Short Circuiting the Power

By William L. Garvin

“I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared.” Thomas Jefferson

If he were alive today, Thomas Jefferson would be frightened to death. Our national debt is over fourteen trillion dollars and rising; this year alone, our states will have a cumulative shortfall of $175 billion; state and local governments have another $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. The Obama administration even managed to run up a $223 billion deficit in February of this year which was more than what the Bush administration ran up for all twelve months of 2007. You may remember the Democrats demagoging this issue throughout 2008 and President Obama calling it a “failure of leadership” to raise the debt ceiling. My how times have changed!

When Republicans proposed a $61 billion cut in a $3.47 trillion budget, the Democrats began shrieking like hysterical banshees full of “tiger blood.” According to Senator Harry Reid, if the Cowboy Poetry Festival was not fully funded “tens of thousands” of people would cease to exist. Come on, Harry, please engage brain before putting mouth in gear. As for cutting the funding to NPR and PBS, wasn’t that also recommended by the President’s own bipartisan debt commission? And by the way, how about using that $105 billion dollars you so cleverly hid in the Health Care Reform bill to reduce the deficit? I’m sure it was just an inadvertent oversight on your part to fail to tell members of the House or Senate about those encumbrances.

Harry’s histrionics were nothing compared to the concerted union and Democrat campaign of incendiary and manufactured outrage in Wisconsin. Jesse Jackson showed up and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the issues (and his usual flair for hyperbole) by equating the restrictions on the scope of bargaining to a civil rights issue. It was somewhat surprising that he didn’t also claim it was the Eleventh Commandment on the stone tablets! Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) declared that neither the United States nor Wisconsin was broke. Moore pointed out that the rich people had plenty of money. “That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours!” spouted the liberal opponent of private property. Of course he has yet to renounce his personal fortune. He also failed to explain why he used non-union workers in making his last film when union crews were available. He also failed to provide his non-union workers with health insurance according to ABC News.

By any standard, this was hardly organized labor’s finest moment. First, fourteen Wisconsin Democrat Senators ran to Illinois rather than argue the merits of their positions. Wags quickly coined the term “fleebaggers” for these miscreants. Their three weeks AWOL allowed their union bosses enough time to organize the usual “uncivil disobedience.” Marchers carried signs saying “Death to Tyrants” and “Hitler + Mubarak = Walker” as well as similar new math equating Mussolini to Governor Walker. One particular frightening sign carried the Liberal castigated slogan “Don’t retreat, reload” but accompanied it with a picture of the Governor with crosshairs superimposed over his face. Where were the condemnations from the left wing champions of civility? Once again, they are blind to their own breaches of decorum. Things became even more sinister when the Governor and Republican members of the legislature began receiving multiple death threats against themselves and their families. Then the local police found about forty rounds of .22 caliber long rifle hollow point bullets by one of the capitol entrances.

If this blatant attempt at intimidation wasn’t enough, the union protestors then occupied the state capitol building by overrunning police lines and transformed the people’s house into a hybrid union hall, smelly gymnasium, and fraternity house of the animal variety. Do you expect the union will pony up the $347,500 it will cost to repair the damages? Not likely.

For these unions, it’s all about the money. In the words of Bob Chanin, a past National Education Association general counsel: “It is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merits of our positions. It is not because we care about children and have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power, and we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year.” Wisconsin just short circuited their power surge and government unions just lost a major battle .