Never acknowledge conservative victories as legitimate.

Never concede defeat in legislative votes. There is always a cloud.

Litigate everything.

Rely on Dane County judges whenever possible.

Elections only matter if liberals win.

Shut down schools, bring legislative process to a halt, tie up the courts, extort  businesses, try to overturn elections … and then say “this is what democracy looks like.”

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Had the federal government passed a law (in the best interest of the people, naturally) mandating that every household in America purchase a handgun and learn how to use it in order to protect themselves and in turn save the government money on police protection, that law would be a constitutional issue for the courts to decide in the exact same way ObamaCare — a real federal law requiring every American purchase health insurance — is also a constitutional issue. Regardless of your political persuasion, any intellectually honest individual understands that the government requiring an individual purchase something is exactly why our founders created a judicial branch. That’s what they’re there for. What they’re not there for, however, is to use judicial fiat to overturn an election. But that is exactly what the Left in Wisconsin is counting on happening just a few days from now on April 5th.

Before I get to that, though, I want to backfill my point with a rundown of the hows and whys that make a Wisconsin State Supreme Court race so crucially important to everyone in America, not just my fellow cheese heads.

The Basics

Last November, for the first time in a long time, Wisconsin voters went to the polls and gave Republicans control of the assembly, senate, and governorship. Governor Scott Walker, the former County Executive of Milwaukee, ran as a reformer, inherited a crushing deficit, and drafted a Budget Repair Bill that would allow him to do two vital things. His first priority was to not lay off any public employees. His second priority was to create long-term, sustainable fixes to the state budget. One of the only ways he could do this was to increase the percentage public employees pay for their health insurance coverage from 6% to 12.6% (still half the national average) and their pension contribution from 0% to 5.8% (most Americans don’t even get pensions). By far, though, the most controversial and necessary part of the bill is the stripping away of public employee collective bargaining rights in all matters other than wages. Opponents say collective bargaining has nothing to do with the budget, that it’s just an attack on workers’ rights.

That’s a lie. And here’s why they’re telling that lie.

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Today, a liberal judge in a liberal Wisconsin county at the request of a liberal district attorney has issued a temporary restraining order that blocks publication — and therefore the enactment, of the law Governor Scott Walker and Republican legislators passed that limits Public Union collective bargaining rights to issues regarding wages only. This order, issued by Dane County (Madison) Court Judge Maryann Sumi is strictly based on a technical procedural issue. No one’s arguing the law passed wasn’t constitutional (yet– see #2 below), the question is whether or not Republicans violated Wisconsin’s open-meeting law during the session in which the vote took place.   They didn’t.

But whatever the legal outcome, the bill will still pass. In a worst case scenario the Republicans merely need to reconvene and pass the bill again, this time making triple-pinky-sure the Left can’t hassle them in court regarding the open-meeting law. Should this happen, the big question is whether or not State Senate Democrats will repeat their shameful escapades and hot-foot it to Illinois again. But even that won’t stop the law from passing because a quorum isn’t necessary for this part of the bill.

So if this is the case, then what’s going on? If there’s no way the Left can stop the law from eventually being passed, what are they up to?

Three things:

1. The Psychological Game: Yesterday, I published a piece detailing the intensifying threats, violence, vandalism and intimidation taking place in Wisconsin against Republican legislators and their supporters in the form of  Tea Party leaders and local businesses. Obviously, the idea here is to use the worst kind of thuggish mob tactics on legislators in the hopes they’ll be too afraid to vote for this bill a second time. If you remember the tension and stress we as a nation went through while the 2000 presidential election was being recounted and litigated, multiply that times 100 and mix it with the continuous threat of violence. That’s the atmosphere hanging over all of Wisconsin right now.  Ratcheting that tension even higher today is the fact that there will be no final ruling from this judge for at least another two weeks, which means the  tunnel of emotional hell these legislators thought they might finally be emerging from has just slammed shut.

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From Politico:

The first round is over. Republican Gov. Scott Walker delivered a crushing defeat to government employee unions in their fight over labor rights in Wisconsin.

But the passage of a law stripping away collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers has touched off a much larger political battle that threatens to spread over Wisconsin’s borders and across the 2012 landscape.

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In today’s The Wall Street Journal:

The unions say they are ready to accept concessions, yet their actions speak louder than words. Over the past three weeks, local unions across the state have pursued contracts without new pension or health-insurance contributions. Their rhetoric does not match their record on this issue.

Local governments can’t pass budgets on a hope and a prayer. Beyond balancing budgets, our reforms give schools—as well as state and local governments—the tools to reward productive workers and improve their operations. Most crucially, our reforms confront the barriers of collective bargaining that currently block innovation and reform.

When Gov. Mitch Daniels repealed collective bargaining in Indiana six years ago, it helped government become more efficient and responsive. The average pay for Indiana state employees has actually increased, and high-performing employees are rewarded with pay increases or bonuses when they do something exceptional.

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From 620AM Radio in Wisconsin:

Since the MSM appears intent on downplaying the growing intimidation and escalating threats of violence around the union power issue, I am reprinting verbatim an email that was sent to Republican senators. The email was signed, but I have deleted the name pending what I hope will be a thorough police investigation.

From: XXXX

Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM

To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen

Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes [sic] will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.

We have all planned to assult [sic]you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic [sic]process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

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Most of us instinctively know that something very important — historic, even — going on in Wisconsin. Well, there is something historic going on in Wisconsin. It is the first salvo in a battle that is going to preoccupy the rest of our lives, for we live in a very unique time in human history — the kind of cusp that has only happened twice before in all of human history.

The pro-Union forces may or may not win the Battle of Wisconsin — but as to the larger war, they are irretrievably doomed. This is not just politics. It is something much, much bigger.

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While the situation in Wisconsin continues to heat up, there has been too little examination by the media about what collective bargaining is and how it works when government unions are involved. After all, unlike in the private sector, no one at the bargaining table is negotiating with their own money, it’s taxpayer money that’s at stake.

We have put together a short video on collective bargaining which, along with our other recent videos on public unions, helps put the issue in perspective. And with a majority of union members now in government rather than the private sector, this is an important issue to understand.

From Wisconsin State Journal:

Senate Republicans Thursday ordered the arrest of their 14 Democratic colleagues, who fled the state two weeks ago to avoid a vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill.

It’s unclear whether the resolution to force the senators back to the Capitol is constitutional. The state Constitution prohibits the arrest of legislators while in session unless they’re suspected of committing felonies, treason or breach of the peace.

Democrats say the Republicans have overreached, and have consulted an attorney for an opinion on whether the GOP actions are legal.

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The world is backwards. It should be the taxpayers striking in the streets of Wisconsin. But, private sector taxpayers can’t afford to take a day off, let alone a week. Doesn’t that say everything? Only government employees with their powerful unions, lifetime job security, short work-weeks, loads of sick days, nonstop holidays, early retirement, and bloated pensions, can afford to stand in the street protesting. Common sense tells us anyone with this much time to protest and the ability to abandon their work duties, is greatly overpaid.

It’s time for a reality check. These $100,000 per year teachers keep talking about “the kids.” Exactly who is teaching those kids while their teachers abandon their jobs and commit fraud with fake doctor’s notes? If they cared about the kids, they’d be in the classroom. They’d leave the striking and lobbying to their union leaders and lobbyists. It’s the students (and their parents) who should be on strike. Wisconsin teachers are the highest paid in the Midwest, but their students’ performance hasn’t improved. Where’s the taxpayer’s union? Where’s the students’ union? Are students and taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Perhaps they should be on strike.

I’m a small businessman. Like all private sector workers, I have no time to protest or strike. Take a day off? How could I do that? I run a business. People depend on me. I’m on call 24/7/365, weekends, holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. Vacations are “working vacations.” The phones never stop ringing, the emails never slow down. I have to work 16-hour days just to pay my taxes. Who benefits? Those government employees protesting in the streets of Wisconsin.

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From The Hispanic Conservative:

The year that best summarized Walker’s saga with local labor was probably 2010. As the 2008-2009 Great Recession hit the country, Milwaukee County’s tax base felt the pinch. Walker called for an aggressive strategy of employee wage cuts and increased benefit contributions. AFSCME refused to accept those concessions provoking Walker to order layoffs and furloughs for hundreds of county workers. The exchange typified the continuing narrative that is Scott Walker.

At no point during Walker’s eight year tenure did AFSCME recognize the financial impact the pension scandal had upon Milwaukee County. In short, Milwaukee County’s Pension Board – without so much as a cost study on pension benefits – passed ultra-lucrative pension buy-backs to hundreds of employees. Almost in a day, Milwaukee County government found herself mired in a $60 million hole without a viable exit strategy.

Instead of acknowledging the county’s fiscal woes, AFSCME fought Walker every step of the way.

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Well, this last week has been yet another shining example of our public sector employees at work. The unions have overreached by such a wide margin that they can no longer cross back over their self-made chasm. To all of you folks at BigGovernment, I ask you this; please just keep giving them rope. It only helps us. I’m sure that you could already tell as much by the desperate Governor Scott Walker/Hitler comparisons. Those are always a crowd-pleaser, right folks? Regardless, the antics in Wisconsin now have even most blue-collar, union-supporting, red-blooded Americans asking themselves “… Really?!”

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On Saturday, standing on the state capitol steps in Madison, Wisconsin I saw history. I saw the first public, physical manifestation of the great struggle between the tea party movement and the public sector unions. At stake: the future freedom and prosperity of this country.

On one side of the debate, you have freedom loving Americans who are the taxpayers, the ones who fund our government and are the heart and soul of this great nation. On the other, those who would seek to ride on the backs of the taxpayers as they take this country down a path of statism.

This is the great fight right now: freedom vs. statism, and the ones of the front lines for freedom are the tea partiers. They have been, and are continuing to, answer the bell time and time again in this crucial time in American history. They’ve been mocked and reviled, questioned, but they are America’s best hope to turn this magnificent nation back to a path of freedom and prosperity and away from destructive statism.

What I saw in Madison on Saturday was amazing. Thursday morning, the American Majority staff in Wisconsin and some local tea party leaders, Meg Ellefson and Tim Dake, along with Dave Westlake, decided there should be a rally in support of Scott Walker and his Budget Repair Bill. In roughly 48 hours, it went from idea to reality, from a few people talking to 10,000 rallying on the steps of the capitol.

Within hours of announcing there would be a rally, I got a call that Andrew Breitbart was in.

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BigGovernment.com has learned that the University of Wisconsin medical school is investigating reports that its
physicians handed out fake medical excuses to union teachers who were planning to call out sick this week.

On Saturday, Andrew Breitbart approached doctors signing teachers up en masse and was told he has ‘[Gov. Scott] Walker Pneumonia.’ Upon putting down his real name, and stating he wasn’t sick and that did “didn’t want to get in trouble,” with cameras filing the scene, one of the alleged doctors became suspicious and demanded that the cameras be shut off.

BigGovernment.com blogger Christian Hartsock and prominent Madison-based blogger and U of W law professor, Ann Althouse chronicled the mass fake doctors note sign-ups, as well.

On Sunday, the Teachers Union backed down and told its members attend class on Tuesday. (more…)

What is occurring in Madison, Wisconsin has become a microcosm of what is happening across America: conservative care givers are being blocked by progressive liberal statists. In Wisconsin, the elected Governor and conservative legislature are trying to institute rational, humane treatment to a sick patient, the state of Wisconsin’s failed economy. Unfortunately, progressive liberal statists and unions, as self-appointed “family members” of the patient, have decided to withhold treatment by NOT allowing the caregivers in the room and by trying to hide the patient in another state.

Photo: Ann Althouse

The progressive liberal statists and unions have taken the situation to a fraudulent and possibly criminal level, with the help of The Democratic National Committee, Organizing For America and their mouthpiece the “Organizer in Chief:” Barack Obama. They have recruited “physicians” in their white coats to hand out FRAUDULENT work notes to the “victims” of the needed treatment. These “physicians” in white coats were eerily similar in appearance to the “physicians” in white coats who slithered into the Rose Garden during the debate on Obama Care. In their actions, these “physicians” have violated and compromised The Hippocratic Oath, medical ethics and committed medical fraud.

The video of Andrew Breitbart shows him being “diagnosed” with “Walker Pneumonia” and being given a “medical release” from work. This is all the evidence needed to bring those “physicians” up on charges of FRAUD before the State of Wisconsin Medical Review Board, The State of Wisconsin Medical Society and The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office. What these “physicians” have done is incomprehensible to those of us that uphold the Oath 24-7 year in and year out.

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Hopefully, Big Government readers can help us identify these Democrat senators from Wisconsin. In the video, they claim they are heading back to the state to fulfill their constitutional obligation. They’re Democrats though, so we’re skeptical they worry about things like that. We’ll see.

Governor Pawlenty in today’s Wall Street Journal:

When Americans think of organized labor, they might think of images like I saw growing up in a blue-collar meatpacking town: hard hats, work boots, tough conditions and gritty jobs. While I didn’t work in the slaughterhouses, I did become a union member when I worked at a grocery store to help put myself through school. I was grateful for the paycheck and proud of the work I did.

The rise of the labor movement in the early 20th century was a triumph for America’s working class. In an era of deep economic anxiety, unions stood up for hard-working but vulnerable families, protecting them from physical and economic exploitation.

Much has changed. The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or “strong back” jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming “industry” left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.

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