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Scott Walker and Taxpayers Win

Mar 11, 2011

RUSH: You notice all the stories about how the Wisconsin capital of Madison is now eerily quiet after the Assembly vote yesterday. Eerily quiet. It’s clear that the Organizing for America crowd and the union thugs are not gonna waste any more money on a lost cause. So, voila! All of these hardworking, middle-class families have just magically disappeared — and now we’re hearing all this talk about recalls. Not for the Democrat senators who ran away and hid rather than do their jobs. No, we’re hearing about recalls for the Republican senators who did their jobs. But recalls involve getting names on petitions, which is what the unions like the SEIU and the groups like ACORN and Organizing for America do best.

So I just want you to remember: Now that quiet has taken over in Madison, Wisconsin, don’t forget the pictures. Remember. When you see these spittle-flecked, red-faced, crazily ranting protesters, remember those pictures. These are the same people who can normally be found in the classrooms indoctrinating your crumb crunchers, and you are paying them to indoctrinate your crumb crunchers. They may not all have been teachers in Wisconsin. They might have been bused in from elsewhere, but that’s who they are. I noticed how many of these protesters were carrying signs about ‘freedom,’ which is ironic because what they were doing was trying to prevent anyone from having a choice about whether they have to join a union or not in order to teach in public schools.

They’re trying to make sure that unions can continue to force their members to pay dues whether they want to belong to the union or not. So we had a government shutdown in Wisconsin. It’s important to remember, now, who did it. Who was it that tried to cause a government shutdown in Wisconsin? And notice how all of a sudden a government shutdown is not so bad after all. When the right people do it, it’s not so bad after all. But if you’re a lib out there, don’t worry, don’t panic! All is not lost because the Democrats are already saying that they’re gonna roll back the Walker reforms as soon as they get the majority back in Wisconsin, and they’re using this as a fundraising effort now.

Meanwhile, these videos that I spoke of mere moments ago — these videos of their spittle-flecked tantrums –will be priceless for the other side. Think about how hard it is gonna be for these Wisconsin Democrats to run as rock-ribbed conservatives after this display of their true intentions — and make no mistake, they will. When liberals seek to win, they have to move to the center, portray themselves as something other than what they are. Here’s the AP story. ‘Wisconsin Quiet After Anti-Union Vote.’ It’s an AP story, and they’re stunned. They are amazed at AP that, why, just yesterday it was a cauldron! It was a hotbed of democracy in action: The great American left striving to maintain its authority and control. Today, it’s like a cemetery. But it’s not a mystery.

Let me help the people at the AP. Organizing for America, the Obama people and the unions are not gonna waste any more money or time on a lost cause. So, voila! All of these hardworking middle-class families — all of these put out, all of these discriminated-against middle-class families, all these people that Richard Trumka says Republicans want to deny a middle class lifestyle. That’s what he said, Richard Trumka (who, by the way, Mr. President, is a bully). Richard Trumka said what’s going on here is that Walker, the governor, and those Republicans want to deny a middle class lifestyle to these hardworking, spittle-flecked middle-class families who joined the effort to deface the state capitol in Wisconsin, to threaten violence.

They’ve just magically disappeared now from the capitol. I mean, you can’t expect people to protest for their rights if nobody is gonna pay ’em — and the money has run out. The cause is gone. Voila! That’s it. And there are competing stories I have here the Stack of Stuff. Here is one. This is from the heavily unionized Associated Press, by the way. Headline: ‘White House: Wisconsin Vote Vilifies Public Workers — The White House is denouncing a vote by the Wisconsin Senate to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from government workers, calling it an assault on public employees.’

If that’s true, then why is it that federal employees are not offered the same so-called collective bargaining rights that the public sector unions in Wisconsin enjoy? We’ve told you before that it was president Jimmuh Carter who stripped federal workers of most of their sacred collective bargaining rights back in 1978. There was little or no outrage at the time — and, oddly enough, Mr. Obama has done nothing to restore those supposedly sacrosanct rights. But that didn’t stop the spokesman, Jay Carney, from saying, ‘Obama believes it is wrong for Wisconsin to use its budget troubles ‘to denigrate or vilify public sector employees.”

The truth was Governor Walker was trying to save jobs. He was trying to prevent people from being laid off. That seems to be an unusual way of denigrating and vilifying somebody if you think about it. ‘The state Senate acted Wednesday night by using a procedural move that’ we all know here ‘to pass the anti-bargaining rights measure without any Democrats in the chamber.’ The White House now says that this vote vilifies public workers. Washington Post, Karen Tumulty: ‘Wisconsin Governor Wins His Battle with Unions on Collective Bargaining.’ Now, there’s a quote in here. Who is it? Ta-da ta-da ta-da — Mark Mellman, a Democrat pollster, said he’s ‘winning.’

Yeah, from the looks of it, he’s winning, Governor Walker is. But! He’s ‘winning the battle through pure, uncompromising force, but he’s losing the war.’ Losing the war. He’s innovating all kinds of bad vibes. He’s getting all kinds of bad press from Mehlman’s buddies. He’s winning, but he is losing. ‘Although Wisconsin has traditionally had liberal and conservative forces, ‘usually the discourse is much more civil and deliberate, even when there are differences in public policy,’ said Dennis L. Dresang, the founding director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

”If this can happen in Wisconsin, it can happen anywhere.” Yeah, it can and it will, if the same demands are made of the same people. If somebody making a hundred grand total makes a demand of somebody 50, ‘I want a raise and I want the total authority to determine how much I get paid, and you’re gonna pay me,’ as long as that remains the equation, these battles will continue, and they will increase, and the Republicans will continue to win them.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial today, their headline says it all: ‘Taxpayers Win in Wisconsin.’ The changes to collective bargaining helped taxpayers when a liberal governor assumes office and gives away the store. They can’t do this now just as easily. When a Democrat wins (the day is going to come they’ll elect a Democrat governor again in Wisconsin someday), it’s gonna be very tough for this guy to go in and reverse this, because what Walker’s done here is going to have meaningful fiscal reform. People’s taxes are gonna be cut. The budget deficit is going to come down. It’s gonna be very difficult for the next Democrat — not to say they won’t try it, but it’s gonna take a big political reversal — to go back to the old ways.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Investor’s Business Daily editorial: ‘Wisconsin’s Walker has his PATCO Moment.’ That’s the air traffic controller strike, Reagan. ‘Fed up with the Democrats’ no-show tactics, Walker on Wednesday night used a perfectly legal parliamentary maneuver to get a vote … and won. On Thursday, the bill passed the state Assembly by 53-42. Walker did it, as he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, for the ‘countless taxpayers who want us to balance our budgets and, more importantly, to make government work for each of them.’ To which we say, Amen.’ Finally, ‘the taxpayers have a seat at the table,’ a point that I was making yesterday.

When there’s collective bargaining with public employees, government union people, who are they negotiating against? Us! Who represents us at the negotiating table? There hasn’t been anybody. The taxpayers have no representation. It’d be like the NFL collective bargaining talks going on with nobody representing the players. In this case, Scott Walker represented the taxpayers. In this case, Scott Walker was representing the people who are paying the salaries and benefits of the government union people. Well, they’ve got a seat at the table. ‘[T]he tantrum thrown by the unions and their bought-and-paid-for Democratic politicians, you’d think they’d been sold into slavery.’

The way Trumka and the boys were talking about this, you’d think that these government union people paid twice what private sector workers make in Wisconsin, were sold into slavery, just like Spike Lee thinks LeBron James was sold into slavery when he took his talents to ‘South Beach’ to play for the Miami Heat (who really don’t play in South Beach, but who’s keeping track?) Slavery! That’s how oppressive Governor Walker was. ‘Yet, in the end, Walker won. And his courage is having an impact. Quietly, Idaho on Tuesday ended tenure for its public teachers. In Iowa, the legislature has begun debating its own bill to curb public unions’ bargaining power over benefits and layoffs.

‘And in nearby Ohio, Gov. John Kasich seeks to limit union bargaining power to wages only — not benefits or layoffs.’ IBD says, ‘Perhaps we’ve reached a turning point in reversing the unions’ pernicious influence on public policy — and their insistence that the 95% of the population that doesn’t belong to a public employee union must be taxed to pay for organized labor’s gilded benefits.’ Amen! That’s exactly what’s going on. The 95% of the workers in this country who do not belong to public sector unions are being taxed and taxed and taxed to pay union workers — and, more importantly, their leaders who are in the five to $600,000 a year range.

All of that is taxpayer money! It’s not the result of sales of iPads. It’s not the profit coming out of Walmart, for example. It’s taxpayer dollars. So, ‘Perhaps we’ve reached a turning point in reversing’ this kind of interest and, ‘If so,’ Investor’s Business Daily writes, ‘this will go down as a shining moment for Walker, Wisconsin and state governments everywhere.’ But let’s go back to the Associated Press on our around-the-world tour. The way the AP is looking at this is embodied in their headline: ‘Wisconsin Defeat Could Help Launch Counterattack on GOP — With the labor movement heading to an epic defeat in Wisconsin and perhaps other states, union leaders plan to use the setback to fire up working people nationwide and mount a major counterattack against Republicans at the ballot box in 2012.’

Let’s look at the numbers. Five percent, even eight — 8% max — of American employees are unionized. Somehow these numbers benefit the Democrats and hurt the Republicans? There’s going to be a ‘counterattack’ on the Republicans with five to 7% of the American population unionized? What is the percent of public sector union members the general population anyway — compared especially with the percentage of taxpayers whom they are fleecing? We’re talking about a percent of a percent here. What’s happened here is an awakening.

Taxpayers around the country are understanding just who it is they’re paying and how much they’re paying them. Now, all during a 2007-2008 we heard about Barack Obama as a community organizer. A lot of people didn’t know what that meant. ‘What’s a community organizer?’ When you stop and think about it, people who live in the real world and hear words like ‘community organizer’ would probably think that Obama was standing around in a community somewhere and organizing the people there. Yeah, okay, but to do what? To go to the grocery store? To meet the bus on time? What is community organizing, and what are people in the community doing standing around waiting for somebody to show up and organize ’em? What exactly is it?

Well, we just saw it.

You just saw what community organizing is.

You saw it for weeks.

It’s $7.5 million in damage to the state capitol. It’s vandalism. It is pollution. It’s litter. It is spittle-flecked faces storming their way into the building with open windows. It is an attempt to shut down the normal, democratic flow of government operations. You just saw community organizing. You just watched it. In fact, the website that put all this together is appropriately named: Organizing for America. I can’t tell you the number of people, over the course of years, asking, ‘What is a community organizer?’ At the Republican convention, Rudy made fun of it. He talked about Obama being community organizer and started laughing, ‘Community organizer? Ha-ha-ha! What’s a community organizer?’

It’s intimidation, it’s bullying, it is shaking down other people for money. Community organizers are bullies, making Obama a bully! They shake down businesses. Jesse Jackson’s a community organizer. It’s not a bunch of poor people standing around an oil drum with a burning fire in five-degree weather in Chicago in the middle of February and some guy who cares about their welfare comes out organizes ’em and tells ’em where to go to pick up a Sterno log to stay warm. It is intimidation. It is bullying. It is what you saw going on in Wisconsin. That’s what it is. If you’ve ever wondered what community organizing is, that’s it, and there’s more of it on tap as these defeats continue to set up for the Democrats.

‘Wisconsin’s measure stripping public employees of most bargaining rights swiftly advanced toward Republican governor Scott Walker’s desk yesterday, and he promised to sign it as soon as possible,’ but this is all gonna lead to a big defeats for the Republicans. That’s the AP take on this whole thing. Richard Trumka, one of the bullies in organized labor, he of the AFL-CIO, said, ‘Governor Walker’s overreaching has brought us to this moment to be able to talk about jobs, to be able to talk about the right to collective bargaining. This is the debate we’ve wanted to have for 25 years. Well, guess what? Suddenly the debate came to us,’ and he lost it! But the die is cast. The tears have dried up. The teats have gone dry. The gravy train is derailed. The golden goose has died. The money tree has withered away, root and branch. Their ultimate defeat — the Trumkas, the organizers, their ultimate defeat — is inevitable. It’s now only a question of how ugly they want to make it.

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