Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Union Backlash
For years, unions have waged war on the GOP, pouring hundred of millions of dollars each election cycle into defeating Republicans at the polls. It worked well for the unions so long as Democrats controlled most state houses and governors' offices, but with the 2010 election producing huge gains for Republicans, the chickens are coming home to roost. In Wisconsin, newly elected Gov. Scott Walker wants teachers in the state to start contributing to their pensions and pay a larger share of their health insurance costs to help close a $3.6 billion budget deficit. But he also wants to rein in the power of the unions by limiting their collective bargaining rights and the state's obligation to collect union dues.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Sutter Brown -- Unleashed
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Call me Sutter. Sutter Brown. California's first dog, the shortest, cuddliest member of Gov. Jerry Brown's and Anne Brown's nuclear family. You may rub my belly. Yes, I am a good Corgi, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi to be exact. Yes, I am handsome. Yes, I would like another treat.
Public Unions Force Taxpayers to Fund Dems
Everyone has priorities. During the past week, Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has launched on the Libyan people. But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state's public employee unions. Walker was staging "an assault on unions," he said, and added that "public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens."
Remember PATCO!
The turmoil and shocking thuggery we are now witnessing in Madison, Wis. is at a level seldom seen in America in this era. School teachers, of all people, are setting bad examples for their students. Some engage in outright fraud, aided by medical doctors giving them phony diagnoses of nonexistent illnesses to give them an excuse for near rioting instead of doing their job of teaching. There is a name for that kind of thing -- it's called a crime. You know, the kind of offense that can get you tossed in the slammer. In the process they show students how to commit fraud -- on their taxpaying parents.
'ObamaCare' -- The New 'N' Word?
"'ObamaCare' ... is a disparaging reference to the President of the United States. It is meant as a disparaging reference to the President of the United States. It is clearly in violation of the House rules against that," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. "ObamaCare," according to several blogs, is the new "n" word. When did "ObamaCare" become a slur? Proponents, after all, boast that President Barack Obama succeeded in signing "universal care'' legislation when every Democratic president since Harry Truman failed to "get it done." Why isn't President Obama flattered to have his name attached to his signature achievement and a now-fulfilled campaign promise? Was there a hissy fit over "HillaryCare" or the widely used "RomneyCare"?
Remembering Clinton and the Episodic Apologists
WASHINGTON -- Frankly, I did not think of Chris Matthews as an episodic apologist until I watched his MSNBC documentary this week, "President of the World: The Bill Clinton Phenomenon." The episodic apologists are a familiar fixture of the Clinton administration, much as the court historians are a fixture of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whereas the court historians always could be relied upon to spin history FDR's heroic way, the episodic apologists always end up slobbering all over the Clintons -- albeit with a twist.
Look for the Union Fable
The good news out of Wisconsin is that public school students' test scores skyrocketed last week, mystifying educators. The bad news is many student-teacher love affairs were hard-hit without access to janitors' closets and locker rooms. Democrats are acting as if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's demand that public sector employees give up collective bargaining would have George Washington rolling in his grave (a clear violation of Gravediggers' Local 803 regulations concerning the rolling of the dead).
The Axis of Ideological Evil
Wisconsin union protesters have taken center stage in our nation's debate about fiscal responsibility. These protesters are pushing for the right to milk the American taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars; they want to be able to "collectively bargain" with legislators, although they generate precisely zero profit. President Obama supports them wholeheartedly. On the other side of the globe, Muslim protesters lash out at tyrannical governments in Egypt, Libya, Jordan and Tunisia. These protesters are pushing for the right to vote -- but more importantly, they're pushing for more benefits, less American regional influence, and a resurgence of genocidal anti-Semitism. President Obama supports them wholeheartedly.
A Price on Our Heads
Back in the American Wild West, federal and state governments often put a price on the heads of infamous outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Sam Bass, Belle Star and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Today, our government is not so selective. It's seeking to put a price on the head of every American. Not because they've robbed a train, but for a different reason that could lead to a very bad end.
After Obama, the Deluge
President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission -- and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in U.S. history. The ensuing $3 trillion dollars in red ink prompted the Tea Party movement and led to the largest midterm defeat of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives since 1938. No matter. The president has proposed a new budget with an even larger, $1.6 trillion deficit. That record federal borrowing prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe it as Louis XV indulgence, an allusion to the wild royal spending that brought about the French Revolution. Even Newsweek editor at large Evan Thomas, who once gushed that Obama stood "above the world" as some "sort of God," called the president's new budget a "profile in cowardice." After Obama leaves office, a perfect storm of rising international interest rates, an anemic dollar and panic on the part of foreign lenders may force an end to this unhinged American rush to borrow and blow what it has not earned.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Fleebaggers: The New Cut-and-Run Democrats
First lady Michelle Obama said, "Let's Move!" Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally? Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states -- paralyzing Republican fiscal reform efforts. Like Monty Python's Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.
The Missing Element
I tried to stay interested in Bill O'Reilly's interview with Barack Obama some weeks ago. Honest I did. Duty called but, when I answered, it turned into what seemed a life sentence. On and on these two went, pausing at every familiar stop, but not for very long. Like the local to Glencoe. Interviewer and interviewee quibbled the whole way, like an unhappy couple you really didn't want to overhear, and the more they spoke, the less they said. A familiar pattern was established from the first and maintained to the end: feint, jab and move on. To sum up the sequence: Gotcha, No You Don't, Next Question....
Democracy Versus Liberty
It is truly disgusting for me to hear politicians, national and international talking heads and pseudo-academics praising the Middle East stirrings as democracy movements. We also hear democracy as the description of our own political system. Like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government. You say, "Whoa, Williams, you really have to explain yourself this time!"
Public Unions Must Go
The protesting public school teachers with fake doctor's notes swarming the Capitol building in Madison, Wis., insist that Gov. Scott Walker is hell-bent on "union busting." Walker denies that his effort to reform public-sector unions in Wisconsin is anything more than an honest attempt at balancing the state's books. I hope the protesters are right. Public unions have been a 50-year mistake. A crucial distinction has been lost in the debate over Walker's proposals: Government unions are not the same thing as private-sector unions.
Scott Walker for President?
"I am going to stand with the hard-working taxpayers of Wisconsin." -- Gov. Scott Walker That is a pretty good place to stand if it comes to that -- as it has in Wisconsin, obviously -- and so arises another obvious point: What about Scott Walker for president? Just asking. We have to see how the government-union tantrum up there plays out and to whose advantage -- that of the taxpayers or that of union members so attached to the public interest they'd rather mill around the state Capitol shouting slogans than perform the jobs for which they hired on. You know, teaching children to read and such like.
Voices of Moderation
Moderation -- at least verbal moderation -- is suddenly in vogue. President Obama's rhetoric has moderated, even if his policies and practices have not. Among Republicans, voices of moderation are warning that the party cannot win elections without having a "big tent" and reaching out to Hispanics, for example. Recently, talk show host Michael Medved has suggested that Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin should moderate their attacks on Obama.
Pennsylvania Railroad: In Juvenile Justice Scandal, Money Changed Everything
Mark Ciavarella, the Pennsylvania judge known as "Mr. Zero Tolerance," had a reputation for running his courtroom like an assembly line, spending just a minute or two on each of the juvenile offenders who appeared before him. If they were not represented by lawyers, which was usually the case, they would more often than not be shipped off in shackles to some form of detention, even for trivial crimes. Aside from defendants and their parents, few people seemed concerned about Ciavarella's mindlessly tough attitude -- until it turned out he was receiving kickbacks from the private detention centers where he sent juvenile offenders. But for those suspicious payments, Ciavarella, who was convicted last week of racketeering and related charges, might still be practicing his special brand of injustice, which he and his supporters said helped kids by hurting them.
Do Wisconsin's Public Schools Deserve to Survive?
With the entire nation watching, Wisconsinites are now debating whether the state's public school teachers ought to be required to pay 5.8 percent of their wages to support their own retirement plans and 12.6 percent of their own health-insurance premiums, and also whether their union ought to be able to negotiate a pay increase on their behalf that exceeds the rate of inflation without letting voters approve or disapprove that raise in a referendum. What Wisconsin ought to be debating is whether these public school teachers should keep their jobs at all.
Iran's Great Fright Fleet: Will Information Warfare Meet Davy Jones' Locker?
2011's great cascade of Arab rebellions continues, and even China's oligarchs are feeling its effects. Libya may be next. Meanwhile, back in Iran, the rebellions have energized the opposition Green Movement. Iran's Khomeinist dictators have placed its leaders under house arrest. As this astonishing spring proceeds, Iran's clerical tyrants have also ordered an Iranian naval task force to sail the Mediterranean Sea for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Why Does Government Suppress Information?
Sunday night is Oscar night! Think you know who's going to win? Want to make a bet? The Hollywood Stock Exchange allows people to bet on which movies, actors, directors, etc. will take home Academy Awards. You can also bet on how much money a movie might make. It's called a prediction market ... except unlike other prediction markets, bettors can't use real money.