Another outstanding newsletter from Wisconsin Club for Growth

Three short articles, all newsworthy and relevant. Enjoy!

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A bad day for government unions




It is way too early to talk of a rout, but two developments last Thursday have to make public employee union bosses very, very nervous.



First, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, who’s been more reluctant than most elected officials to come to grips with a fiscal crisis driven by union benefits, signed legislation requiring retired state workers to chip in on premiums for health insurance they now get for free.



There’s still ample opportunity for this to go wrong. Quinn might be pulling a fast one: We smell the possibility of litigation over changing the terms of benefits already “earned,” and contribution rates aren’t set.



But even if he’s being too clever by half, Quinn has highlighted a problem with no conceivable solution that’s favorable to the unions.



And we’ll note that asking for contributions from current retirees goes farther than anything Scott Walker ever considered as far as we know. So can we look forward to unionistas marching on Springfield with “Recall Quinn” placards?



In a potentially more significant development, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled decisively in favor of union members who objected to the Service Employees International Union taking their money without notice to bankroll a political campaign against then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.



What makes this decision a bigger deal than the Illinois legislation? The Wall Street Journal noted that Justice Alito’s opinion opened the door to explosive questions about “agency shop” rules that compel workers to pay dues for collective bargaining whether they join the union or not. Alito asked, shouldn’t people who choose not to join the union have a right to opt into its political activities, rather than have to opt out or lose control of their compulsory dues?



Sounds like an invitation for more litigation.





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Why the unions had to lose



A hallmark of the recall campaigns was the difficulty recall backers had coming up with an acceptable explanation of why they wanted to remove elected Republicans from office.



The real reason, affirming the permanence of unchallenged union power, quickly proved politically toxic. Something else was needed and as we’ve seen, none of the reasons cooked up by the Left had much credibility.



But conservatives are still obligated to explain why the government unions need to have their wings clipped. An analysis in U.S. News and World Report discusses why conservatives succeeded in Wisconsin:



•Wisconsin voters understood unchecked union power has come to pose a direct threat to the ability to pay for legitimate and necessary government services.

•They understood that the practical effect of government union power is that taxpayers work to support the unions and are expected to pony up, no matter what.

•Taxpayers recognized that they were being shamelessly exploited to ensure a comfortable lifestyle with virtually no risk of unemployment, for people who, even when they work hard and do their jobs well, are net consumers, not producers, of tax revenue.

Importantly, the article notes that voters are way ahead of the political leadership and have told them it’s safe to take necessary steps toward fiscal sanity. We’d go a step farther and say it’s politically dangerous to avoid taking those steps.



Meanwhile, the unions and their Democrat allies are having just as much trouble explaining their defeat as they had explaining why they demanded a recall in the first place.







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A media tutorial

The uneventful 21st Senate District recount remains useful in shining the light of truth on Democrat's electoral cheating.



As a side benefit, the mainstream media clumsily shines a light on its own tactics. Consider Thursday’s Racine Journal Times story trying to debunk allegations that high school students were taken out of classes to drag Democrats to the polls. The headline: “Group, district, refute activist’s get out the vote claims.”



Note the verb “refute.” In media usage, Republicans accused of crimes “deny” a charge. Democrats “refute” it.



True, the Journal-Times had to repeat the GOP allegations in order to dismiss them, but the spin is insulting. Students weren’t sent into Democratic wards, we’re told; they were sent into wards with low turnout in past elections. We’re supposed to be too dumb to recognize two descriptions of the same thing.



Just so we’d know everything’s okay, the Journal Times talked to a member of the school board and reported the following:



“Racine Unified School Board member Sue Kutz, who’s been on the board since the get-out-the-vote events began, said students should have the right to take part in such activities.



“’I don’t care about the partisan politics. It gets them involved and helps them understand how the election process works,” Kutz said. ‘If this is something they want to do and the parents are supporting it, that’s their right and ability to do that.”



It took us two minutes to find there’s only one Susan Kutz with a Racine address and she signed both the Wanggaard and Walker recall petitions. The Journal-Times could have discovered that as quickly as we did and arguably had a professional duty to do so, but chose not to mention it.