First lady Michelle Obama said, “Let’s Move!” Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally?
Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions, and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal-reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.
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Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?
Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big-government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.
Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP governor Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union-dues racket, and rein in collective-bargaining powers run amok.
Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health-insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.
On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.
The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.
Almost eight years ago, more than 50 Texas Democratic state lawmakers holed up in Oklahoma and New Mexico for weeks to stymie a vote on Republican-sponsored redistricting plans they opposed. Over the past week, it was thousands of public-school teachers in Wisconsin who faked illness and boycotted their classrooms. And it’s union henchmen calling out loud for statewide strikes to bring Republican reformers to their knees.
I get a headache when the workers of the world are attacked. Nobody's getting rich working for state government. They will stifle their pay and benefits. It is a jobs program. Don't you want folks to have jobs that support, enlarge and magnify the greatness of the nation? A job with a measure of security and opportunity for advancement? I don't think that is wrong. Right, Ms. M?
It seems to me that if these fleebaggers were serious, they would man up, take their loss, and then run on the restoration of those "rights". If they are so right about what they feel, its a slam dunk landslide.
I want folks to EARN jobs that support, enlarge and magnify the greatness of the nation. Blackmail and political favors isn't "earning".
Oh, and "fleebaggers" is absolutely fantastic. I now consider it my civic duty to use the term - even after the MSM tells us it's hackneyed, dumb, hateful, etc.
In the past few days, I wondered why a republican legislator hasn't switched parties to democrat in Wisconsin. Then a quorum could be formed. THe vote could be had, and then the legislator could switch back. If I understand correctly, a quorum is not a certain number of legislators, but 1 from the minority party. Is this correct? If not, apologies.
To the more immediate point, right on Michelle. This is stunning. And I'll turn the tables on the dems - people all throughout the middle east revolting for democracy, and democratic votes being thwarted right in our states. By, of course, dems.
@fredstat, no, it is about numbers, not party. For financial matters they require more than a simple majority of participants before they can hold the vote.
@democlash, "workers of the world"? That phrase tells me all I need to know about your views, but I will waste my breath anyway speaking to your already closed mind. These "workers" won't loose their job security or opportunity for advancement. Unless the Dems and Unions get their way of course. Then there will have to be layoffs and job losses to make up what isn't saved through requiring state workers to contribute to their own retirement and healthcare benefits on a level closer to public sector employees. And hey, by not forcing ALL state employees to be union members and automatically pay democrat campaign contribut...err, "union dues" they can offset the additional costs of paying their own way.
I just Googled (Binged, actually) "public union workers earn 200000" and a list of links to stories was presented: Some Ohio teachers and Some NY MTA workers were examples being offered.
I chose 200k, as that was approximately the figure bantered about while debating extending tax cuts. I could have went to +100k, as I heard that figure defining "rich" as well.
Anyway, we have established that "someone" IS getting rich working for the State Governments, and it is evident "someone else" is getting poor by paying for it. In a Capitalistic, Free Enterprise system - those jobs you pine for to "enlarge and magnify the greatness of the Nation", should and would be better served through creation in the private sector.
There really are very few needs, and certainly no desires, that a government has the right to provide.
I call the back to the basics treatment the Tea Party has given the Republican Party, tea-boarding, named after the infamous and effective water-boarding treatment used to bring terrorists to their senses.
I love Fleebaggers, but how about flea-boarding in reference to the border states that give sanctuary to these bloodsucking electoral midgets. Perhaps the rallies left in their wake should be called a Flea-Circus.
@DKW
so you are on the side of folks earning, and not on the side of political favor and "blackmail." Good. Let's make sure that happens! Let's pay for our wars out of current income then, collapse corporate welfare,institute a progressive tax system, and ferret out and punish the villains in the ongoing economic destruction. Not sure putting the kibosh on unions will bring about those results though. One might have to look behind the curtain. It isn't the unions back there.
Public sector employees are virtually the only group of employees in the 21st century that receive pensions. The ponzi pension schemes were thrown in the dust bin of history decades ago by the rest of the economy.
Private sector employees have watched employment and income evaporate over the past 2.5 yrs. Meanwhile, the public sector has been humming along if not expanding under Obama and his Porkulus plan.
Enough is enough! Working for "the public" means you should be compensated similarly to "the public"!
BTW, has a teacher ever (EVER?) been fired for mediocrity? I know that they can lose a job if they abuse a student, show up drunk, etc. But how bout just stinkin' at teaching math? People in the private sector face this prospect every day. Yet somehow every single teacher is so amazing that they are never fired for poor performance? Interesting.
@Lawdawg: In Texas and other right-to-work no-public-union states, yes teachers can and have been fired for things like consistently low standard test scores. Hopefully with the coming cuts we are going to have to make they will do it based on scores and skils and not seniority...and hopefully we can trim administration rather than teaching staff.
@democlash: "Let's pay for our wars out of current income then, collapse corporate welfare,institute a progressive tax system, and ferret out and punish the villains in the ongoing economic destruction."
I actually agree with most of this...at least the way I mean those words.
If we are close to a balanced budget then of course any wars we fight would be out of current funds. Hopefully we don't have to fight too many but we can't control the actions of others. In case of a full-blown live-fire WW III though, deficit spending approved here.
As far as corporate welfare, yes we need to get rid of all the ethanol subsidies and mandates and government interference in the energy and real estate industries.
Here we disagree. We already have a progressive tax system. What we need is a flatter tax system where more people pay at least some tax, the highest marginal rates are lower, but there are less loopholes.
The villians in this economic destruction include everyone involved in the Union-PAC kick-back cycle as well as all the fiscally irresponsible politicians.
I agree heartily with your position here, but it's especially important to get your facts right on opinion pieces. You write that "Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois." A score is 20, and scores are at least 40. With only 14 or 15 Democrats in the Wisconsin senate, how do you come up with "scores"?
OK, add up to 37 legislators from Indiana and you have "scores." My mistake, and I'll read more carefully before commenting next time. Never mind this or the previous comment.
Lawdawg - "BTW, has a teacher ever (EVER?) been fired for mediocrity? I know that they can lose a job if they abuse a student, show up drunk, etc. But how bout just stinkin' at teaching math?"
In NY they can't fire them for many of the reasons you listed. They do have them quit teaching classes but make them show up each day, sit in the library until school is out. And they still receive their salary and benefits.
I think it is OSU who said if they wanted to be rid of a tenured professor because not enough students enrolled in his classes it would take 2 1/2 years to follow the proper procedures dictated to them by the Unions.
Democlash you forgot child labor laws, 40 hour weeks, paid vacations, over time, dangerous working conditions, bosses who beat their workers, etc in your Union talking points.
Which one should we use: Canada's, the UK's, France's?
Helpful hint: all three have less progressive tax systems than we do. In fact, according to the OECD we already have the most progressive tax code of any developed nation.
Here is Massachusetts, state employees are usually discovered to be the sister, daughter, son, brother-in-law, cousin or some other form of relative to one of our infamous state legislators...the majority of whom are, of course, DEMOCRATS! Let's take the daughter-in-law of the mayor of Boston for instance...her salary is over $100k as a SECRETARY in City Hall!!!! There are NOT very many secretaries in the state who earn that salary, much less receive the extraordinary benefits package of a civil service employee. This is just one of thousands of similar stories in the bluest of blue states!!!!!
It is no wonder that it was JFK's EXECUTIVE ORDER that put this whole 'public employees' mess in place. When George Meany and Franklin D. Roosevelt both knew public employees and collective bargaining would NOT be good for America, one has to wonder why JFK (who cut his political teeth on the Boston Democrat machine) decided it would. Gee, do you suppose it had anything at all to do with 'politics'?
I get a headache reading about the poor 'workers of the world' being attacked!!!!! Perhaps they need to find a better place in this old world to live...you know, like Russia!!! I'm sure they'd get a good deal in any collective bargaining there!
