Tag: Scott Walker

Wisconsin spends $1.2 million defending “John Doe” prosecutors.

8:43 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The State of Wisconsin has spent more than $1.2 million defending Democratic Party prosecutors who had instigated investigations against innnocent citizens merely because those citizens opposed that party’s agenda.

The courts have repeatedly ruled against those investigations, sometimes with very harsh words. Yet, the state continues to spend money defending them, even though the governor, Scott Walker, is a Republican and the state legislature is controlled by the Republican Party.

This quote from the article sums it up:

“They lost in the highest court in Wisconsin and they still won’t let go. And we are supposed to keep battling them on our dime while the taxpayers pick up the tab for them to harass us in court. And why is the state of Wisconsin paying legal fees for Milwaukee County officials who are being sued for violating people’s civil rights in a Milwaukee County investigation? Let Milwaukee County taxpayers pay to defend their corrupt public officials.”

If Scott Walker is serious about running for President, he should end the funding of these prosecutors now.

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A look at Ted Cruz’s election strategy

9:36 am

The presidential election: While other candidates trash Rand Paul, Donald Trump, and their supporters, Cruz refuses to do so, taking the high road in the expectation that he will eventually win those supporters when Paul and Trump drop out of the campaign.

As Cruz is quoted in this different article,

“I would … note that an awful lot of Republicans, including other Republican candidates, have gone out of their way to smack Donald Trump with a stick. Now I think that’s just foolish,” he said. Asked why, Cruz paused and then replied, “Donald Trump had a rally in Phoenix, Ariz. [to which] between 10 and 20 thousand people came out. When you attack and vilify the people at that rally as crazies, it does nothing to help Republicans win in 2016. I’d like every single person at that rally to show up and vote in 2016, knock on doors with energy and passion, and turn this country around. If Washington politicians show contempt and condescension to those [voters,] that is a path to losing at the ballot box.”

Though I don’t post much about election campaigns, this does not mean I do not follow them closely. Most of what happens is childish drivel (such as last week’s debate and the big to-do between Trump and Megan Kelly), but if you look for real nuggets of information about the candidates you can find them. These two stories illustrate the cool-headed strength of Ted Cruz. His track record shows he is not afraid to fight, but it also appears he knows how to choose his fights well.

I have liked Scott Walker for the same reasons. In Wisconsin he was willing to fight, but kept a cool head and held back from fighting over petty issues. The problem for Walker now is that he has seemed too cool-headed during the campaign, unwilling to do anything that might offend anyone. This is not going to win elections. Nor is it going to change things even if he should win.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court declares illegal Democratic SWAT team raids on conservatives

1:35 pm

Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that the Democratic Party investigations and SWAT team raids on conservatives were illegal and “unsupported in either reason or law.”

As the court noted,

The special prosecutor has disregarded the vital principle that in our nation and our state political speech is a fundamental right and is afforded the highest level of protection. The special prosecutor’s theories, rather than ‘assur[ing] [the] unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people’ . . . instead would assure that such political speech will be investigated with paramilitary-style home invasions conducted in the pre-dawn hours and then prosecuted and punished.

In other words, the Democrats in Wisconsin, disliking the fact that Republicans and Scott Walker had legally won elections and were publicly criticizing them, tried to shut their opponents up by using the power of the government to literally destroy them. It is important to repeat exactly what they did:

On October 3, 2013, multiple Wisconsin conservatives were awakened by a persistent pounding on the door, their houses were illuminated by floodlights, and police — sometimes with guns drawn — poured into their homes. Once inside, the investigators turned the private residences of these innocent conservative citizens “upside down,” seeking an extraordinarily broad range of documents and information. These raids were supplemented by subpoenas that secured for investigators massive amounts of electronic information.

This is the behavior of storm-troopers and tyrants. Thankfully, the court in Wisconsin has now forcibly agreed, and declared these actions fundamentally wrong.

This ruling means that the lawsuits against the Democratic prosecutor and everyone who was involved in these abusive investigations and raids will go forward with great vigor.

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Scott Walker reveals his inner Democrat

9:11 am

In a disappointing move, Scott Walker, Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate, has announced his support for state funding for a new basketball arena, which would require increased taxes as well.

It seems to me that Republicans, no matter how conservative, always eventually disappoint and evolve into big government stooges. This happens partly because they are politicians, who are generally a lower form of life, and partly because politicians tend to do what the voting public wants. Sadly, for the past century the American voting public — even the so-called conservative voting public — has consistently voted for more government handouts, which is why Republicans evolve to the left with time.

For Walker this is unfortunately seems to be happening sooner than I had hoped.

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Supreme Court upholds voter ID again

9:31 am

The Supreme Court today turned down a challenge to Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, essentially allowing it to become fully effective.

This is not the first time the court has upheld voter ID. Moreover, the decision today is another political victory for Scott Walker, who pushed the legislation through, and a defeat for Democrats and the left, which for some reason fear a system that will make sure voter fraud is difficult if not impossible.

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The collapse of corrupt unions in Wisconsin

6:59 pm

Link here.

[The reason unions fought Scott Walker’s reforms so hard] wasn’t because they were worried about employees as much as they were worried about losing political clout, earned mainly through forced contributions and closed shops. They used that money not so much to improve the lives of public-sector employees, but to hand-pick their bosses, who would also be their negotiating partners. Now that their cash flow has become so greatly restricted — and will likely become even more so — they have to focus on delivering value to members or watch them walk away. That’s exactly how it should have been all along.

Morrissey is commenting on a Washington Post article, which noted these facts:

Union officials declined to release precise membership data but confirmed in interviews that enrollment is dramatically lower since the new law was signed in 2011. The state branch of the National Education Association, once 100,000 strong, has seen its membership drop by a third. The American Federation of Teachers, which organized in the college system, saw a 50 percent decline. The 70,000-person membership in the state employees union has fallen by 70 percent.

The bottom line is that the use of force is almost always wrong, whether it is forcing people to join unions or forcing florists to participate in gay weddings. Forcing public employees to be union members didn’t so much improve their wages as much as encourage corruption in the public sector while simultaneously screwing the taxpayer.

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Ted Cruz introduces bill outlawing political targeting of citizens.

11:00 am

Link here.

As Jazz Shaw notes at the link, “You mean that wasn’t already illegal?” Though Shaw does carefully analyze the political ramifications of making Democrats vote for or against these bills, ramifications that will likely weaken the power-hungry in government, my first thought when I read this was instead, “This is more evidence why I am increasingly not a big fan of Ted Cruz.”

You see, how does one really increase freedom and weaken the power of government by passing another law? You really don’t. This law might be politically effective, but if it should happen to pass and Obama actually sign it, all it will accomplish is create another law that can be used as a wedge to pry more power into government.

Cruz does this kind of showboating a lot. Though I almost always agree with him, the behavior illustrates why a senator is not the best choice for President. We don’t need a showboat right now. We need a conservative President who understands how to run a hostile executive branch even as he cuts its power and influence and still wins elections.

Sounds like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, doesn’t it? Both have the right qualifications, winning elections even as they were being slimed by the left wing union, media, and Democratic Party attack machine for actually cutting the power of these power-hungry groups.

As a senator Ted Cruz does not have and cannot get that track record. Worse, he has made me doubt his tea party sincerity with his talk of rebuilding NASA and going to Mars. Instead of trimming the waste in NASA, it appears he wants to keep feeding the Texas pork that NASA sends his way.

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The evil polices of that evil Republican Scott Walker has now produced a $1 billion budget surplus in Wisconsin.

10:16 am

The evil polices of that evil Republican Scott Walker has now produced a $1 billion budget surplus in Wisconsin.

Senate Republicans Tuesday narrowly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s $541 million tax cut proposal in a vote that guaranteed the cuts will become law.

The tax decreases — the third round of cuts by Republicans in less than a year — passed 17-15 with GOP Sen. Dale Schultz of Richland Center joining all Democrats in voting against the proposal. The proposal now goes to the Assembly, which passed a different version of the tax cuts last month with two Democrats joining all Republicans in supporting it.

With growing tax collections now expected to give the state a $1billion budget surplus in June 2015, Walker’s bill will cut property and income taxes for families and businesses, and zero out all income taxes for manufacturers in the state. [emphasis mine]

Why is it that even with gigantic and yearly surpluses Democrats still oppose tax cuts? Or do we already know the answer?

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An interview with Scott Walker.

10:22 am

An interview with Scott Walker.

Lots of interesting information about the Wisconsin governor, who so far looks to me to be the best candidate, from either party, for President in 2016. The key paragraphs, however, are those that describe the violent threats made against himself, his wife, and his children by his Democratic and union opponents.

The protestors would shout me down; they would shout down lawmakers at events. They would not allow people to speak. It eventually got to the point where I and even some of our Senate Republicans in particular got death threats. I got threats against me probably a stack high from the ground. As I point out in my book “Unintimidated,” we had one of the most egregious ones, one that I got right before I went into a press conference. It was directed actually at my wife, pointing out that a governor had never been assassinated before in Wisconsin, but that she should start paying attention and that they not only were going to target me, but maybe they’d start thinking about my kids. It talked about where my kids went to school at the time, it talked about where my wife works, where my father-in-law lives, and where my parents were at. There was another one that talked about threatening to gut my wife like a deer. My kids were targeted on Facebook. There were just all sorts of horrible things.

Ain’t it nice how Obama came out so strongly to condemn this ugliness in Wisconsin when it occurred? You say he didn’t? I am shocked, shocked!

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Scott Walker’s epic battle to beat the unions in Wisconsin.

10:30 am

Scott Walker’s epic battle to beat the unions in Wisconsin.

When they and Democratic legislators failed to prevent passage of Act 10 [the law that defanged the unions], they tried to defeat — with a scurrilous smear campaign that backfired — an elected state Supreme Court justice. They hoped that changing the court’s composition would get Walker’s reforms overturned. When this failed, they tried to capture the state Senate by recalling six Republican senators. When this failed, they tried to recall Walker. On the night that failed — he won with a larger margin than he had received when elected 19 months earlier — he resisted the temptation to proclaim, “This is what democracy looks like!”

Read it. It describes the way our country can defeat the fascists.

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Great Scott

10:33 pm

Great Scott.

Meanwhile, the results of the changes began coming in. In Milwaukee, the reforms saved some $11 million, an embarrassing windfall for Democratic mayor Tom Barrett, who had predicted that the city’s structural deficit would “explode.” Localities across the state have seen similar savings. There is no disputing the central fact of Walker’s tenure as governor: His reforms are working.

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