Firewall: The End of the Beginning

Bill Whittle's take on why teacher's unions are on the way out...

Gaming The System: How Public Union's Collective Bargaining Force Higher Taxes

Here's a video from the Heritage Foundation on how public union's collective bargaining has forced higher taxes.



via Redstate.com

Public Employee Unions: What's At Stake...

Here's an excellent video on what's at stake with the public employee unions.



Via Powerline

Here's another video from Tim Pawlenty in solidarity with Scott Walker of Wisconsin


Also via Powerline

But not to be outdone...here's a video showing the hypocrisy of the left on civility.  Listen around 7:30 or so into for the money quote:

Will history repeat itself?

By

JP Bender

Thirty years ago—on Aug. 3, 1981—workers in the union know as the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), walked off the job. Their demands included seeking a shorter workweek, additional pay increases, improved working conditions and better safety for air travelers. This was all done in the name of collective bargaining. The union defied an ultimatum by the newly elected President Ronald Reagan to return to work.

The union members rallied, demonstrated and had the backing of the liberal democrats. Forty-eight hours later, Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers.

Union leaders and members were arrested, jailed and fined. PATCO’s $3.5 million strike fund was frozen, the strike was broken and eventually the government decertified the union.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R), faces a similar situation with public employees, taking to the streets, challenging his proposals for lower wages, increased contributions of retirement funds and the elimination of collective bargaining. The state of Wisconsin, like 30 other states, and the federal government too, faces financial ruin in the face of a depressed economy and budget shortfalls.

Protesters are pledging to remain in the Wisconsin Capitol while Senate Democrats are committed to staying out of state until a compromise can be found with Gov. Walker on collective bargaining rights for public sector employees.

The Republican governor said that while the state enjoys a lower-than-average unemployment rate -- about 7.5 percent compared to 9 percent nationally -- about 5,000-6,000 state workers and 5,000-6,000 local government workers will find their jobs on the chopping block as the state looks to close a $3.6 billion biennial budget gap.

Under the governor's proposal, unions still could represent workers, but they could not force employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized. Only wages below the Consumer Price Index would be subject to collective bargaining, anything higher would have to be approved by referendum.

If the situation cannot be resolved, more than 14,000 state employees could be fired.

Obama: "Elections Have Consequences"

Guess what?  now the "chickens are coming home to roost," to quote Mr. Obama's spiritual advisor.  On today's Meet The Press Senator Linsey Graham, (not one of my favorite Senators...) spells it out for Mr. Obama:

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about what is becoming a federal issue, and that is what's happening in Wisconsin. This was the scene on Friday in the rotunda in Madison as union workers were protesting the move by the governor of Wisconsin to demand a greater participation on unions in terms of pension contributions, as well as health care contributions, also trying to end collective bargaining in the state. And you see the response there. President Obama did an interview and weighed in on this. This is what he had to say.


(Videotape, Wednesday)
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions. And I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends.
(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Senator Graham, did the president do the right thing weighing in to this controversy?


SEN. GRAHAM: I think the president should be focusing on what we're doing in Washington. The president's budget this year is the highest level of spending as a nation--25.3 percent of GDP--since World War II. So that's not the number to use to get this place in, in, in fiscal sanity. We should be looking at the dollars we're actually spending. That's what the House did. But when the president talks about Wisconsin, I think that's--that really is inappropriate. The governor of Wisconsin is doing what he campaigned on. He said he would ask contributions from government employees for pension and for health care at a level that I think is reasonable. And he also put on the table renegotiating and reforming collective bargaining. He told me yesterday it takes 15 months to do a contract with government employees in Wisconsin. And so he's doing what he said. There was an election on his proposals, and he won, and he should be allowed to fulfill his mandate just like the House Republicans.

MR. GREGORY: Senator Durbin, is the White House, is the president, using his own campaign operation, an operation of supporters, to fuel protests in Wisconsin?

SEN. DURBIN: Let me tell you why what's happening in Wisconsin, just north of Illinois, goes way beyond the discussion of the Wisconsin budget. If you think this is just about money and the budget, then you might believe Cesar Chavez was just working to get a couple pennies more per pound for grapes or that Martin Luther King was really working for access to hotels and restaurants. There's a much bigger issue at stake here. For over 80 years in America, we have recognized the rights of our workers to freely gather together, collectively bargain, so that they could have fairness in the workplace and fairness in compensation. And that is what's at stake here. It goes way beyond this budget issue. This governor of Wisconsin is not setting out just to fix a budget, he's setting out to break a union. That is a major move in terms of American history. I believe the president should have weighed in. I think we should all weigh in and say, "Do the right thing for Wisconsin's budget, but do not destroy decades of work to establish the rights of workers to speak for themselves."

SEN. GRAHAM: David, if I could just add, this is a campaign flier I have--I don't know if you can see it--from the last election cycle where Wisconsin unions said, "If you elect this guy, Scott Walker, he's going to reform or limit collective bargaining." He was open about what he was going to do about contributions to pensions and retirement, and he told the people of Wisconsin, "I'm going to change collective bargaining because it is--impedes progress when it comes to education. It's too hard to fire anybody, it is too complicated. And I'm going to change that system." So, in a democracy, when you run on something, you do have an obligation to fulfill your promise. He didn't take anybody by surprise. He's doing exactly what he said. There was a referendum on this issue, and the unions lost. And the Democrats in Wisconsin should come back to Wisconsin to have votes. [emphasis is mine, ed.]

But Liberals, aren't about elections or Democracy...they're about mob rule.  In Wisconsin,  the unions, the Democratic Party and Obama's Organizing for America, are trying to overturn last November's election results.  They haven't learned the lesson of Texas in 2003-2009...

The mess in Wisconsin has happened before. In 2003, faced with a new Republican majority intent on redrawing an electoral map that preserved power for Democrats that the voters no longer gave them, the Texas Democrats fled the state. And in 2009, rather than allow a vote on an election security bill that they didn’t want, the Texas Democrats brought the state legislature to a halt — killing the voter ID bill and everything on the calendar that followed it. . . . So the Democrats are trying to bring both houses of the legislature to a full halt to kill the union bill. It may work, at least temporarily, just by running out the clock. But if what has happened in Texas is any guide, it will be a pyrrhic victory. Democrats in Texas have won very little since the 2003 run to the Red River. And after they filibustered the voter ID bill in 2009, which a heavy majority of the voters supported, they suffered an unholy beating in 2010. The Republicans now have a super majority in the House, and the man who led the filibuster, state Rep. Jim Dunnam, was defeated. He didn’t lose just because of that filibuster, but having that on his record certainly didn’t help him.”

It will take decades for the Democrats to recover from their stupidity in Texas...and probably the rest of the country from the current act of their own self destruction.  Our country is made up of roughly 25% self described Liberals, 33% Conservatives with the remaining 42% independent/moderates...those moderates are watching what is occuring in Wisconsin very, very closely...and what they see, according to Gallop polling, they don't like.  Not even FDR or the founder of the AFL-CIO approved of government employees belonging to unions   

Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.  "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government." [emphasis is mine, ed..]

The simple fact that the Democratic Senators of the Wisconsin Legislature have abdicated their responsibility to their constituents, and to their state means that for all intents and purposes, they have abandoned their jobs, and their offices.  The GOP majority in both houses should peel off those portions of the proposed legislation that are tax-finance based, and require a qourum to pass, and simply pass the rest of their agenda by majority vote. Over at the Chicago Boyz...comes this comment: 

Ryan Says: February 19th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Actually, it appears that the three-fifths requirement is only for fiscally-related bills. (See Wisconsin’s Constitution, Art VIII, Sec 8; Wisc. Legislature’s Joint Rule 11(2)) However, for non-fiscal bills, the quorum is only one-half, which the Republicans could muster on their own. (Wisc. Const. Art IV, Sec 7; Wisc. Leg. Joint Rule 11(1); Wisc. Senate Rule 15.) It doesn’t appear that a stand-alone union reform bill would require the three-fifths majority for a quorum, only a simple majority. The Republicans could, theoretically, pass a stand-alone bill reforming public sector union collective bargaining practices (or simply abolishing public sector unions altogether, if they wanted to play hard ball) without needing a single Democratic senator to show up to constitute a quorum. (At least, according to my reading of the relevant Constitutional provisions and legislative rules.) This would take the issue out-of-play for the Democrats vis the remainder of the budget bill, and could bring them back to the table if the Republicans wanted to play hard ball as well (if I’m reading this correctly).

In another thread there, comes this far more telling comment: 

Subotai Bahadur Says:

February 19th, 2011 at 1:12 pm
From what I have seen, Shannon Love is right. The firing will have to be by the school districts. There are other routes available to the governor; assuming that events are not overtaken by violence [I firmly expect the Obama/DNC goons will physically assault the pro-Walker demonstration today. Everybody bring videocams to document!]. This is a cross post from something else I did. If this is not allowed, feel free to delete:

The quorum requirement that covers this bill is from Article VIII, Section 8 [Finance] of the Wisconsin State Constitution. Short form, for all bills having to do with money, the quorum is set at 3/5 of the Chamber. Fair enough. But …budget bills are the only bills that require a 3/5 quorum. All other business is governed by Article IV Section 7, which specifies a quorum for each House of the Legislature to be 50%+1.


Hold the Budget Repair Bill in abeyance until they have an Article VIII quorum. In parallel, start passing a simple one page bill that a) ends all collective bargaining for all government employees in Wisconsin, b) decertifies all public employee unions, and c) creates a joint House-Senate STUDY commission to determine how pay and benefits will be set for state employees. With no Democrats in the Senate, committee hearings should be somewhat quicker than usual. If they stay out of the Capitol, the bill can be passed handily. If any one of them shows up; they get grabbed, cuffed, and stuffed in their chair in chambers [perhaps not literally, but it is a wonderful thought], and the Budget Repair Bill is brought up for a vote.


Indeed, there are a number of bills that are not budgetary in nature that can be started and run through the Senate if they do not show up; bills that Patriots will love and which will make Democrat heads explode. How about proof of citizenship and residence to register to vote? State issued picture ID to cast a ballot? Requiring all candidates for Federal office to file notarized copies of original documents in advance to prove that they meet Constitutional requirements of the office to get on the ballot? How about closing party primaries, if they allow crossover voting now? How about the proposed Federal Constitutional Amendment that would allow 2/3 of the states to void any Federal statute or regulation? This could be fun, and it could be never-ending.

They either come back to the Capitol, or get their a***s handed to them.
Subotai Bahadur

Medical Fraud in Wisconsin

ObamaCare is resulting in the proliticization of medicine in Madison Wisconsin, where Dr. Patrick McKenna was video'd giving out fraudulent physicians notes to cover the unionized teacher's missing work to attend the protest at the state capitol this week.  Ann Althouse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin has this video of the physician in question.



Here is video from the McIver Institute

“I asked if they were handing out doctors’ excuses and a guy said yes and asked me if I needed one,” she said. “When I told them I needed one for February 16 and 17th, he wondered if I wanted to come back here for the protests next week.”


What happened next?

“I said, ‘sure,’ and I received a doctor’s note for the 16th through the 25th of February, without a medical exam.”

The notes read

Feb 19, 2011
Patient’s name______
Date of birth ____/_____/_____

To Whom it May Concern:
This is confirm I have seen and evaluated the above named patient.
Please excuse from work/school due to a medical condition from
____/____/____ through
Please contact me at badgerdoctors@gmail.com if additional information is needed. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Physician Signature:
Physician Name
WI license number

Based on an examination of the signature and medical license number provided, one of the men handing out these notes was purporting to be James H Shropshire MD, a Clinical Associate Professor at the University Wisconsin Madison.

Instapundit reader, Dr. Steve White notes that,

I noted the Althouse blog reference at Instapundit. I’m a physician. I take care of patients. Yes indeed, if I were to give a doctor’s note to someone without conducting a proper medical evaluation (however brief), I’d be guilty of improper behavior and ethics and could be brought before the medical licensing board.  However, there’s another name for this: FRAUD. The teachers will use these notes to justify their absences and collect their pay. Both the doctors and the teachers are perpetrating a fraud.  Wonder if the Wisconsin attorney general could be motivated to look into that? At the very least, demand that any teacher turning in a doctor’s note over this work action also turn over the record of the medical ‘evaluation’. That would put a stop to this real quick.

More importantly, this is the first politicization of fraudulent medical coverage to give, as Prof. Jacobsen of Cornell University says,

“We have seen the future of the health care system, and it is the doctors on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, handing out free sick notes to public sector union members so they can fraudulently collect their pay for missing work. Boy, oh boy, I can’t wait for Obamacare. Politicized medicine, massive fraud in the name of progressive politics, and a callous disregard for the law free from fear of prosecution for those aligned with the Democrats.” [emphasis  is mine, ed.]

If you are a union member and support the politically correct party, you can break your union negotiated contract...to fraudulently call in sick to attend a political rally...that's the future of ObamaCare.  In my union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, Mid Atlantic Regional Council,  you can be terminated from your employment for doing this...why are teachers and public employees being given special treatment?  Best of all...here's a video of a physician giving Andrew Breibart a note...



From the comments come this:

The doctors in question are Lou Sanner, Anne Eglash, Hannah Keevil, James Shropshire and Patrick McKenna. I wouldn't be surprised to find they have already been referred to the Wisconsin Dept. of Regulation and Licensing and/or the WI Attorney General. Handing out obviously phony medical evaluations on the street and in front of cameras is pretty dumb, even for self-absorbed leftist pigs. 
golgathum 52 minutes ago 4

Left Threatens Political Violence in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin over the past few days, teachers unions and public employees unions have been spouting all  sorts of threats against the governor and Republican controlled legislature.  Where are all the voices in the media calling for "moderation"?



...oh, my bad, it's ok for the LEFT to do this...it's ok for the left to impugn anything about their opponents.  Mr. Obama needs to lead...not follow as he did after the Tucson shootings when leftist media and leftist pundits blamed the Tea Party for all sorts of heinous crimes...

Public Union Crimes

The recent snow emergency in New York City brings to light what can happen when a public employees union decides that it wants a bigger piece of the pie.  In NYC, the issue is that the city wants to cut the sanitation budget by 6%...and the union is pissed.  So, it appears that the corrupt sanitation union leadership decided to not clear streets in the more affluent section of the city, such as the upper west side, portions of Queens and a few other areas.  The NY Post has reported from numerous sources that union leaders ordered the slow down to punish the wealthiest sections of the city.

Sources said budget cuts were also at the heart of poor planning for the blizzard last weekend. The city broke from its usual routine and did not call in a full complement on Saturday for snow preparations in order to save on added overtime that would have had to be paid for them to work on Christmas Day.


The result was an absolute collapse of New York’s once-vaunted systems of clearing the streets and keeping mass transit moving under the weight of 20 inches of snow.

The Sanitation Department last night denied there was a concerted effort to slow snow removal.

There are no organized or wildcat actions being taken by the sanitation workers or the supervisors,” said spokesman Matthew Lipani.

Joseph Mannion, president of the union that represents agency supervisors, said talk of a slowdown “is hogwash.” But he admitted there is “resentment out there” toward Mayor Bloomberg and his administration because of budget cuts.

His counterpart at the rank-and-file’s union, Harry Nespoli, has also denied there is a job action, though he admitted his guys are working lucrative 14-hour shifts.

Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said only: “We would hope this is not the case.”

But multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised.

And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay.

One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.

 What makes this story so damning is that several people died because emergency services couldn't respond.  At least one new-born baby died because they mother couldn't  get to a hospital in time.  When NY's union beholden lame duck governor is calling for criminal investigation, then you know it's pretty bad.

New York Gov. David Paterson called for a criminal investigation after the New York Post published a story quoting union workers and supervisors who related that some streets were plowed over and over while countless others were purposely skipped. Don't be surprised if the city faces years of expensive litigation. One newborn baby died when its mother was reportedly forced to wait for nine hours for care, a Brooklyn woman waited for nearly two days for an ambulance, and countless others endured miseries and injuries that went unreported. It's beyond outrageous that these things happened because unionized city workers don't like 6 percent pay cuts when city officials are desperate to find ways to save tax dollars.

I think the best solution would be to charge the union leaders with Second Degree Murder, seize their union pensions, dissolve the union itself and fire all of the sanitation workers.  That may sound extreme, but that's pretty much what Ronald Reagan did in the early 1980's when the Air Traffic Controller's union struck during a contract dispute.  It would show that the city is genuinely interested in getting itself out of the huge pension hole that it's corrupt coterie of union leaders and politicians have dug the city into through it's overly generous pension and contract grants.  Here's a suggestion from the comments. 

To begin with, arrest and charge the union leaders with second degree murder. Fire those who called in sick, and those who didn't do their jobs. Once that's done, take away ALL of their money (pensions, health care, etc.) that they've stolen from the taxpayer, and they go to jail.  It's slowly dawning on people how politicians and the criminal public employee unions have participated in the total economic destruction of every facet of municipal, state, and federal governments.  Give the members a choice: retain the union, and you're out of a job, or quit the union and keep your job at a lower wage, and benefits that you must pay at least 50% out of their own pockets.

That would be the place to start.  Public employees shouldn't be permitted to hold their city/county/state/federal government hostage for wages or pensions.  None of the very generous public pensions in this country are really solvent.  That's the next big story as millions of public employees begin to retire and the hole in all these underfunded plans begin to show...

<noscript>Watch the latest video at href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.comnoscript>

Public unions have been sucking off the public tit for almost a century.  They have long since achieved their stated goals and it's past time to dissolve them.  When a union can hold an entire city hostage, then it has broken it's promise, especially when it's deliberate actions cause the deaths of innocent people.  Unfortunately, we don't have any politicians with the courage to face down public unions by firing those workers who don't do their jobs...more's the pity.