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December 8, 2010
Volume 4, Number 46
In This Issue:
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1) Walking the Walk
2) Baggy Pants Crackdown
3) Does your neighbor work
for you?
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Walking the Walk
If Scott Walker wasn’t in peak form at Friday evening’s TV appearance on Fox News, peak form must be something to behold.
The Governor-elect was relaxed, confident, and displayed a big-league presence in six minutes of give-and-take on fellow Wisconsinite Greta Van Susteren’s “ On the Record.”
With 22 other freshly-elected governors, Walker was in Washington, D.C. to meet with President Obama and Vice-president Biden. They “said the right things” but “actions speak louder than words and we need more action,” Walker said.
In this case, “action” is defined as relief from ObamaCare mandates that will soon impose new burdens on overextended state finances; part of the same tidal wave of mandates already imposing new burdens on families whose insurance premiums are increasing thanks to “affordable” health care. Within minutes after he’s sworn in January 3, Walker said, he’ll head for Attorney General Van Hollen’s office and direct him to join the other states questioning the federal government’s authority to command private citizens to buy specific consumer products.
Van Hollen has wanted to join that lawsuit from the beginning. Twenty-seven days from now he’ll no longer have a governor blocking the way.
Walker also noted that he and other affected governors—notably Ohio’s John Kasich—delivered the message that the high-speed rail boondoggle is something “most of us can’t afford and certainly don’t want.” Of course that’s up against the impenetrable obtuseness of an administration that waves off grassroots rejection by pronouncing high-speed rail “a national priority.” Here again, Walker gets the best of any argument by saying “At a time when our roads and bridges are crumbling, we shouldn’t be adding more to the deficit to fund a thing that a handful of people are going to use.”
Baggy Pants Crackdown
If you are high on synthetic marijuana, wearing baggy pants, and planning to address someone in a less-than-cordial manner, look around and make sure you aren’t in Racine County. Though not in the business of giving legal advice, we think we know how to spot a package deal that might land you in trouble with the “three strikes” law.
Alert to signs of social decay, Racine County supervisors are pondering a three-pronged crackdown. One proposed ordinance would forbid possession or use of synthetic marijuana—which is not illegal—without a valid prescription. A second ordinance, the details to be filled in, may give school officials authority they don’t think they have now, to deal with classroom bullies. A third ordinance would amend the prohibition against skateboarding on Racine County property, expanding it to ban the wearing of baggy pants in places like the courthouse. It’s undeniably true that ugliness of some sort or another is on daily display in courthouses from coast to coast. Eliminating one of its more easily avoidable manifestations may represent progress: Call it going after the low-hanging fruit. Some jurisdictions have adopted stern baggy-pants enforcement as a way to get the attention of both established and potential ne’er-do-wells, though with the policies in their relative infancy, it’s too early to have meaningful data.
Clearly, there are potential pitfalls. We think back to our ROTC days and wonder what havoc might have ensued had we shown up in uniform at the courthouse if the proposed ordinance were in place.
Deeper legal analysis may also be needed to clarify how skateboarding in skinny jeans could be affected; we suspect the discomfort may be deterrent enough. Anyway, the county property angle still seems unambiguous.
But clearly in at least one Wisconsin county, it doesn’t pay to be too hip.
Does your neighbor work for you?
Once again, the MacIver Institute has performed a valuable service, pointing out an issue generally overlooked by the mainstream media.
The day before Thanksgiving, the MacIver people noted that government employees in Wisconsin persist in outnumbering those working in the manufacturing sector.
This disquieting condition was first observed a year ago last Spring. What the MacIver people now confirm—by simply paying attention, the first step toward quality journalism—is that it’s no coincidence: Government is gradually crowding out the private sector as a Wisconsin employer and is widening its lead over manufacturing.
In December 2009, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce sounded an alarm when government employment exceeded jobs in manufacturing by 2,400. At the end of November this year, it was government 431,100 and manufacturing 426,700, the gap swollen to 4,400.
Wisconsin’s current population is 5.7 million, so more than seven of every 100 state residents are government employees.
Ah, but wait! Forty percent of all Wisconsin residents—according to Department of Health Services estimates based on Census Bureau data—are young people who typically haven’t yet entered the full-time workforce and older people long-since retired. Perform the calculations for the working-age population—let’s say those aged 20 through 64—and you discover more like one in every eight people who has a job in Wisconsin is paid with tax dollars.
It's unsettling that about 12.5 percent of the working population is on a government payroll and it looks like a growing trend. Ruin lies ahead if it’s allowed to continue.
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