Big labor loses, Americans (and esp. Wisconsonites) win

[CaptainHaplo]

Scott Walker wins by a fairly large margin in Wisconsin. Big labor made it a battle - and they lost it in a big way.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/05/politi...html?hpt=hp_t1

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...eported-heavy/

Wow - fiscal sanity and expecting government workers to contribute to their own pensions are looked upon as good things. Who woulda thunk it?

[nikimcbee]

Not even the 119% voter turn out in Madison could save them.

Union dues well spent!

Just think of all of the cool stuff they could have purchased....
New car, new boat, cool vacations.
Oh well.

Congrats Aramike.

@ Haplo, by big labo(u)r, you mean public sector, not private sector unions.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

Not even the 119% voter turn out in Madison could save them.

Union dues well spent!

Just think of all of the cool stuff they could have purchased....
New car, new boat, cool vacations.
Oh well.

Congrats Aramike.

@ Haplo, by big labo(u)r, you mean public sector, not private sector unions.

Yes it was public sector unions that "took the hit" when it came to the original reforms - but private sector unions were indeed a significant part of the recall process. The Teamsters Union was actively working on behalf of the recall effort, for example.

When it comes to the lessening of power of unions - both public and private lost a lot of political clout since both sides were so invested.

[gimpy117]

well bummer there, but not like I didn't see it coming.

I dunno, I wouldn't say "I'm a union man", but the right to organize I feel is as important now as it ever was.

[mookiemookie]

Elections can be bought. What a wonderful world that the Citizens United decision has brought us.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Elections can be bought. What a wonderful world that the Citizens United decision has brought us.

I don't know if we can state without a doubt that elections can be bought.

But maybe we can:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/ex...?cid=N00009638

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/

[August]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Elections can be bought. What a wonderful world that the Citizens United decision has brought us.

Sounds like sour grapes to me Mookie. Taking the out of state money out of the picture, Walker still raised over 10 million dollars from Wisconsinites whereas Barrett only raised a little under 2.9 mil.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Elections can be bought. What a wonderful world that the Citizens United decision has brought us.

Indeed an election can be "bought" - Big Labor Unions - both public and private - paid lots and lots of money to buy the organization that got the recall going. After all - getting all those people to go door to door and get signatures - or sign them with made up names themselves - isn't cheap. Bussing in union members from out of state so they can have near riots in the state capital building doesn't come cheap.

Big labor paid for the game - then got its clock cleaned.

You can "buy" an election - but you can't buy the results.
However, some will try to stuff the ballot box. No comment on the Madison turnout, huh?

For the record though - I agree with you on the Citizens United decision. Anything that isn't an individual should not be giving money. Period.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Elections can be bought. What a wonderful world that the Citizens United decision has brought us.

I'm sorry, Mookie, but that's total horse manure coming from someone who doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about beyond the talking points he's been willingly consuming from a spoon feeding.

Besides what others have aptly pointed out here, I love how the lefties have ignored the fact that the unions and out-of-state interests have been pouring money into this process for months, INCLUDING a failed FOUR MILLION dollar investment in the failed union-preferred candidate for governor, Kathleen Falk.

The democrats have been pouring literally MILLIONS into this effort for over 16 MONTHS and have failed at virtually every turn (Prosser/Kloppenburg, the recall of Alberta Darling, etc). Sure, they got Randy Hopper but that guy had about three hundred other problems that made him vulnerable.

The facts don't support this BS claim, and if you've paid any attention at all to what's be going on around here, there were no shortage of the left and unions getting their messages out. Sure, if you ignore the PACs, the mobilization efforts, the union spending on voter-drives and bringing in PAID out-of-state workers to supplement these efforts, the amount of money spent on the preferred candidates, etc, yes, Walker did better fund-raising than Tom Barrett.

I'll even stipulate that, and I'll concede the point for the sake of argument. Now I'd like you to tell me how that money was spent that specifically led voters to vote for Walker in droves. I know, I know ... in the mind of the average person on the side who loses just assumes that the opposition are idiots.

Tell me, Mookie, what part of Barrett's plan did you like? Us in Wisconsin can't even identify ANY plan from Barrett. Even better, what part of Walker's actions did people still hate? I mean, a projected surplus after a $3.6B deficit? Positive job growth and depletion in unemployment rate?

How about this: where were the democrat millionaire/billionaire donors? Is Soros on vacation? Is Hollywood tapped out after Obama's mansion fundraisers? Do you object to Obama's fundraising successes?

This was nothing more than an epic fail for the Democrats in Wisconsin, and they know it. The state convention is next week, and I suspect that their leadership faces being thrown out. Have you ever heard of Graeme Zielinski? He's their spokesman, and he makes Reverend Wright sound reasonable.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has been infiltrated and taken over by activist antagonizers, and the results of Tuesday were a clear repudiation of this. You can delude yourself into thinking that the Democrats haven't been spending millions in support of this recall for over a year, and additional millions by proxy, but that's nothing more than the delusions that made the left think this was a good idea in the first place.

The irony is even thicker, though - while the left's extreme, crybaby behavior here was designed to defeat Walker and his reforms, it has done nothing but to give Walker and the conservatives an even stronger mandate. Yet, if they merely would have behaved reasonably, they may have had a decent chance of winning the state back in '14.

Now, they and their interests, and a principle source of their funding, have been utterly destroyed as an effective driver of public policy. They have no one to blame but themselves.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

Not even the 119% voter turn out in Madison could save them.

Union dues well spent!

Just think of all of the cool stuff they could have purchased....
New car, new boat, cool vacations.
Oh well.

Congrats Aramike.

@ Haplo, by big labo(u)r, you mean public sector, not private sector unions.

Thanks!

I've been pretty much walking on a cloud since the results came in. I've followed and campaigned for Scott Walker since his early County Executive days - if there's a straighter shooter out there, I've never met him.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Looking at the subject line:

Wow, I didn't really the two (2) Koch brothers represent all Americans!! I wonder where my unearned $22,000,000,000.00 is?