by John Nolte Had the federal government passed a law (in the best interest of the people, naturally) mandating that every household in America purchase a handgun and learn how to use it in order to protect themselves and in turn save the government money on police protection, that law would be a constitutional issue for the courts to decide in the exact same way ObamaCare — a real federal law requiring every American purchase health insurance — is also a constitutional issue. Regardless of your political persuasion, any intellectually honest individual understands that the government requiring an individual purchase something is exactly why our founders created a judicial branch. That’s what they’re there for. What they’re not there for, however, is to use judicial fiat to overturn an election. But that is exactly what the Left in Wisconsin is counting on happening just a few days from now on April 5th.
Before I get to that, though, I want to backfill my point with a rundown of the hows and whys that make a Wisconsin State Supreme Court race so crucially important to everyone in America, not just my fellow cheese heads.
The Basics
Last November, for the first time in a long time, Wisconsin voters went to the polls and gave Republicans control of the assembly, senate, and governorship. Governor Scott Walker, the former County Executive of Milwaukee, ran as a reformer, inherited a crushing deficit, and drafted a Budget Repair Bill that would allow him to do two vital things. His first priority was to not lay off any public employees. His second priority was to create long-term, sustainable fixes to the state budget. One of the only ways he could do this was to increase the percentage public employees pay for their health insurance coverage from 6% to 12.6% (still half the national average) and their pension contribution from 0% to 5.8% (most Americans don’t even get pensions).By far, though, the most controversial and necessary part of the bill is the stripping away of public employee collective bargaining rights in all matters other than wages. Opponents say collective bargaining has nothing to do with the budget, that it’s just an attack on workers’ rights.
That’s a lie. And here’s why they’re telling that lie.
How Public Employee Unions Elect Democrats With Your Tax Dollars
Currently, if you’re any kind of public employee in Wisconsin, union membership is compulsory. If you want to work for the State, you are forced to join the union and therefore you must pay dues that average around $800 a year. These dues are not only the lifeblood of public union power, they are the lifeblood of power for elected Democrats in WI (and nationwide). Using dues forcibly taken from public employees (right out of their paychecks), in 2008 public unions gave almost all of their political donations to local Democrats.Furthermore, three national public unions dropped almost $3 million into WI Democrat coffers in the form of straight-forward political donations and television ads in support of Democrats.
For instance, among the 14 Senate Democrats who fled the state to avoid voting for Governor Walker’s Budget Repair Bill, public unions represented anywhere from 5% to 66% of their total campaign contributions from ‘07 to ‘10. Nationwide the numbers are even more staggering. Unions, mostly public employee unions, gave a staggering $400 million to Democrats in 2008 alone.
Taxpayers — Republicans, Independents, and Democrats alike — pay for all of this. This is our money being used in a corrupt laundering racket to funnel money from our pockets to public employees to their unions and then, ultimately, straight into the coffers of Democrats throughout the country and at every level of government — from your local school board to the President of the United States.
How Collective Bargaining Bankrupts States
As we’ve already established, elected Democrats rely on public union donations to win office which, of course, means they are then beholden to these unions once they reach office. Well, guess who the public unions then do their collective bargaining with? Yes, with the very same Democrats who rely on public unions in order to get them elected.It doesn’t get any more corrupt than this.
Furthermore, what are elected Democrats using to please their important public union contributors? Your tax dollars. This isn’t like a private business where sitting across the table from union officials are hard-nosed negotiators worried about the bottom line, stockholders, and their own profits. If they give away the store they go out of business. Wisconsin, on the other hand, can’t and won’t go out of business. Therefore, elected Democrats have no stake in protecting the taxpayers and so they do give away the store. That’s why public employees have Cadillac benefits and you and I don’t. That’s why it’s impossible to fire bad teachers. That’s why it’s a contract violation to clear your streets of snow even when the unions won’t. That’s why states across the country are going bankrupt.
And believe it or not, it gets worse…
The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers union, has used collective bargaining to muscle school districts into purchasing their own over-priced health insurance coverage program. Yes, the very same teachers union that spent $1.6 million to elect Democrats then sits down with Democrats to collective bargain regarding which health insurance provider the various districts will purchase from — and lo and behold a number of school districts throughout the state have their benefits administered through the union’s own WEA Trust. By most accounts this is a Cadillac benefits plan that costs the state millions more than it should — a lucrative plan that we private sector employees could only dream of.
Worse still, there’s no serious competition for a less expensive, more reasonable plan. Why would there be? Elected officials aren’t spending their own money or their company’s money. They’re spending your money.
Their only incentive is to please the same unions that fund their campaigns — and collective bargaining rules makes all of this look perfectly acceptable and legal.
This is nothing more than legalized graft and racketeering.
Franklin Roosevelt was exactly right about the dangers of collective bargaining in the public sector when he said:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.
Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.Why Democrats and Public Unions are Terrified of Governor Walker’s Bill
Governor Walker’s bill hits at the very heart of this legalized graft and racketeering by stripping away the collective bargaining that burdens Wisconsin taxpayers with programs like WEA Trust — which is a cash cow for the public sector unions and therefore a cash cow for elected Democrats. The more money public unions receive, the more money they have to help elect Democrats.
What most frightens the unholy duo of Democrats and public unions, though, is that Walker’s Budget Repair Bill is a victory for workers rights inasmuch as it ends, not only the forcing of public workers into the union, but also the garnishment of their pay checks to pay union dues.
Once you give public employees the God-given right to opt out of the union and force unions to collect their own dues, there’s no doubt some people’s eyes will open just as they have in the private sector. The result is that public union membership will wither on the vine just as private union membership has. The result…
Public unions lose their power, elected Democrats lose a crucial ally funded with your taxpayer dollars, and this viciously corrupt circle takes its rightful place on the ash-heap of history.
Finally, this will also create something of a cultural shift. Without wildly influential public unions spreading their disgusting entitlement mentality, fewer idiots will be brainwashed into thinking they deserve something for nothing. And if anything best describes the Democratic base, it’s “entitled idiots who think they deserve something for nothing.”
Why Obama Has a Dog In the Wisconsin Fight
Wisconsin is a vital swing state for Obama. In 2008 he won the state by an impressive margin, but 2010 saw a sea change in the state’s electorate that created a tidal wave in favor of Republicans, a tidal wave that could extend to 2012 and cost the president his re-election.
The more unpopular Republicans are in Wisconsin, the better chance Obama has of winning the state. By using this bill as a way to toxify Governor Walker and the Republican Party in general, by waging a sort of psy-ops war on the population with all the divisive tension and anguish the protests and the 24/7 news coverage cause (think of the 2000 presidential election recount times 100), the idea is to lay the groundwork for an Obama victory in a state that just a few months ago had turned on him.
The Tactics
You can laugh all you want at the 14 Wisconsin Democrats who fled the state, but while you were laughing they, the White House, and Big Labor were playing chess.Interminably extending the debate over a bill that would’ve otherwise sailed to passage had the 14 not fled, effectively created an enormous amount of personal, emotional tension and anguish among the citizens of Wisconsin. The idea here is to wear the citizens down so they put pressure on Governor Walker and the Republicans to bring it to an end. The protests and campaign of violence we’ve seen are all a part of that.
Put simply, Wisconsin Democrats are currently enjoying a two-fer: Using every dirty trick in the book, including violence, intimidation and death threats, they’re not only stalling a bill that could weaken their political power, they’re also helping Obama’s re-election chances.
These shrewd Leftists have also had an endgame in mind the whole time — a checkmate, if you will — and now we get to where this column began.
End Game: The Wisconsin State Supreme Court Election on April 5th
Because Wisconsin voters gave Republicans control of the governor’s mansion and the legislative branch, ultimately there is nothing Democrats (or their allies in the media) can do to stop Walker’s agenda from becoming law — and this Budget Repair Bill is only the beginning. The Governor has bigger plans in mind, all of which is anathema to the Left: A voter ID law, concealed carry laws, and the expansion of the school choice program. Simply put, the Leftist Apocalypse could come true in Wisconsin and spread across the nation just as public sector union reform has.
Based on an absurd procedural technicality, a left-wing judge in Madison has already halted the collective bargaining portion of Governor Walker’s bill from being put into law and an appeals court has already passed on making a ruling and kicked it up to the State Supreme Court. And this is just the beginning of judicial meddling and overreach into legislative matters that — unlike forcing the American people to purchase something — has no constitutional issue that requires any sort of adjudication.
The Left’s firewall, as it always is with leftists unable to win at the voting booth, is the courts. And on April 5th, State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser is up for re-election. Prosser is a reliable 4 to 3 tie-breaking vote in favor of judicial restraint on a court that’s just one vote away from exploding into a frenzy of left-wing judicial activism. The one vote on the horizon willing to overturn every piece of Walker’s agenda — including the end of collective bargaining reform — is Joanne Kloppenburg, Prosser’s left-wing opponent.
If the court flips on April 5th, if Kloppenburg prevails in the upcoming election, every aspect of Governor Walker’s agenda is DOA. Everything he and the legislature passes will ultimately be overturned by the State Supreme Court and the status quo, including this unbelievably corrupt partnership between public unions and elected Democrats, will remain firmly in place for generations to come.
The Dirty Election Campaign Waged By Kloppenburg and Her Supporters
Though she hasn’t said so outright, Kloppenburg has made little secret of where her sympathies lie. Though she has never sat on the bench of any court, her election strategy has been to play just coy enough to keep herself out of trouble while at the same time signaling to public unions that she’s the horse to back to stop Walker:“It’s time to get even. Vote Kloppenburg,” read a letter from the faculty union at the Milwaukee Area Technical College to members. “Many of the legal challenges” to the law that limits government unions’ bargaining power will go to the state Supreme Court, read the letter. The court “is currently 4-3 in favor of anti-union justices. A Kloppenburg victory would swing the balance to our side.”
Such expectations seem widespread. After they lost in the Legislature, union rally organizers in Madison immediately switched to chanting Kloppenburg’s name. Kloppenburg backers worked the crowd, the Associated Press reported, adding that her Facebook page was “alive with comments from people trying to mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts for her.”
Kloppenburg does little to damp expectations. She impugns Prosser as partisan, offering no proof other than a boast made by his then-new campaign chief to a newspaper, one Prosser hadn’t approved and swiftly disavowed.Incredibly, Kloppenburg has made clear she has no intention of recusing herself from any ruling regarding collective bargaining even though she’s married to a UW-Madison professor who has publicly opposed Walker’s collective bargaining reforms. She also interned for the reliably liberal Chief Justice currently sitting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So no one on either side doubts her allegiance or her agenda.
Smearing Prosser with Lies
In turn, public unions and their supporters everywhere have responded with organization on the ground, money, and dishonest smears against Prosser in the form of vicious attack ads. Patrick McIheran of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel documents the ”nuclear bomb” the left dropped on Prosser just last week (see above, read below):
The Supreme Court race’s nuclear bomb gets dropped: A Democratic-leaning pressure group, the Greater Wisconsin Committee – it’s where [former Democrat] Gov. Jim Doyle sent a lot of his leftover cash upon retirement – runs an TV ad ripping Justice David Prosser over a child sexual abuse case he dealt with while a prosecutor in 1979.
The ad insinuates that Prosser shielded from prosecution a Catholic priest who tried touching two boys inappropriately. The case is not new news, but the group hoping to oust Prosser from the court is plainly hoping some of the abusive priest’s infamy rubs off on the incumbent.
The inconvenient part, however, is that one of the victims has spoken out – against the ad. Troy J. Merryfield Friday released a letter saying he found the ad “offensive, inaccurate and out of context. I hope that organization,” he wrote of the Greater Wisconsin Committee, “will remove the ad.”The ad is a lie, a $3 million lie, a total smear, and Kloppenburg defends it:
Prosser asked Kloppenburg to call for the ad to be taken down. She declined to do so.
“It’s not my ad,” Kloppenburg said. “Like it or not, third parties have a First Amendment right to run ads of their own choosing.”
So Who Will Win All the Wisconsin Marbles April 5th?
I’m unaware of any polling on this race so I turned to Charlie Sykes, a talk radio leader in Wisconsin (you should be listening to) and Big Government contributor. He’s on the ground there and understands the story (and stakes) as well as anyone. Here’s his disconcerting but undoubtedly accurate lay of the land:I think it will be close: the left is engaged and enraged. We conservatives are engaged. Don’t know about the independents. This is a traditionally very low turnout election and if the unions turn out their troops, there might be enough votes to flip the court. But no one on our side is complacent about this. We understand that, as you say, it is for all the marbles.
This will turn on how the race is defined: if voters decide based on credentials: Prosser wins; if they see it as a choice between a liberal and a conservative judge, Prosser wins; if it turns on who is tough on crime, Prosser wins.
But, if it is seen as a referendum on Walker or the union bill, Kloppenburg has a very real shot.This in a state where a sitting State Supreme Court Justice losing a re-election bid is nearly as rare as Halley’s Comet. This in a state that just 4 months ago (feels like years) voted overwhelmingly for Republican rule.
The Good News
Sykes tells me that during this crucial upcoming week some of the state’s largest business groups are finally going to get up on the air in favor of Prosser. The idea is to move the crucial independents to our side.
What are the Stakes?
Nothing less than democracy. Will four Robed Masters rule Wisconsin or will the representatives elected by the people of the state be allowed to govern?
What You Can Do
If you live in Wisconsin or if you know anyone who does, make sure Tuesday April 5th is circled in red on the calendar. Vote. Vote. Vote.
In the meantime, you can volunteer.
And you don’t have to live in Wisconsin. Get engaged on Twitter. Get engaged on Facebook. Anyone, anywhere can be an activist today using social media.
Start here with Justice David Prosser’s campaign site and Facebook page.
What you can’t do is nothing.
Big Government
