Wisconsin Democratic Party Joins Effort to Recall Eight Wisconsin Senators

Apparently only eight are eligible to be recalled, and they're going after all eight.

Of course, now we'll have to recall the Fleebaggers.

I guess I underestimated exactly how critical union contributions -- especially government union contributions -- are to Democratic campaign coffers.

“The strategy for Democrats has been public union growth. If we’re able to put any restraint on public union growth, it will put a significant restraint on their political clout,” said Saul Anuzis, chairman of UnionRefund.org, a group that works to inhibit unions’ political spending.

Allah thinks it's mostly about galvanizing the base, preparing the battlefield, for 2012, and while surely that's part of it, I think that overlooks the obvious in favor of the clever: No, this is really mostly about how absolutely critical government unions are to the Democrats. It's the only segment of union growth in America. And every raise given to a government union worker is just more money that flows directly into Democratic campaigns.

A good quote over there from a Republican Senator, Randy Hopper, who basically vows that if he's looking into his political grave -- he's ready to jump.

I continue not believing the polls showing 62% of the public opposing taking "rights" to collective bargaining away from union members. For one thing -- that loaded word "rights." Rights that Obama's federal government workers do not have, thanks to noted right-winger Jimmy Carter, who realized that government workers should not be allowed to extort from their employers.

“The fact of the matter is, the president told us at the White House that he had unilaterally frozen spending for federal employees. Federal employees don’t have collective bargaining rights,” Barbour told reporters during an event at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday. “The idea you guys have given the country is it’s just like there’s some constitutional right to collective bargaining. About half the states either don’t have it at all – my state does not have collective bargaining – or they limit it. The federal employees are not allowed to have collective bargaining for pay, for pensions, for health care.”

Even Jimmy Carter was wise enough to stop unions from collectively bargaining with the government. People need to think about that.

For another thing, it's easy to say someone should have "rights," but do non-union workers care enough to vote against those who strip them of such rights?

There's an old joke about the difference between mishap and tragedy: When your house burns down, it's a mishap; when my car gets a flat, it's a tragedy. People are of course most concerned about what they're most concerned about, which is naturally themselves.

Which means they may intellectually, or for "being nice" reasons support PEU's "right" to extort money from taxpayers and launder it back into Democratic coffers -- how passionate are they in this opinion? I think they don't give a rat's ass, personally, and while they may say they don't support this, I think they view it as a mishap (something that happens to you) and not a tragedy (something that happens to me).

Who'll flip against the Republicans? Well, among the, say, 20% of the state and municipal union workers who actually vote Republican, maybe half of them will flip. Almost no one else will.

By the way, I'm misremembering that joke; if you can think of the proper way to write it, let me know.

Joke Wrong: The actual joke doesn't really work so well to illustrate my point. oblig. says it's the Mel Brooks explanation of the difference between tragedy and humor:

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Humor is when you fall down a sewer and die."

Ah well, it still gets at the same idea.

Rephrasing the Question: “Do you favor forcing all state employees to join a union and empowering government unions to take union dues directly from employee paychecks?”

posted by Ace at 07:19 PM

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