Calling Jimmy Carter…
Through three decades of involuntary retirement, the Former Worst President in U.S. History has spent much of his time monitoring elections in Third World countries, to make sure they’re on the level. His services are badly needed at home.
Phony signatures on presidential nominating petitions from 2008 are under investigation in
Indiana.
In
New Hampshire, people can easily cast ballots under the names of the dead. Voter ID is brushed aside and efforts to purge the deceased from voter lists are shown to be unserious.
But none of this can top the absurdity of voting-day registration in Milwaukee. An
independent review of polling-place registrations from the 2011 Spring Election found multiple instances of out-of-state driver’s licenses being accepted as proof of Wisconsin residency. People used hotel receipts—the sort of thing we’d regard as evidence that you actually live someplace else—to prove local residency. Errors were found on more than one in three registration forms.
But then look at this: The Milwaukee review by the Grandsons of Liberty found that
94 percent of same-day registrants had an official photo ID. The Left’s favorite excuse for shrieking about voter suppression is demonstrably a non-issue. In fact, the only suppression worth discussing is the suppression of the fraudulent voting Democrats struggle desperately to continue.
These revelations should remind honest citizens that their vote is both precious, and threatened. Ballot integrity is one of the things that determine whether people are governed by their peers or ruled by thugs. It’s the kind of thing wars have been fought over. Better to preserve it than to have to win it back.
Fighting back with the truth
Mark Twain was never more right than when he said “A lie can run around the world three times while the truth is still getting its shoes on.” So its cause for celebration when the truth about Governor Walker’s reforms manages to cut through the fog of falsehood served up every day by the anti-Walker Left. And it’s all the more satisfying when the truth manages to find its way into the pages of the mainstream media.
An example turned up earlier this month in
USA Today, in the form of an opinion column by Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise institute. Schultz explains why a Walker recall election is more important than the 2012 Presidential election:
Wisconsin has emerged as a central battleground in the fight over the outsized political role played by, and the enormous privileges enjoyed by, public employee unions. The collective bargaining entitlement enables public sector workers to extract excessive compensation, benefits, and pension packages at the expense of taxpayers.
Public employee unions understand that the legitimacy of collective bargaining privileges is now in question, as cash-strapped states struggle under the burden of a costly public sector. If they can knock off Walker, they send a powerful signal to other reform-oriented governors not to target collective bargaining.
And he quotes the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s positive editorial about the Governor’s reforms.
"The governor did balance the budget … he did reduce the structural deficit significantly; he did put a lid on property tax increases; he did give schools and municipalities more control over their budgets than they've had in years."
If you think someone might be won over by reading 11 concise paragraphs on the necessity of the Walker reforms, show him
this column.
Trying it their way, III
As we close in on recall elections—by which a minority of voters may overturn the results of the last election —we’ve sought clues to how they might reshape life in Wisconsin.
It hasn’t been arduous work; nearby states provide abundant material to forecast the conditions of civic life in a Wisconsin governed by Recall Walker enthusiasts. A few weeks ago we examined tax increases and teacher layoffs in Ohio. Last week we glimpsed union skimming of home health care dollars in Michigan. Earlier we looked at the Tax Hell of Illinois.
This week: Indiana.
Indiana is an especially apt example because outgoing Governor Mitch Daniels started several years ago to rein in government employee union excesses. The battle never ends.
The Indiana House was scheduled this week to take up right-to-work legislation. Workers would be free to join or not join unions. Unions could conduct their business as usual; they just couldn’t force workers to pay dues if they don’t want to join.
Naturally, unions hate this, and their indentured servants, Indiana House Democrats, have boycotted most session days this year to deny a quorum and prevent the House from functioning.
Sound familiar? Like Wisconsin Senate Democrats, they fled to Illinois last year. But now the
Wall Street Journal reports, any member who skips out can forfeit $1,000 a day after three days.
We disagree with the
Journal on one point: Indiana isn’t “the labor reform story of the year,” the fight over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker completing his term is. If Indiana lawmakers fail to enact right-to-work this winter, they can try again. If Walker is defeated in a recall, chances are they won’t.
Wisconsin is benefiting from Walker reforms
By Mike Grebe
If there is one thing the people of Wisconsin have learned in this last year, it is that politics and policymaking can be extremely emotional. People often approach challenges believing their solutions are the only way to address difficulties.
It is in discovering that there are a wide variety of solutions to some of government’s paramount challenges that can cause the greatest emotional reaction, especially when these other ideas actually work.
In what can only be described as an emotional diatribe against the very tough but necessary decisions Gov. Scott Walker has made during his first year in office, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate made some serious accusations in a previous
Milwaukee Biz Blog regarding Gov. Walker’s reforms. While Tate and members of the Democratic Party had ideas on how the $3.6 billion budget deficit should be addressed – mostly by raising taxes on hard working Wisconsinites – Gov. Walker implemented reforms which fell in line with the promises he made on the campaign trail, and the Badger State is now benefiting from those reforms.
The reality is that Gov. Walker has laid the foundation for a more successful Wisconsin, put government back on the side of taxpayers, and got the state’s fiscal house in order. Not only has the governor closed a $3.6 billion budget deficit by not raising taxes or laying off public employees, he also added $1.2 billion to Medicaid, and his reforms led to the reduction of overall school property taxes by $47 million.
During the Doyle administration, Wisconsin lost more than 150,000 jobs, UW-Madison students saw a 9 percent tuition increase, and million-dollar cuts were made to public education which Doyle used one-time stimulus funds to backfill. Democrats have long used budgeting gimmicks to “balance” the budget, when all they really did was rob Peter to pay Paul and then used one-time federal funding to pay Peter back, but only temporarily.
Gov. Walker knew that the long practiced strategies of raising taxes, cutting crucial government programs, laying off workers and fudging numbers were not going to create long-term stability for our state. Gov. Walker is committed to creating an environment which allows Wisconsin to lead the way in private sector job growth. He knows that tomorrow’s leaders will come from our education system, which is why public education makes up the largest percentage of state support in his budget.
It is because the ideas and solutions that are turning our state’s economy around did not come from big-government, public employee union bosses that these same unions have launched this baseless recall effort. Gov. Walker’s reforms implemented a system whereby public employees have been asked to contribute the employee’s share of pension and health care costs, just like is done in the private sector.
Now, Madison liberals, at the direction of special interest unions, are fighting tooth and nail to force the millions of dollars Gov. Walker has saved taxpayers back into the hands of public employee unions. Wisconsinites will not stand for the $9 million power grab this recall is going to cost them and they will not allow the blatantly false accusations of what Gov. Walker’s reforms have accomplished to prematurely end his term.
Mike Grebe is the chairman of Friends of Scott Walker.
