Seizing on any opportunity they can find, liberals in Wisconsin have embraced the fictitious “war on women” and twisted it into “Scott Walker’s War on Women” in an attempt to convince voters to oust the governor well before the end of his term. The imaginary war apparently resonates well with focus groups and in polling ahead of the June 5 recall election. Unfortunately, it is a distraction from the real fight: the Left’s War on Wisconsin.

For close to sixteen months now, out-of-power liberals have waged an all out political assault on Wisconsin. It started with the massive protests in Madison, orchestrated by liberal groups that specialize in creating astroturf masquerading as a genuine grassroots uprising. If it weren’t for the professional protesters and labor bosses, there would have been no massive march on the state capitol, no widespread death threats against Republican lawmakers and staff, and no defacing of public property in the name of free speech.

The protests and successive round of recall elections launched in their wake are not so much about the specifics of Governor Walker’s policies as they are ongoing attempts by the Left to reassert political power in a state that rejected liberal candidates in 2010.

When labor bosses rallied their political teams to protest common sense collective bargaining reforms, they were fighting to defend plush pension and healthcare packages that were costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars they could no longer afford. Championing that kind of government spending was a war on Wisconsin.

When labor bosses opposed giving local governments the flexibility to achieve cost savings while lowering property taxes, they were essentially holding taxpayers hostage and threatening the stability of local governments across Wisconsin. Labor bosses were waging a war on Wisconsin.

When progressive leaders joined forces with unions to kick off a round of recall elections because they disagreed with votes cast by some conservative lawmakers, they were slapping voters in the face and telling them they elected the wrong people. The progressive leaders were waging war on Wisconsin.

Beyond the politics, the policies that wage war on Wisconsin go back years. Big spending governors in both the Republican and Democratic parties managed to grow state government to an impossibly bloated size prior to Walker’s election. To maintain the pretense of following a constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, outgoing Democrat governor Jim Doyle resorted to accounting gimmicks that would have impressed even an Enron executive. The real budget deficit stood at $3.6 billion in a state where job losses had totaled 150,000 under the leadership of a liberal governor.

Thanks to the policies of the Left, at the end of 2010 more Wisconsinites held government jobs than manufacturing jobs. Major employers were threatening to leave the state after liberals in the legislature pushed through a series of tax increases that put Wisconsin employers at a competitive disadvantage. The future was grim and the central economic development plan of the Left was to build a high-speed passenger rail line between Milwaukee and Madison at a taxpayer cost of nearly $1 billion.

Reckless spending, wasteful projects, massive job losses, and employers looking to flee the state are among the consequences of the Left’s war on Wisconsin prior to 2011.

The political actions of the Left ranging from outrageous rhetoric and death threats on conservative lawmakers, to recall election after recall election signal a desperate gamble and perhaps a sort of final electoral battle to decide who will win the war on Wisconsin. Whatever their choice, citizens of the state should know that there is a difference between a “war” fabricated to win an election and a real political war where the outcome will define Wisconsin for a generation to come.

Originally published here. 

Promoted from the diaries

By: Brian Sikma

Kris Barrett, the politically active spouse of Tom Barrett, current mayor of Milwaukee and the Democratic nominee running against Gov. Scott Walker, has been caught using her taxpayer funded e-mail account to lobby and campaign for Democratic candidates and causes. Mrs. Barrett is a public school teacher and last year she was employed by Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin’s largest school district. The district has two policies that prohibit employees from using any government resources, including e-mail addresses, for political purposes.

Using Wisconsin’s open records law Collin Roth, a researcher with the conservative investigative watchdog group Media Trackers, obtained e-mails from Mrs. Barrett’s account showing her lobbying Democratic lawmakers to vote against Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining reforms. Another e-mail exchange found Mrs. Barrett recruiting fellow public school teachers to campaign against a conservative Republican candidate running for county executive in Milwaukee County.

Wisconsin has a public purpose doctrine upheld by state courts that prohibits government employees from using public resources for political purposes. More specifically, Milwaukee Public Schools has an ethics code and an acceptable use policy for school resources that specifically prohibit staff from using government resources to promote a political agenda or candidate. The ethics code reads in part, “[Employees] may contribute to political candidates, either with financial resources or in donation of services, provided donations do not utilize MPS equipment, time, or work product.”

Last summer Wisconsin public school teacher and union boss Shelly Moore ran as a Democrat in one of the state Senate recall elections. After it was discovered that she had hijacked taxpayer resources and used her e-mail for political and campaign work a complaint was filed against her. This time around, Democrats and Big Labor groups are hoping that an arguably compromised legal investigation into county government employees who worked for Walker and used their work computers for political activities becomes a scandal that sinks his candidacy in the June 5th recall election.

Reflecting that strategy, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett has ratcheted up his public musing about the investigation and roundly condemned those who broke the rules. With his own wife now discovered to have abused public resources and violating school district rules, Barrett’s attack may need some modification.

As of Monday afternoon the Barrett campaign had not commented about the situation. Kris Barrett is a regular surrogate for the campaign reaching out to women voters and those who oppose Walker’s collective bargaining reforms.

Brian Sikma is the communications director for Media Trackers. 

Just released campaign finance documents show Big Labor both inside and outside of Wisconsin pouring just over $7 million into the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker and four GOP state senators. In the 2011 recall campaign combined total spending by unions and progressive groups reached $14.7 million, or just over twice what labor unions alone have managed to raise or spend in what is the opening round of the effort to knock out Governor Walker less than two years into his term.

Much of this pre-primary spending, disclosed in reports that ended April 30, went to promoting Democrat gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk and a bevy of attack ads aimed at Governor Walker. Tom Barrett, considered the favorite of Democrat Party insiders in the May 8th recall primary, directly benefited from only a fraction of labor spending.

Read More →

By: Brian Sikma

Washington is broken. For decades elites in both parties have traded control back and forth. With but few exceptions the wise old men in both parties have disagreed not about the path the country should take, but how fast that path should be traveled. The end result: Americans now have a federal government bigger than ever before, spending more than ever before, regulating more than ever before, and saddled with enough debt and deficits to threaten the future of the next generation. For the first time ever the next generation of Americans faces the very real possibility that their standard of living will decrease from that of their parents and grandparents.

The general inertia of the federal government as it explodes in size, scope and cost is the product of countless pacts made with the devil as establishment insiders have cut deals to maintain their power. When elitists Republicans like Richard Lugar compromise it has been a wholesale sell out of principles in exchange for political power and prestige. They trade away the future of the nation for their own legacy.

Washington is broken because the establishment is self-serving.

Senator Richard Lugar is not a member of the establishment; he is the establishment.

When Lugar took office in 1977 the national debt stood at $706 billion. Adjusted for inflation that would be close to $2 trillion in today’s money. Now, the national debt is $15.7 trillion. How much longer can we stand the likes of Richard Lugar championing fiscal responsibility and bringing Hoosier common sense to Washington?

Richard Lugar’s entire career in the United States Senate has morphed into walking onto the field, playing defense and compromising away on almost every single major issue facing the country. Democrats and liberals don’t mind it when Republicans walk onto the field and compromise – it gives them the political cover they need to continue to sell out the future of the country. What Democrats and liberals do mind is when Republicans and conservatives decide they actually believe in America enough to start fighting for her future.

It’s not enough to simply put on the uniform and go play defense. Politics is a full contact sport and with a nation in the balance we need to field champions who will start fighting the giants of the establishment. It’s time for conservatives to play to win. Washington needs to see more senators who are fighters, not compromisers.

Shortly after he was elected to the Senate in a Tea Party sweep in 2010, Wisconsin businessman Ron Johnson quipped to his new colleagues “I didn’t come to join the club, I came to join the fight.” Richard Lugar is the club’s president, and Indiana has a chance to replace him with a true fighter.

Richard Mourdock will never be named Barack Obama’s favorite Republican. He won’t win the applause of the pundits and elites who are enamored by their own brilliance but can’t understand the values that everyday Americans hold dear. Mourdock won’t arrive in Washington ready to join the club, he’ll arrive ready to join the fight because already in Indiana he’s stood for conservative principles and challenged the Obama Administration’s unprecedented power grab aimed at scuttling free enterprise.

From my vantage point on the front line of the fight here in Wisconsin, I know the difference between an individual who stands up to established bullies and a person who desperately wants their approval. As someone who is proud to be Hoosier born and raised, I’m asking conservatives in Indiana to vote for Richard Mourdock on May 8th. It’s time to push back on failed establishment liberals regardless of their party affiliation. It’s time to starting winning the fight for the future of our country.

This endorsement reflects my personal views and is not an endorsement by any organization with which I am affiliated.

By: Brian Sikma

This week Wisconsin Democrats may have done more than anyone else to defeat their recall effort aimed at removing Governor Scott Walker, Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and three state senators from office.

Driving the debate in Wisconsin for the past several weeks was legislation to overhaul the state’s outdated mining regulations. At stake was a proposed iron ore mine in the northern Wisconsin – an area widely viewed as the most economically depressed part of the state. Mine investors noted that the hundreds of direct jobs that would be created had an average salary nearly twice the current per-household income of the region. Hundreds more ancillary jobs would also have been created in other parts of the state as the mine contracted with businesses such as Caterpillar Mining’s Milwaukee plant to manufacture the equipment needed to operate the mine.

On Tuesday, March 6, state Senate Democrats killed the regulatory overhaul that would have eliminated unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to the issuance of a mine permit and clarified the subsequent regulatory structure under which mines must operate. Since burdensome regulations were imposed decades ago, no new iron mines have been opened in Wisconsin even though the state has one of the largest iron ore deposits in the United States.

After Senate Democrats scored a coup to kill the mine legislation by garnering the support of a lone Republican engulfed in an interpersonal conflict with fellow GOP senators, one of the state’s leading union officials blasted the move saying Democrats were proving that they were “job killers.” Lyle Balistreri, head of the 15,000 plus-member Milwaukee Building and Construction Trades Council, an AFL-CIO affiliate, took to the stage at a union rally the evening following the vote and delivered blistering remarks castigating Democrats for opposing the legislation.

The crowd of restless union members met his unscheduled anti-Democrat comments at a rally intended as an anti-Walker event with calls of approval.

In a follow-up television interview, Balistreri – whose union has backed several Democrats who are now state Senators – declared, “For the Senate Democrats to vote against this bill is a sign that they’re not with us.” Hours before the Senate vote the day before, several construction unions rallied in Madison to demonstrate their support for the reform.

This latest controversy is only a continuing development in a growing feud that could split the once-powerful alliance between unions and Wisconsin Democrats.

When several leading unions extracted a budget-veto promise from Democrat gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Falk in exchange for their endorsement in the recall Walker campaign, an intra-union spat become a public controversy. WEAC, the state’s teachers union, was responsible for creating the pledge. But when union president Mary Bell lied to the press about the existence of the pledge she was blasted by a police union official who disagreed with both the pledge and Bell’s attempt to cover it up.

WEAC’s unprecedented failure to poll its membership before endorsing Falk landed it in hot water from both rank-and-file union members and progressive bloggers.

The nationally observed protests at the Wisconsin state capitol in the spring of 2011 were a public demonstration of the strong relationship between Big Labor and the Democratic Party. Recall efforts aimed at Republican state Senators following the collective bargaining reform battle failed to net Democrats their desired majority in the state Senate. In that fight unions and their allies spent more money than the Democratic Party, and if Democrats hope to be competitive in this round of recalls they are going to have to rely on union spending.

The split between Wisconsin labor leaders and Wisconsin Democrats is no small thing considering they have been in complete lockstep since Republicans took control of the state in 2010. The current disagreement with public sector unions going after one another, public sector unions opposing private sector unions, and both groups warring against the Democrat establishment, could signal the demise of a once-powerful alliance. At minimum, with national unions reluctant to play in state issues as they work to re-elect President Obama, the state-level feud reveals an opportunity for conservatives to exploit the deep divide that marks the often eclectic coalition that Democrats frequently depend upon to win elections.

A quaint pastime of late for the mainstream media has been calling out radio talk show hosts for the stupid things they occasionally say. Make that conservative talk show hosts, because the entire spectrum of so-called “progressive” talk radio is going completely unnoticed. A case could be made that this is because liberal talk radio has a listenership of irrelevantly miniscule proportions when compared to the millions of Americans who regularly tune in to local and national talk radio shows. But be that as it may, certainly the importance of progressive talk to the liberal base and its presence on the airwaves should merit some scrutiny, particular from those in the media who like to imagine themselves as impartial, unbiased communicators of fact.

In Wisconsin, a state widely seen as ground zero for polarized politics, a thriving talk radio community exists. Joining the occasionally biased hosts of Wisconsin Public Radio in championing liberal causes is John “Sly” Sylvester, the state’s leading progressive talk radio host. Sylvester regularly obtains interviews with leading reporters in the state as he presents his point of view on local, state and national politics.

Last Thursday when conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart suddenly passed away, Sly used his show to make insensitive and horrendous remarks about Breitbart, and gave callers a forum for making utterly vile and inappropriate remarks about Breitbart’s work and family. Declaring that he would pour weed killer on Breitbart’s grave to prevent a resurrection, Sly enthused, “I can kill him like the weed he was.” Seconds later he emphatically declared, “I’m glad he is dead!”

Comparing Breitbart to former North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il, terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, and Confederate soliders, Sly declared, “The world is a better place today. Can you think of the last time you’ve been this happy that someone is dead?” The last time I remember the nation collectively cheering the death of someone was when heroic Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. There is no comparison between someone as evil as a known terrorist responsible for killing thousands of Americans and any individual on the left side or right side of the American political spectrum.

But Sly didn’t stop with his comments there. He encouraged callers to join him in his rant, and one particular caller managed to – with the approval of Sly – rage:

“I pray and hope that all his possessions are torn and scattered to the ends of the Earth. And that his family is struck dumb and unable to lament. I hope his descendants be infested by boils and physical deformity and left only to copulate with beasts…”

The leading liberal talk show host in Wisconsin did nothing to rebuke the caller. Maybe that is no surprise since he has in the past used his show repeatedly to make sexually charged comments about Republican Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. The day after his comments grabbed the attention of conservative watchdog organization Media Trackers, Sly managed to quietly pull the audio of that segment from his website.

No apology has been forthcoming.

No sponsors have stopped advertising.

When Rush Limbaugh makes a poor judgment call, he can apologize and the media is still outraged. When a liberal radio host proclaims his hatred of a conservative journalist and his family, or when a liberal radio host mocks tornado victims, or when any number of liberal opinion leaders make sexually charged comments about conservative women, the silence of the mainstream media is deafening. If it is morally responsible for the self-proclaimed arbiters of fact and gatekeepers of public consciousness to attack media personalities who make insensitive comments, the one-sided outrage betrays an agenda – maybe a subconscious agenda – that looks a lot like censorship.

By: Brian Sikma, Media Trackers

Indiana House Democrats today continued their walkout by refusing to show up for work when the House was scheduled to go into session at 9:00 am. The quorum call found only 62 members present, a handful excused, and the rest absent. Republicans hold a 60-40 majority but to reach a quorum for business there must be 67 legislators present. The presence of only seven Democrats is needed to end the walkout and allow the House to get back to work.

Throughout this latest walkout (the second one this session and the third in the right-to-work debate), Democrat leadership has been unsuccessful in keeping a completely united front. Thursday morning six Democrats were spotted on the House floor but not all of them appear to have cast a vote. If they and just one more of their colleagues were to break away from their caucus and its union bosses, business could resume on the floor and in committee.

A mid-morning press conference was held by Senator David Long (R-Ft. Wayne) to address the Senate’s perspective of the stalemate. Long, the Senate president pro tempore, called the actions of House Democrats “really troubling” and said that the stonewalling was “at the behest of a special interest group.” According to him, in conversations that he has had with the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency, the constitutionality of an amendment proposed by Democrats to the right-to-work bill was raised but never seen as an obstacle to a floor vote.

Long said that the agreement was between House leadership and Senate leadership that after the long Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, both sides would come back for a debate and a series of votes on amendments that Democrats would prepare. Ample time was given for interested parties to draft amendments that would eventually get up or down votes in the House. When Republicans, after merely noting that they believed a measure to put right-to-work up for a statewide referendum vote was unconstitutional, said they would give the amendment a vote, Democrats left their seats and have not returned since.

“Individuals who refuse to do their job,” Long said, “I don’t know of another other job in America where that would stand.” As modest sized protests by union members moved into their third day, he also said that he hoped the opinions of a majority of Hoosiers would cut through the noise of the protesting. “I hope the outrage of the people of Indiana will be heard loud and clear,” he said in an apparent reference not to right-to-work, but the utter refusal of House Democrats to even work at all.

Liberals are now arguing that because right-to-work was not the defining issue of the 2010 election it should not be heard or, alternatively, it should go up for a statewide referendum. In Wisconsin opponents of Governor Scott Walker’s reforms tried to use a similar tactic saying that because Walker didn’t mention collective bargaining reform he and the Republican legislature should not have passed it. But saying that because an issue was not “the” issue (whatever that means) of a particular election cycle binds policymakers to inaction is a pretty specious argument. Besides, Indiana has been debating right-to-work for a number of years now, and bills have been introduced in previous sessions to make the state a right-to-work state.

“When I ran for state Senate in 2010, the people of my district, and people across Indiana were focused on job creation and what we can do to make Indiana’s economy stronger,” said freshman Senator Jim Banks (R-Columbia City). Banks, a rock-ribbed conservative, said that other issues were certainly important, but if right-to-work is a tool to bring jobs to the state and, more importantly, protect the rights of workers, then “we should be dealing with this issue, we should be confronting this challenge head-on.”

Just how long the impasse will last remains to be seen. Republicans have repeatedly said they will allow Democrats to debate the bill and have votes on their amendments to the legislation. Until House Democrats come back to work, Hoosiers will be left wondering if RTW, the common shorthand for right-to-work policies, actually stands for “refusing-to-work.” 

By: Brian Sikma

Indiana unions have been very good to Indiana Democrats. Minority Leader Pat Bauer netted over $76,200 in contributions from union PACs in his 2010 re-election campaign. Just one SEIU-affiliated PAC in Indiana gave 158% more contributions to Democrats than Republicans that same cycle and two top local SEIU operatives have a record of giving exclusively to Democratic candidates and local parties.

Perhaps it is at the behest of unions that Indiana House Democrats have chosen to carry on their tradition of opposing right-to-work by staging a walkout. With right-to-work legislation forcing unions to actually prove their value to members and preventing unions keeping non-union workers out of certain jobs, no wonder the House Democrats have decided to let House Republicans (who hold a legislative majority) penalize them with $1,000-a-day per legislator fines.

Right-to-work reform has been bantered about in the state for several years, and last year a 36-day walkout by House Democrats managed to kill the proposal. This year, the drama picked up afresh with a 3-day walkout by Democrats before the threat of fines brought them back.

In public and private Democrat leader Bauer said that there would be no more walkouts this year, and that the Democrat caucus would show up for work even when the right-to-work bill was on the agenda. That promise was promptly broken when Bauer appeared only briefly and by himself on the House floor Tuesday afternoon without his caucus in tow.

The walkout continued with a pep rally / Democrat caucus meeting in the statehouse rotunda on Wednesday morning. After failing to show up in their seats for the 9:00 am session start, House Republicans slapped them with the long-awaited fine. The absence of a quorum has shuttered legislative business all the way from the chamber to committee hearings.

Democrats, instead of fleeing to Illinois like they did last year, have chosen to remain in the state. In fact, a walk around the state capitol will find a number of them milling about or headed to and from their offices. Due to the modest numbers of union protesters that have showed up each day, the capitol is swarming with state troopers who could, under the rules of the House and the provisions of the Indiana Constitution, be ordered to nab a few Democrats and take them to the House chamber where business could resume.

For now, Democrats are enjoying some expensive leisure time and there is no indication of when they will start doing their job again. Union money is an important part of the Democratic Party’s political success, so it’s no wonder that Democrats would put their union-underwritten money stream ahead of constituents. It is, however, quite shameful for them to do so.

Originally published on Hoosier Access by Media Trackers.

At the heart of Indiana’s current battle over right-to-work legislation is union power. By some estimates, the legislation would impact 34,000 workers and give them the choice of belonging to a union. Without right-to-work laws, workers must join a union as a condition for employment. The worker is not given a choice in the matter and employers are barred from hiring otherwise qualified employees if they choose to not join a union.

Indiana House Democrats are obstructing the passage of right-to-work legislation by repeatedly walking out on the legislative process. On Tuesday, they said the reason for their afternoon walkout was to protest Republican opposition to an amendment they would offer to place right-to-work legislation to a statewide referendum vote. Wednesday morning the Democrats rallied in the statehouse rotunda with a modest crowd of union supporters and pledged to stay out “one day longer, one day stronger.”

The only problem with the referendum is that Indiana, unlike its neighbor Ohio, doesn’t have a referendum mechanism. Only state constitutional amendments must pass a statewide vote.

What right-to-work opponents want is something that has never been done in Indiana for a regular piece of legislation. One lawmaker, Rep. Tim Wesco (R), said that putting a bill to a referendum vote would be “without precedent.” There is simply no constitutional provision requiring or even allowing a referendum to take place. Such extra-constitutional legislating does not appear to bother House Democrats who, led by Minority Leader Pat Bauer, have consistently resorted to walkouts as a means of blocking legislative business.

In Ohio the death knell for union reform was sounded when unions and their allies were able to push SB 5, Governor John Kasich’s collective bargaining reform measure, to a statewide vote. The measure was soundly defeated, but only after a petition process that saw over a quarter of the signatures gathered thrown out for fraud or other errors. Observers noted that a critical difference between Ohio’s battle and the one faced by states like Wisconsin, is that the reforms have had a chance to go into effect in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and public support for them has then increased over time. In Ohio, the battle was reasoned arguments versus union scare tactics and with the reforms unable to go into effect, the public was denied the chance to see how effective the measure really could be.

Unions are pushing hard to put the Indiana right-to-work measure up for a referendum because they are hoping to preserve their power by imitating Ohio. That such an imitation would be extra-constitutional does not bother them. After all, their lip service to “this is the people’s house,” and “power to the people” is only a charade to give some semblance of legitimacy to their repeated efforts to shut down legislative business. The people of Indiana elected the current make-up of the state legislature. Shutting down the legislature to promote a measure that the legislature has no constitutional authority to enact is not democracy – it is power politics at its worst.

If unions and Indiana Democrats are really interested in using a referendum mechanism to deal with union reform, they should reintroduce their proposal as a Constitutional amendment that could go to the people for a vote. Alternatively, they could introduce a Constitutional amendment to create a referendum system in Indiana. Both of these approaches would be more legitimate than their current temper tantrums and would at least give a passing nod to the idea that government should respect parameters established by the state Constitution.

Originally published on Hoosier Access by Media Trackers.