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Posts Tagged ‘wisconsin’

Walker wins!

Posted by Richard on June 5, 2012

Much earlier than I had expected (less than 2 hours after the polls closed), Fox News projected that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had survived his recall election. NBC,  CBS, and CNN soon followed. This is a tremendous victory for the Tea Party movement and a crushing defeat for organized labor and the Socialist Democrats.

Apparently, according to Fox News, earlier projections that the vote would be incredibly close were based on exit polling, and when the vote totals started coming it, it soon became clear that there was a significant difference between the actual votes and what the exit polls predicted. In other words, either many of the people being exit-polled lied, or (much more likely) the exit polling didn’t question a representative sample.

I’m thrilled, but cautiously so. With 55% reporting, Walker leads 57-42. That’s bound to tighten as more of Madison and Milwaukee come in. So I just hope Walker’s margin of victory ends up being big enough to avoid a recount or challenge. Because you know if it’s close, challenger Tom Barrett and the unions will try to pull an Al Franken.

UPDATE: Here’s the biggest laugh of the night. David Axelrod looked at the Obama-Romney numbers from the Wisconsin exit polls and tweeted that “WI raises big questions for Mitt” — shortly before the actual vote totals completely discredited the exit polls.

Axelrod must have also fashioned the Obama campaign’s response. According to Politico, they’re claiming that a “strong message” was sent to Walker. As Joshua Sharf tweeted, these are the folks who said a “strong majority” passed Obamacare. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

UPDATE 2: According to the AP, with 97% of precincts reporting, it’s Walker 53%, Barrett 46%. So Walker’s margin of victory tonight is greater than the 5% margin he had in 2010. Woohoo! Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch also beat the recall with 53%.

Oh, and as for the four Republican state senators facing recall — they all won, with 55-61% of the vote.

Does it get any better than this?

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Concealed carry comes to Wisconsin

Posted by Richard on June 22, 2011

And then there was one:

Wisconsin stands on the verge of becoming the 49th state in the country to allow citizens to carry concealed guns, after the state Assembly made a bipartisan vote to legalize that practice Tuesday.

The measure passed 68-27, with 11 Democrats voting in favor of the bill along with the body's lone independent and all Republicans except Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Hartford), who had wanted stronger legislation. Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) said his vote was mistakenly not counted and he would seek to correct that.

The approval of the bill marks one more piece of long-blocked legislation that Republicans have been able to pass now that they control all of state government. The bill to allow the concealed carry of guns and other weapons such as Tasers passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote last week, so approval in the Assembly sends the bill to Gov. Scott Walker, who supports the measure.

Once the measure is signed by Gov. Walker, Illinois will be the only remaining state in the nation that completely bans concealed carry. Nine states issue concealed carry permits, but give the issuing law enforcement agent (usually sheriff or police chief) some discretion on who to approve. The other 40 are "shall issue" states — anyone who meets the statutory requirements (generally some training and no felony conviction or adjudicated mental health problem) must be issued a permit — or "no stinkin' permit required" states (Vermont and Alaska). 

And as a result, our streets are running red with blood as crazed gun nuts shoot it out over parking spaces, cutting in line at the express lane, etc. Oh, wait … they're not. Violent crime continues to decrease as gun sales and carry permits increase.

In fact, it seems almost like violent crime rates are inversely related to rates of gun ownership and carry. Just what you'd expect if (1) the vast majority of people are peaceful and non-violent; (2) violent crimes are almost exclusively committed by a very small percentage of the population who have no moral compass or impulse control and aren't deterred by laws alone; and (3) that small violent minority can be deterred to some extent (and if necessary, stopped) by members of the peaceful majority who are prepared to defend themselves and others.

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Governor Walker explains

Posted by Richard on March 10, 2011

In a new Wall Street Journal op-ed column, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker shows that he really knows how to frame the issue:

In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in Wisconsin. A week later, she got a layoff notice from the Milwaukee Public Schools. Why would one of the best new teachers in the state be one of the first let go? Because her collective-bargaining contract requires staffing decisions to be made based on seniority.

Ms. Sampson got a layoff notice because the union leadership would not accept reasonable changes to their contract. Instead, they hid behind a collective-bargaining agreement that costs the taxpayers $101,091 per year for each teacher, protects a 0% contribution for health-insurance premiums, and forces schools to hire and fire based on seniority and union rules.

My state's budget-repair bill, which passed the Assembly on Feb. 25 and awaits a vote in the Senate, reforms this union-controlled hiring and firing process by allowing school districts to assign staff based on merit and performance. That keeps great teachers like Ms. Sampson in the classroom.

Read the whole thing. 

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Bravo, Wisconsin Republicans!

Posted by Richard on March 9, 2011

Congrats to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the Republicans in the State Senate for finally saying, "Enough is enough!" and figuring out a way to curb the public employee unions, despite all the Democrats remaining AWOL. I only wish they'd done this at least a week or ten days ago and spared us some of the crap that's been taking place in Madison.

I for one had seen quite enough of the angry mobs of union demonstrators, the sick leave fraud, Michael Moore's commie rants, the defiling of public property, and the trashing of the capitol grounds (Tea Party members cleaned up after the demonstrators).

The next few days should be interesting — and further clarify just how thuggish these public employee unions are. Tonight, they've taken over the Wisconsin State Capitol and handcuffed shut some of the doors. Apparently, they're going to try to prevent the Assembly from meeting to pass the Senate-passed bill.

Just keep checking in at Althouse for the latest from Anne and Meade. She's promised that more photos and videos are coming.

UPDATE: Meade's first pictures are up. And apparently the (unionized) police allowed the union thugs to take over the State Capitol. Bryan Preston is incensed (HT: Instapundit): 

Remember when ObamaCare passed, and Tea Partiers went nuts, stormed the hill, took over the building and handcuffed themselves inside? Yeah, me neither, because the Tea Partiers are civilized and didn’t do any of that. Wisconsin’s leftist union thugs, not so much.

…

If the police are being so lax in their security out of political spite, and someone gets hurt, well I don’t want to think about what follows that.

…

Update: Michael Moore, noted rich union buster who makes his money decrying capitalism to a stupidly receptive leftist audience, declares war. I’m not usually one for playground insults and taunts, but I’ll make an exception in his case.

You want war? Bring it, Lardbutt. You are the biggest talking, good for nothing little piece of Communist filth this country has produced in decades. You suck up to backward brutes and thugs like Castro while you castigate the American engines of the world’s economy. You trash this country and our people and belittle our values every chance you get, you cynical black hole of a human being. The worst words I can think of are too good to use to describe you. You are a buffoon, a hypocrite, and really of no use to civilization whatsoever.

What he said.

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Stand with Gov. Scott Walker

Posted by Richard on February 21, 2011

Please join me and over 50,000 others in signing Americans for Prosperity's "Stand with Walker" petition. This is the text:

Union dues should be voluntary, and the state should not be in the business of collecting them. Union certification should require a secret ballot. Collective bargaining should not be used to force extravagant pension and health benefits that cripple state budgets.

These common-sense reforms have made the union bosses desperate to disrupt Wisconsin government and overturn an election. They must not be allowed to succeed. In fact, every state should adopt Governor Scott Walker's common sense reforms. 

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A turning point in Wisconsin?

Posted by Richard on February 19, 2011

To indulge in some metaphor-mixing, this nation is fiscally at the precipice and politically at a tipping point. Madison, Wisconsin is, as Herman Cain said, Ground Zero. Someday, we may look back on February 19 as the day that we began to tip away from the precipice.

With only 48 hours' notice, thousands of Wisconsin's hard-working private citizens gathered at the capitol to support Gov. Scott Walker and respond to the angry demands of Wisconsin's public employees (and their supporters bused in by unions, the DNC, and Obama's Organizing for America). They told them, "You work for us. And we can no longer afford the lavish salaries and benefits that you've pressured previous administrations into giving you. It's time to get real."

Watch the video of Herman Cain below. The crowd noise and limitations of the on-camera microphone make it difficult to hear everything that he said, but you can get the gist of it. I hope there's a better recording or that someone with the technical expertise can clean it up. Because I'm thinking that with clearer audio, this could become this year's equivalent of the 2009 Rick Santelli rant that gave birth to the Tea Parties.


[YouTube link]

Money quote: "We the people of the United States of America are not going to let the United States of America become the United States of Europe!"

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