Neumann vs. Thompson

Some folks seem to think the Wisconsin Club for Growth has picked sides in the 2012 United State Senate race in Wisconsin.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Under our charter, the Wisconsin Club for Growth takes no position on federal candidates. Likewise, the National Club for Growth takes no position on Wisconsin state or local candidates.The confusion among some people stems from recent advertisements run by the National Club for Growth regarding former Governor Tommy Thompson.

The National Club for Growth and Wisconsin Club for Growth are completely separate and independent organizations. Wisconsin Club for Growth focuses exclusively on state and local issue advocacy. We do get involved in Federal elections.

Furthermore, the Wisconsin Club was not consulted nor informed in advance of the recent advertising campaign. We first learned of the ad when it began airing on Fox News.

To be clear, Wisconsin Club for Growth does not intend to issue statements or offer opinions about candidates for United States Senate.

If you have comments regarding the recent advertising campaign, please contact the National Club for Growth at http://www.clubforgrowth.com .

Looks like we’ve started something…

You probably don’t need to be reminded of the nationwide historic significance of what’s happened in Wisconsin government over the past eight months, but it feels good to say it.

For roughly half a century state and local political realities have been shaped by a corrupt symbiosis between unions and intrusive, expansionist government.

Union dues taken involuntarily from workers were (and still are) invested in making sure government keeps union dues flowing. In short, your tax dollars have bankrolled a never-ending campaign to expand government and make you pay higher taxes.

Wisconsin has launched a literal revolution against this political racket, and the nation is watching. Former Capitol staffer Christian Schneider wrote about it for National Review Online.

In suburban Milwaukee, the Brown Deer school district is implementing a plan to allow performance pay for its best teachers. “No Wisconsin public-school district has ever had the opportunity in any of our lifetimes to even think about these things,” said Brown Deer Public Schools finance director Emily Koczela in an interview with a local television station. “We’re looking at understanding what effective teaching is, how to measure it in the children’s point of view, and how to reward teachers that consistently turn in a performance that’s better than the norm,” added Koczela.

Similar uprisings are happening elsewhere.  Looking in panic to 2012, unions are spending potentially irreplaceable millions on a November referendum where Ohio voters will decide whether reforms enacted this spring will stand. As with Wisconsin’s recalls, they’re emptying the checkbook in an all-or-nothing bid to revive their money machine in time for next year’s climactic showdown.

The Columbus Dispatch is finding union members who aren’t on the same page as their “leaders.” Interestingly, the Columbus newspaper mentions a prominent player in the campaign to repeal the reforms, called “We Are Ohio.”  In the recent state Senate recalls, “We Are Wisconsin” turned out to be nothing but a front group for national unions.  Tip for Ohio voters: They weren’t Wisconsin, and they aren’t Ohio.

Instructional video

The MacIver Institute strikes again, with videotape of Leftist punks and slobs attempting to disrupt and intimidate people who are providing children with something all too rare in Milwaukee: quality education.

The scene is Messemer Preparatory School, where the vast majority of kids go on to college, in stark contrast with kids taught by (some of) the protesters seen on the tape. The kids doomed to attend Milwaukee Public Schools go on, in shocking percentages, not to college but to a life of illiteracy, innumeracy and cultural ignorance unless they somehow find a way to teach themselves.  Brace yourselves before watching the MacIver video. It reminds us to be grateful to the Left for once again unintentionally doing the rest of us a favor.

For years Brother Bob Smith has been building strong minds at Messemer. But there’s one thing Brother Bob can’t give his students. It’s priceless, and the protesters delivered it free of charge.

They allowed the students to personally witness what human beings can easily become without the discipline and sense of decency that open the door to learning in Messemer classrooms.  The kids got to see what happens when people choose to define themselves by who they hate rather than by what they can do.

It’s a lesson few of the Messemer students are likely ever to forget. And sadly for some of the people on the picket line, it may well have been the only effective teaching they’ve ever done.

Try suing Jim Doyle

As far back as when she was Wisconsin’s drunk-driving Democrat Attorney General it was widely known there was no love lost between Peg Lautenschlager and the man who preceded her in the A-G’s office, then-Governor Jim Doyle.

So he might be the one she’d prefer to be suing on behalf of her client, the Wisconsin State Employees Union (WSEU).  Arguably he’d be a more appropriate defendant than the current state government.

Let us explain.

In 2009, the Doyle administration wrested agreements from various bargaining units to take 16 unpaid furlough days to help balance a fundamentally unsound state budget.

This year the Walker administration decided that the Association of State Prosecutors—mainly assistant district attorneys—needn’t take all 16 days, having taken several furlough days prior to the Doyle agreements.

Now Lautenschlager and the WSEU are suing to be paid for six furlough days, compensation to which they have no claim under the terms they agreed to back in ’09.

The big picture is this: Doyle submits one smoke-and-mirrors budget after another, raising everybody’s taxes and stiffing his supposed union buddies for a few weeks’ salary through unpaid furloughs.

Then along comes Scott Walker, who’s accused of waging war against state workers. He preserves union members’ jobs, balances the budget without layoffs or furloughs or tax increases, and by the way, tells the prosecutors they’ve already done their share and don’t need to give up all 16 days, and that triggers a union lawsuit.

It would speak better of the union leadership if they were actually insane.  Most of their no-longer-mandatory members are smart enough to figure that out.

A failed frame-up

Police reports of statements given by Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices in the bogus “choke-hold” incident show that if any member of the Court has been lucky to escape liability, it’s Ann Walsh Bradley, not David Prosser.

For weeks, Capitol insiders had been saying Liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and her Mini-Me Bradley desperately needed the affair to disappear.  Why?

Because other Justices’ statements verify that Prosser was falsely accused by Bradley.  Prosser is joined by two others saying Bradley advanced on him rapidly, jabbing her clenched fist in his face.  It’s specifically confirmed that Justice Roggensack said “Ann, this isn’t like you,” and physically pulled Bradley away from Prosser.

No one with an ounce of compassion would have wanted this episode to go on any longer, for Prosser’s sake.  But slander rates no compassion.  It would have been endlessly entertaining to watch Bradley’s tale wither and decompose in open court, before the eyes of Wisconsin voters.  Bradley and the Chief had to find a way out that wouldn’t be too laughably obvious.

That the job of reviewing and ultimately discarding the case was handed off to an elected Republican district attorney isn’t hard to understand. The series of Democrats who ran this railroad from day one could no more tolerate one of their own pulling the plug than they could afford to risk two of their favorite jurists trying to hold their flimsy story together under oath.

If there’s one piece of this that deserves to be remembered, it’s what it says about the credibility of Bradley and Abrahamson. It also speaks about the Dane County “justice” system that played the angles for two months before concluding it had better find a way to flush the whole, stinking mess.

WEAC on the wane

We can’t recall anyone looking at a state budget one month after it took effect and remarking on how it had worked. But the current budget is no business-as-usual tax and spending plan. At the beginning of August, one month in, changes were already measurable.

For instance, Democrats said school districts would suffer terribly.

Let’s check that out:

• Appleton—saves $3.1 million through competition among health insurance providers.
• Ashland—saved almost $378,000 thanks to being free to choose its health insurance provider.
• Baraboo—switched insurance providers to save $660,000 next year.
• Edgerton—anticipates insurance savings of $500,000.
• Elmbrook—estimates savings through health insurance changes at $878,000.
• Fond du Lac—will save enough to offset a $4.4 million budget shortfall.
• Kaukauna—will hire more teachers, reduce class sizes and introduce merit pay.
• Kimberly—saved $821,000 by changing insurance providers.

This represents only one aspect of the budget bill’s positive impact, breaking the teacher union’s near-monopoly status as health insurance provider to school districts, It may be only the beginning.

For decades WEAC, the statewide teacher union, has been the 800-pound gorilla of Wisconsin politics. WEAC and affiliates directed almost $900,000 against Republican senators in last week’s recalls, and that’s just what legally has to be reported. But just as school districts are now free to choose insurance providers, public employees are now free to decide annually whether their union is doing them any good and whether to pay the dues government employers will no longer automatically withhold. School districts can recognize a chance to save money. We’ll bet their employees can too.

WEAC waning II

Monday WEAC Executive Director Dan Burkhalter announced that layoff notices had been issued to 40% of the organization’s staff.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Burkhalter blamed the layoffs and other budget cuts at WEAC on Gov. Scott Walker’s “union-busting” legislation.

It’s easy to understand why Burkhalter is so upset.  Before Governor Walker’s collective bargaining reforms, Burkhalter’s $242,000 annual compensation  package was paid from the forced union dues of Wisconsin school teachers.  Now he has to convince school teachers to voluntarily write a check to the union for their services.

Good luck with that, Mr. Burkhalter.

Right about rail

It’s impolite to say we told you so, but in today’s political environment it seems constantly necessary.

So next time someone says Governor Walker was unintelligent to reject federal money for high-speed rail, clue them in about how wrong they are.

There’s proof in last Tuesday’s San Jose Mercury News. 

We’ll summarize:

California is planning a high-speed rail project that differs from the rejected Milwaukee-Madison line chiefly in that it would traverse a total of about 800 miles. Three years ago California voters authorized $9 billion in bonding for the project and the federal government has ponied up about $3 billion of your money to help out.

One small problem: Overall costs are estimated at $43 billion and the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says there’s no certainty where the bulk of it will come from.

This is especially troublesome in light of anticipated massive cost overruns. Even though nobody has yet turned a shovel, estimates are ballooning north of $60 billion and heading higher.

It’s especially revealing that the California High Speed Rail Authority acknowledges higher cost figures, because it just recently figured out how many bridges it will need to build—years after producing the cost estimates it used to sell the project.

If this sounds hauntingly familiar—like the city of Milwaukee feigning surprise over multimillion-dollar expenses for digging up and relocating electric transmission lines to accommodate Mayor Tom Barrett’s streetcar project—it’s because that’s the way these things invariably turn out.

Walker smelled boondoggle and made the right call. But for some people, spending big money on big projects directed by big government is an objective in itself. Whether the projects are useful or perform as advertised is irrelevant; for Liberals, they’re almost a biological imperative.

Vindication

Yesterday, Wisconsin’s silent majority voted to keep conservatives in control of state government.  The outcome of Tuesday’s historic recall elections is a huge setback for Democrats and the unions who control
them.

The election is also a signal to conservatives nationwide that the time for fundamental, structural reform is now. They can pursue such reforms and live to tell about it. The ugly face of union anger will still be on display, but its threats were drained of their menace yesterday by the resolve of voters in a handful of Wisconsin Senate districts.

It’s important also for reform-minded voters and politicians alike to realize that Republican defeat yesterday would have been survivable.

The collective bargaining and government employee benefit reforms, along with the first genuinely balanced state budget in a dozen years, would not have been reversible by the loss of the State Senate majority to Democrats.

Such a loss, however, would have given Democrats the ability to halt any further reform initiatives at least until January 2013—assuming the 2012 elections produce a GOP majority. And it would have given Democrats a bigger megaphone to demagogue every issue and the ability to move cynically contrived legislation through one house.

In those respects, Tuesday’s results spare us an incalculable volume of political trash talk.

Next week, voters in two Senate districts have the opportunity to punish Democrats for fleeing the state last winter and it would be sweet indeed to see their minority shrink further as a reward for their brazen attempt to purge Republican members who actually did their jobs.

From there, it’s on to 2012, with a new and welcome assurance that trying to make government honest may not be a suicide mission after all.

Paid in full

Yesterday’s recall elections happened for a reason the recall proponents were careful not to talk about.

The truth is, they were part of a multi-step plan to drag Wisconsin back where it was before January, and last week brought a timely reminder of what that was like.

Last Tuesday, the Walker administration announced it had resolved the matter of the Doyle administration’s illegal taking (elsewhere known as theft,) of $200 million from the Patients Compensation Fund.

The sole purpose of the fund is to compensate victims and families affected by medical malpractice. Health care professionals pay into it as a legally-protected trust fund.  But the 2007 Doyle budget raided the fund and the State Medical Society sued.  In January 2010, the state Supreme Court ordered the state to repay the money.

Counting reimbursement for interest and loss of earnings, by the time the fund was paid back last Tuesday, Jim Doyle’s budget heist cost you, the taxpayer, almost $234 million.

This may seem unrelated to the recalls but it’s really one, tight package: Months of fury in the streets over a Republican Legislature committed to honest budgeting; an honest Supreme Court Justice still going through Hell because the Left will say or do anything to get its own way; and six brave State Senators subjected to a viciously dishonest campaign to scuttle further reforms.

It’s all one fight and it will not end anytime soon.