WSJ: So Much for a ‘More Civil’ Public Discourse

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From the Wall Street Journal:

By STEPHEN HAYES

When President Obama spoke last month at the memorial service for victims of the shooting in Tucson, his speech called on Americans to live up to their ideals. He encouraged the nation to see the shooting through the eyes of 9-year-old Christina Taylor-Green, “who was just becoming aware of our democracy, just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship.”

Christina, he said, “saw public service as something exciting and hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.” Her aspirations, he said, must be ours. “I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it.”

The Tucson address was the best of Mr. Obama’s presidency. It was a profoundly patriotic call for Americans to give their best to the country. Looking forward, the president insisted that the post-Tucson political debate not be conducted “on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.”

On Feb. 13, just the other side of the news cycle, a post on “Organizing for America,” the website for the president’s campaign arm, urged progressives to protest a proposal from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to reform public-employee benefits and limit collective-bargaining rights. The message, from Organizing for America’s regional director for Wisconsin, began this way: “We’ve got a fight on our hands and it’s personal.”

The next day dozens of angry protesters marched in front of the home of Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard, a Walker supporter. The head of the local teachers union said this: “We want him to know we have our eyes on him.” In neighboring Kenosha, Joe Kiriaki, the executive director of the Kenosha Education Association, joined protesters at the home of state Rep. Samantha Kerkman and confronted her parents when they drove down the street. Mr. Kiriaki noted that Ms. Kerkman lives in a 3,300 square-foot house worth more than $400,000. “I don’t think she’s feeling too much pain,” he quipped.

Last Tuesday, hundreds of protesters shut down the road in front of Gov. Walker’s family home in Wauwatosa, Wis. Across the state in Madison, a crowd of 20,000—many of them teachers skipping school—gathered at the Capitol. Signs compared Mr. Walker to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. Still others accused him of “terrorism” and “rape.” One sign had a photo of the governor in crosshairs: “Don’t Retreat, Reload.”

Elected officials joined the protests—and the slurs. In a television interview on the sidelines of the demonstration, state Sen. Lena Taylor compared Mr. Walker to Adolf Hitler.

If Ms. Taylor and the other protestors seem surprised by Mr. Walker’s proposals, they shouldn’t be. Last fall, the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of Teachers distributed an anti-Walker flyer to its members with clips from the media. Among them, a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel report that “Walker said he intends . . . to void parts of labor contracts.” Another promises pay cuts for government workers and a reworking of benefits. Another included an on-the-record quote from a Walker campaign adviser saying, “We would take the choice out of the collective bargaining process.”

Many Wisconsin voters cast ballots for Mr. Walker and his fellow Republicans in November despite these promises—or, more accurately, because of them. Republicans have a 60-38 majority (with one independent) in the state assembly and a 19-14 majority in the state senate. Republicans need 20 senators present for a quorum in order to vote on and pass Mr. Walker’s proposal. So Ms. Taylor and her colleagues fled the state. It is hard to imagine a more antidemocratic move—attempting to thwart the will of voters by simply not showing up.

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Strictly Right Radio with Victor Davis Hanson

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On this episode of Strictly Right, Andrew has a wide-ranging discussion with Victor Davis Hanson, talks about a sad story of government trying to replace the parents, the threat of radical Islam, and a tale of political correctness with Dennis Lennox.

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WSJ: The Showdown Over Public Union Power

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From today’s Wall Street Journal:


By STEVEN MALANGAGovernment workers have taken to the streets in Madison, Wis., to battle a series of reforms proposed by Gov. Scott Walker that include allowing workers to opt out of paying dues to unions. Everywhere that this “opt out” idea has been proposed, unions have battled it vigorously because the money they collect from dues is at the heart of their power.

Unions use that money not only to run their daily operations but to wage political campaigns in state capitals and city halls. Indeed, public-sector unions especially have become the nation’s most aggressive advocates for higher taxes and spending. They sponsor tax-raising ballot initiatives and pay for advertising and lobbying campaigns to pressure politicians into voting for them. And they mount multimillion dollar campaigns to defeat efforts by governors and taxpayer groups to roll back taxes.

Early last year, for example, Oregon’s unions spearheaded a successful battle to pass ballot measures 66 and 67, which collectively raised business and income taxes in the state by an estimated $727 million annually. Led by $2 million from the Oregon Education Association and $1.8 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), unions contributed an estimated 75% of the nearly $7 million raised to promote the tax increases, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Also in 2010, teachers unions and public-safety unions in Arizona were influential players in the successful ballot campaign to increase the state’s sales tax to 6.6% from 5.6% to raise an additional $1 billion. Some state business groups also supported the tax increase in the vain hope that the legislature would roll back business and investment taxes. The public unions, by contrast, wanted the tax hike precisely to avoid government spending cuts.

In Washington state there was a ballot measure last November that would have raised $2 billion by imposing an income tax on those earning more than $200,000. The media portrayed the political fight as a battle among the rich. That’s because William H. Gates Sr, father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, supported the tax, while Microsoft’s current chief executive, Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos opposed it.

But unions were the real power behind the scenes. According to Ballotpedia.com, state and national SEIU locals gave $2.5 million, while the National Education Association and Washington teachers union locals contributed $900,000 to the $6 million campaign for the new income tax. In the end, Washingtonians voted down the tax, in part because they feared it would eventually be expanded to everyone.

This was not the first time that government unions targeted upper-income earners. In 2004, California labor groups—including the California Teachers Association, the SEIU, and health interests such as the California Council of Community Health Agencies—led a successful $4.7 million campaign to raise the state income tax on those making more than $1 million and devote the money to health-care funding. In all, public unions gave $1 million to the Proposition 63 effort, while public health groups donated another $1.3 million, according to HealthVote.org.

In New York in 2008-09, then-Gov. David Paterson balked at tax increases and proposed budget cuts in an attempt to come to grips with the state’s growing fiscal crisis. In response, unions launched a barrage of attack ads. The New York State United Teachers union spent $750,000 advocating against a cap on property taxes. The state’s health-care unions (and hospitals) mounted a $1 million radio campaign against Medicaid cuts. In the end, the legislature raised a host of taxes, including higher levies on the incomes of those earning more than $200,000.

Across the Hudson, New Jersey’s powerful teachers union has led the fight against Gov. Chris Christie’s efforts to cut spending. The New Jersey Education Association collects about $100 million a year in dues from its 203,000 members; last spring the union spent $300,000 a week, according to the head of the union, for radio ads urging tax increases on the rich instead of budget cuts. But Mr. Christie held firm and his budget was passed largely as he proposed it.

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An Immigrant American’s Honest Assessment of Obama

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Video from Gabriella Hoffman:

My dad and “spiritual adviser” Boris Hoffman gave a rousing speech at the Eagle Forum of San Diego’s February meeting. An immigrant from Lithuania (a country formerly occupied by the now defunct USSR), my father is disappointed with the direction America is going. He draws parallels of Soviet communism to Obama’s Marxist-Leninism currently plaguing America. He talks about the need for young people to wake up, for Americans to stop taking their country for granted, and for people to stop downplaying American Exceptionalism. Like any immigrant oppressed by communism, my father recalls the limitations he faced there. If you let America continue down this wrong path, we will be the next USSR. Obama, his agenda, and his cronies are not a joke.

Ann Coulter: Democrats: Emboldening America’s Enemies & Terrifying Her Allies Since 1976

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From Human Events:

Democrats: Emboldening America’s Enemies & Terrifying Her Allies Since 1976

By Ann Coulter

The Middle East is on fire again, and crazy Muslims with funny names aren’t helping things — Mahmoud, ElBaradei, al-Banna, Barack…

The major new development is that NOW liberals want to get rid of a dictator in the Middle East! Where were they when we were taking out the guy with the rape rooms?

Remember? The one who had gassed his own people, invaded his neighbors and was desperately seeking weapons of mass destruction? The guy who emerged from a spider hole looking like Charlie Sheen after a three-day bender?
Liberals couldn’t have been less interested in removing Saddam Hussein and building a democracy in Iraq. So it’s really adorable seeing them get all choked up about democracy now. Say, as long as liberals are all gung-ho about getting rid of out-of-touch, overbearing dictators, how about we start with Janet Napolitano?

Why did they want to keep Saddam Hussein in power again? Yes, that’s right — because he didn’t have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Their big argument was that Saddam was five long years away from developing them.

By my calculations, that means as of March 2008, Israel would have been gone and Saddam would have been in total control of the Middle East.

Thanks, liberals!
But they were shocked by Mubarak. Liberals angrily cited the high unemployment rate in Egypt as a proof that Mubarak was a beast who must step down. Did they, by any chance, see the January employment numbers for the United States? The only employment sectors showing any growth at all are medical marijuana cashiers, Hollywood sober-living coaches and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” understudies filling in for maimed cast members.

Are we one jobs report away from liberals rioting in the street?

Mubarak supported U.S. policy, used his military to fight Muslim extremists and recognized Israel’s right to exist. Or as the left calls it, three strikes and you’re out.

Obama was so rough on the Egyptian leader, the Saudis reportedly had to ask him not to humiliate Mubarak. (You know, like Chinese President Hu did to Obama.) In fact, Mubarak may be the only despot Obama didn’t bow to.

You’d think Mubarak and Obama would be natural allies. Mubarak lives in Egypt; Obama created a pyramid scheme known as ObamaCare. To win Obama’s support, maybe Mubarak should have dropped the whole “president” thing and called himself “czar.” Obama seems to like czars.

Or he should have announced that Egypt was going to blow $500 billion on a high-speed bullet train nobody wanted.

You know another country where Obama wasn’t interested in democracy? (I mean, besides the U.S. when it comes to health care reform?) That’s right — Iran.

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The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here

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From the Wall Street Journal:

The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here
President Obama is applying ‘a scalpel to the discretionary budget, rather than a machete.’

By STEPHEN MOORE

We hear that the White House was caught off guard by the near-universal panning of President Obama’s budget proposal. So yesterday morning Mr. Obama was rushed in front of the TV cameras for a press conference to rebut the wave of negative reaction to his status quo spending plan released on Monday.

The press was unusually harsh in its questioning, and Mr. Obama was clearly on the defensive. At one point he even said that the media is too “impatient” for budget cuts. Asked why he isn’t willing to cut more spending to bring the deficit down faster, he said he’s applying “a scalpel to the discretionary budget, rather than a machete.”

What has the White House worried is not the negative reaction from Republicans but criticism from fellow Democrats and friends in the media. MSNBC, for example, called the budget “the big punt.” The Los Angeles Times said that it “landed with a thud.” Even the New York Times groused that “the budget is most definitely not a blueprint for dealing with the real long-term problems that feed the budget deficit.” During a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad said that the president’s budget “cannot be the answer for this country’s fiscal future.”

The overarching problem for Team Obama is that the budget contains trivial cost savings. In the first two years the deficit is actually worsened. Democratic deficit hawks are upset about the total absence of savings in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Mr. Obama explained his whiff on entitlement reform by saying it should “be a negotiation process” and that Republicans and Democrats need to get “in that boat at the same time so we don’t tip over.” It was hardly Harry Truman saying “the buck stops here.”

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Finally, a new place for Bill Clinton to meet women

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From QMI:

A Winnipeg-based matchmaking service has added a division to their company that specializes in matching people with genital herpes [...] They added the herpes aspect to the list of questions after several people came forward asking for help. Now, Tregobov says clients are often open to being matched with someone with herpes, even if they don’t have the condition.

“We don’t necessarily match two people with herpes together, we match based on compatibility and based on acceptance,” she said. “Every single person is asked are you open to it? Yes or no.”