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| Brief · February 21, 2011 The Foundation"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." --Thomas Paine For the Record"Welcome to the reckoning. We have met the fiscal apocalypse, and it is smack dab in the middle of the heartland. As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation. Let us pray it does not go the way of the decrepit welfare states of the European Union. The lowdown: State government workers in the Badger State pay piddling amounts for generous taxpayer-subsidized health benefits. Faced with a $3.6 billion budget hole and a state constitutional ban on running a deficit, new GOP Gov. Scott Walker wants public unions to pony up a little more. He has proposed raising the public employee share of health insurance premiums from less than 5 percent to 12.4 percent. He is also pushing for state workers to cover half of their pension contributions. To spare taxpayers the soaring costs of Byzantine union-negotiated work rules, he would rein in Big Labor's collective bargaining power to cover only wages unless approved at the ballot box. ... This modest call for shared sacrifice has triggered the wrath of the White House-Big Labor-Michael Moore axis. On Thursday, President Obama lamented the 'assault on unions.' AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union bosses dubbed Walker the 'Mubarak of the Midwest' while their minions toted posters of Walker's face superimposed on Hitler's. Moore goaded thousands of striking union protesters to 'shut down' the 'new Cairo' while the state's Democratic legislators bailed on floor debate over the union reform package. ... Yes, the so-called progressives truly believe that bringing American union workers into the 21st century in line with the rest of the workforce is tantamount to dictatorship. Yes, the so-called progressives truly believe that by walking off their jobs and out of their classrooms, they are 'putting children first.' If ever there were proof that public unions no longer work in the public interest, this is it." --columnist Michelle Malkin Political Futures"Let no one be confused, the stakes in Wisconsin are high and the Badger state could turn into the crucial battle ground between progressivism and the new Tea Party majority in the country. ... What is really at stake in Wisconsin today ... is the future of American competitiveness. According to the latest Pew polling, the American people understand that unions make it harder for America to compete globally. Government unions are simply a parasite on the U.S. economy. When President Obama came into office, he shielded government unions from transparency by ending their reporting requirements to the Department of Labor. As a result it is impossible for the American people to know for sure how much of their taxpayer revenue is being diverted into union coffers. ... If government employees want to voluntarily form associations and lobby the government for higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions, that is their constitutional right. But they have no right to force all employees to join their organization and take money from their paychecks every week." --Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll The Gipper"Let me reaffirm a promise made during the months of campaigning. I believe in your right to know all the facts concerning the people's business. Independent firms are making an audit of state finances. When it is completed, you will have that audit. You will have all the information you need to make the decisions which must be made. This is not just a problem for the administration; it is a problem for all of us to solve together. I know that you can face any prospect and do anything that has to be done as long as you know the truth of what you are up against. We will put our fiscal house in order. And as we do, we will build those things we need to make our state a better place in which to live, and we will enjoy them more, knowing we can afford them and they are paid for." --Ronald Reagan Washington's BirthdayIn some circles, today is observed as "Presidents' Day," jointly recognizing Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but it is still officially recognized as the anniversary of "Washington's Birthday" -- and that is how we mark the date in our shop. Washington's actual birthday is tomorrow, Feb. 22. Read more and comment here. Government"At his press conference [about his budget], the president displayed all the classic symptoms of what could be called Liberal Obduracy Syndrome (or LOS). For Obama, every single appropriation in the monster we call a federal budget is precious.... Casting around for examples of blatantly, incontrovertibly virtuous uses of taxpayer money, Obama cited two: college loans and infant formula for poor children. 'Are we only serious about education in the abstract, but when it's the concrete, we're not willing to put the money into it? If we're cutting infant formula to poor kids, is that who we are as a people?' Oh, please. Since passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965 ... the federal government has spent billions on higher education. Though it is doubtful that the Founders ever conceived of a federal role in education at all, we've been lavishly funding students, colleges, and universities (over and above what the states spend) for decades. ... As for Obama's invocation of baby formula for poor children -- he's a little behind the curve here. ... [L]et's imagine a federal program that subsidized formula only for poor women who cannot nurse. Would it look anything like the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program? Fully 51 percent of infants now get WIC funding, along with 25 percent of young children. ... This is not to be Scrooge, but merely to demonstrate that even the most heart-stirring of liberal programs -- formula for babies! -- has become bloated beyond reason and could easily be cut." --columnist Mona Charen Insight"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --British author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) Re: The Left"Aren't investments those things that people make after they've paid all their necessary expenses in the present and paid off all their debts for past purchases? That's how we define investments in our family. There have been times when either my husband or I have taken an extra odd job just to have a bit to add to an investment fund. But for the life of me, I can't remember a single time when we used bread money or bill money to invest in anything extra. So President Barack Obama has either lost his bearings completely or else he fully intends -- as long as he's in the driver's seat -- to drive our little economic dune buggy off the cliff to the place where civilizations go to die. Are we still on the car-in-the-ditch metaphor? It's hard to keep track." --columnist Kyle-Anne Shiver
Faith & Family"Our culture makes it easy to undo a marriage -- from no-fault divorce laws that allow one spouse to end a marriage unilaterally to 'marriage' counselors predisposed to see divorce as the best solution to a person's unhappiness. And when divorce occurs with a person's family or social circle, it has a destabilizing effect on others' marriages. ... Marriages plagued by abuse, serial infidelity, or substance use may indeed require dissolution -- but the majority of marriages fail not because of serious pathology but because of interpersonal issues. Ironically, the poor economy has produced one silver lining -- fewer couples have gotten divorced in recent months. According to one report, as many as 38% of couples considering divorce opted to stay together because of today's economy. Some critics bluster that financial pressures that keep a couple together when they otherwise might split will imprison couples in unhappy marriages. I disagree. I think it buys time. And often what a couple with a struggling marriage needs to do is simply buy time. Chasing something 'better' is often a less successful recipe for happiness than working on what you have." --columnist Rebecca Hagelin Reader Comments"Mark Alexander's essay, When the Right Is Wrong, provides the clearest and most concise assessment of Obama's political objectives I have read anywhere, and I appreciate the fact that The Patriot Post is consistent in its advocacy of our Constitution, whether that means taking on a Democrat or in this case, a Republican, Michael Medved." --California Conservative "You are way off the mark. We have had several BAD MEN in the White House. Most notable in my lifetime are Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. But, I really don't think Obama intends to destroy the country. Like most liberals he does not understand what the end result of his policies and ideas will be." --Wally Editor's Reply: "Way off the mark"? I wrote nothing to suggest there have not been other "bad men" in the White House. Nor did I suggest that Obama intends to "destroy the country." I do believe he is fully intent on undermining our Constitution to the extent that he is able to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," as he put it. Obama knows exactly "what the end result of his policies and ideas will be," and that verdict was returned before he ever took office. Finally, he is FAR Left of Jimmy Carter. "Rarely is there new wisdom. Frequently are there forgotten lessons. 'The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.' --Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) Who will be our Gibbon? Who will write 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic'?" --Semper Fi "Regarding the Wisconsin teachers union tantrum, if the teachers union would commit their political contributions toward their pension and compensation packages it seems to me they would not only contribute to solving their problems and keeping their jobs but also get on with educating our children which is what they're supposed to be doing anyway." --Doug
Opinion in Brief"This is not a happy ending but the beginning of something potentially very dark. The end of the Mubarak regime [in Egypt] is the biggest shift in the region in 60 years, since Nasser overthrew King Farouk's dissolute monarchy and diminished London's influence in Cairo. We are witnessing the unraveling of the American Middle East -- that's to say, of the regimes supported by Washington in the waning of British and French imperial power after the Second World War. ... [A]fter the fall of Mubarak, what remains to hold up the Hashemites in Amman? Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood is more radical than Egypt's, the regime is less ruthless, King Abdullah's Arabic is worse than his English, and pretty westernized Queen Rania, who seems so cute when CNN interviewers are fawning all over her, is openly despised outside the palace gates. Iran is nuclearizing, Turkey is Islamizing, Egypt is ... what exactly? Well, we'll find out. But, given that only the army and/or the Muslim Brotherhood are sufficiently organized to govern the nation, the notion that we're witnessing the youthful buds of any meaningful democracy is deluded." --columnist Mark Steyn The Last Word"The fact that liberals support democracy in Egypt, but not in Iraq or Iran, can mean only one thing: Democracy in Egypt will be bad for the United States and its allies. (As long as we're on the subject, liberals also opposed democracy in Russia, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and all the Soviet satellite states, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua and Minnesota.) Democrats are all for meddling in other countries -- but only provided a change of regime will harm U.S. national security interests. Time and again, Democrats' fecklessness has emboldened America's enemies and terrified its allies, which I believe was the actual slogan of the State Department under Jimmy Carter: 'Emboldening America's enemies, and terrifying her allies, since 1976.' For 50 years, Democrats have harbored traitors, lost wars, lost continents to communism, hobnobbed with the nation's enemies, attacked America's allies, and counseled retreat and surrender. Or as they call it, 'foreign policy.' As Joe McCarthy once said, if liberals were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that at least some of their decisions would serve America's interests." --columnist Ann Coulter Opinion
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