MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers after discovering a way to bypass the chamber’s missing Democrats.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill”—a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall.

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which spends no money, and a special conference committee of state lawmakers approved the bill a short time later.

The lone Democrat present on the conference committee, Rep. Tony Barca, shouted that the surprise meeting was a violation of the state’s open meetings law but Republicans voted over his objections. The Senate then convened within minutes and passed it without discussion or debate.

Spectators in the gallery screamed “You are cowards.” (more…)

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and the author of, most recently, Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College.

Drawing rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Crazy U is a very funny yet very serious look at the higher-education industry, especially the status anxiety college invokes in parents. Ferguson roams the countryside with his diffident son, touring various campuses and meeting characters such as a sharp-tongued counselor who charges $40,000 to shepherd high schoolers through an increasingly competitive and byzantine admissions process.

Reason’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Ferguson and his son Gillam, who is now a sophomore at the University of Virginia (discussed as “Big State University” in the book). Shot by Jim Epstein and edited by Josh Swain.

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Depending on the situation, he’s morphed into Carter, Bush, Clinton, Nixon, Reagan, Lincoln, and even Washington. With the Mid-East in full meltdown, the Chameleon-in-Chief’s true colors are starting to show.

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If you’ve noticed over the last few days, the protests in Madison have gotten smaller. They’ve actually shrunk in size. Despite a visit from Fidel Castro Michael Moore over the weekend, the three-week old protests have just sort of begun to peter out.  Now, there could be a perfectly good explanation for this, or it could just be they’ve decided fighting over the small things isn’t keeping their members energized enough, because on Monday…

The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.

The union sued in July 2010 to force the school board to again include the erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.

Wait a minute! You mean you didn’t know that the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association was fighting to save their $786,000 (per year) purple pill-popping habit?

Two years ago [in 2008], the Milwaukee school district decided that it was more interested in enhancing teacher performance in the classroom than the bedroom.
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From Heritage’s The Foundry:

Today former Congressman Ernest Istook testified before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the $105 billion slush fund in advance appropriations liberals tucked inside Obamacare. The $105 billion bypasses the traditional yearly budgeting process and is spread throughout the 2,700 page legislation. It took the Congressional Research Service (CRS) seven months to identify all the disparate funds and it was not until February (11 months after the bill passed) that all of the funds could be totaled up.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has been beating the drum to raise awareness of this unprecedented level of advance spending. But the liberal media has been attacking her for calling it “hidden” funding. In reality, Rep. Bachmann said that “practically no Member of Congress even knew that $105 billion of funding was” in the bill.FactCheck says that this funding was know to “those who read the bill … including members of Congress.” But does FactCheck really believe that any member of Congress read all 2,700 pages of the bill? Do they have any evidence at all that any member of Congress knew about the $105 billion figure before CRS published their report this February?

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Suppose you’re a college student who is about to begin searching for a summer job. You’ve spent the past few semesters taking classes in “The Spirituality of Running” and “The Mythic Rhetoric of the American Superhero*,” so you feel adequately prepared to hit the job market. (*Note: both are actual college classes.)

There’s only one problem: nobody is hiring.

Two-plus years of ‘Hope and Change’ (and a $787 billion stimulus package), the country is still living in the backwater of “The Great Recession.” The unemployment rate lingers near ten percent.

But for college kids in their early 20s, things are even worse. The unemployment rate for 20 to 24-year-olds is a staggering 16.3 percent. Those economic “green shoots” of a couple years ago have long since withered and died. Okay, so you can’t get a job. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend your summer moping around your parents’ house! President Obama’s “Organizing for America” is already at work to secure his re-election, and they need your help!

From BarackObama.com:

“This summer, Organizing for America will train a new team of summer organizers. We’re looking for a new generation of organizers — not only to help us win elections but also to help strengthen our democracy in communities across the country.”

Here’s the deal: spend your summer vacation organizing your community for the President’s 2012 re-election bid in return for college credits! Maybe. (Actually, that’s something you’ll have to “organize” with your college advisor — on your own time, of course.)

Sound too good to be true? There’s more:

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Is this the distempered, hatemongering that our “teachers” are teaching our children?

The video below is the last seven minutes of a townhall meeting that was held on March 7 in Wisconsin. It was hosted by Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI) and State Senator Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa). The video shows that the pols quietly listened to the whiner teacher issue her lies about what the situation is in the state but when State Sen. Vukmir went to the podium to try and respond, the crowd filled with distempered union thugs erupted and would not let her finish her points.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but when scenes like this were reported to the nation back in 2009 when Tea Party members were interrupting townhalls because they were so upset at Democrat lawmakers, why, the Democrats and their handmaidens in the Old Media establishment were filled with dire warnings that the uproars were evidence of the end of our polite political discourse was nigh.

So, where are the scolds in the Old Media and the Democrat Party to tsk tsk these union thugs for being so uncivilized that they forced this townhall to be shut down?

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In Michigan, police were caught on tape stealing private property:

What do you want to take in the basement?  Do you want to take the drums and all that (expletive), or no?

The police took three pages worth of property that included a 52” flat-screen TV, a DVD player, two computers, a camera and several DVDs.

Why does this kind of abuse happen?  The answer is civil forfeiture.

In the United States, if the government suspects that you committed a crime, officials can arrest you and put you on trial.  The government must then prove you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

But if the government suspects that your property was involved in a crime, under civil forfeiture laws officials can take and sell your property.  In most instances, they get to pocket the proceeds.  Importantly, they don’t have to prove you did anything wrong.  This sounds bizarre, but with civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

As civil forfeiture expert Scott Bullock explains in the above video:

You cannot give the very people who are out there enforcing the laws a direct incentive to try to take homes, cars, currency, and other property from citizens.  Under the law in over 40 states, police and prosecutors are allowed to keep all or most of the property that they seize.  So this gives them a very direct incentive to go out and take as much property from citizens as possible.

This explains why one of the police officers caught on tape says, “If Luke comes down here, he’s gonna wanna take everything . . . he’s gonna give us a chance to frickin’ take all this stuff.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation to discuss smart policy solutions to address high oil and gas prices. Then Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Barack Obama’s recent decision on Gitmo detainees.

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:

Price of Light Crude on NYMEX
AAA: Daily Fuel Gauge Report
Not the Time to Tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
What To Do About High Oil Prices
The Way We Drive Now
Obama reverses stance on Gitmo, military tribunals
“The Least Worst Place”
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Below are the Radio Television Digital News Association’s guidelines for the use of hidden cameras in news gathering. The Left, abetted by the mainstream media, has sought to demonize James O’Keefe from the start. Not content to stop there, they have also used O’Keefe to demean and undermine Andrew Breitbart given their linkage as the ACORN video story was playing out. In turn, they also attempt to further undermine O’Keefe for any connection to Breitbart. In short, if you prove to be an effective fighter against the Institutional Left, any and all events, associations, facts – and even non-facts – are considered fair game to try and damage your reputation.

At the same time, a Leftist blogger can call a sitting Republican Governor, not just lie about his identity, but impersonate another, David Koch – and there’s nary a peep about the dubious ethics involved. In fact, the usual Leftist suspects, TPM and the Washington Post, for example, make hay out of it to attack the conservative Republican. Worse, not only does the Democrat Party ignore the dubious ethics employed by the imposter caller, they demand an investigation into, not the impersonator of a private citizen, but Gov. Scott Walker.

Governor Scott Walker’s conduct on the prank call with the David Koch imposter has largely receded from the national media spotlight, but if Wisconsin Democrats have their way, it will be the subject of an investigation by Wisconsin’s enforcer of campaign finance and ethics statutes.

If that isn’t clear enough as regards the double-standard employed by the Left and their media pals, you may recall another recent incident where NBC’s Dateline attempted to do a sting targeted at individuals who would dare attend a NASCAR event. Thanks to new media, in the person of Michelle Malkin in that instance, the plot was exposed.

On a side note, James O’Keefe promptly released the entirety of his video of his lunch meeting with Ronald Schiller, now gone from NPR. To this day, Katie Couric has not done that as regards a hit piece on Sarah Palin she manufactured from an interview during the 2008 campaign.

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Despite claims to the contrary from state Democratic officials, the recall efforts against eight Republican Senators could be coordinated by workers from Washington, DC, the MacIver News Service has learned.

“These aren’t being run by national operatives,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate on the statewide UpFront with Mike Gousha television program. “This is not some prefabbed, manufactured effort.”

However the MacIver News Service has obtained a recruitment advertisement which solicited applicants from the Washington, DC area for the positions of “Field Organizers” for the Wisconsin Recalls.

The ad, for the Madison-based “Wisconsin Progress ” organization, was listed on the website of The Brad Traverse Group.

The Traverse site, operated out of Falls Church, Va, bills itself as “the leading resource for anyone seeking a job on Capitol Hill and off the Hill in the fields of government affairs, public affairs and communications.”

Although Tate asserted the recalls were organic and outside interests from Madison and Washington, DC were merely assisting with the efforts, the Wisconsin Progress advertisement says the duties for the positions include, but are not limited to: “Execute a field operation in a targeted state senate district–Manage a volunteer effort to collect recall signatures–Operate and Manage phonebank–Implement mass canvassing operations–Outreach to other progressive organizations to recruit volunteers–Data Management.”

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3. GM’s Incentive Spending:  Slashing prices through discounts and incentives to juke market share is not a healthy business model

Famed investor Warren Buffett once said, “If you have to have a prayer session before raising prices by ten percent, then you’ve got a terrible business.”  So, what does it mean if your business is slashing prices month over month through discounts and other incentives? Take a look at the graph below.

From GM’s IPO last November through February, the incentives and discounts the company is offering to consumers have increased from 29.8% above the industry average to more than 50% above industry average according to Edmunds.com.

What this means is simple: Yes, GM can crow about its 46% sales surge in February, as it did last week.  But what they aren’t telling you is they are offering discounts and incentives 50% higher than the industry average helping to inflate their numbers, and that these discounts have grown by leaps and bounds every month since the IPO.

During GM’s IPO announcement in November, the company promised that it would offer fewer incentives that crimped margins.  In February, GM Vice President Rick Scheidt said regarding incentives “it’s way to close to the bankruptcy for us to be sliding back into old habits.  We know everybody’s watching.”  Last week, GM said it will fall back to regular industry incentive levels in March.

Yet, the same week, GM announced a new 72-month, interest free financing plan on several GM models.  The announcement prompted Edmunds auto-analyst Jeremy Anwyl to note “GM’s rhetoric has been saying one thing – discipline, discipline, discipline – and their actions have been going completely in another direction.”

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The Middle East is in flames, China will shortly rival our military power, trade deals needed to help our limping economy continue to lag, and the Washington Post reports the Administration is now engaged in a major diplomatic effort to improve relations with their own cabinet secretaries?

The lowlight:

“News this week of the first departure of a Cabinet secretary from the Obama administration comes amid a wide-ranging effort under the new chief of staff, William M. Daley, to repair badly frayed relations between the White House and the Cabinet.”

The “solution” includes the creation of a new “Cabinet Czar”…

“At the same time, the White House recently created the position of Cabinet communications director, appointing media adviser Tom Gavin to the job. The goal, according to the official statement, is ‘to better coordinate with and utilize members of the Cabinet’ and is a ‘high priority.’”

…even as the Post reports that part of the problem is the current “czars.”

“Part of the problem, people on both sides said, has been an abundance of issue specialists – the ‘czars’ – who manage matters on the environment and the economy within the West Wing. ‘The White House loops people out. The czars keep people from getting in,’ said one senior Democratic official who has fielded such complaints from three agency heads. ‘The level of frustration is pretty high.’”

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The conventional wisdom is, new media is a powerful insurrectionist-like force. The Left proved to be quite capable of employing it to damage Bush, protest the war and bring Obama to power. Now, what with the union’s problems in Wisconsin and elsewhere, NPR’s Schiller pulling a cut and run and Obama under siege almost daily, the Right’s efforts in new media seem to be coming into their own.

The institutional Left is not accustomed to coming under fire, given their cozy relationship with the mainstream media. Today, there’s a new sherrif in town thanks to new media efforts. Given that activist James O’Keefe hinted at more shoes to drop in the NPR campaign, it’s unclear if what may still be to come from O’Keefe influenced Schiller’s decision in any way. Schiller did mention O’Keefe’s group offering NPR a 5 million dollar donation, no strings attached. That suggests there must have been other communications between the two parties. Stay tuned.

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In the past 10 years, the burden of federal spending has skyrocketed, more than doubling from$1.86 trillion in 2001 to an estimated $3.82 trillion this year.

President Bush deserves a lot of the blame thanks to the no-bureaucrat-left-behind bill that bloated the Department of Education, the corrupt farm bills, the pork-filled transportation bills, the new prescription drug entitlement, and bailouts for banks and auto companies.

Obama then came to office promising hope and change, but he simply grabbed the baton and continued the spending spree, adding more TARP bailouts, and then giving us the boondoggles of a fake stimulus and government-run healthcare.

Taxpayers finally said enough is enough last November and there’s a new Congress with marching orders to stop Washington’s spending orgy.

But Barack Obama and Harry Reid are saying no. They want us to believe that the House spending cuts are too severe.

What does this mean?

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From the same MoveOn.org rally that brought us video of the now infamous foaming liberal, who proudly “declared war on righties, Teabaggers and Republicans” over at the always sunshine and roses hotspot known as Daily Kos, we bring you yet another performance from an angry liberal.

Just moments after Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) gave a rousing speech at MoveOn.org’s “Solidarity With Wisconsin” rally, urging Americans to preach our principles and values across the country and around the world, this self-professed “Left of Lesbian” progressive took to the microphone to follow the Senator with this his own display of values:

“It’s time for Barack Obama to do what he did in Tucson – show up.”

“If you want to know the difference between Egypt and Madison:   Mubarak is a Tyrant.  Scott Walker’s an Asshole”

(I’m thinkin’ Hyde Park Johnny over at the Daily Kos may want to update his post.  He thought there were “no tea partiers in sight.”)

If this man looks and sounds familiar to you, he should.  This clip of him on Mediaite made the rounds on the day of the Tucson, AZ shooting, when he used an impromptu vigil as an opportunity to push Sarah Palin into the fray, as did so many others on the left that day.

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Today is Ash Wednesday:

WASHINGTON (AP) – A National Public Radio executive was captured on hidden camera calling the tea party movement racist and xenophobic and said NPR would be better off without federal funding, in an embarrassment likely to fuel the latest round of conservative attacks on public broadcasting.

The video was posted Tuesday by James O’Keefe, the same activist whose undercover videos have targeted other groups opposed by conservatives, like the community organizing group ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

It drew swift reaction from Republicans in Congress, who are renewing efforts to cut funding to public broadcasters. NPR and PBS have long been targets of conservatives who claim their programming has a left-wing bias. Similar efforts in the 1990s and 2005 were not successful, although public broadcasters take the threat seriously.

National Public Radio said in a statement that it was “appalled” by the comments from Ron Schiller, the president of NPR’s fundraising arm and a senior vice president for development.

Schiller informed NPR that he was resigning from his position before the video was shot, NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said Tuesday. He was expected to depart in May, but has now been placed on administrative leave. (more…)

Capitol Confidential has previously reported on legislation introduced by California Democratic Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner that seeks to impose a new, and unconstitutional, tax on out-of-state, online retailers including (ironically) a number of eBay users.  Capitol Confidential has since learned that a prominent corporate sponsor of such efforts is retail giant Target, and that a number of other big retailers back the legislation, too.  According to one source, that group includes Bloomingdale’s.

So what if neither Target nor Bloomingdale’s collected and remitted sales/use taxes in states where they sell online to customers but in which they maintain no physical presence (the practice Skinner’s bill aims to ban by redefining the concept of “nexus”)?  Based on what appears on both companies’ websites when one inputs an order using the data of a resident of such states, it appears both corporations are willingly taking advantage of the same constitutional case law as the online retailers targeted by Skinner’s legislation to avoid tax liability.

Here is a screenshot of the “review” page related to a Target transaction input using a Vermont customer’s information. Target’s website indicates that there are no Target stores in Vermont, and this is the final page at which customers can make adjustments, or discard the transaction:

No sales or use tax appears as a line item in the transaction, and the asterisk next to the $0.00 figure merely points to a line saying “why has sales tax been applied?” (which in this case, it has not).

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