans and that they already respect their employees; if you think employers bargain for a fair wage through negotiations with each employee, and if you think the free market is the answer to today's economy , then you probably stand with Walker . The free market does work, it just needs to be unhindered by all the government regulations that are supposedly for the benefit of society.

On a more personal note, I understand that the poor tend to live in run down neighborhoods, and can't afford to fix up their homes, but do you have to do further damage? Do you think that by vandalizing and destroying your own stuff will make us want to give you more? I do not get it, you demand we take care of you and give you everything you want and then you trash what was given to you, do you really think we want to keep giving you more? Oh and statistically, the poor in America are the richest poor in the world, in some countries you would be on par with their middle class.  Maybe be a little appreciative from time to time.

An Open Letter to the GAB

"The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday, John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 v. Sam Reed, that people who sign political petitions don't have a right to keep their signatures from being disclosed publicly. Defendants insisted that signatures, like Election Day ballots, should remain anonymous and a form of speech protected under the First Amendment. But the court decided that the benefits of disclosure outweighed its burdens" . Chrisitian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Editorial-Board-Blog/2010/0625/Supreme-Court-on-transparency-vs.-anonymous-speech.

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided just this last week that your refusal to allow the Scott Walker Recall Petitions to be made public is illegal. As an arm of the Wisconsin government you are required to follow the decisions made by the Supreme Court or you will be in contempt of court. I heartily suggest you follow the law of the land and release the petitions so the public can access them to verify them.

I also request that this letter be considered an official document and be added to the public file and each of the GAB judges be given a copy.

Why is Act 10 Working?

Why is Act 10 working?

The Labor unions have been against this thing since the beginning saying it would destroy our state. We would be balancing the budget on the backs of working class families who would up and leave our state. We would be putting millions of dollars as kick backs into the hands of a few rich industrialists and evil corporate owners. So what really happened? And why is it actually working like Walker said it would from the very beginning?

Walker promises us that he would close loop holes and remove some unnecessary drains in the budget. Closing some departments and selling off some buildings that were unneeded, and privatizing some superfluous components, like the electrical plant. He wanted to make the government lean and mean and more able to handle the future. Act 10 and the 2012 budget did all that, just as promised.

So why the uproar? Because Act 10 did exactly as it was supposed to do. The unions knew exactly what it would do and they screamed like little girls the second they found out what it would do. So in a nutshell what did Act 10 do? The only thing it did was cut out fraud, waste, and abuse. And the people depending on that money had a hissy fit.

Fraud as in the case of the University professor that retires but still comes back after a short vacation to teach and then pulls in his retirement and a salary. That is double dipping and it is fraud, plane and simple. Waste as in the case of the power plant that was not being cost effective anymore. And abuse as in the case of the WEA Trust that because they were an entity only used by union teachers could charge anything they liked for their coverage; but now they have to compete with other insurers and what is the result, the cost for their coverage has come down, and the fat they had accumulated in their company trimmed. Clearly an abuse of the taxpayers.

So the defrauders, wasters, and abusers are ticked off royally and have taken to the streets. They are not getting their piece of the pie illegally anymore. The cockroaches have picked up picket signs. But Act 10 is working despite the protests. Simply because it has finally cut out the fraud, waste and abuse that the lefties had voted for themselves. That is why Doyle couldn't balance the budget even with double digit tax increases, not only did he overlook the waste in the system, he simply fed the defrauders and abusers.

Despite the call for the recall, Act 10 is working. And only the defrauders, wasters and abusers are unhappy. We have cut the scraps being thrown to the scavengers. Eventually they will get tired and give up, but not until the drag this state down with them. The recall will cost somewhere between $9 million and $20 million. More abuse. Yet they decry the voter ID bill because it could add a couple million to the budget.

It was the right time for Act 10 and that is why it is working. The scavengers will have to find some other carcass to feed on from now on.

Wisconsin's leaky sink

Here is an analogy that might make things clearer.

I have a sink that has sprung a leak, it is leaking water all over, gallons upon gallons and nothing stops it. I call a plumber to fix the leak, but my kids don't like having someone else come into the house to do the work, some get upset. Of my 33 kids, 14 of them decide they are going to prevent the other 19 from getting the leak fixed by running away with the plumbers tools, nothing can get done without those tools. They stay away for weeks, and threaten to never return.

Finally my 19 kids decide they will work around the impasse caused by the 14 runaways and give the plumber a tool that he can work with and fix the leak; not quite the same tool, and not as effective, but it will help.

When the 14 runaways hear about the fix they return, and now they are incensed that somehow the plumber was given the tools needed to plug the leak and stop the unnecessary wasting of water. Now they have gotten a bunch of their friends to threaten violence and intimidate the 19 kids who stayed home and tried to find a solution for the leak. They have also started making trouble for them in their own homes, so their families would see how "mean" they were, for stopping the leak, and get rid of them.

Even some members of the families of the 14 runaways decided that maybe it wasn't for the good of all to have them try to throw a monkey wrench into the leak problem by running away with the plumbers tools. A lot of the family members decided to give the plumber some extra tools to help keep the leak plugged and not allow the 14 runaways and their friends to cause the repair to fail. Now the rift between my 33 kids and the plumber has gotten out of hand, not only are my 14 kids fighting against the 19, but they are also threatening the plumber with all kinds of sanctions. Even so far as trying to get some other states plumbers money to prevent the plumber from doing anymore work on the leak.

And why all the commotion? Because they wanted the sink to keep leaking, they liked the leak, because they could get all the water they wanted from the leak; and now that the leak is temporarily fixed they have to use the faucet to get their water. They don't like using the faucet. Using the faucet means they have to do some work, and they have to turn it off when they are finished getting their drink. They would much rather have the water running constantly and aplenty so they don't have to be responsible.

Cast of characters:

14 Runaway kids: Wisconsin's Democratic Senators

19 Stay at home kids: Wisconsin's Republican Senators

Runaways friends: Unions, protesters, Democratic Assembly, Mainstream Media,

The plumber: Scott Walker

The Leak: the Budget of Wisconsin

The Narrator: The people of Wisconsin

The unions are disgusting!

They don't want to offend the special olympians? But they have no shame and no respect for anyone. When will the people of Wisconsin wake up and realize that the unions do NOT have their best interest at heart?

Sarah Palin comes to Wisconsin

Walker v. Unions: the truth told

Wisconsin Interest
Volume 20, No. 1
March, 2011

By now, the political lore is familiar: A major political party, cast aside by Wisconsin voters due to a lengthy recession, comes roaring back, winning a number of major state offices.

The 43-year-old new governor, carrying out a mandate he believes the voters have granted him, boldly begins restructuring the state’s tax system. His reform package contains a major change in the way state and local governments bargain with their employees, leading to charges that the governor is paying back his campaign contributors.

Only the year wasn’t 2011 — it was 1959, and Gov. Gaylord Nelson had just resurrected the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Certain of his path, Nelson embarked on an ambitious agenda that included introduction of a withholding tax, which brought hundreds of protesters to the Capitol. Nelson also signed the nation’s first public-sector collective bargaining law — the same law that 52 years later Gov. Scott Walker targeted for fundamental revision.

Two different governors, two different parties, and two different positions.

Ironically, their assertive gubernatorial actions may produce the same disruptive outcome. By empowering the unions, Nelson’s legislation led to public-sector strikes and work stoppages. By disempowering the unions, Walker’s actions might lead to public-sector strikes and work stoppages.

In Walker’s case, union members reluctantly agreed to his pension and health-care demands, but have fought desperately to preserve their leverage in negotiating contracts. That raises the basic question of the Madison showdown: Why is Scott Walker so afraid of collective bargaining?

The answer can be found in the rise of the state’s teachers unions.

After the 1959 Municipal Employees Relations law passed, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association became, in 1964, the state’s first certified teachers’ bargaining agent. Slowly, more teacher groups across the state began to organize in their districts. And in 1969, Ashwaubenon teachers became the first Wisconsin educators to hit the bricks and strike, as 83 teachers walked out for four days.

Part and parcel with these developments, a venerable professional group founded in 1853, the Wisconsin Education Association, transformed itself into a tough-talking trade union in 1972 called the Wisconsin Education Association Council, with the authority to bargain on behalf of teachers all over the state.

WEAC began collecting funds from its members ($3 apiece) to spend on supporting political candidates. According to the union, 88% of its endorsed candidates won in the 1974 elections. The union had arrived on center stage as a major player in Wisconsin politics.

Unionized teachers routinely flexed their muscle. Between 1969 and 1974, there were 50 teacher strikes in Wisconsin, despite a state law declaring public employee strikes illegal.Because there were no penalties outlined in the law, WEAC’s leadership frequently convinced its members to walk out anyway.

A turning point came in March 1974, when a bitter teachers’ strike in the small town of Hortonville prompted a resolute school board to fire and replace 88 striking teachers. All hell broke loose.

The strike, one of the longest in the history of American education, garnered national media attention and was litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices affirmed the school board’s right to fire the strikers.

Asked later if it was wise for WEAC to pick a fight in conservative Outagamie County, its former executive director Morris Andrews said: “I would have chosen a better place.”

Determined to use the Hortonville defeat as a rallying cry for solidarity, Andrews began pushing for a stronger, more galvanized teachers union. Under his leadership, WEAC hired collective-bargaining and arbitration experts and implemented “pattern bargaining” strategies. The idea was to extract as much salary and benefit increases as possible from teacher-sympathetic school boards, then use that data to pressure more stubborn boards to cough up better pay and benefits.

Notably, WEAC’s post-Hortonville muscle led to passage of a 1977 mediation-arbitration law that guarantees settlement of deadlocked collective-bargaining disputes.

The new law essentially ended public employee strikes. According to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, the state has had 111 municipal employee strikes since 1970; 90% took place prior to the 1977 med-arb law. Since 1982, there has only been one strike, in 1997 by Madison Metropolitan School District teachers.
The end of strikes, however, didn’t mean teachers were any less aggressive in negotiating. Aided by the new law, teachers redoubled their efforts to improve compensation. And they succeeded, judging by the costs of total pay and benefit packages.

For instance, statewide average teacher salaries increased 6% per year in the 16 years before the Hortonville strike. In the 16 years after the strike, the increase is pegged at 7% annually. Not a big difference, for sure.

But salaries are only a part of the picture. Consider that in the 16 years prior to Hortonville, average state per-pupil spending increased 6.7% per year. Post-strike, it jumped to 9.6% per year in the 16 years following the Hortonville clash.

Through collective bargaining, WEAC obtained concessions from management that appeared to have little fiscal effect, but in the long run greatly benefited its members.

It was in the early 1970s, for example, that local government employees across the state started to see taxpayers picking up the full cost of pension benefits — the very practice Gov. Walker fought against in his budget-repair bill.

In the ’70s, union leaders were figuring out the value of benefits; many of labor’s decision-makers were older and needed health and pension benefits more than the rank and file. They recognized that benefits were often not taxed, meaning that teachers usually got more bang from a buck in benefits than from a buck in pay.

Other provisions benefiting unions followed. In 1973, Wisconsin enacted the “Educational Standards Bill,” establishing that all teachers must be certified by the state Department of Public Instruction, that every school district must provide kindergarten, special education, guidance counselors, and other measures.

Also in 1973, Milwaukee teachers negotiated a benefit that paid their health care premiums when they retired — in 2016, this benefit will be worth $4.9 billion, or more than four times the size of the Milwaukee district’s current budget.

Teachers represented by WEAC often demanded that their health premiums be provided by WEA Trust — their own health insurer — at a cost often greater than insurance on the private market. (Started in 1970, WEA Trust is now the fifth-largest health insurer in Wisconsin.)

In none of these cases of advancing teachers and their union were the long-term fiscal costs known. While Capitol protesters in February offered to give up some short-term financial considerations, it is this slow, steady, tectonic shift towards enriching and empowering public employees that Walker sought to decisively reverse.

Bottom line: Even in giving up ground on a few major points, the negotiating tide on work rules and other matters still favors government labor.

Today, K-12 education funding dwarfs the next-highest state spending program by a measure of 4-to-1. In 2011, Wisconsin spent $5.3 billion on public school aids, compared to $1.3 billion on Medical Assistance.

Give WEAC credit for having the most aggressive and most sophisticated bargainers. Give it credit for executing a long-term strategy to enrich its members. But the union has been so successful for so long that it has sown the seeds for a humbling comeuppance.

It was this seemingly inexorable march toward higher spending that Walker is trying to halt by disassembling an overly powerful and deeply entrenched union machine.
Upon taking office in 1959, Gov. Nelson called on politicians to “think and act anew.” And that’s exactly what Gov. Walker is doing.

Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

A letter to Governor Walker

Dear Governor Walker,

I have recently heard news reports that you may be ready to compromise on the collective bargaining of wages with the unions. Please I urge you to remain strong, to not back down now, it is too critical to the future of the state of Wisconsin.

I know you have taken a lot of heat from the unions and from the media, but we the conservatives need to know you will not give into the intimidation and extortion of the liberals. I continue to fight for you, I continue to defend you, I am in this for the long haul, and I hope you will also continue to keep the faith.

In the recording of you that has been circulating with the phony David Koch, I heard you mention a story of your belief that this was a defining moment for the state of Wisconsin and you wanted to emulate your hero President Ronald Reagan. I was really inspired by that story and felt that finally we had a man who would stand up to the liberal mindset that is destroying this country. Please do not be a leader like William Clinton who checked the polls to decide what direction the country should be turned. Ronald Reagan was hated by the left, the Democrats and the Media, and he didn't care, he lead this country like he was proud of it, because he was profoundly proud of it. I know you are facing a huge backlash right now, but remember your hero, and mine, faced even worse backlash, and he remained strong because he knew he had the support of the people. You have the support of the majority, even though we cannot be marching constantly on the steps of the Capitol. We have to work to fund the state. I have worked too hard to get off and stay off welfare to see it all go down the drain to someone who doesn't care about their own future, much less that of this wonderful state and country.

When I signed up for military service, I took an oath, much like you did when you took office, to uphold the Constitution and defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic. And simply because I no longer am a member of the military doesn't mean I can turn my back on my oath. I will continue to fight all enemies, even if they turn out to be well-meaning but selfish union members. If what they are doing is to the detriment of this state and country, I will not back down.

If you give in now, you will only be reinforcing the idea that mob rule is acceptable. This is not what democracy looks like, no matter how loudly the protesters catterwall, this is what anarchy looks like, and we cannot let the few loudest shriekers determine the course of the future of our great state. Please the voters gave you a majority of both houses in a previously very red state, we continue to fight in the trenches for you. Please do not let us down by giving into the rabble.

Anne M Winrich