Silent Majority Speaks Up
After hearing from citizens who want the Government Accountability Board (GAB) to make Walker recall petitions available online for public inspection, the agency
rejected the ACLU’s request to redact address information from all petitions to protect the identity of one woman who said she was being stalked.
It would have been impossible for the GAB to find and redact this woman’s information as the petitions are not currently available in a searchable database format. Redacting all address information would make it impossible for groups and individuals to find fraudulent entries among the more than one million petitions filed.
Fred Young of Racine was among the silent majority who spoke up and who called out the GAB:
Kevin Kennedy,
Your announcement of refusal to allow citizen groups to check the authenticity of the Walker recall petitions is unacceptable. Your stated reason for withholding the petitions is a fig leaf. Recall fraud prevention and citizens’ right to access of public records trump stalker victim fear.
You post my partisan political contributions on-line for the world to see. Nomination papers are public. Partisan recall petitions should be posted as well.
You posted the petitions for the nine recalls last year. You posted the petitions for Lt. Gov. and four state Senators this month.
To withhold a million signatures to honor the request of one stalked person and a few who just don’t want their name published is to ignore entrenched precedent as well as to violate citizens’ right of access to public records. If a person doesn’t want their name seen, they shouldn’t make campaign contributions, sign nomination papers or support recall petitions.
Going forward, what will prevent massive fraud in future recalls if recallers know the GAB doesn’t check for fraud and will prevent citizen groups from checking for fraud. Katie bar the door!
I don’t want to be disrespectful, but the Saul Alinsky “whatever it takes” behavior in Madison makes me angry.
Fred Young
Democrats to labor: “Drop dead.”
Last week’s State Assembly vote on iron-mining legislation revealed the ugly truth: Legislative Democrats who blather about the importance of creating family-supporting jobs, aren’t willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Anybody who’ s spent time in Northern Wisconsin knows the economy in that part of the state has been pretty much a hand-to-mouth affair for decades. It’s a wonderful place to live, provided you can find steady work. At the opposite end of the state, the metal-bending industries of Southeast Wisconsin have seen manufacturing jobs wither away just as government everywhere has ballooned.
For these two remote but integrally connected poles of the Wisconsin economy, the new iron-mining venture Assembly Republicans and the Walker administration hope to secure, would mean a private-sector capital infusion of at least a billion dollars and jobs at every skill level, precisely when and where they’re needed most.
Last week, the Party that always claims it’s looking out for the little guy flatly rejected this. Given a clear choice between thousands of family-supporting jobs and cozying up to well-heeled, full-time environmentalists, Democrats—unanimously—told their blue-collar constituency to drop dead.
A large contingent of American blue-collar voters didn’t come to be called “Reagan Democrats” for no reason. One big reason is the sort of thing enviro-Democrats did in the Wisconsin Assembly last week. For the moment, Republicans don’t need any help from Democrats to enact laws encouraging job creation. Blue collar workers should never forget who’s trying to stop them.
Illinois redux
In our search for examples of what Wisconsin would be like if Governor Walker’s reforms were overturned, we keep finding that as bad as things have been in Illinois, they continue to get worse.
That’s pretty much what we said last week and before our posting was a day old it proved to be true all over again. Last Thursday the Illinois Policy institute came out with a
report that their state’s unemployment rate had increased more than that of any other state in 2011.
Then on Sunday, an op-ed in the
Chicago Sun-Times even more pointedly referred to the stark contrast between Illinois’ predicament and Wisconsin’s reforms.
Illinois state government has gained virtually nothing from these huge tax increases because soaring government pension costs — costs vehemently defended by the state’s unionized government employees — are consuming much of the extra money.
The big problem is Illinois government’s futile struggle to keep its predicament rolling along instead of facing the necessity of fixing it.
Governor Pat Quinn, who started off 2011 with massive tax increases—his preferred alternative to Walker-style reforms—delivers his state-of-the-state message to the Illinois Legislature this evening. It will be interesting to hear how he spins the massive failures of 2011 to the lawmakers who helped him make them happen.
Good news, bad news
The good news is that big unions at the national and state level are preparing to drain their checkbooks this year in Wisconsin recall campaigns.
The bad news is that big unions are preparing to drain their checkbooks this year in Wisconsin recall campaigns.
No, that’s not a typo. It’s both good and bad news that Wisconsin continues to be the ground on which pivotal battles will be fought. Liberals, literally from coast to coast, are fretting that they might be squandering money in their attempt to take over this state—money they’d otherwise be spending in this fall’s attempt to entrench their collectivist takeover of the whole country.
We first heard that story last summer. Now it’s been repeated in a Washington, D.C.
publication that’s pretty friendly toward Liberals.
The normal people of Wisconsin have been presented with a challenge they never asked for: to stand in defense of the kind of government reforms that were needed to rescue this state from bankruptcy—and that are still needed to rescue the whole nation from bankruptcy. It is a sobering challenge and a deadly serious one.
It’s encouraging to know the reforms that triggered this battle are working and that it’s being
noticed.
It’s a rare thing to recognize a decisive moment in history before it occurs. And recognizing such a moment, few might relish the prospect of being personally caught up in it—until after the fight’s over and they’ve won. Of course there’s always the little matter of having to win.
