Wisconsin Guv Walker First Gets it Right;
Then Screws-up in Battle vs. Unions
“Collective Bargaining for government employment conflicts with the interests of the nation and the tax-payers.” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
” I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I'm maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL - CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government's reason for being. It was in recognition of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety . . . . I must tell those who failed to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.” President Ronald Wilson Reagan
Confusion Reigns on All Fronts as Nation Stagnates;
Seethes in Obama-Created Swamp
“. . . She’s the most disgraceful country that ever you have seen,
They’re hanging men and women there for wearing o’ the green . . .”
The Founding Fathers must be spinning at 300 revolutions per second in their graves right now. And like “dear old 'Oirelan'” in the song The Wearing of the Green, something quite disgraceful is going on in America right now.
Item: Democratic Senators from Indiana and Wisconsin have left the states where they won election and are now roasting weenies and enjoying the Iron Chefs reality TV show in Illinois. This “protest” (which is really a disgusting aberration of their responsibilities as elected representatives of their state) is in its second week.
Item: Spend, spend, spend and spend some more. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is propagating the Democrats message that taxing creates jobs. Trumka, who next to SEIU President Andy Stern is the second-most frequent visitor to the White House and therefore ranks as an Obama-advisor, wants to dramatically raise the federal gas tax so that “a dedicated source of revenue will be created to fund infrastructure permanently.” Of course the unions and Democrats, who claim to be the proponents of the poor and the middle class, have to realize that taxes upon necessities like food and gas are “regressive” . . . that is they harm the middle-class and especially the poor by taking a far greater proportion of their meager disposable incomes for taxation. And then there’s the fact that a tax on gas amounts to a huge inflation as the costs of it will show up in every single item that’s bought or sold in the country. Of course, yes, more union and government jobs would be created at the cost of 2-5 times that many jobs in the private sector. This is an example of the well-known economic gaff called the “Broken Window Fallacy.”
Item: the Democrats are now talking about renewing their highly successful, they say, “Cash for Clunkers program which is an example of “The Blessings of Destruction” another gaff that an Econ-101 should never make, much less an elected official.
specifically, Cash for Clunkers created a scarcity of used cars (they were destroyed in huge numbers, remember) and pushed the cost of the average used car in the country up $1,800. Mr. President, the rich don't buy used cars, so who do you suppose your stupid law hurt?
Item: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been thwarted in his attempt to bring his state back from a $3.6 BIllion shortfall and to free all state and county and local governments from the shackles of collective bargaining and may soon have to start laying off government employees to make his budget balance. By the way, there is no “right” to collective bargaining either in the constitution or the laws of nature, no matter how often such a “right” is trumpeted about.
Item: The just mentioned Governor Scott Walker is, however, playing favorites. No doubt because of the political realities, Governor Walker is not addressing unionized police and unionized fire-fighters in Wisconsin they are exempt under his new bill which otherwise would be an impossibly unpopular move. A real statesman does the right thing, not the popular or expedient one. The good governor needs to familiarize himself with the history of the 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Union that resulted in the firing of 11,000 ATC employees who refused to honor the law created by Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter; and who violated their oaths of office. Carter removed the ability of federal workers’ unions to strike or use other collective bargaining against the taxpayers with Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. In Walker’s defense, President Obama who often speaks without knowing anything about his subject: vowed that he would “put on comfortable shoes and march with a picket sign” anywhere where the collective bargaining process was being challenged . . . sounds like it’s been really challenged in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, no need to go to Wisconsin.
Item: President Barack Obama has ordered his INjustice Dept. to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. The aim is twofold: to please his gay supporters cementing their votes in his behalf; and to eventually make gay marriage legal with all the rights of real marriage including adoption. The folks at NAMBLA must be enjoying bouts of orgiastic excitement about now. Who cares about non-voting children after all?
Item: It’s begun abundantly clear since the revelation of the pathetic Obama budget that in his eyes no single government spending or government interference or government abuse or fraudulent government boondoggle deserves to be cut; apparently no federal government program ever created suffers from fraud, abuse or incompetence and all must be continued into perpetuity with ever-increasing budgets? The United States’ federal government officially faces a $14.1 TRillion national debt and $112 TRillion in UNfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare, and the federal side of Medicaid; and NOT including all the Welfare programs) and the president and his Progressive buddies on the left side of the aisle cannot understand why the America voters kicked so many of them out of office last November. They are refusing to consider $30 Billion in spending cuts and moving the country closer to a federal government shutdown. ‘Lest you think this is just the Rajjpuut’s interpretation of the economic situation . . . two voice no less far apart on the political continuum than Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton and new TEA Party Senator Rand Paul when asked what constitutes the greatest threat to America’s security gave the same answer: the nation’s DEBT.
Item: That privileged class known as unionized government workers has become the new elite that President Obama prefers above and beyond all others. It works like this: The government unions use up to 85% of the union dues they collect for the salaries of union officials and for political contributions. 96% of those political contributions go to the campaign funds of Democratic candidates. Those candidates when elected create a bunch of new “goodies” for the unionized government workers whose dues again fund the bloated salaries of union officials and the war chests of the Democratic Party. If, occasionally, they are not successful in electing a lot of Democrats one year, little will be lost between then and the next election and the dues-campaign funds vicious circle continues eternally. And who pays for this vicious circle profitable to progressive Democrats and union leaders alike? The taxpayer, of course.
Item: Even without Obamacare, the ridiculous budget submitted by Obama will almost double the National Debt in the next decade: $13.2 TRillion more. The present Republican budget (which is just a preliminary <designed to make up for the fact that the last Pelosi House did not pass a budget> doesn’t include necessary further cuts . . . but IF the present Republican budget extended into the next decade it would result in additional debt of over $10 TRillion dollars. Of course with Obamacare, both budgets would swell by another $2.4 TRillion over the next decade. When will the voters wise up? When will they understand that government spending programs and entitlement programs are all PONZI SCHEMES? When will they understand that Thomas Jefferson had it right when he said, “That government is best that governs least . . . “?
Item: The Obama administration is drawing up a bill that will charge sellers of artificial trees a “tariff” to support a marketing fund for the natural Christmas tree industry to make up for their ever falling share of the holiday tree market. Can one eagerly look forward to the day when the feds will bailout the natural tree promoters?
Item: You may not know these facts, but facts they are . . . the United States has discovered and verified the discovery of the biggest oil deposit in the world 88% beneath us and 12% below Canada called the Bakken Fields oil deposit. This makes Saudi Arabia look like energy-paupers. Even without the Bakken deposits (now outlawed for use except those portions under Indian reservations), recent advances in natural gas and oil drilling technology would presumably soon allow the United States to become an exporter of natural gas and IF drilling were maximized, to be virtually free of foreign oil dependence . . . but, of course, that would mean that green energy subsidies would not have any merit. Government studies showing that wind energy is NOT practicable for large scale use; and the Spanish economic study of the results of that nation’s 23-year failed (Unemployment went from 4% to 21%) green energy program have been stifled by the EPA and not reported in the mainstream/ lamestream media. The EPA and Progressive Democrats are attempting to quash reports contrary to their green agenda . . . for example: turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, and rare earth minerals – and huge orders of difficult resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping and monstrous amounts of pollution and carbon dioxide emissions (which the EPA has called “toxic”) at every step of the way.
Greater wind-turbine development which the Obama administration is describing as a “MUST” would also necessitate greater dependence upon China. Roughly 96% of the world’s rare earth production is centered now in China and Mongolia. Theirs is a very pollution-concentrated process which hopefully we will not emulate seeking rare earths here in the U.S. In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals – and over 15,000,000 tons of waste. As mentioned earlier, wind turbines do NOT work on a large-scale basis. Why? Because the backup power plants (the wind doesn’t always blow, hence the need for backups) are not only far more INefficient but according to the EPA’s own literature they also generate far more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they were able to run at full capacity. As backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind electricity production.
Ya'll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
