FILE: June 5, 2012: Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker reacts at his victory party in Waukesha, Wis. Walker defeated Democratic challenger Tom Barrett in a special recall election.AP
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is defying a directive from the National Park Service to close down several state parks that receive federal funding in the wake of the partial government shutdown.
The Republican governor has directed the state Natural Resources Department to keep open parks that receive a majority of their funding from the state, The Hill reported.
The department recently intervened after the Fish and Wildlife Service placed barricades near a Mississippi River boat launch because it was on federal land. The barricades were removed because of a decades-old agreement between Wisconsin and the federal government, state officials said.
“We respect the magnitude of the process the federal government has had to undertake to close its properties and certain activities on properties they own and manage,” Cathy Stepp, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, told agency employees in an email obtained by The Hill.
“However, after close review and legal consult, [the Department of Natural Resources] has clarified areas where the federal procedures are over-reaching by ordering the closure of properties where the state has management authority through existing agreements.”
State officials also said Wisconsin will not not fully follow a Fish and Wildlife Service directive that hunting and fishing be prohibited on federal lands during the partial shutdown, according to the report. (more…)
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Prior to the election, most reporters — or their editors — weren’t interested in looking into any of this too closely. But in the wake of the refusal of elected GOP leaders in the states to do the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare, the development of the federal Obamacare exchanges might now receive closer examination. The idea of funneling about $1 trillion (according to the Congressional Budget Office) over Obamacare’s real first dozen years (2014-25) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to private insurance companies was always problematic. But it’s more problematic to hire a subsidiary of one of those insurance companies as an architect and policeman of the exchanges through which the Obama administration intends to have this abundant taxpayer money flow, more problematic still that Obama’s first head of the CCIIO may have profited personally from the venture, and most problematic of all that HHS may have told a private company to violate federal securities law in order to aid Obama’s reelection prospects.
Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.
States are not required to set up Obamacare exchanges, but it seems to have surprised observers that many are choosing not to. Politico reports that, with only 17 states so far having said they will set up the exchanges, the “Department of Health and Human Services’s role in bringing the law to life is going to be a lot bigger than originally thought.” More than a third of all states have already said they won’t set up the Obamacare exchanges. Among others, Republican governors Scott Walker, John Kasich, Sam Brownback, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Nathan Deal, Paul LePage, Robert Bentley, Mary Fallin, and Sean Parnell have said they’ll refuse to set up the exchanges in their states.
In Missouri, voters took matters into their own hands, approving a ballot measure to vest authority over the decision in the Republican-led state legislature, rather than leaving it up to the Democratic governor. Missouri will not be establishing an exchange. Utah governor Gary Herbert, meanwhile, has opted for a sort of mild civil disobedience, saying that his state will continue to pursue “our version of an exchange based on defined contribution, consumer choice, and free markets” — a type of exchange that is rather plainly banned by Obamacare.
States’ refusal to be complicit in this crucial aspect of Obamacare should shine a spotlight on the development of the federal exchanges — and what it illuminates won’t be pretty.
The Obama administration’s congressional allies botched the drafting of this aspect of the health care overhaul, as the plain language of Obamacare doesn’t empower federal exchanges to distribute taxpayer-funded subsidies to individuals; it empowers only state-based exchanges to distribute the subsidies. (The administration pretends otherwise.) Moreover, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is lagging behind in developing the federal exchanges.
It gets worse. HHS has contracted with a subsidiary of a private health care company to help build and police the very exchanges in which that company will be competing for business. The person who ran the government entity that awarded that contract has since accepted a position with a different subsidiary of that same company. An insurance industry insider (speaking on the condition of anonymity) says that HHS, in an attempt to hide this unseemly contract from public view until after the election, encouraged the company to hide the transaction from the Securities and Exchange Commission. (more…)
The wave, that is. I speak of one that will wash away far more than just a failed presidency. This wave will have the torque to rock the entire liberal bubble — the political/media/crony bubble — leaving it forever exposed. Ironically, those inside this bubble will be the last to know — which is precisely why it will happen. Those who would rule over us, and insult us with outrage over Big Bird, academic debate-scoring, “binders” memes, and specious jobs statistics know nothing about us. This includes those inside the bubble who purport to represent our views.
But we know them well. For the record, “we” refers to the quarter of the country that never bought into the fraudulent vapor of Obama and who lost respect for anyone who did. Even post-election, when 70% plus of the nation was in this stupor, we knew it was Marxist voodoo that could not last.
It did not. Early in 2009, per Rasmussen, another 25% got over the phony high of Obama’s election. Since then, Obama’s been underwater on approval .
Millions more have joined this narrow majority in the past weeks. Debates have been the catalysts, but this epiphany has been building for much longer — and now it’s reached critical mass. There is now understanding of the shallowness of Obama and of liberalism. Everything said by the supposedly racist, mean-spirited conservatives has been validated.
Doggone it…I think they’ve been right all along.
We were, and not just about Obama. We’ve been right about the academia elites, the Jurassic media, the elitist conservative pundits, the establishment, the “obama foam” class, and Occupy and union thugs, too. This includes anybody who makes his living from government — and the reporting thereof. It encompasses those who live inside the bubble, plus those who depend on them. These people are all intertwined, co-dependent, and out of step with America. Recent events have finally connected dots for a lot of people in ways they can no longer deny.
Reviewed by Grover G. Norquist – Special to The Washington Times
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
SHADOWBOSSES: GOVERNMENT UNIONS CONTROL AMERICA AND ROB TAXPAYERS BLIND
By Mallory Factor with Elizabeth Factor
Center Street, $24.99, 336 pages
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Why can President Obama impose expensive regulations on coal miners and steel workers? Because those industries he is damaging are small potatoes compared to the public-sector unions that now fund his campaigns. He doesn’t care about unemployed coal miners. They are not paying customers. Most miners now are non-union.
Mallory and Elizabeth Factor have written an important and powerful new book, “Shadowbosses,” that explains the symbiotic relationship between the modern Democratic Party and today’s labor unions. One is not possible without the other. Democratic politicians pass laws that give union leaders power over workers, and union leaders use that power to take “dues” money from workers to give to Democratic politicians.
Last year, in 2011, 16.3 million workers who belong to unions (in every sense) had $14 billion taken from them in union dues. Much of that money flowed into political campaigns as cash and to pay “volunteers.” Labor unions are the skeleton and muscle of the modern Democratic Party.
Before the federal government passed the Wagner Act in 1935 forcing workers to join unions as a condition of employment, only 8 percent of Americans chose to join unions voluntarily. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt’s legislation giving unions power over workers, once a union was in place, it did not need to ask workers to join. They paid dues or did not work.
Before the creation of government-empowered unions, the Democratic Party was the party of the discredited Confederacy, and from 1860 to 1932, of 15 presidents only two were Democrats: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson only won because Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Progressive, splitting the Republican vote.
When Herbert Hoover imposed massive tariffs, hiked the new income tax to 75 percent and spent like Barack Obama, he deepened a recession, and Franklin Roosevelt was able to win the 1932 election. FDR continued Hoover’s policies of higher taxes, “stimulus” spending and government regulations. He might have lost the next elections. But FDR created a new extension of government — labor unions with powers over workers to extract union dues. With government relatively small, those unions were in factories and there was a limit to how high wages and work rules could go without bankrupting businesses. Union power was constrained by its interest in the health of the overall economy.
Over time, unions killed off much of the auto, steel, mining and manufacturing industries in the United States. They went on the prowl, looking for new sources of dues money — and they found it in government workers: police, fire, teachers and generic bureaucrats. (more…)
THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS WERE TAKEN AT A LUNCHEON FOR PAT McCRORY, REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR NORTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR AT THE CAROLINA COUNTRY CLUB IN RALEIGH ON SEPTEMBER 25, 2012. GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER OF WISCONSIN WAS THE GUEST SPEAKER.
From the left: Pat McCrory, candidate for North Carolina Governor and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin
Its dominant interest groups have done to Obama what they did to Carter.
By JAY COSTMr. Cost is a staff writer for the Weekly Standard and the author of “Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic” (Broadside Books, 2012).
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Roosevelt’s successors continued to pay off existing clients while bringing new ones into the mix. By the 1970s the party added the environmentalist left, the feminist movement, government unions, trial lawyers and others to its coalition. By the 1990s, big business, long considered to be a client of the GOP, also purchased a major stake. All of these groups joined the Democratic Party because of special privileges they received from it, and in exchange they provided cash for campaign ads, volunteers for get-out-the-vote efforts, and support to members of Congress through lobbying networks.
For a long while, Democrats managed to balance the needs of their clients with the public interest, much like FDR had done during the New Deal. Eventually there were just too many special interests to do both. The party was like a juggler who added one too many balls to the routine, only to see them all come crashing down.
In the wake of Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall election, Democrats are blaming their loss on Republican-friendly super PACs and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United. The thinking goes that moneyed interests far outspent the Democrats, bought the election, and undermined democracy.
This analysis is misguided. Liberal Democrats who fancy themselves reformers should take a long, hard look at their own party before pointing fingers at the Supreme Court. When they do, they might see it has fallen far from its lofty claims to be the “party of the people.”
The first progressive Democrats hated the role of narrow interests in their own party. At the turn of the last century, early liberal leaders such as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson were embarrassed by Tammany Hall, the amoral political machine that ran New York City. Both tried unsuccessfully to break the back of the “Tiger,” as Tammany was known. (more…)
The Obama administration suddenly looks like a house of cards.
By PEGGY NOONAN
What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into “one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever,” as the Washington Post’s Peter Whoriskey and Dan Balz reported in a day-after piece. Fifty thousand volunteers made phone calls and knocked on 1.4 million doors to get out the vote against Gov. Scott Walker. Mr. Walker’s supporters, less deeply organized on the ground, had a considerable advantage in money.
But organization and money aren’t the headline. The shift in mood and assumption is. The vote was a blow to the power and prestige not only of the unions but of the blue-state budgetary model, which for two generations has been: Public-employee unions with their manpower, money and clout, get what they want. If you move against them, you will be crushed.
Mr. Walker was not crushed. He was buoyed, winning by a solid seven points in a high-turnout race.
Governors and local leaders will now have help in controlling budgets. Down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all. The big meaning of Wisconsin is that a public injustice is in the process of being righted because a public mood is changing.
Political professionals now lay down lines even before a story happens. They used to wait to do the honest, desperate, last-minute spin of yesteryear. Now it’s strategized in advance, which makes things tidier but less raggedly fun. The line laid down by the Democrats weeks before the vote was that it’s all about money: The Walker forces outspent the unions so they won, end of story.
Money is important, as all but children know. But the line wasn’t very flattering to Wisconsin’s voters, implying that they were automatons drooling in front of the TV waiting to be told who to back. It was also demonstrably incorrect. Most voters, according to surveys, had made up their minds well before the heavy spending of the closing weeks.
Mr. Walker didn’t win because of his charm—he’s not charming. It wasn’t because he is compelling on the campaign trail—he’s not, especially. Even his victory speech on that epic night was, except for its opening sentence—”First of all, I want to thank God for his abundant grace,” which, amazingly enough, seemed to be wholly sincere—meandering, unable to name and put forward what had really happened.
But on the big question—getting control of the budget by taking actions resisted by public unions—he was essentially right, and he won.
Associated PressWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. (more…)
The war on Wisconsin; Update: Sarah Palin’s call to arms
By Michelle Malkin • March 28, 2012 02:52 AM
The war on Wisconsin
by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012
Now is the time for all good tea partiers to come to the aid of Wisconsin. Fiscally conservative leaders in the Badger State are under coordinated siege from Big Labor, the White House, the liberal media and the judiciary. The yearlong campaign of union thuggery, family harassment and intimidation of Republican donors and businesses is about to escalate even further. This is the price the Right pays for doing the right thing.
The most visible target is Gov. Scott Walker, who faces recall on June 5 over his tough package of state budget and public employee union reforms. Three state GOP legislators — Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Sen. Van Wanggaard and Sen. Terry Moulton — also face recall. A fourth target, staunch union reformer and Second Amendment advocate Sen. Pam Galloway, announced she was stepping down last week — leaving the legislature deadlocked and Democratic strategists salivating. (more…)
Throughout the 2012 election cycle Republicans have pined for a bold, conservative reformer—a leader courageous enough to make difficult choices and articulate enough to explain them to a skeptical public. The good news is they have such a candidate. The less good news: Scott Walker isn’t running for president. He’s running to hang on to his job as governor of Wisconsin.
Walker is the target of a recall effort funded by national labor unions. Why? Reforms he made to balance the budget have dramatically diminished the influence of public employee unions. If not reversed, these reforms will inspire similar efforts across the country, and the outsized power of public sector unions will finally be reined in.
The election in Wisconsin—which will happen in late spring or summer—could have a profound impact on the 2012 presidential race, with the winning side emerging from the battle organized and energized in one of the most important swing states this November.
Walker came to office in the Republican wave of 2010. He inherited a mess. Under his profligate predecessor, Jim Doyle, state government had operated almost as a slush fund for public employee unions. Giveaways to teachers and others put the state on an unsustainable fiscal path, so Doyle raised some taxes and threatened to raise others. He raided a state fund set up to cover medical liability, essentially stealing contributions doctors had made to the pooled account. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against that pilfering, but the money had already been spent. Even after budget gimmickry that would make Fannie and Freddie blush, the official deficit was $3.6 billion.
Just over a year later, Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature have nearly eliminated the deficit. For the two-year budget cycle, the state will show a $143 million shortfall because the stagnant economy has resulted in lower tax receipts than had been projected. But the shortfall is for the first half of the cycle; Wisconsin will run a surplus in the current fiscal year. And Walker said last week that he will eliminate the remaining shortfall without raising taxes. It’s a credible claim. He reduced the deficit without raising taxes. In fact, one of his first moves upon being sworn in was to cut taxes on businesses. His subsequent reforms have allowed property tax receipts to go down for the first time in years—by some $47 million.(more…)
