It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => Politics/Legislation/Elections => Topic started by: IronDioPriest on February 25, 2011, 09:31:44 AM
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I'm not always happy with Charles' GOP establishment shilling and anti-establishment bashing these days, but this is a very good piece on the stakes and dynamics of the showdown in Wisconsin.
From WaPo...
Rubicon: A river in Wisconsin (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022406520.html)
The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity...
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...A choice, not an echo: Democrats desperately defending the status quo; Republicans charging the barricades.
Wisconsin is the epicenter. It began with economic issues. When Gov. Scott Walker proposed that state workers contribute more to their pension and health-care benefits, he started a revolution. Teachers called in sick. Schools closed. Demonstrators massed at the capitol. Democratic senators fled the state to paralyze the Legislature.
Unfortunately for them, that telegenic faux-Cairo scene drew national attention to the dispute - and to the sweetheart deals the public-sector unions had negotiated for themselves for years. They were contributing a fifth of a penny on a dollar of wages to their pensions and one-fourth what private-sector workers pay for health insurance.
The unions quickly understood that the more than 85 percent of Wisconsin not part of this privileged special-interest group would not take kindly to "public servants" resisting adjustments that still leave them paying less for benefits than private-sector workers. They immediately capitulated and claimed they were only protesting the other part of the bill, the part about collective-bargaining rights.
Indeed. Walker understands that a one-time giveback means little. The state's financial straits - a $3.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two years - did not come out of nowhere. They came largely from a half-century-long power imbalance between the unions and the politicians with whom they collectively bargain...
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...To redress these perverse incentives that benefit both negotiating parties at the expense of the taxpayer, Walker's bill would restrict future government-union negotiations to wages only. Excluded from negotiations would be benefits, the more easily hidden sweeteners that come due long after the politicians who negotiated them are gone. The bill would also require that unions be recertified every year and that dues be voluntary.
Recognizing this threat to union power, the Democratic Party is pouring money and fury into the fight. Fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers are unionized. The Democrats' strength lies in government workers, who now constitute a majority of union members and provide massive support to the party. For them, Wisconsin represents a dangerous contagion.
Hence the import of the current moment - its blinding clarity. Here stand the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang on to the gains of their glory years - from unsustainable federal entitlements for the elderly enacted when life expectancy was 62 to the massive promissory notes issued to government unions when state coffers were full and no one was looking...
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...We have heard everyone - from Obama's own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?
Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?
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I still consider him one of the smartest men in the room.
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I still consider him one of the smartest men in the room.
Yup, he is. That makes it all the more frustrating on those occasions when he works to perpetuate GOP status quo.
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I still consider him one of the smartest men in the room.
Yup, he is. That makes it all the more frustrating on those occasions when he works to perpetuate GOP status quo.
Some times I would like to get him to explain why he took a certain position because it seems out of character. That's when I get a little confused and when that happens I get angry.
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Well, he nailed this one.
And the question remains, are we serious?
I would say so, with conservatives looking to lead and demonrats running away to hide, the contrast is stark.
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Well, he nailed this one.
And the question remains, are we serious?
I would say so, with conservatives looking to lead and demonrats running away to hide, the contrast is stark.
Tha part that kills me is when I hear that they want a serious conversation. How do you do that if you're in hiding? ::thinking::
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So far the best analysis that I have heard has come from Limbaugh. I don't know if he came up with this on his own or if he harvested it from somewhere else but the picture painted is crystal clear. He called it a money laundering operation for the Democrat party this week. And it is. The Democrats take the money from the taxpayers, send it to the unions in the form of government spending (think: stimulus) who, in turn, extract money from their members in the form of dues which are then turned back to the Democrat party in the form of political donations. The Democrats receive over 98.5% of union campaign contributions, the remaining 1.5% being a token payment to the Republican party and others merely to provide a thin veneer of legitimacy.
That is the story, that is the theme which must be reiterated to the public. It's simple. It's understandable. It completely spells out the behavior of the Democrats and the public sector unions in WI, IN, OH and everywhere else. And it's unquestionably true.
EDIT:
He got the idea from James Taranto at the WSJ. Here is an excerpt from Wednesday's show:
[The Democrats] are beholden to union paymasters, their main priority when in power is to increase the cost of government -- i.e., when you pay these people. By increasing the cost of government, you launder money through the unions and get the dues returned to you. So the Democrats, for all the ideological reasons they want to expand government, also have an economic reason to expand government. Expanding government, increasing the cost of government enhances their power because the unions are essentially money launderers of taxpayer money.
Because where are the public sector unions getting their money? They're not producing anything. They're not making widgets. People are not buying anything. Ends up in the annual household budget of a public sector union worker is taxpayer revenue, pure and simple. It's tax dollars -- and when there isn't enough of that we borrow it; and when we can't borrow any more, we print it. But none of it results from production. It's pure redistribution of wealth. So not only are private sector people being taxed and having their standards of living affected negatively, those dollars they pay the government, more and more end up, at the end their circuitous route, in the Democrat Party. Because the Democrat Party's paymasters are the unions.
(and hey, guests here at the forum...please register and post a comment or two)
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And Rush is as right as anyone can be.
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Michael Barone in Washintgon Examiner made much the same point very succinctly: Public sector unions force taxpayers to fund Democrats. (http://itsaboutliberty.com/index.php/topic,170.0.html)
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Now if only enough people can "get it."
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Now if only enough people can "get it."
I commented somewhere a couple days ago that I am encouraged by the clarity of articulation in this effort to educate people as to the incestuous nature of public sector unions and the Democrat party. It's an easy case to make, and it seems like it's being made well by many people, and it seems to be sticking.
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Follow the money. The trail ends in a democrats pocket.
And people believe corp greed is bad.....
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Follow the money. The trail ends in a democrats pocket.
And people believe corp greed is bad.....
It depends on whose corporation.
That fascist pig Immelt and GE can do no wrong, right?
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Follow the money. The trail ends in a democrats pocket.
And people believe corp greed is bad.....
It depends on whose corporation.
That fascist pig Immelt and GE can do no wrong, right?
GE, they bring good(obama) things to light........