As the battle of the budget wages on, the March 4^th D-Day moves inexorably closer, and with the Continuing Resolution passed in the House of Representatives early this morning, including two amendments by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to defund Obamacare, the media is increasingly raising the specter of a possible government shutdown. What every Republican, every patriot, every person conceivably affected needs to understand is how this will impact average Americans.

Will airports shut down because air traffic controllers have gone on leave? Will those mean Republicans throw granny out in the street when Social Security stops sending payments? Will everyone who receives checks in the mail see their income dry up because the Post Office shuts down?

The Democrats will tell you that and more. A Google search of “government shutdown” brings up pages describing dire consequences. But if you follow the links you will see that this is more a reflection of leftist web domination than anything else.

The greatest consequence of a government shutdown will be the Democrat-generated media hysteria we will have to put up with unless/until they get their way. They will demagogue at every opportunity, describing fantastic scenes of nationwide anarchy. They will do what they always do, about the only thing they do well, and in fact have already begun doing:

They will lie.

President Obama almost immediately threatened that Social Security checks would stop coming.

He lied.

Think Progress, the archetypical radical left propaganda rag, interviewed freshman Republican Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), who pooh poohed worries about a government shutdown. They didn’t ask him to qualify, but later attempted to discredit his message:

Kelly’s assertions are simply not true. One need look no further than the federal government shutdown of 1995 for proof. During the nearly four-week shutdown, Social Security checks were not mailed and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements were disrupted.

They lie.

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From Joe Klein in Time:

Revolutions everywhere–in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they’re protesting against it. I mean, Isn’t it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting “Freedom, Democracy, Union” while trying to prevent a vote? Isn’t it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn’t it interesting that some of those who–rightly–protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate?

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can’t be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters. And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker’s basic requests are modest ones–asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions’ abilities to negotiate work rules–and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time.

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From John Fund in the Wall Street Journal:

Labor historian Fred Siegel offers further reasons why unions are manning the barricades. Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.

“Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits,” Mr. Siegel told me. After New York City’s Transport Workers Union lost the right to automatic dues collection in 2007 following an illegal strike, its income fell by more than 35% as many members stopped ponying up. New York City ended the dues collection ban after 18 months.

Myron Lieberman, a former Minnesota public school teacher who became a contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, says that since the 1960s collective bargaining has so “greatly increased the political influence of unions” that they block the sorts of necessary change that other elements of society have had to accept.

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At least two Democrat organizations are using the union-backed protest in Wisconsin to raise campaign cash. The Madison-based State Senate Democratic Committee and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee of Washington, D.C., both made fundraising appeals Friday.

The fundraising efforts came after President Obama and the Democratic National Committee mobilized activists to support the unions, which are protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal. Walker wants public-section union workers to make modest pension and health insurance contributions to help address the state’s budget problems.

The protest prompted 14 Democrats in the state Senate to flee the capital Thursday, preventing the legislature from voting. Now the embattled lawmakers, who hid at a resort in Illinois, are getting a financial boost for their obstructionism.

More than 1,600 supporters have given $80,000 to the State Senate Democratic Committee, according to ActBlue.org. Similar data isn’t available for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is located on K Street in Washington, home to many lobbying firms.

A fundraising email from Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, asked for a minimum donation of $14 to support the 14 senators. It stated:

I am so proud of the fourteen Democrats who walked out to prevent the GOP from stripping public workers of their rights and benefits, and I’m proud of Democratic legislators everywhere who stand up for working families.

But when Democratic legislators fight for those issues – like they have in Wisconsin—their task is always easier with Democratic majorities, with Democratic leaders who share our concerns.

With your help, we can make sure we have even more leaders looking out for working families.

Meanwhile, the State Senate Democratic Committee denied that its fundraising appeal had anything to do with politics. Its executive director, Kory Kozlowski, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “This is not about raising money at all.” Kozlowski claimed the funds would cover the costs of the 14 senators hiding in Illinois.

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Today, tea party activists will rally in Madison in opposition to the political class. It is a defining moment.

Several members of Congress, like Rep. Denny Rehberg (R, MT) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R.-Wash.) are offering amendments that would prevent any new spending from being used to implement Obamacare.

Good for them.  Those are important additions to the big spending bill pending in Congress.

But here’s the dirty little secret:  Much of Obamacare is being implemented with money that was already appropriated last year.  These billions are already available for bureaucrats to put Obamacare into force.

Denying additional funding for Obamacare does not de-fund the huge amounts it already is using for implementation.  That requires additional action.

Even though the last Congress failed to pass other appropriations bills (creating the need for the currently-pending spending measure), that former Congress DID provide billions to get Obamacare launched.  The money was directly appropriated as part of the health care legislation, rather than included in a separate appropriations bill as is the normal practice.

The details are in a Congressional Research Service report issued last October, “Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).”  CRS devotes seven pages to describing the billions of dollars already appropriated and which the Obama Administration even now is spending to promote that law.

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The Commerce Clause that regulates interstate commerce is at issue in the legal battle of Obamacare.  Can the federal government tell individuals that they must buy insurance?  Not as well known is how the same commerce clause is destroying farms and raising food prices by stopping the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers to the Central Valley in California.      The feds at the urging of the state government has literally turned off the tap, destroying prime farmland in order to benefit the sex lives of the Delta Smelt.

Approximately 85-90% of the water from this primary source has been shut off to the Central Valley.   The smelt is a fish so insignificant that no one other than the Bezerkely-enviro-wackos and some local fisherman have heard about this tiny fish.

The smelt is fish that is native to California and, for the most part, is known to fisherman simply as “bait”.   The California enviros’ zeal to increase the population of smelt has led to a terrible federal, legal decision that shut down the water to thousands of farmers in the Central Valley; the nation’s largest and most productive farm land.    Thousands of farmers there are suffering with unemployment over 20%, scores of farms have been lost and tens of thousands of agricultural workers are now without jobs.   If California didn’t have enough economic problems, you can add shooting yourself in the foot.  The inmates are now officially running the asylum.   If we needed a poster for enviro-insanity it would be the promotion of the lowly smelt over the interests of: farmers, food production, food prices, jobs and California families.

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From The Washington Times:

The big issue in Wisconsin today is whether or not public sector workers should have collective bargaining rights. In an Aug. 16, 1937 letter to Luther Steward, the president of the National Federation of Public Employees, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had something to say about that:

[M]eticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Roosevelt would have absolutely rejected the mass demonstrations aimed at blocking access or regress from the state’s legislative building, and at keeping children out of school:

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – In rapid-fire action Friday, the Republican-controlled House voted to strip federal money from President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and from Planned Parenthood and to bar the EPA from issuing global warming regulations.

Upping the ante in the budget faceoff, the Obama administration warned that workers who distribute Social Security benefits might be furloughed if congressional Republicans force cuts in government spending.

In a letter the Social Security Administration sent to its employees’ union, agency officials said that while no decision about furloughs had been made, they were possible “given the potential of reduced congressional appropriations.”

The letter was circulated by congressional Democrats, who said such cuts could mean shuttered Social Security offices and delayed benefit payments. The letter’s distribution by Democrats underscored how the threat of jeopardizing Social Security payments is a potent political weapon.

GOP lawmakers accused Democrats of “irresponsible scare tactics,” and said their proposed cuts would not affect benefits or force the Social Security Administration to close offices. Any furloughs “would result only if that decision were made by the administration,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said in a written statement. (more…)

There’s a dirty little secret in public school governance: for a few thousand dollars, unions can run the table. How? Elect the school board. Then, at negotiation time, they’re sitting across the bargaining table from their friends.

Who is looking out for taxpayers? In far too many school districts, no one. The inmates are running the asylum.

When unions have the ability to elect their boss – the Michigan Education Association actually has a how-to manual on the subject – a conflict of interest presents itself.

Watch ‘Choose Your Boss: Electing Politicians’ – Episode 7 – “Kids Aren’t Cars”

What can be done about it?  Some have proposed banning unions from giving campaign contributions to those that would oversee collective bargaining agreements. That’s a good move.

The union in Michigan has brazenly gone so far as to actually initiate recall campaigns to take out board members who don’t see things the “union way.”  It’s right out of the Jimmy Hoffa handbook.

And if there’s a reform-minded, troublesome superintendent?  Take over the board and fire him!

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From Politico:

The House just approved Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, checking off a hot-button social issue even as it set up a bigger showdown over defunding the health care law.

The vote was 240-185 with 11 Democrats voting for the amendment, and seven Republicans voting against. One member voted present. A group of Republicans on the floor applauded when the vote hit 218.

That amendment managed to suck up three hours of often emotional debate time Thursday night, which is a big part of the reason the health care law defunding votes got pushed into today.

Pence, of Indiana, touched off a vicious back-and-forth Thursday night in which Republicans insisted the organization is too aggressive about performing abortions and several Democrats charged that the GOP was waging a “war on women.”

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As school teachers and other publically employed members of unions in Wisconsin continue their march on that state’s capital, protesters frequently compare Republican Governor Scott Walker to Hitler or some other megalomaniac bent on destroying the hopes and dreams of the middle class. Some Wisconsin politicians, like state senator Fred Risser (D-Madison), paint the governor a despot by claiming that “[Walker] comes across more like a dictator and less like a leader.” And President Obama has asserted himself in the mix to assure union leaders he stands with them and believes the legislation Governor Walker supports will “just [make] it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally,” and that it is “an assault on unions.”

Missing in all this name-calling and finger-pointing is the honest truth about what’s happening in states like Wisconsin where unions have run budgets into the ground: and that truth is that public employees have grown so accustomed to pensions, health insurance, and other benefits coming to them via taxpayer expense that they can’t handle the thought of paying their own way like regular “volk” (a little joke for the “Hitler” chanters in the crowd.)

That’s right: Many of the marchers/protesters in Wisconsin are simply outraged that they may actually have to pay for the goods and services they’re used to forcing others to purchase for them. And they’re so blinded by their learned dependency on big government handouts that they can’t understand that Governor Walker is simply asking all employees in the state to carry their own weight for a change, because taxpayers in Wisconsin can’t do it any more: it’s financially untenable.

As Rush Limbaugh put it: “Average, ordinary Americans who are paying the salaries and the health benefits and the pensions [of union members] are losing their jobs and losing their homes. [So] there isn’t any money anymore!” And this means average Americans, like those in Wisconsin, can’t afford to foot an extravagant bill for others any longer.

We must keep in mind that Governor Walker’s proposals don’t end collective bargaining altogether, which is the charge being leveled by union members and media outlets throughout the country. This is just a smoke screen thrown up by union bosses and the people obligated to those bosses (like Wisconsin Democrats and President Obama), as part of a greater effort to make it seem like Governor Walker is after unions per se. But in truth, the governor’s actions are aimed at saving the state of Wisconsin from the bankruptcy it faces if someone doesn’t step up and pull these unionized masses off the taxpayer’s teet.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the labor protests in Wisconsin, unemployment and the Anna Nicole Smith opera in London.

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

Related Links:

Anna Nicole in London
Royal Opera’s ‘Anna Nicole’ misses the inner beauty
Tulsa Opera
Wis. Gov. Walker calls Democrat boycott a ’stunt’
Salary info Big Labor doesn’t want you to see; statewide strike looms, teachers’ union recruits out-of-state protesters
After all those efforts to paint Tea Partiers as using violent images and rhetoric, these pictures from Madison have got to hurt.
Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Up to 10.0% in Mid-February
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Now the battle has been joined.

It has long been understood that the 2010 elections were just the beginning of the struggle to reverse America’s current decline. It will take at least two or three election cycles to correct decades of bad policy choices. We aren’t staring into the fiscal abyss because of any single policy or event, but rather the cumulative effect of dozens, if not hundreds, of flawed decisions made by fickle politicians who capitalized on the fact that the American public was largely disengaged. In the end, these decisions created a vast political class who live off the fruits of others’ labors.

When a business wants to increase its future earnings, it has to find new markets and sell more of its product. For the political class its the same, only their markets and products are government services. As a result, every year, public sector unions spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying for bigger government and filling the campaign coffers of the politicians who acquiesce to their demands. In addition to bigger government, they’ve won pay packages higher than the private sector, almost 100% job security and the ability to retire in their fifties with lifetime retirement income and health benefits. All paid for by us. Unlike private sector unions, every dollar funding government employees’ pay, pension and benefits comes out of our paychecks.

In other words, we’ve created an enormous taxpayer-funded lobby whose sole mission is to resist any effort to control government spending. As the old saying goes, we’ve seen the enemy and, while they may not be us, we are funding them.

This is why the current political fight in Wisconsin is critical.

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From the Associated Press:

Wisconsin was the first battleground. But it is unlikely to be the last.

A similar proposal to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights drew throngs of protesters Thursday at the Ohio Capitol. Hundreds more have demonstrated in Tennessee and Indiana, where Republican-led committees have advanced bills to restrict bargaining rights for teachers’ unions. And governors from Nevada to Florida have been touting the need to weaken union powers and extract more money from government employees to help balance out-of-whack budgets.

The confrontation comes as organized labor is reeling from a steady loss of members in the private sector. The public sector, with about 7.6 million members, now account for the majority of workers on union rolls, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among union leaders, a sense of crisis is growing.

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Last May, after millions of barrels of oil had been pumped into the ocean, Barack Obama issued an order to halt all U.S. deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.   Immediately, constitutionalists began to rail against the moratorium, which appeared to be a severe abuse of Presidential authority – a quick grab for powers that the commander in chief simply doesn’t wield.  The courts agreed, and on June 22, an injunction was issued by U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman, who argued that Obama’s directive was “overly broad.”

A few hours after their defeat, U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar issued a statement stating that the Obama administration would be presenting a “new order in the coming days that eliminates any doubt that a moratorium is needed, appropriate, and within our authorities.”

A second drilling ban was enacted last July, only to be rescinded in October – before Judge Feldman could rule on it.  Since then, the government has used a cadre of regulators to deny drilling and enforce a de facto ban.  In fact the government has not issued a single drilling permit in the last 9 months.

Two weeks ago, Judge Feldman found the Obama administration in contempt of court.

“Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance,” Feldman ruled. “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provides this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt.”

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Reason.tv presents exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage of the movie adaption of part I of Ayn Rand’s epic and hugely influential novel, Atlas Shrugged, which tells the story of a United States crumbling under the weight of government intervention and the “men of the mind” who fight against their collectivist exploiters.

This sneak peek offers a glimpse into the post-production process as well as portions of a never-before-viewed scene from the movie.

***SPOILER ALERT*** This video contains portions of a scene and actors discussing the actions of their characters.

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Here’s a video arguing for the abolition of the corporate income tax. The visuals are good and it touches on key issues such as competitiveness.

I do have one complaint about the video, though it is merely a sin of omission. There is not enough attention paid to the issue of double taxation. Yes, America’s corporate tax rate is very high, but that is just one of the layers of taxation imposed by the internal revenue code. Both the capital gains tax and the tax on dividends result in corporate income being taxed at least two times.

These are points I made in my very first video, which is a good companion to the other video.

There is a good argument, by the way, for keeping the corporate tax and instead getting rid of the extra layers of tax on dividends and capital gains.

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