Perhaps one of the most disturbing developments in the fight against Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to curtail school spending is his opposition’s penchant for reverting to its usual selfish ways.

A commune has been created within the Wisconsin state Capitol.  People sleeping on the floor.  Piles of pizza boxes stacked in the corner.  Signs taped to the walls.  A drum circle and Hyde Park-style Speaker’s Corner to air the latest rant.  An area transformed – no joke – to medically treat protesters.

So the unions are not only leeches, but squatters as well.

The Lord of the Flies now resides in Madison, Wisconsin.  This story, released by the MacIver Institute, reveals an actual makeshift organizational structure, complete with marshals that order people around.  Capitol security stands idly by as the Capitol is overtaken by hippies and union goons.

This is coming to a Capitol near you, should your state decide to push bold reforms, as well.

But that’s precisely the point: Big Labor wants to show America exactly what will happen if other states attempt to curtail in spending.  Wisconsin is the unions’ national example.

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Tabitha Hale, a FreedomWorks employee, got in a heated exchange while filming a union member outside of her office when she was attacked by the thug. We at Eyeblast personally know Tabitha, and she is one of the nicest people you will ever meet and is definitely not an instigator. Not to mention hitting a girl is one of the most cowardly things a man can do.

Just imagine if a Tea Party member were caught on video doing this. All the major media outlets would been looping this for the next 6 months.

Take a look this cowardly act:

Before he goes, can we please figure out how to spell his name?

The Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) caught the eye of the Landmark Legal Foundation long before they gained national prominence due to their pro-union position around the tense debate currently playing out in Wisconsin. But not only have they recently stepped up to pay some back taxes, presumably due to pressure from Landmark, if Governor Walker is correct, they are also gouging taxpayers for health care costs at the same time they failed to pay the appropriate taxes – and the stance taken by truant Wisconsin teachers appears calculated to allow what some are calling a scam to continue.

In April, the Landmark Legal Foundation asked federal officials to investigate its claim that WEAC failed to report or pay taxes on $430,000 in contributions to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee between 2000 and 2002 in apparent violation of federal law.

The Wisconsin Education Association Council has voluntarily made $171,091 in payments to the Internal Revenue Service after a review of past federal tax returns, the state’s largest teachers union said Wednesday.

WEAC previously created the WEAC Trust, which, among other things, provides health insurance for Wisconsin school districts.

If the bill proposed by Governor Walker were to pass, the teachers union could still employ collective bargaining for wages but their ability to control the benefits portion of the contract would go away. Walker claims that would immediately reduce health care costs for WI school districts by 68 million dollars. Obviously, it would also impact the WEAC Trust’s bottom-line. (more…)

Washington Post owned Slate.com used a crude misogynist wordplay to call Sarah Palin a c*** in a headline for an article published Tuesday about a supposed secret Sarah Palin Facebook account.

The headline read: Sarah Palin Uses Alternate Facebook Accunt to Praise Sarah Palin.

The article, posted in Slate’s “Slatest” section, is based on an article from Wonkette titled, Sarah Palin Has Secret ‘Lou Sarah’ Facebook Account To Praise Other Sarah Palin Facebook Account, that in a rare show of class for Wonkette does not use the sexist slur in the article.

Several commmenters at Slatest criticized Slate for the slur. Others, however, cheered: “”Accunt” lol, Perfect. No accident.” And “Accunt is a just made up word — like refudiate.”

Given Slate’s prominence as a respected part of the mainstream media with professional standards to uphold, an innocent typo of this magnitude with this subject is highly unlikely. (For the benefit of Media Matters senior blogger Eric Boehlert, try to imagine Slate “accidentally” doing the same to Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi. It wouldn’t happen.)

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The story of the leaked manuscript of former Palin aide Frank Bailey is getting a lot of traction as the mainstream media finds ways to maximize and defend the indefensible. Andy Barr and Ben Smith from Politico have taken it upon themselves (obviously without legal council) to run a story repeating distorted claims by a troubled ex-employee, with the goal of smearing Governor Palin in mind. Barr and Smith ponder why it is that no publisher has signed on to print Bailey’s manuscript, which he has been trying to sell for almost 18 months. On top of the legal ramifications, there are many reasons.

They do note that Bailey chose an anti-Palin writer and a “critic” of Governor Palin to help pen the text. What they didn’t state is that “critic,” a man by the name of Ken Morris, is a known leftist who has a history of pulling obsessive stunts directed towards Governor Palin, and that the other writer, Jeanne Devon, is a legend in the Alaskan left-wing blogoshpere for her unhinged, freakish behavior aimed at hurting the governor. These aren’t just people who disagree with her politics. These are people who have spent a lot of time, money, and integrity trying to damage Governor Palin.

Now, just who is Frank Bailey? Other than what’s on the surface – that being his connection as a former employee of the former Governor of Alaska. What was his role in her administration and why did he chose to publicly stab his former employer in the back? The Politico article notes:

A Palin ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Bailey and Palin corresponded and that the former aide had access to Palin’s passwords and her email account. But the Palin ally said that the content should be viewed through the lens of Bailey being “the quintessential disgruntled employee” who had been denied senior jobs he sought, cut out of Palin’s vice presidential campaign, and been caught up in the “Troopergate” scandal.

This man felt as though he had been denied a senior post in the administration. I have read his manuscript by the way, and can tell you that this guy thought he was doing a bang-up job for the governor. However, the evidence doesn’t support his assertion. After all, Bailey was the only member of Governor Palin’s administration who had ever been recommended to receive ethics training by a state investigator. I am not going to release any detailed information that isn’t public already, but there are some pretty pointed lies within this manuscript that only take a few minutes on Google to figure out.

While working for Governor Palin, part of Bailey’s job was to set up and maintain her email accounts. He had direct access, by way of knowing her password codes, to all of her messages. What he did with that access was highly unethical, a serious breach of trust, if not the law. If indeed all the emails are actually hers in the first place.

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As the protests in Wisconsin continue, and occasionally border on riotous, as when the crowds repeatedly shout down FOX NEWS’ reporters and attack Governor Scott Walker’s house and automotive, I can’t help but wonder how the Founding Fathers might react were they to see it. How would they react to the unions’ cries for democracy? And to the way those cries have been parroted on media outlet after media outlet across our country?

Granted, the Founders all recognized “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” but they did so from the vantage point of a republican form of government rather than a democratic one. In fact, the fear of “democracy” was foremost in the minds of many of our Founders as this nation was birthed.

One of the reasons our Founders opposed democracy was because of its short life expectancy. Said John Adams, the second president of the United States: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” And because they feared the violence (think Wisconsin’s teachers’ unions) that usually accompanies a democracy’s suicide, Benjamin Rush warned: “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”

Predominantly, the Founders viewed democracy as “mob rule.” A form of government in which a mere a minority of the population could manipulate a majority of voters into supporting their cause, therefore giving the few control over the purses, the land, and the lives of the many.  (Case in point: the 10% of the employees in this country who are unionized and who, through the partnership unions share with the Democrat Party, have been able to live off the monies confiscated from taxes on the 90% of non-unionized employees.)

On the other hand, our Founders adhered to a republican form of government because of its stability over the long haul. It wasn’t given to “change,” thus even the most charismatic of leaders, or politicians, would always be constrained by the limitations placed upon him (or her) by the Constitution and the laws of nature.

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In American politics, all eyes this week have been turned toward Wisconsin, where the clash over the bargaining process and entitlements for public employee unions has sparked protests and legislator walkouts. Today on Coffee and Markets we’re talking with Mark Mix, head of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, about his views on the battle in Wisconsin and elsewhere over public employee unions. We also talk about Mitch Daniels’ surprising attitude towards right to work laws in Indiana.

We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Mitch Daniels Salutes Dem Lawmakers Who Fled IN to Avoid Labor Vote
Indiana House Passes Right to Work Bill
Barone: Public Unions Force Taxpayers to Fund Democrats
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
NRTW on Twitter

After seeing the tactics of the left-wing and their Siamese twin union leaders in Wisconsin on full display over the prospect of still getting a better retirement deal than we taxpayers do, I call for a National Strike Day for every single non-public sector union member. They seem to think we can’t live without them, and they refuse to work without getting more of our money, so let’s deny them our labor for a day or two and see who can’t really live without whom. (NOTE: Every negative reference here to public sector unions does not include police, firefighters and emergency personnel who do some of the most important jobs around, jobs most of us couldn’t do.)

Just think of it, every shop, restaurant, office, factory, gas station, EVERYTHING closed for a day or more. If the government won’t listen to us, won’t instill a minimum amount of fiscal sanity, let’s shut it down.

Government acts as though they own us and the fruits of our labor, more than that, they’ve spending the wealth of generations yet to be born in a never ending quest to…well, who knows? It’s almost as though they’re trying to plug a black hole with money. Well, a black hole can’t be plugged, it will just consume mass for eternity, much like the government, which, urged on by public sector parasites, is incapable of getting enough of our money, so let’s deny it to them.

This is, of course, impossible to make happen. Not only is it impractical, but those of us without the protection of tenure face real world consequences for our actions and would be fired for refusing to work, even for a day, without a valid excuse. We can’t all have doctors standing by to write us “get out of violating your contract free” notes. Non-liberals simply don’t act that way.

But think of the concept.

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A pro-public union SEIU rally turned ugly Tuesday outside the Colorado Capitol in Denver.
The Colorado union supporters started out the day chanting, “Tax the rich!”

During the rally several of the pro-union protesters took turns harassing a gay black conservative tea partyer who was participating in the counter-rally.

The SEIU supporters called him stupid, uneducated. They called him “son.” They harassed him. They asked him how he could vote against “his own best interest.”

In this clip the SEIU supporters asked the black tea partyer,

“Do you have any children that you claim?” **

Via Red White Blue News:

So just who are the racists again?

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“I think this is a group of people who don’t want to see black people receive a dime” — John W. Boyd, Jr., leader of the National Black Farmers Association.

I’ve been a blogger at The Huffington Post for several years now and if you head over there sometime, you may notice that Rep. Michelle Bachman is featured quite often on the site — usually in a way that makes her appear either crazy or stupid or both. To be fair, the Bigs don’t go out of their way to make Nancy Pelosi look awesome, either. That’s the way the blogs bounce.

Still, I was somewhat surprised when I met the congresswoman at CPAC at how immediately I realized she wasn’t at all the person she’s portrayed — she’s smart, articulate, and her speech at CPAC about Pigford was pitch perfect in it’s focus on the real farmers as victims of Pigford fraud.

In this short interview, Rep. Bachmann and I discuss Pigford as well as an aspect of her life that — literally — not a single liberal friend of mine knew anything about: her commitment as a parent to her own five children plus over twenty foster kids. It seems to me that Rep. Bachmann’s opponents don’t want the image of her as that kind of person to be known because it would tend to make her seem human and likable. (more…)

Many on the left, including the Center for Media and Democracy, are now challenging the veracity of Christian Hartsock and my separate but damning video selections taken at the Van Vones/Common Cause/Code Pink “Uncloak the Kochs” rally in Rancho Mirage, California, on January 30, 2011:

In a peaceful rally of more than 1,000 people, a crew of videographers who have worked with Breitbart egged a few into making outrageous, bigoted remarks on camera, then presented them as representative of the entire crowd and the rally sponsors. None of the interviewees was identified, and some looked to be wearing wigs or disguises. Given Breitbart’s history of promoting staged videos, it is difficult to have any confidence in the authenticity of the clips.

For two years the left has tried desperately to find video evidence of Tea Party participants to damn the whole. They have failed so miserably that it became necessary for the creation of the group, CrashTheTeaParty.org, which called for opponents of the Tea Party to dress up as Nazis or in other offensive uniforms, or to carry troubling signs, all in the hopes of getting the mainstream media to falsely portray the fake Tea Party protesters as authentic and representative of the whole.

Well, Christian and I needn’t instigate fake people dressing and acting foolishly, in a racist fashion, or threatening violence. Those at the Rancho Mirage anti-Koch rally (against capitalism, free markets, and gummy bears) have been more than forthright in their extremism. (And now look at what we found in Madison, Wisconsin!)

Since Lisa Graves and the Center for Media and Democracy has now challenged the authenticity of the videos we took, we feel it’s appropriate to isolate those who made the hateful remarks by name.

The first is self-identified “Roger Fraser from Chicago, and happy to be here!”

I found him yelling “revolution now!” as I was rollerblading amongst the anti-capitalism H8 chanters.

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As you no doubt recall, the Obama administration has sued the State of Arizona over its get-tough illegal immigration law, S.B. 1070. Judicial Watch has been representing Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce in court against this shameless legal assault. Recently we added a new client: The Arizona State Legislature.

On Friday, February 11, 2011, we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on behalf of the Arizona State Legislature in the Obama Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Arizona. Governor Jan Brewer paved the way for this intervention when she signed emergency legislation on February 7, 2011, authorizing the Arizona Legislature to retain counsel to help defend S.B. 1070.

Here’s a squib from our motion:

Under a newly enacted Arizona law, the Legislature has been authorized to defend S.B. 1070….Through this Motion, the Legislature now seeks permission to intervene as a defendant (joining the State of Arizona and Governor Brewer) for the purpose of defending its enactment, S.B. 1070, and the interests of the people of Arizona.

In the motion, the Legislature argued that it “has a paramount interest in seeing that [the law’s] enactment is upheld.”

In addition to the “Motion to Intervene,” Judicial Watch also filed a “Proposed Answer in Intervention” on behalf of the Arizona Legislature. The court filing counters the allegations proffered by the Obama Justice Department in its complaint challenging S.B. 1070. Among the Arizona Legislature’s key arguments:

• [The Arizona Legislature] has a right to protect its citizens.

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Much of the current controversy in Wisconsin involves the impending loss of most collective bargaining privileges for state employees, including public school teachers.

The fact is that the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest teachers union in the state, has grossly abused that privilege for decades, resulting in the unnecessary siphoning of millions of dollars from Wisconsin public schools.

Under current Wisconsin law, the identity of the insurance company that provides health coverage to school employees is a matter of collective bargaining in each school district.

In the majority of districts around the state, WEAC negotiators have used that law to pressure local school boards into purchasing coverage from WEA Trust, an insurance company established by and closely associated with the union.

WEA Trust offers very comprehensive health coverage, at a very high cost to schools. Most of the districts with the most expensive health premiums in the state are clients of WEA Trust. Most of the districts with the lowest premiums do business with other insurance carriers.

A few dozen districts have managed to dump WEA Trust insurance over the past few years, despite the protests of teachers and their union. Officials from many of those districts say they managed to save at least six figures their first year with a different carrier, and maintained steady rates in subsequent years, while still offering quality health coverage to employees.

Officials from other districts say they’re also eager to dump WEA Trust coverage, but need their employees’ anonymous claim histories from WEA Trust to share with other bidders. Several say they have never requested that information because they were told WEA Trust would punish them by pulling them out of local insurance pools, resulting in skyrocketing premiums.

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First, I need to start with a confession and a plea for forgiveness. For the last two years, when the DC parlor game of “who should run in 2012″ came up, I had one answer: Mitch Daniels. Sure, he was kind of boring. But, I thought that after four years of the “flash and dash”, “hope and change” flimflammery of the Obama Administration, boring would be right up the voters’ alley. Daniels was competent, in precisely the kind of way you trust-and want-your accountant to be competent. He was, I thought, the man for the times.

I was wrong. I am sorry.

It turns out Mitch Daniels is a 1990s conservative; hesitant, afraid to stand on principle, desperate to be loved by editorial writers from the dying newspaper industry. (Newt Daniels?) He needs everybody to support him and stands ready to jettison any principled policy position for an extra few points bump in the polls. No doubt, he wants to ‘rise above’ politics, but he has personally risen so far above it that one wonders why he even bothers. He wasn’t pressed into service as Governor and presumptive presidential candidate. He chose that path, presumably, because he had a vision for how to lead. Again, and I will say this a lot, I was wrong.

Yesterday, Indiana House Democrats took a page from the Wisconsin Senate ‘fleebagger’ playbook and fled the state to avoid a vote on legislation to curtail union privileges. At even a basic level, it is an unbelievable abdication of responsibility. We are a representative democracy. We have elections and those elections have consequences. You don’t get to simply pick up your ball and go home when you don’t like the results. That’s a temper tantrum, not responsible, adult behavior.

But, Mitch Daniels endorsed it.

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As Americans, we’re often taught that trusts and monopolies are the product of big business and are bad. However, if trusts and monopolies are bad when Big Business engages in monopolistic ways, why isn’t it bad when Big Labor engages in the same sort of behaviors that are condemned when committed by Big Business?

For over a week now, the nation has watched tens of thousands march in protest to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget plan. Democrat lawmakers (aka Fleebaggers) have fled the state in order to avoid doing their duty, while Obama’s OFA has bussed in the astroturf from out of state. While the union meme has been that Walker’s plan is “union-busting,” perhaps a more apt description would be “trust-busting.” (more…)

The Federal Reserve’s QE2 stimulus has stoked a fire storm of global of inflation. What began in the Middle East and North Africa as a rebellion against rising food and basic essentials for some of the poorest people on earth has now spread to supposed success stories, like China. Over the weekend, rioting broke out in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other major cities to the chant of “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness”. As inflation moves on from food to rising fuel costs and then mounting raw material imports; the U.S. is about to be hammered by the combination of higher prices squeezing consumer discretionary spending and higher material costs hurting business profits. Americans need to be prepared this fall for the economy’s ugliest witch’s brew: STAGFLATION.

Chinese police deployed in large numbers this weekend to quash what is being called the “Jasmine Revolution”. China’s authoritarian Communist leadership is trying to short-circuit dissent before it spins into the type of popular uprisings seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria and Libya; where over 500 people have died. Although Chinese law enforcement tried to crack down on Internet communications, cell phone pictures and videos of protestor’s resentment and desperation is leaking out.

Americans should not be fooled that these protests are someone else’s problems. We may only spend about 10% of our income on food, but much of the rest of the world spends 1/2 their income on food. When people who have little or nothing see what little they have evaporating, there is no downside to violent confrontation with the establishment.

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is caught in the headlights of world anger over the inflationary ravages from his flooding the world with cheap dollars; he lashed out at investors for fanning inflation.

Blaming investors is disingenuous in the extreme; it has been the financial engineering of the US Federal Reserve’s serial paper money printing that continues to cause havoc around the world. The Fed’s repetition of stimulus spending was the father of the 1990’s tech stock bubble and 2000’s US housing bubble. Like all government intrusions into the economy, the eventual pay-back was the mother of two of the worst economic crashes since the Great Depression and is destined to cause more grief in this cycle.

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On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the bill clear through that crowd,
Get out of debt this time! (U rah rah!)

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Or it’s Cloward-Piven time.
Fight! Fellows! – fight, fight, fight!
Or it‘ll be our behinds!

I imagine you are aware of all those greedy capitalists in Moscow, Wisconsin, demonstrating so they can keep working in collusion, to siphon public money for their power hungry interests and their own bank accounts.

Sorry for the bad typing; make that government workers, in Madison. “Kill the bill!” they shout and likely spit when they do.  The name of it is the Budget Repair Bill, but much of the Marxstream media call it Gov. Scott Walker’s “anti-union bill.”

Fightin' Bob La Follette, progressive to the ends of his hair

I live forty-some miles northwest of Mad City, in the town where the nation’s first Progressive Party presidential candidate, Robert La Follette married his leftist, feminist wife, in 1881. Yeah, 1881. Politically precocious, we are, here in Badgerland. “Fighting Bob” learned his social justice from U. of W. president, John Bascom, who came from Massachusetts’ Andover Seminary (essentially of the same United Church of Christ denomination as the so reverent Jeremiah Wright).   Those Congregationalists stem from the Puritans, whom, as the name implies, had a soft spot for utopianism and legalistic perfectibility.

Progressivism, but also unvarnished Marxism made inroads very early here in Wisconsin, including within the state and region’s labor movement.  In 1904, the University of Wisconsin became the home of John R. Commons, one of the first progressive incrementalists, a label which tends to cover radical interests of unknown lengths.  He was called the spiritual father of Social Security and he specialized in union studies.  He was also one of America’s progressive eugenicists.

Barry Obama’s hero, Harold Washington was not America’s fist socialist, big city mayor.  That distinction goes to Emil Seidel, elected as Milwaukee’s Marxist boss in 1910, the same year that Victor Luitpold Berger was elected America’s first socialist representative in Congress.

Socialsts tried and convicted, 1919

It was Berger that gave union leader Eugene Debs a copy of Das Kapital and won him over to Marxism.  Debs became the Socalist Party’s candidate for president in 1912, with Mayor Seidel his VP candidate.  However, their Socialist Party of America chose not to run their own candidate for president in 1924, eagerly backing La Follette, instead, much as confessed socialists backed Obama, in 2008.

The Department of Justice was on to Berger and he was tried and in 1919, convicted of rather tenuous charges under the Espionage Act of that time.  Four others were also convicted for their own doings.  Yet, Berger continued to be a political celebrity in Wisconsin.

Those names are just the tip of the top of the iceberg. Extensive information on the Wisconsin front on the Marxist war against American freedoms is available in numerous books and at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, where they have a curious pride in their collection.  Compiled, it is enough to satisfy the appetite of one much more skeptical than our state’s own Sen. Joe McCarthy. (more…)