Victory’s Fathers
DiSalvo illustrates this process by examining the California Correctional Peace Officer Association and their efforts to get more prisons built:
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, the CCPOA lobbied the state government to increase California’s prison facilities — since more prisons would obviously mean more jobs for corrections officers. And between 1980 and 2000, the Golden State constructed 22 new prisons for adults (before 1980, California had only 12 such facilities). The CCPOA also pushed for the 1994 “three strikes” sentencing law, which imposed stiff penalties on repeat offenders. The prison population exploded — and, as intended, the new prisoners required more guards. The CCPOA has been no less successful in increasing members’ compensation: In 2006, the average union member made $70,000 a year, and more than $100,000 with overtime. Corrections officers can also retire with 90% of their salaries as early as age 50. Today, an amazing 11% of the state budget — more than what is spent on higher education — goes to the penal system.
How do you beat this sort of naked aggression against the taxpayer? The Scott Walker reform that got the state of Wisconsin out of the business of collecting dues for the unions would seem to be the answer. Giving state workers a choice in whether to join a union resulted in a 45% drop in membership in Wisconsin public employee unions. Fewer members paying dues means smaller campaign contributions, which could trim the political power of the unions.
But where can this success be repeated? The one political lesson other reform-minded governors might draw from Wisconsin is not that challenging the unions is a great idea and the other 49 state executives should rush out and try it. Indeed, the opposite is true. “Even with this loss, Wisconsin’s voters have sent a clear message that attacks on workers’ rights will not go unchallenged,” said Gerald McEntee, the president of AFSCME. Most governors don’t want that kind of headache.
Walker survived — but so will public unions for the foreseeable future.
3. Obama, the left, and the unions will come back strong from this debacle. Using a boxing analogy, Obama and the left got socked in the jaw and have been given a standing eight count. But it’s still the early rounds, and the opposition has plenty of time to regroup, refocus, and come roaring back with a vengeance.
That’s the plan, anyway. And it starts with money. Despite the setback in Wisconsin, unions will still be spending upwards of $500 million in direct and in-kind contributions to elect Democrats in the fall, after spending $450 million in 2008. The Democratic campaign committees in the House and Senate are outraising their GOP counterparts. Fundraising for the presidential race will be more evenly matched than last time when Obama outspent John McCain by 4-1, but it’s far too early to believe that the Wisconsin victory will be a game changer in that regard. Walker outspent Barrett by 8-1, largely because he was able to get an early start in fundraising due to a quirk in Wisconsin election law and the fact that the Democrats stupidly split their resources in an unnecessary primary campaign. That advantage is not going to carry over to the general election which will make Democrats much more competitive.
Laughably, many Democrats are whining about the fundraising imbalance — something they were strangely silent on in 2008 when President Obama raised $750 million, swamping the McCain campaign. They will dig deep to try to match the spending coming from conservative Super PACs with an increased effort of their own to fund liberal groups. While Romney dealt a surprise to Obama in May by outraising him $76.8 million to around $60 million, the president still has a large advantage in total money raised. Adding the May fundraising to the numbers from the end of April, Romney has raised about $175 million to Obama’s $277 million. That gap will probably narrow, but Obama has far more cash on hand. This is to be expected since Romney had a competitive primary contest. But for the next crucial months, the president can spend lavishly while Romney must slowly build his organization and gather resources for the push this fall.
A final thought: The Walker victory had many fathers, while the Democrats’ defeat had only one orphan: poor, lonely President Obama. He is the leader of the party and could have unleashed a nationwide effort from Democrats in the last month of the campaign and put his prestige on the line by visiting the state to gin up enthusiasm and support for the Democratic candidate Tom Barrett. Either he miscalculated what was at stake or he feared he had more to lose than gain with such an effort. Both explanations reveal a lack of courage and foresight on the president’s part. His inaction has depressed his party and put a charge in Republicans.
There is still time to rectify his mistake. But with five months to go before Election Day, Obama may very will learn to regret this blunder.
Barack Obama is the son of a thousand fathers … … all bastards like him.
Classic!! Thanks for the laugh!
You can hear the screeeeeech of Democrat fingernails as they desperately cling to their delusions.
Sorry Rick, but Sarah Palin is right and you are wrong. And, she is not a “pundit”. She is a patriot and a natural born leader. And she has been leading the charge since November of 2008. You diminish yourself in your dismissive attitude towards her. She of course, will be proven right. So, get out of the way and let the next battle begin. Go Sarah!
Well said and right on. I trust Barone to provide a correct view.
Thank you Kent for your clarification and realism.
Will PJ Media be willing to walk back this remark after the goose has been basted for the final time?
GB
“But with five months to go before Election Day, Obama may very will learn to regret this blunder.”
Let’s hope he learns to regret this blunder as he packs his bags to head back to Chicago next January.
The Democraps are desparetely clinging to power. You can hear their screeches as they go down. And just why is this happening? Governments are running into a wall. The wall is the fiscal pocketbook. Union post retirement benefits are draining resources away from schools, roads, mental health and prisons. And the promises already made simply can not be met because there isn’t enough money. You will find out just like the steel and airlines did. When the money runs out, you will not be paid these benefits. Sorry that you elected politicians who promised benefits, but didn’t fund them. In Illinois you even wrote your benefits into the Constitution. When the checkbook is bare you will not be paid. Its that simple. You have run into the law of numbers and you are on the losing side.
“But we aren’t likely to see a huge decline in union membership among state and local workers any time soon.”
Don’t you count on it. More and more union members resent the power of the unions, their thuggish tactics, and are leaving them. In Wisconsin alone, membership in public service unions has plummeted since Walker’s election in 2010 and this lesson has not been lost on either the union or its members. States around the country are going to try to do the same thing that’s being done in Wisconsin. Union membership has been declining steadily around the country over the past few years and this loss in Wisconsin could speed this process up.
But the real test will come in November. Will union members break with their unions and vote for Romney? It happened with Ronald Reagan, it could happen again, especially if Obama keeps killing huge union projects like the Keystone pipeline. And if Obama loses Michigan, the epicenter of unions in the country because of the auto industry, then you know that Obama is going to go down in flames this fall.
And don’t forget that 38% on union households in Wisconsin voted for Scott Walker in the recall.
That must really gall the unionista labor leader thugs in Wisconsin.
The big wall to wall industrial and public employee unions have very little control over their members’ votes. Even teachers who generally vote Democrat do so because they’re products of the leftist education system and have spent their whole lives sitting in the back or standing in the front of classrooms and surrounded by people who either don’t think at all or think just like they do, they don’t really vote Democrat because the NEA tells them to. Likewise, AFSCME et al. has little influence over their members’ votes though public employees well know, or at least strongly beleive, that their self-interest is usually better served by Democrats. What rally counts is that the unions have control over huge amounts of dues money and PAC money and they spend it on Democrats no matter what their membership thinks. Since in over half they states, you can’t hold most public jobs without being a union member, they have a lock on that money. There is a reason that only two or three of the states that allow union/agency shops and full public employee bargaining are very, very Blue states. There are ways to get at that dues stream and to cut off the union dues revenue even in Blue states, but Republicans generally aren’t brave enough to take the heat for it. Swartzenegger dived head first into a maelstrom of dues money and his initiatives failed miserably because he didn’t attack the unions’ dues structure beforehand. Walker succeeded but only because his situation was Nationalized and money poured in; if that had been left to WI, union money would have soundly defeated Walker. Likewise, Kasich has left the dues stream intact in OH and is facing a sh*(storm. A Republican governor CAN cut off dues collections even in states that authorize union/agency shops and dues checkoffs; I’ve been a part of doing it several times and my pricipals survived to tell the tale. When I was head of LR, the mere threat of doing it quickly brought our largest and most agressive union to heel. But you do have to be willing to have people call you a partisan, mean-spirited union buster; it actually feels good to be called stuff like that so long as it is the right people calling you names.
Not enough coffee yet this morning!
“There is a reason that only two or three of the states that allow union/agency shops and full public employee bargaining are very, very Blue states.”
S/B: There is a reason that only two or three of the states that allow union/agency shops and full public employee bargaining are NOT very, very Blue states.
There’s a reason God created the paragraph.
Too much for your meager attention span I guess.
Look, I can tell you how the WI voter who supported Walker in the recall but also supports Obama is thinking. All you really have to do is put yourself in the frame of mind of someone who has no real use for politics and regards voting as a necessary but thankless waste of time, like jury duty. That person was asked during the recall to choose again between the same two candidates who ran for governor in 2010, and has absolutely no use for the political faction — local to WI — that has required voters to waste their time and the state’s money making the exact same choice just because they are filled with sore losers. Obama, on the other hand, is not asking these voters to waste time doing a repeat election, and so can be supported as someone doing a reasonable job as president — and they think that mostly because of the media’s kid-glove treatment of Obama. Give them some new information about Obama, and they’ll reconsider, maybe, but all the anti-Obama talking points in the world are not necessarily going to annoy them the same way that being asked to choose again between Walker and Barret did last Tuesday.
I think this article is mostly correct. My view is what the voters of Wisconsin were really voting against was the childish tantrums the left threw when they didn’t get their way, not against the unions per se. You’re supposed to play by the rules most of the time. The Democrats didn’t and most people didn’t like it. I think it would be a very serious mistake for conservatives to read too much into this victory.
Let me tell you where you might be wrong on this; when you watch a football game and the team you’re rooting for is down two touchdowns and the cloack is running out the momentum of the team is very low, but then at 4th and down and the other team throws an interception and the losing team picks it up and runs 80 yrds for a touch down, the momentum changes and the team pulls up their boot straps and marches on. They rush the opposing quaterback for another interception and the teams are tied. The game goes into overtime and your team gets a field goal and wins. This is how I see the Wisconsin Scott Walker victory. We have the momentum now and I believe we will at the last minute pull a quaterback sneak and kick that field goal real pretty and win.
Couldn’t disagree more! Now the possible has been manifested, not only with the upcoming political leadership state to state, but to citizenry, who can see that they are not alone in their observation that Public Union operations, are (once exposed and UNDERSTOOD)a horrendous and injurious way to run public works labor. Unlike their private sector counterpart, they have to squeeze only the temporary politician, not the private sector manager for unrealistic benefits. Nor does the temporary politician have the natural motive to put up the ‘fight’ necessary to ward off the onslaught of ‘selfish’ compensation. Yes, I make that distinction between selfish and self-interest in the case of public sector unions. So, finally I would suggest the ‘mustard seed’ has been planted. Semper Fi.
Decent people now see that Democrats, whatever their color, are violent people and as such are feared. This is why the Dems are losing.
I don’t think Democrats and the Kos kids are violent. I think they get themselves all ginned up in the echo chamber to aquire a little rage fueled faux courage and make threats. They are threatening, like most bullies.
Now me? I’m violent.
“Either he miscalculated what was at stake or he feared he had more to lose than gain with such an effort. Both explanations reveal a lack of courage and foresight on the president’s part. ”
He can’t rectify the very essence of his being in five months. He has no courage,he has no foresight and he is a conscious enemy of this country. None of this is going to change.
Let’s not forget that the Supreme Court may very well strike down Obamacare in the next few weeks, the biggest blow yet to re-election. Mr. Obama’s best move might be to withdraw from the race “to spend more time with the family.”
A lot of pundits are attributing Bill Clinton’s latest “off the reservation” comments to his wanting Obama to lose in 2012, so Hillary can run against Romney in 2016. Well, Hillary can run in 2016 regardless of who wins in 2012.
I think Bill Clinton is sabotaging Obama so that Hillary can run in 2012. Yep, that’s right, 2012. The smart Dem’s (I know, oxymoron) know that 2012 will be just a continuation of the 2010 wave election if Obama is on the ticket. Their only hope right now is to replace Obama….get him to resign and replace with Hillary.
There is a cold war going on within the Democratic party right now…I expect the war to heat-up in the run-up to the DNC.
@TommyTee – Glenn Beck’s take on that this morning (I paraphrase): Billary can’t win 2016 if Obama wins 2012. Reason being, given four more years of what we have now, the country will be so screwed up that NO Democrat will be able to win 2016.
I’ve had this same thought flit through my head as well. In 2008 when old Soros held Hill back and pushed little o forward, he gave o a “one term proposition.” “If the American people are so stupid you can get them to re-elect you, you’ve got two terms. If Americans aren’t quite that stupid–yet–Hill comes off the bench to close the deal.”
Feeling like Mel Gibson in that conspiracy movie…
Thing is, though, even with “Not Obama” doing as well as they have in the primaries, Obama still has enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination without help from superdelegates (plus the fact that he and Biden can vote for themselves). Obama would have to give up the nomination willingly, or else there would have to be a mutiny on the part of Obama’s supporters on the floor.
We should keep in mind that Palin spoke just to rain over the wet, to make it even more demoralizing for the Dems. Inside us, we should understand also that we have to keep fighting. No retreat, reload.
You’re right. As you can see from TT12′s comment (#15) they are not beaten yet. The only way for us to win is not only to reload and keep charging, but to kick them while they are down while we are reloading so they can’t rise up and strike back.
… and we can add to that, Mrs. Palin has much more national influence than the author of this post. On “both sides of the aisle.”
GB
Ive said it before: this was only an “ordinary frontal victory”: we met the enemy head-on and the enemy retreated – but still intact and functioning. It’s far from over.
Don’t celebrate until their captain’s hat floats to the surface.
Dear Rick,
Opinions are like assho***. Yours stinks.
Best
TT12
Gosh. You are not only erudite, you are deep.
The problem most Republicans/conservatives have in dealing with unions generally and public employee unions specifically is that most Republicans/conservatives don’t know jack about unions or public employment. For most of my career, my state was the only one in the Country with full public employee collective bargaining and at least one branch of government controlled by Republicans. In a given year all but two or three of the union states are deeply and irredeemably Blue. Almost all of the Red states are right to work states with very little private sector unionization and almost no public sector unionization. The lesson of that is that unions cannot survive without compelled dues or some government compulsion, e.g., regulated utilities, railroads and airlines, etc.
The learned professor is wrong or agenda driven when he attributes public sector unionization as a product of civil service reform. In many ways, unionization is very destructive of the aims of merit system civil service. Merit systems of public employment long predate public employee unionization and in the federal sector go back to the 19th Century with most states quickly following suit. In a merit system of public employment employees must be selected on the basis of merit – relative ability – rather than political party, affiliation, direct patronage, etc. This has been true at the delivery of service level of almost every government in the country for most of the last century. Only a few traditionally very corrupt and very Democrat states or localities held on to true patronage systems, and even they had to say they had merit systems to get federal funds. It is significant that most of the recent USSC cases on the limits of patronage hiring come from Chicago.
Public employees almost never are actually organized by unions. Unions organize legislatures and get the legislative body to give them collective bargaining and the right to tax the employees for holding their jobs. In a few instances it has been done by executives, e.g., Kennedy’s executive order starting bargaining for federal employees, and the Ds had no monopoly; Nixon vastly expanded federal bargaining though federal bargaining is very restrictive compared to most state law bargaining. To the extent that public employees even get to vote in representation elections it is almost always just a choice of which union will get them, not whether they will be union or not. I would hazard that there isn’t a public employee union in the Country other than NEA that could keep more than 30% of the bargaining unit paying dues without compulsion. In my experience, almost immediately upon the cessation of compulsory dues collection, the “membership” drops below 50% and what an agressive employer does is watch for the union’s dues payers to drop below 50% and then question the majority status of the union. ‘Course, my state is pretty much the only one in the Country that has ever done that. We’ll see how “agreeable” Walker is to bargaining demands now that the WI unions are largely below 50%. As a matter of law in most states, you only have to bargain with a majority representative, and if the union can’t show a majority, you move to decertify them; if you’re going to be called a union buster anyway, you might as well make it worthwhile.
Once again, Art, I learned more from your comments then I did from the poorly worded and argued article. Thanks.
Thank you for the kind words!
Published on Mar 2, 2012 Romney behind closed doors – big spender: “Boost federal involvement”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od48N1T9_00&feature=player_embedded
Moran has always been a middle of the road guy and he can’t understand why the country is po’ed. To him, the marxists are just slightly more agressive liberals.
So he doesn’t see Wisconsin as a big deal. He’d be rationalizing it even if it was a 30 point victory.
What was the question answered in WI on Tuesday? The question was, “Are we better off with Scott Walker than with someone else? We know the answer to that question! What do you suppose the question will be in WI come November? Obama is going to have an impossible time convincing the voters of Wisconsin, or anywhere else that the Jackass in the room is not the Economy with him riding it! The fact that he STAYED AWAY will further demoralize his would be supporters. Obama’s ‘Lead From the Bunker,’ strategy worked so well. The question is not if he is toast, just how crispy!
If a proposal for reducing pubic employee’s pension benefits (going to 401K’s) applies only to new hires, guess who is in full support: the present union members.
Published on Jun 8, 2012 by southernavenger Why Ron Paul conceding he won’t be president and Rand Paul supporting the presumptive GOP nominee are but trivial anecdotes to the obvious and ongoing success of the most transformative political movement of our time: The rEVOLution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4bijuD4evpc
Either he miscalculated what was at stake or he feared he had more to lose than gain with such an effort.
You’re forgetting he is a narcissist, everything is about him. He didn’t get into this because the only thing important to him is his election. He is very shallow skinned and this is apparant to anyone looking.
Not a word here about outside money in this campaign. Millions from unions and fundraising nationwide and groups like Americans for Prosperity. Looking at all the comments here should reassure the Obama folks. Everyone here has something negative to say about Obama. Not many are rallying around the contestant, Romney. Good luck with that… Nobama is NOT going to be on the ticket.
Well, Rick, you can spin it as you wish, just like the exit polls spin everything toward The Chosen One, but Sarah Palin had it right about Obama’s goose.
Lessee, Palin or Moran, on this one? Hmm, gotta go with Palin. That chick knows politics.
Yes, Walker beating the recall badly means the union limits are endorsed by the people, and that has all kinds of strategic implications. However, that is not why this victory is so influential for the Presidential election. It’s because it just made Walker into the big gun in the State. He has essentially been re-elected in big fashion. His policies have been proven and approved. Wherever he goes in WI, he is now King.
That means, when he campaigns for and with Romney, Romney gains immensely. Walker is now a certified rock star, and the Left made him that way.
Guys like Moran may not understand it, but those more solidly on the Right and Left certainly do. Thus the happy faces on the Right, and the bitter tears on the Left. Anyone on the Left who say otherwise is just whistling past the graveyard. Certainly, no one on the Right thinks this was a little deal. “This is a big effin’ deal!” – Biden
Hello, my name is Nathan I identify as a liberal and marxist socialist. I would like you to invite you to criticize my beliefs and me personally. I would like to be your Ideological whipping by.
-nate
I think the race is Romney’s to lose. When Dems fall in NY9 Dems have problems.