Despite union threats to throw twice as big a hissy fit as Wisconsin liberals, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed right-to-work legislation today, breaking the union stranglehold on jobs in the state. As in Wisconsin, expect union members to start keeping their own money in droves rather than give it to union bosses and the Democratic party.
In related news, peaceful union protestors stood aghast as aggressive Steve Crowder repeatedly drove his menacing face into an innocent Michigan union member’s Fist of Happiness:
Krauthammer: Republicans would be insane to take the “taxes now with a promise to consider cuts later” non-deal Obama is offering.
Especially since Obama’s tax hike “would have reduced the 2012 deficit from $1.10 trillion to $1.02 trillion.”
The national election was disappointing, but here in Texas Republicans continues to make gains. “Overall we have 796 more Republican elected officials in the State of Texas today than we did in 2008.”
Former Texas Democratic congressman Jack brooks has died.
And in case it got lost in the election night news, Steve Stockman, the Republican who retired Brooks in the 1994 election, is returning to congress representing the 36th district.
Displaying a willingness to perceive reality heretofore unguessed at, the Michigan senate passes right-to work legislation. Tomorrow: David Letterman’s Cold Day in Hell Special.
School goes into lockdown because a student brought…a thermometer.
Save the life of a fellow employee at AutoZone? That’s a firing. (Hat tip (last two): Alphecca.)
Once you find out that PSY once sang “Kill those f*cking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives/Kill those f*cking Yankees who ordered them to torture/Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully,” suddenly “Gangnam Style” doesn’t seem quite so amusing.
Lots of larger pieces in various stage of construction, but rather than put them up when everyone is getting ready for Thanksgiving, here’s a quick LinkSwarm:
Former Sen. Warren Rudman dead at age 82. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings really worked at controlling the deficit. That’s why Democrats had to kill it.
Israel and Hamas agree to a ceasefire. Pretty much ensuring that we’ll go through this whole charade again a year or two down the road.
The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco and Grain Millers Union, having been given a second chance by a federal judge, decided that the first hole in their foot just wasn’t big enough and decided to shoot again. Hostess is still dead.
Two weeks after wining reelection, and facing an FBI probe for corruption, Jesse Jackson, Jr. resigns. Like father like son.
First up, Unions kill Hostess. By calling a strike against a company that was already in bankruptcy, against the advice of the Teamsters, who had already taken a look at the Hostess books, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union ensured that instead of a 6% pay cut, unionized workers would take a 100% pay cut. Way to go, unions!
Israel still seems to be gearing up for a ground offensive in Gaza. And by firing rockets at Tel Aviv, Hamas pretty much guarantees that the only faction in Israeli politics urging restraint will retink their position. “I get a lot less liberal when you want to kill me.”
Lefties are trying to boycott Papa Johns for daring to lay people off because of ObamaCare. “If this is anything like the Chick-fil-A buycott, and you want Papa John’s for dinner, you’d better get your order in now.” It’s amazing that any business in America ever has to declare bankruptcy, given there are so many liberals around who can tell them exactly how much profit they “need”…
Former general and former CIA head David Petraeus testifies on Benghazi. He says his report said the attack was launched by al Qaeda, but higher-ups in the Obama Administration deleted the reference. The more we hear about Benghazi, the more it appears that Fox News was right.
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup. First up: The man who moved from one to the other:
Chuck DeVore examines the differences between California and Texas. Scariest takeaway? “With one-eighth of the nation’s population, California has one-third of America’s welfare recipients.”
A review of the book Crazifornia. Pay special attention to the California bridge tester who couldn’t test bridges because he was up on child sex crime charges.
“City College of San Francisco is perilously close to bankruptcy, in part because it employs nearly twice as many faculty as similar colleges and pays them better – yet educates no more students on average, says a new financial analysis of the state’s largest public school. The college got into trouble because, unlike other colleges, it failed to make the budget cuts necessary to keep up with reductions in state funding, never set aside money for its growing retirement obligations, and ‘has provided salary increases and generous benefits with no discernible means to pay for them.'” So it’s like the State of California in miniature. Bonus: Its current budge assumes the passage of Proposition 30.
And speaking of propositions, Prop 37, requiring the labeling of genetically modified food, will be a windfall for trial lawyers.
The city manager of Stockton explains why the city had to declare bankruptcy. It’s filled with special pleading for vested union interests: “Nor can we leave the CalPERS state pension system. CalPERS should be reformed, but if Stockton didn’t offer an industry-standard pension plan, we simply would not be able to staff an already challenged police department. It is unrealistic for creditors to posit that Stockton reject existing pension obligations.” Attention anyone thinking of buying California bonds: When it comes to paying you or paying union cronies, you’re going to get the short end of the stick, no matter what the law says.
I’ve got another Texas vs. California piece coming around on the guitar, but I thought there was enough here to warrant a separate post.
Hold on to your hats, but it seems that California voters might, just might, be catching on that the Democrats who run California’s state government are wasting their money.
I will now wait for the indignant shouts of incredulous outrage to die down.
Support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for billions of dollars in tax hikes on the November ballot is slipping amid public anxiety about how politicians spend money, but voters still favor the proposal, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Well, I did say “might.”
The findings suggest that voters are leery of sending more cash to Sacramento in the wake of a financial scandal at the parks department, spiraling costs for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project to connect Northern and Southern California and ill-timed legislative pay raises.
If voters aren’t willing to stop spending for a $100 billion train to nowhere that everyone know will never be completed, and which would lose even more money every year if it was, when will they?
Brown’s measure would temporarily raise income tax rates on high earners for seven years and boost the state sales tax by a quarter-cent for four years in a bid to avoid steep cuts in funds for schools and other programs.
Note that word: “temporary.”
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the way politics actually works knows that there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax hike. The only thing that prevents Democrats (and establishment Republicans) from spending every cent of every tax collected and more is booting them out of office. Raising taxes simply ensures that they’ll spend all the new revenue and additional money they don’t have on top of that. And with the fiscal tsunami California is facing from bloated government, spiraling debt, and gold-plated public employee union pensions that will bankrupt the state, those “temporary” taxes will never be repealed. Ever.
And two or four years down the line, the next Democratic governor will be asking the voters to approve another “temporary” tax hike…
Back in 2008, this sort of news would probably get my dander up. The upshot is that the federal Highway Bridge Program is going to force various levels of Texas government to pay for replacing little-used bridges rather than repairing them, even if some only get 25 cars a day and there are alternate routes available, in order to keep getting federal funds.
There’s lots wrong with the program: Taxpayer money wasted for one, and the principles of Federalism violated for another; there’s absolutely no reason for the federal government to take money from taxpayers in the various states, put it in a big pot, rake off their bureaucratic maintenance fees, and then redistribute it to states, counties, etc. Let counties and states repair their own bridges, and decide which ones to repair and how to pay for them.
But even given all that, my outrage meter is barely quivering. Unlike so many Obama-era boondoggles, at least we’re getting something tangible and useful. At least it didn’t line some corrupt solar power company CEO’s pockets before his firm went bankrupt. At least it didn’t screw non-union pensioners to line the coffers of the UAW. At least it’s not a multibillion dollar high speed train boondoggle that will never be finished. At least here’s a public works project that’s actually shovel ready. And, as long as you think that there should be public roads in the first place (there’s a libertarian case for completely private roads, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago), then at least we’re getting something at least vaguely within the purvey of some government entity.
And at least the program didn’t end up killing a border patrol agent and 300+ Mexican civilians.
So corrupt, incompetent and scandal-ridden is the Obama Administration that I have a hard time working up indignation over the fact that a significant fraction of $150 million will probably be wasted on bridges we don’t really need, mainly because I’m sure Obama or his cronies will find a brand new way to waste ten times that one something completely useless sometime over the next week…
Texas has a market that works just fine for electricity when government lets it: “California pretended to have a deregulated electricity market, but it was really a poorly designed, government-controlled system that eventually collapsed under its own weight. Texas’ economy is outperforming the rest of the country because we put fewer burdens on markets. This is why Texas has the most competitive and successful electricity market in the United States, if not the world. If we let it work, the world-class Texas electricity market will power Texas’ future.”
You know, if I were looking to save money, eliminating the state’s open meeting law is about the last thing I would cut. California at every level government needs more transparency, not less. (That probably true for the other 56 49 states as well.)
Finally, I want to note that Dwight has created a tag to track all mentions of the No Longer Golden State on his blog, so you can read his roundups on police incompetence, municipal corruption, and bankrupt locales such as Vernon, Bell, San Bernardino, Cudahy, Maywood, and Zalgo.
Now that a week has passed since Scott Walker’s decisive victory in the Wisconsin recall election, I wanted to touch on one issue that helped contribute to the left’s defeat in the recall, namely the narcissistic infantilism displayed among a small, but highly visible, set of Wisconsin liberals. Their actions helped Walker win the recall election.
First up, let’s take a look at their whiny self-regard, as exemplified by Crying Man:
“We worked so hard.” Well, too bad; Republicans worked harder, out-hustled and out-voted you. It’s like a member of Generation Participation asking for a good grade just because they showed up and tried, even though they got the answers wrong. “I worked so hard! Can’t you just give me an A?” And complaining that it’s “the end of Democracy” because your side lost is such pure narcissistic, drama queen behavior that I’m surprised to hear it from anyone over the age of twelve. Did he shout “You’re the worst dad in the world!” the last time his father refused to let him borrow the car keys?
Or take the liberals shown here the day after the election:
So, while all of you in the People’s Republic of Madison were having your Happy Singalong Drum Circle, Republicans were manning phone banks, registering voters, and running Get Out the Vote drives. Maybe the first two or three days of singing and drumming helped the cause by drawing attention to the fight; after that they were an exercise in petulant self-indulgence.
And speaking of self-indulgence, drama queens and that video, what did the two liberals haranguing CNN’s bus driver think they were accomplishing? You lost. Whining about them calling the election earlier than you thought they should, especially after they were proven correct, is like an eight year old throwing a temper tantrum because she doesn’t want to go to school.
Also, notice something else about those two videos: all the use of personal pronouns. I, my, we, etc., as though the results of the election were a personal affront. Here’s a hint, Dorothy: It’s not about you, it’s about good governance and the will of the voters in a democratic republic.
Of course, don’t forget about how liberals kicked off their pro-union, anti-Walker protests last year:
Was there not a single adult among all the recall supporters to go “Hey, wait, acting like complete assholes might alienate voters”? Did they forget that they were in the Midwest, where “direct action” isn’t considered cute or “empowering,” but as rude jackassery?
A certain class of liberals seems to miss the excitement of the early civil rights protest era, missing the fact that Madison in 2011 is not Selma in 1959. Your actions aren’t aimed at convincing voters, but at drawing personal attention to yourself for throwing a hissy fit. “Look at me! I’m a college radical! My ideas are more important than yours, and I’ll scream and shout until I get my way!”
Here’s Amy L. Geiger-Hemmer describing all the ways recall supporters alienated voters:
Without your tantrums, outbursts and boorish behavior we might have stayed home for this election. Without your filthy, pot smoking hemp-headed minions occupying and violating the Capitol we might have been complacent. Without your obnoxious protests, boycotts and other actions from your union playbook, we might have sat this one out.
But you couldn’t hold back. You couldn’t restrain yourselves and behave like adults. You couldn’t accept the 2010 election results. We sat and watched as you erupted in a juvenile hissy fit that embarrassed Wisconsin . The spectacle you created is what motivated us. And thanks to your ill-mannered behavior, we won.
Read the whole thing.
Still another sign of their infantile infatuation with 1960s radicals was their use of Socialist Realism iconography for their signs:
Did they really think signs that could have been created under the regimes of Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro were a swell way to win over independent voters? Or did they just not care? (Psst: Here’s a hint guys: The real solidarity was fighting communist puppets, not democratically elected state officials.)
But what it all boils down to is bunch of privileged, white, well-to-do radicals, many in their 20s, more interested in politics as a form of external therapy and personal attention than with actually accomplishing anything. All their screaming, drum-banging tantrums not only failed to accomplish anything, but like the similar actions of Occupy Wall Street, they were counterproductive exercises that alienated independent voters and potential allies.
And judging from the blog posts of people who hang out in places like Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, they still don’t seem to have learned a thing.
