Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.
Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.
Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.
Here’s hoping he wins those fights, too.
How is it a “Waterloo” when Republicans couldn’t even get enough signatures to recall all eligible Democrats and lost two seats? More like a draw to me.
Gerrib, compare the amount of money spent on the recalls, vs. the issue losses both in the legislature and in court — and your idea of a “draw” would have to apply to Napoleon’s defeat at…
Heh.
Chris, the military definition of victory is achieving your objectives at acceptable loss while denying the enemy his own objectives. The Republicans wanted to implement the Walker reforms and make them stick. The Wisconsin public employee unions wanted to overturn the Walker reforms. The battlefields were the Wisconsin State Supreme Court election and the two sets of Wisconsin State Senate recall elections. The Republicans won the former and won enough of the latter to keep control of the Wisconsin State Senate. The Walker reforms were defended and implemented at acceptable loss. The Republicans won.
The Democrats/Wisconsin public employee unions achieved nothing they were trying to achieve. Their corrupt health insurance monopoly is ended, so-called collective bargaining rights for public employees are sharply curtailed and, most importantly, financial support of the unions is now voluntary rather than compulsory. If the experience of other states is a guide, financial support for these unions, among their own members, will fall by 80 to 90 percent. The Wisconsin public employee unions not only lost and lost big, their future existence is now problematical. One such union has already folded up and blown away. I predict others will follow.
In the meantime, the abolition of the health insurance monopoly of the self-dealing unionists has allowed all but the two school districts that unwisely entered into contracts under the old union monopoly health insurance regime to balance their books without layoffs. The two unwise districts have had to cut union teachers to pay the “vig” on their health insurance. The contrast in these results – especially for the alleged beneficiaries of union membership, now unemployed due to the greed of union bosses – have not gone unremarked, especially by the victims of the dead-ender defense of undeserved union privilege.
The Democrats and the unions all claim to be for the working people. However, the events in Wisconsin has proven the lie of their claim. If they were for the working people, they’d enact policies to help them keep their jobs. Instead, the Democrats and unions pushed policies that enriched themselves and caused working people to lose their jobs. In Madison, where they foolishly signed contracts with the unions before the April elections, dozens of city employees are being laid off but the unions are quite happy.
Also, if Obama and the Democrats cared about America’s working people, they wouldn’t be pushing another 4,257 regulations down business’s throats, including 219 with a projected economic impact of over $100 million each.