I Am Barack Obama's Worst Nightmare

June 4, 2012
Jim Yardley

I am a thinking, educated, intelligent, independent voter.

I am fanatical in my support for the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

I believe that there is only one phrase that might be slightly more important than "We the People of the United States ...".  That phrase would be "In the Beginning the Lord said 'Let there be light'..."

But the most significant thing that makes Barack Obama view me as his worst nightmare is simply this:  I tell the truth about him.  I don't need to lie.  I don't need to "create" a narrative.  What he has done all by himself is so appalling that any need for embellishment is stillborn.

The MSM and Kool-Aid addicted left-wing pundits have praised Obama for his leadership. 

I haven't seen any evidence of leadership.  I have seen coercion.  I have seen bribery.  I have seen "bait-and-switch" policy pronouncements.  But I have not seen leadership. 

Leadership is convincing people who would not normally agree with your policies, strategies, tactics or even goals that you are right, and that the policies, strategies and tactics that you are proposing to use are effective and cost efficient.  Doing that will persuade opponents that you might, just might have a shot at pulling off whatever it is that you are planning.  Saying "I won" is not leadership.  Bribing Senators to vote for your health care plan is not leadership.  Speaking over 50 times to the nation about your healthcare plan and still not achieving the support of a majority of its citizens certainly does not indicate leadership.

Obama operates according to Chicago rules.  Oppose him and he'll turn Eric Holder loose on you.  He might have Ken Salazar put a boot on your neck.  Kathleen Sebelius might not give you a waiver that has been afforded your competitors.  Janet Napolitano might raid your place of business and demand proof that not one employee is here illegally (although she wasn't going to deport them anyway).  Perhaps he'd threaten to have one of Lisa Jackson's minions at the EPA crucify you.  He might force you to sit through a Joe Biden speech.  (OK, maybe even Obama wouldn't go quite that far.)

Leadership is Jack Kennedy saying "We will send a man to the moon by the end of the decade" and convincing a sizable majority of the voters to support the idea enthusiastically.  The most vivid contrast between Jack Kennedy's moon challenge and anything coming out of the White House recently is the fact that Kennedy's statement did not end with these two words out of his mouth: "or else". 

Barack Obama's leadership is apparently patterned after an earlier Progressive president. 

A president who jailed those who opposed his ideas. 

A president that formed committees of ordinary citizens to spy and inform on their neighbors. 

A president who didn't merely deny women contraception, but their right to vote in his own war on women.

 A president who was also a college professor. 

A president who also saw himself as a world shaking figure. 

Woodrow Wilson.

Sleep well, Mr. President.  You'll see me in your dreams.

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller for a variety of manufacturing firms, a Vietnam veteran and an independent voter.  Jim blogs at jimyardley.wordpress.com, or he can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com

American Thinker

Ayers and Obama: What the Media Hid

by John Sexton

 
 Obama's connection to Bill Ayers, like his connection to Jeremiah Wright, briefly became a campaign issue in 2008. The Obama campaign was quick to distance the candidate from the 60's domestic terrorist, even as blogs continued to dig up evidence connecting the two men. Eventually the issue became enough of a story that, on October 3rd, the NY Times weighed with a piece titled "Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths" by author Scott Shane. Looking back it's clear that the Times' story downplayed or overlooked some significant connections between the two men, connections which may have raised red flags for some voters. According to Bill Ayers' next door neighbor, Senator Barack Obama was a guest at a 4th of July party Ayers hosted in 2005. The date is significant because it effectively undercuts the claim, made by the Obama campaign during the 2008 election cycle, that Obama and Ayers were merely acquaintances who had only crossed paths a few times since 2000. Obama's attendance at the party suggests they were friends.

Scott Shane clearly didn't know about the 2005 party. Indeed, he writes near the end of his piece "Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship." But it now appears Shane was intentionally misled by Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt who he quotes as follows:

“The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false,” said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. Mr. LaBolt said the men first met in 1995 through the education project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and have encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood. He said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they bumped into each other on the street in Hyde Park.

The claim that Obama hadn't "spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail" with Ayers since 2005 appears in retrospect to have been a Clintonian parsing of the truth. In fact, it now appears they spoke face to face at Ayers 4th of July party. But notice there's a bit of goalpost moving being done by LaBolt here as well. No one suggested that Ayers was a political adviser to candidate Obama. The suggestion was that the two men were friends and that the friendship might indicate that the two shared similar worldviews. That's the story the NY Times and the rest of the media never fully investigated in 2008.

Shane's story does note that the Obama-Ayers connection began with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school grant initiative which Ayers helped bring to Chicago. Obama was later selected to be the Chairman of the Board for the CAC. Shane notes that "some bloggers" have suggested Ayers tapped Obama for the position but he goes on to explain this probably wasn't the case. The impression is that these unnamed bloggers have unfairly overstated the connection the two men shared.

However, Shane overlooks the more obvious (and easily documented) connection. Various boards on which Obama sat in the late 90s granted nearly $2 million dollars to Bill Ayers' Small Schools Workshop.

This archived webpage notes over one million granted to Ayers' project by the CAC, but the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation (on whose Boards Obama also sat) granted nearly an additional million in donations to Ayers' group during the same time period.

In addition to donations to Ayers' Small Schools Workshop group, the same foundations donated $761,100 to a related group run by Ayers’ brother, John Ayers. In fact, in 2001 Obama would join the "leadership council" of a successor to the CAC called the Chicago Public Education Fund. Also on the leadership council of the group was Bill Ayers' brother John. (Documents demonstrating this connection have been hidden from view on the internet archive using robots.txt).

It's easy to claim that Obama and Ayers weren't "close." How does one measure "close" in the absence of detailed personal history that isn't available in this case. It's much harder to deny the connection implied by the nearly $3 million dollars Obama helped direct to Bill Ayers and his brother. Why didn't Shane Scott see fit to mention any of this?

Finally, one of the arguments the Obama campaign used in 2008 (dutifully repeated by the Times), was the suggestion that Bill Ayers radicalism was a thing of the distant past by the time Obama knew him:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

This is extremely dishonest as it suggests that the only objectionable thing about Bill Ayers is his history as a domestic terrorist. Surely that would be enough for many people, but even putting his past aside there is ample evidence that Ayers is as radical now as he was then. On September 11th, 2001, Ayers was profiled by the NY Times in a piecewhich opened with Ayers saying "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough." In 2010, Ayers' wife Bernadine Dohrn said in an interview that she and Bill "are radicals today" and added "we think the real terrorist is the American government." Just two months ago Ayers was in Union Square telling anyone who would listen "I get up every morning thinking today...I'm going to end capitalism."

This is the adult who Barack Obama befriended in Chicago.

Ayers methods have certainly changed since the 60s, but his commitment to bringing down the American system has been a constant throughout his life. Therefore, it's fair to ask what Obama saw in Ayers, the committed anti-capitalist radical. It's also fair to ask why the NY Times (and the rest of the media) were so quick to dismiss the import of the connection. No one is saying Obama and Ayers were part of a secret cabal, but they do seem to have been friends over a period of years, so presumably they had something in common. Given Ayers' consistently extreme views on America and government, isn't that worth exploring?

Big Journalism

Race Matters...To Racists

• 
• Derek Hunter

In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said America is a “nation of cowards” on race because we don’t talk about. So let’s talk about it.

Voter ID

Progressives are up in arms over the prospect of voters being required to show something at the polls they must show regularly to function as a productive member of society – a photo ID. It’s because progressives, particularly progressive Democrats, have a vested interest in preventing as many people as possible, especially minorities, from becoming productive members of society.

Productive members of society – and those who aspire to be – don’t need or want government to do for them what they can do for themselves. The socialists, communists, fascists and anarchists – in other words, progressives – obviously don’t have the support to win elections. They must find many votes beyond their core supporters to survive. So they attempt to manipulate minorities.

They play the race card. They attempt to convince them Republicans, particularly conservatives, are racists.

Never mind only a few generations ago, it was Democrats who were lynching black people in the South, turning water cannons on them, toying with the idea of using eugenics to eliminate them and, always, trying to prevent them from voting. Since the party of slavery couldn’t own the bodies of black people anymore, it turned to trying to own their minds.

And votes. In the last 50 years, progressives have become quite interested in minority votes as the popularity of their message has waned. They pushed for a web of government dependence to entangle minorities – direct subsidies of just enough money to encourage complacency, public housing that serves as a staging ground for continuing criminal enterprises, an education system that coddles and babysits but does not, no matter how much money is sunk into it, educate, and, from their leaders, the soul-crushing rhetoric of victimhood and entitlement. Utopia is only an election cycle away – if we can get rid of those damn Republicans.

How else to explain how U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has been in office since 1965? It certainly isn’t because he has helped his district in Detroit. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off … twice. You can tell what it used to be when you drive through, and it’s sad. There is no one in that district not named Conyers whose life is better off since he assumed office, yet he’s re-elected by overwhelming margins every two years. Why?

They vote Democrat because they are told Republicans will only make things worse. Never told – or asked – is how things truly could be worse. But it’s folly to seek logic in irrational thought.

Which brings us back to voter ID laws.

Holder told a group of black preachers this week the push in some states to require a government-issued ID to vote constituted an assault on minority voting rights. He seemed unconcerned about protecting the integrity of that right.

Holder claims requiring a photo ID to vote would disenfranchise minorities disproportionately…somehow. MSNBC harps on this point relentlessly, and progressives from Rev. Al Sharpton to U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., equate voter ID laws with a return to Jim Crow. But why? Do these progressives fear their partners in democracy are too stupid to obtain a driver’s license or state-issued photo ID?

The sad part is the rhetoric surrounding this issue figures only to get worse.

Get real, progressives. Almost everyone has a photo ID these days. You have to have one to deal with
banks, stores, school registrars, property managers, traffic cops and with the HR people where you work.

Progressives should be encouraging minorities to get IDs, not concocting excuses so they don’t have to. A few years ago, they demanded illegal aliens have access to drivers’ licenses. Was that Jim Crow? Only if you want to keep those people lashed to the ship of government dependency.

There’s no upward mobility in that plan. You can’t even move across the street. You’re just stuck where you are, where your parents were, where your children will be. But you’ll keep voting for Democrats because there will always be “leaders” who you view as having the job of helping you telling you the alternative is worse.

Democrats know upward mobility is not their friend. Even the prospect of it threatens their power structure. That’s why they don’t want you having a photo ID. It’s crucial to helping you improve your life on your own. And if you can improve your life on your own, you don’t need them or anything they’re selling.

If vote fraud is such an insignificant thing – as progressives falsely claim – then why not root it out completely? Because the party that always seems to ensure the polls in St. Louis stay open just long enough to get right amount of votes to pull out close elections at the 11th hour, or miraculously finds forgotten “lost” votes in car trunks or offices after the number needed to win is known has no interest ensure the integrity of our “sacred” right to vote. They need Mickey Mouse and the offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys on the rolls in every jurisdiction.

Because they want to win. And they’re willing to do anything to win.

They will cheat the process they hold so dear. They will oppress the people they claim to champion. They will spend $10 trillion on the war on poverty and make not a dent in the poverty rate.

Because it’s not the defeat of poverty they seek. It’s political power. Their ideas won’t win elections, so their bought votes must.

Progressives Can’t Help Themselves

This Holy Grail of race-baiting politics causes discussions of politics to veer from constructive to avoidance. I got into a discussion on Twitter this week with MSNBC contributor and professor Karen Hunter (no relation, but her first reply jokingly told me I needed to change my last name) about her comment that Mitt Romney wants to be “president of Caucasiastan.”

I know the folly of engaging with someone whose first move is the race card, but I proceeded anyway.

After she acknowledged Rev. King’s dream was everyone being treated equally, she claimed to be the culmination of that dream, adding “which is why I know that Mitt’s vision of America is a nightmare for folks of color.” She didn’t explain why.

Karen also wondered whether I think “Romney cares about or even understands the needs of black/brown Americans?” Telling that Karen Hunter thinks “black/brown Americans” have special needs and need special attention, that certain Americans can’t thrive on their own, that they need the government that has served them so well these many years.

In just a few tweets, Hunter played every stereotypical card of a progressive. When she ran out, she ran out (she blocked me for pointing out that a terrible economy knows no race). But not before firing off the ever-thoughtful “Mitt just wants to be POTUS. He doesn’t actually care @ the people. We have more problems than the economy.”

Yes, we do – starting with progressives who embrace and foster division, envy and hatred. They push ideas that have failed everywhere because they believe those ideas failed only because they weren’t the ones implementing them.

But most of all they embrace race.

A progressive will look at someone, assess the amount of pigment in their skin and determine how that person should think and vote. Hell hath no fury like that of progressives when someone of color who dares stray from their pigmentally assigned expectations. Just ask Clarence Thomas.

The Way Out Is Up

Progressives talk about “social justice” and “leveling the playing field” – deep-sounding but meaningless platitudes meant only to distract. But they won’t acknowledge the fact their policies, their actions, are what caused the playing field to look like Dresden in the first place.

They ignore the starting line, where everyone is equal, and fixate on the finish line, when there isn’t one. It’s exactly what you’d do if you trying to make sure no one wins and convince people the deck is stacked against them.

That’s because what progressives want is power – government power, their power – and they have no problem using race baiting to steer votes their way.

Even if voter fraud were as rare as progressives claim, the real fraud is when they tell large chunks of the population their destiny is determined by their skin tone. A photo ID won’t set anyone free, but it is a passport to a society that values work, rewards diligence and offers an upward path. Progressives can’t have that because those who choose that path are significantly less likely to vote progressive.

Karen Hunter ended the last tweet listed above with the hashtag “#racematters.” She’s right, it does. To racists. That explains why it’s the obsession of progressives.

Townhall

Breitbart Was There: Telling WI Union Thugs to 'Go to Hell'

by John Nolte

 
 My phone rang on a Sunday afternoon, and I never answer my phone on Sundays -- unless it's family, or if it was Andrew Breitbart; an exception that had little to do with the fact he was my employer.

"Hello."

"Did you see it?"

"Yeah, we watched the live feed online. It went off just a few seconds ago."

"Could you even hear us? The crowd was insane. I couldn't even hear myself."

"The feed was great. You could hear every word."

"Including me telling them to go to hell?"

It was April 17, 2011, a full two months after Wisconsin state Senate Democrats fled the state and exploded Republican Governor Scott Walker's Budget Repair Bill into the most important national political battle this country will have in-between the '08 and '12 presidential elections.

Wisconsin is a state President Obama won by 14 points, but just two years later it was hit by a Republican tsunami. Among the casualties was Democrat Russ Feingold, a popular U.S. Senator. But the real winner was Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker who was given Republican majorities to work with in the legislature.

Wisconsin was in terrible economic trouble and Walker acted quickly, drawing up a bill that would, among other things, reform the public sector unions that were bleeding the state dry thanks to benefits and pensions the rest of us -- the taxpayers who pay their salaries -- can only dream of.

The idea was to --gasp! -- demand public employees kick in more for their health and retirement benefits, still less what those of us in the private sector pay, but enough to make spoiled crybabies crybaby. Walker's most important reform, though, was the end of collective bargaining for all public unions not representing police and firemen. Walker's bill  would also liberate public employees from being forced into unions. Though they would never say so, this is what most terrified (here's why) Democrats and the real motive behind the outrages that would follow.

The first 27 years of my life were spent in Wisconsin. I grew up and got married there. Most of my family is scattered throughout the state, and many of them are school teachers. But it wasn't until Feb 17, 2011, that Wisconsin became my personal crusade.

That was the day the Democrats fled the state because that appalling and cowardly act was the only way they could attempt to stop Walker from passing his reforms.

And so, as the dirty filthy hippies occupied the State Capitol, as the Journal-Sentinel (the state's largest paper) practiced its bias, and the national media lied about everything, and as I argued with family members I love who were part of those Capitol protests  -- I was outraged and obsessed by what was happening and determined to do everything I could to ensure those dirty filthy hippies and the crybaby public unions were dealt one humiliating loss after another.

Feverishly, I covered and followed every twist and turn of the drama on the Bigs. The fact that my home state was involved had little to do with it. It was the injustice of Democrats and liberal judges and union thugs and the corrupt media using every nasty, deceitful trick in the book to overturn, stifle, and bully democracy.

You can't begin to imagine how lonely this fight was in the beginning. At the time it felt like it was just me, a few Facebook friends, and Milwaukee's two talk radio giants, Mark Belling and my friend Charlie Sykes. The media and the protesters had seized the narrative, the state was under siege, and no one in the GOP appeared to be lifting a finger. Essentially, what the union thugs, backed by the White House, were doing was working. Everyone and anyone who could help seemed intimidated…

…Except Andrew Breitbart.

I'm the editor of Big Hollywood, I wasn't Andrew's political guy, but even though the Wisconsin battle was eating up a lot of my time, Andrew supported everything I was doing. He understood better than I did that was going on in Wisconsin, what it meant for our country and the rule of law, and therefore he wanted in on the fight. And my guess is that one of the reasons he wanted in was also due to the fact that at the time we were completely outnumbered, outgunned, and it all looked hopeless.

Andrew loved that kind of fight most.

"Including me telling them to go to hell?"

I don’t remember how I answered Andrew, but I do remember how I felt when he told that mob exactly where they needed to go -- and that was, for the first time, hope.

Andrew and Governor Sarah Palin walked into the lion's den that afternoon -- straight into the state's Capitol; ground zero.  Surrounding them were the most dangerous people in the world not sitting in a  jail: spoiled union thugs addicted to getting something for nothing. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them, and their malevolent purpose that day was two-fold: To make sure the opposition's message wasn't heard and to send a message of intimidation to anyone else who might also consider speaking out.

Throughout the entire event, these crybabies howled, screamed, banged drums, tooted horns, and acted like the surly mob they were. And although they were only a few feet away from, Andrew looked every single one of them in the eye and told them to go to Hell.

The only reason I'm violating one of my cardinal rules and inserting myself into this story is because I think I represented the silent majority in Wisconsin -- the person who was sitting at home watching my state being trashed and feeling as though the media was right, that maybe I was in the minority of opinion on this one. How can you possibly defeat so many people who are so energized, organized, and angry?

Naturally, the corrupt media all but ignored Andrew and Palin's appearance (she also gave a brilliant speech which is embedded below), even though they were among the first national figures with the courage to step into the brawl. But it didn’t matter because we no longer need the media to get our message out. "Go to hell" went viral, and if you had to lay down a marker as to when things started to turn around in Wisconsin, I would argue it was then.

Andrew's (and Governor Palin's) fearlessness, their willingness to walk right up to the bully and pop him in the mouth -- this was a grassroots game-changer. If some Jewish guy from Southern California is willing to fight this fight, then by God we are going to fight this fight.

Since then there have been countless court battles, a round of recall elections, a state Supreme Court election, and any number of fights -- and the crybaby union bullies have lost them all. Moreover, Walker's reforms are showing the kind of real results that can no longer be denied.

But one cold, rainy, tension-filled day last April, Andrew Breitbart planted the flag of his reputation and his company into the battle for Wisconsin, a flag we have only risen at every opportunity since his passing. That flag flies today and will fly until the final battle is over, Tuesday's final recall election.

In the end, we may look back and wonder if Andrew played fair. Because if you think about it, instead of telling that mob to go to hell, Andrew probably should've told them they were going to need more guys.

 Big Government

The Road to Recall: One Left-Wing Loss After Another in Wisconsin

by Joel B. Pollak

 Tuesday’s recall election in Wisconsin is the culmination of a long political campaign waged by the left to reverse the results of the watershed 2010 election, and to prevent reforms that might be imitated elsewhere.

These included: tax cuts for job-creating businesses, spending reductions to turn deficits into surplus, and collective bargaining reforms that freed state and local governments from the onerous cost of union benefits.

As important as the 2010 election was nationwide, it was even more dramatic in Wisconsin. It brought Gov. Scott Walker to office, but also swept aside liberal stalwart Sen. Russell Feingold and ended the career of veteran Democrat Rep. David Obey. It boosted Rep. Paul Ryan to the head of the House Budget Committee, and eventually saw Wisconsin’s Reince Priebus take over the Republican National Committee.

Gov. Walker’s first move was to declare the state “open for business,” hanging a sign to that effect on the Wisconsin-Illinois border--a sign of Walker’s determination to attract jobs fleeing Illinois and other union-dominated, high-tax and high-spending Midwestern states. By lowering taxes on businesses and balancing the state budget by focusing on spending cuts, Walker sought to transform the state’s economy and its political culture.

Next came Walker’s infamous collective bargaining reforms--legislation that ended the privilege enjoyed by public sector unions to sit on both sides of the negotiating table when wrestling with state and local government over employee benefits and work rules. The reforms also made union dues optional for public employees. (Shrewdly, Walker exempted public safety employees from the reforms--a lesson that Ohio’s Republican leaders failed to learn when their own collective bargaining reforms were defeated.)

As Walker would later point out, the end of mandatory dues was what worried union bosses the most.

Teachers’ unions were also scared to lose their monopoly over the health insurance market in school districts state-wide. But they quickly framed their self-interest as “workers’ rights,” and made their fight against Walker into a national cause.

It is almost difficult to remember just how many battles the unions fought--and lost--en route to attempting to remove Walker from office. First there was the dramatic standoff at the state capitol in Wisconsin, which began when Democrats literally fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum they needed to pass Walker’s collective bargaining bill. The unions brought crowds of demonstrators--including children dragged from school, and physicians handing out fake doctors’ notes--to lay siege to the state legislature.

When the law passed, Democrats sought to overturn it in the courts on procedural and other grounds. That led to the first electoral battle--a close election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court between incumbent Republican David Prosser and Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg declared victory, but turned out to have lost when a local Democrat official discovered over 7,000 missing votes. A recount confirmed the result.

The summer of 2011 saw the first recall effort, in which Democrats sought to swing the balance of power in the state senate by toppling six Republican incumbents. They just needed to win three of the six contests, but managed only two--turning broadcaster Ed Schultz’s live victory rally-style results coverage on MSNBC into an on-air funeral.

The next battle was the recall election itself. Democrats boasted that they had obtained one million signatures--far more than necessary--to recall Gov. Walker. But as Walker’s reforms began to have their effect--new job creation, budget surplus, lower tax burdens, and (ironically) fewer layoffs for public employees--voter enthusiasm for the anti-Walker cause diminished rapidly, and radically. In their own primary, Democrats spurned union-backed Kathleen Falk for Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett--Walker’s opponent in the 2010 race, who spent the interim putting Walker’s collective bargaining reforms to good use.

And so we arrive at the recall election itself--a contest Democrats have called a dry run for the 2012 presidential election, but which they have already lost. No longer running on collective bargaining, they have made voter ID and the so-called “war on women” their top priorities. President Barack Obama, wisely, is keeping his distance. However, he can no longer keep what has happened in Wisconsin from happening everywhere.

Big Government

Walker's Protection of WI Public Employee Rights Pays Huge Dividends

by John Nolte

 
 It's one of the greatest scams in the history left-wing scams, and it goes a little something like this: Taxpayers of all political stripes pay the salaries of public employees, public employees are forced to join public unions, public unions garnish dues from members and then use those dues to fund Democrat candidates to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. What a racket.

In other words, against our will, you and I are helping to fund Democrat campaigns. But so are those public employees forced into unions.

But now, thanks to Governor Walker's reforms, the rights of Wisconsin public employees are protected. They are no longer forced into unions, forced to pay dues, forced to fund political causes they disagree with, and the benefits of this liberation are now paying off:

Public-employee unions in Wisconsin have experienced a dramatic drop in membership -- by more than half for the second-biggest union -- since a law championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker sharply curtailed their ability to bargain over wages and working conditions.

That could mean the sharp losses that some Wisconsin public-worker unions have experienced is a harbinger of similar unions' future nationwide, union leaders fear. Failure to oust Mr. Walker and overturn the Wisconsin law "spells doom," said Bryan Kennedy, the American Federation of Teachers' Wisconsin president.  

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers-fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme's figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

Here's the rub:

Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year. 

In other words, that's how many people Walker's reforms liberated to make their own choices.

The left's year-long freak out in Wisconsin has NOTHING to do with workers' rights -- what about the right NOT to join a union? -- the freak-out was about the loss of an immoral law that forced public employees to join public unions and the subsequent loss of those dues that turn into a gajillion dollars for Democrat campaign contributions and anti-Republican ads.

The fewer union members, the less dues you collect and the less you can then spend on getting the Democrats in office who vote to force people into public unions in order to keep this corrupt vicious circle turning.

Got that?

It is immoral to force people into unions and it is even more immoral to use my tax dollars to fund candidates I oppose.

The same thing is happening with Planned Parenthood right now. That abortion mill receives federal funding -- our tax dollars -- and then spends money on ads opposing Mitt Romney.

It simply doesn't get any more corrupt than that.  

Gov. Walker's leadership on this issue has been groundbreaking. Hopefully, this coming Tuesday, Walker, his Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and the State Senate seats up for recall will stay right where they are -- protecting the taxpayers and the rights of public employees.

Big Government

Armed EPA Agents Visit Ashville Man

By Alan Caruba

Sometimes a small incident says volumes about a large government agency. In this case the Environmental Protection Agency.

Around 1.45 PM on May 23, Ashville, North Carolina resident Larry Keller was in the midst of an international call which he had to cut short in order to answer his front door. He found two armed agents of the EPA who were accompanied by an Ashville Police officer.

According to a May 24 news story in the Ashville Tribune, a weekly newspaper to which I am a contributing columnist, the agents had blocked his and his neighbor’s driveways with their cars. They had driven all the way from Raleigh to confront him.

What had he done? The unannounced visit had been occasioned by news that Dr. Al Armendariz, a regional EPA administrator whose 2010 lecture had been videotaped and been released by the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on April 25th. In the lecture, Dr. Amendariz had said that the agency’s “general philosophy” was to “crucify” oil and gas producers.

He compared the agency’s “philosophy of enforcement” to the way, as a Wall Street Journal editorial reported, “Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them, And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. The point is to ‘make examples’ of alleged lawbreakers.”

The case in point had been Range Resources, a driller who had been exonerated of charges of water pollution as the result of fracking. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the reference to executions “raise(d) questions not only about” not only Dr. Arnendariz’s comments “but the EPA’s larger impartiality and judgment.”

Keller, who describes himself as “a bit of a political activist” had emailed the EPA Director of External Affairs, Dr. David Gray, saying “Hello Mr. Gray. Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello?”

That was enough to dispatch two armed agents to his front door. He was told by one agent that “…my choice of words in the email could be interpreted in many ways.” They did not identify themselves, but asked if he had ever been arrested. He responded swiftly that he had not. When he asked for a copy of his email, they refused to provide it because “the case was still under investigation.”

His wife arrived home and the agents did not want a witness so “They left in a big hurry.”

The Ashville Tribune by Catherine Hunter quoted Keller who described their attitude as “accusatory” reporting that he compared “their tactics to those of Nazi Germany SS methods.” 

Keller contacted the agent’s supervisor, Michael Hill, and was told that the incident with Dr. Armendariz “had prompted so many emails and calls that authorities in Washington, DC ordered an investigation.”
Keller’s email inquiry to contact Dr. Armendariz was treated as a threat when it clearly was not. Since when is trying to contact an EPA administrator a crime?

“I want the world to know,” said Keller, “the government is reaching into the privacy of our homes and computers. I’ve never been so offended by the power of government in my life.”

Do we really want an EPA that uses such tactics against a citizen who has merely indicated an interest in contacting one of their administrators to comment on what he had said during a lecture?

Do we really want an EPA whose working “philosophy” regarding the oil and gas industry is to “crucify” it in order to regulate it and, as we know, is trying to thwart drilling, as well as to end the coal industry that provides an energy resource that produces one half of all the electricity in the nation?

It is, as noted, just one small incident, but it reflects the way the EPA functions in a presumably free society.

Over the years I have read of many incidents in which the EPA has asserted powers to impede the most innocent actions of citizens and it is long past the time when this agency is reined in by Congress.

The only option at this point is to rid the nation of the Obama administration, crack down on the EPA, and rid us of the threat it poses in its efforts to deny entire industries from providing the energy the nation requires and attacks our agricultural and ranching communities for practices that reflect its normal operation.

As they used to advertise horror films, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” An EPA that operates on the basis of intimidating its chosen enemies and that seeks to intimidate citizens inquiring about it, is reason enough to be afraid.

Canada Free Press