Another outstanding newsletter from Wisconsin Club for Growth: these guys really, really get it

This Wednesday Update February 5, 2014

False Despair “The shift to a cleaner energy economy… will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world…I want us to be able to say yes, we did.” --- Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 28, 2014 Comprising a tiny portion of a speech few cared about, those words mark the final the descent of our lord and master into contemptible absurdity. For many of today’s children, a “safer” world would be defined as one in which they can count on sufficient home heating fuel to escape death by freezing, and one in which a federal government oozing false concern did not deliberately drive the cost of keeping safely warm higher and higher with every regulatory edict its ideologues could invent. We are in our 17th year with no detectable trend in global temperatures and a Southern Wisconsin 10-day forecast showed overnight lows in single digits at best, approaching mid-February. If nothing else, last week served to highlight the administration’s policy of asserting preposterous claims and demanding you believe them or be found morally wanting. Meanwhile on Planet Earth, Governor Walker spent the day before Obama’s speech trying to ensure sufficient propane supplies to defuse a crisis of the non-imaginary kind. The takeaway message from an already-forgotten speech: Nothing our current federal government says can be assumed to reflect its true purposes. Nothing. Never trust. Always doubt. Pick your friends carefully… Remember the dockworkers walking away from their corrupt union boss in “On the Waterfront?” A brief item in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal recalled the image. It quoted a January 27 letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi from Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) and Donald Taylor, leader of the United Here union which represents hotel, casino, food-service and warehousing employees. Neither group is exactly enthusiastic toward Conservative ideas, so it’s revealing that they’re onto legislative Democrats working hand-in-hand with Barack Obama to brazenly stick it to them. On recognizing that the laughably-named “Affordable Care Act” would not let them keep the health insurance they liked, the two wrote, they “spent three years presenting the Administration with reasonable fixes to the ACA’s problems. All of them were rejected and the proposed regulations [regarding multi-employer health and welfare trust fund and other self-funded plans] offer virtually no assistance …” They were “bitterly disappointed” with Obamacare regulatory proposals, they wrote, adding, “If the Administration honestly thinks that these proposed rules are responsive to our concerns, they were not listening or they simply did not care.” Remember, these are political allies of the Obama administration. The epiphany isn’t new. LIUNA was not among the cheerleaders for Obamacare and last July the union published a letter to Obama that was blunt in addressing the false promises made to engineer its enactment, calling Obamacare “destructive,” noting that three million union members were in jeopardy of losing their coverage and adding that “This…was something that you promised would not happen.” If enough union members figure out that they’re on call to be used and thrown away in advancing the Left’s broader statist agenda, maybe they’ll walk away too. The Keystone Shuffle Between the nearby item about LIUNA protesting Obamacare deceptions and the State Department’s Friday afternoon document dump on the Keystone XL pipeline, there is a unifying theme. Last Friday, State released a report totaling 11-volumes—the better to make sure it’s not widely read—saying Canadian tar sands oil will go on being extracted and exported with or without the pipeline, so going ahead with the project won’t have much environmental impact that wouldn’t occur anyway. It also noted the resulting creation of an estimated 42,000 jobs and billions in associated tax revenues. If that sounds like the sort of information that would automatically break the five-year logjam over building Keystone, let us introduce you to the Obama Administration. The current dynamics of the pipeline issue exhibit the classic earmarks of Washington Democrats’ familiar double game: Endangered Senate incumbents like Mary Landrieu send sharp missives to the White House, calling for Keystone’s approval. This solidifies her union base and ensures energy-industry campaign donations. The administration meanwhile continues to stall a decision, securing more contributions from rich greenies and a free hand to work its will later this year, with elections safely past. The unifying theme is one of extracting cash and organizational support from unionized labor and then, when anticipated union jobs and benefits are on the line, telling millions of individual union members to go pound sand. Is it too much to hope they’ll eventually notice they’ve been better off with Republicans in charge? November 4th would bring a ballot-box massacre of Democrats if a Keystone project denial were issued anytime soon. Start watching for it one day short of nine months from now. Headlines from Around the State Labor committees consider worker's comp changes February 5, 2014 Wispolitics Nationwide support behind Walker's fundraising advantage February 5, 2014 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Walker: 'Tweaks' to tax cut plan would be OK. February 5, 2014 Green Bay Gazette Walker plan for worker training gets support. February 5, 2014 Appleton Post Crescent As a member of Wisconsin Club for Growth, you are part of a growing movement to fundamentally reform Wisconsin government. When you see our Wisconsin Club for Growth ads on TV, you can proudly say, “I put those there.” And when you see our conservative leaders stand tall against attacks from Big Labor, you can say, “I made it my mission to help them and I did.” Your “Wisconsin Club for Growth” contribution for $25, $50, $100 or more affects our Wisconsin economy, our quality of life, our way of life, and our future. Donate Today