Category: Unions

Wisconsin: Are Liberals Aborting Themselves Into Political Oblivion?

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In writing about Tricia Willoughby — the 14-year-old home-schooler who showed such poise during her speech Saturday at the Tea Party rally in Madison — James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal took note that Miss Willoughby is the daughter of Wisconsin pro-life activists. Taranto also noticed that between 1975 and 1992, there were 316,457 abortions performed in Wisconsin:

There probably are many more like Tricia Willoughby, aren’t there? After all, her parents are “pro-life activists,” which means they have a tendency to follow the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. People on the other political side are more inclined toward subtraction (or as they call it, “choice”), as we explained in our 2005 paper “The Roe Effect.” . . .
Scott Walker won the governorship last year by a margin of 124,638. That may not be within the margin of abortion; after all, some of the missing 316,457 would have voted Republican had they existed, and many would not have voted.
But JoAnne Kloppenburg, the left-liberal state Supreme Court candidate who was supposed to save Wisconsin’s labor monopolies from Walker’s reforms, lost by just 7,316 votes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . . . It’s almost inconceivable that the Roe effect alone is insufficient to account for Justice David Prosser’s victory.
Oh, and in four years, Tricia Willoughby will be old enough to vote, while an additional 54,522 will not be.

Kinda sucks to be you, doesn’t it, progressives? Meanwhile, Instapundit tips us to Miss Willoughby’s e-mail to Ann Althouse about that union bozo who shouted ugly words during her speech: “I was thinking ‘That is what you want to say to me? Really? You’re not even listening to what I’m saying, or criticizing my actual logic. You are simply just calling me names because I am on the opposite side’.”

Professor Jacobson dubs the Wisconsin recount “Kloppenburg’s Folly.” Of course, in a state where many employees are forced to pay union dues, Big Labor has money to burn, so this recount is just a way for them to impose additional costs on their opposition.

VIDEO CLASSIC: ‘Pure Bias, Which You Demonstrate With Every Breath You Take’

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Kerry Picket of The Washington Times has not yet identified the two dudes who hassled her at a press conference with D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, but the one dude (pictured above, right) let loose with a hissy rant of self-righteousness that will live in infamy:

“Don’t pretend that you’re not biased. . . . You are obviously hostile and filled with contempt. I have no interest in cooperating with you. You know that you’re dishonest, because you really have a point of view that’s filled with bias and prior conclusions. . . . And the people of D.C. have voted, have voted against vouchers. That either matters to you, and is dispositive because we have a representative democracy, or you are utterly driven by ideology — which is clearly the case. . . . Pure bias, which you demonstrate with every breath you take.”

Now let’s go to the video:

Just taking a wild guess — a shot in the dark — Mr. Hissy Self-Righteous will turn out to be a long-time public-school employee and/or a teachers-union activist. Nothing is more ironclad in the minds of such people than their inalienable right to employment at taxpayer expense. Because school-choice threatens to deprive them of their monopoly of feasting on the government teat, Kerry Picket’s questions about Gray’s opposition to vouchers were like garlic to a vampire.

There is a Memeorandum thread, with blog comment by Weasel Zippers, JammieWearingFool, The Right Scoop, Hot Air, Fire Andrea Mitchell and Verum Serum

UPDATE: A little birdy tells me I guessed wrong about these two guys. Not union. Not school officals. I’m kind of surprised (but perhaps shouldn’t be surprised) to learn that D.C.’s LGBT community is staunchly opposed to vouchers, because they oppose tax money being spent to send kids to church schools.

Well, Of Course: 14-Year-Old Wisconsin Tea Party Speaker Is Home-Schooler

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When I saw this video at Ann Althouse’s blog (hat-tip, Instapundit), I did some quick searching and learned that Tricia Willoughby is a home-schooler and debate champion, one of three daughters of Wisconsin pro-life leaders Bret and Nancy Willoughby:

As the father of six home-schooled kids myself, I’m very proud to see Miss Willoughby’s poise as a public speaker. However, she twice uses “enormity” in an incorrect sense. The word has a negative connotation: “an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act . . . the quality or state of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; especially: great wickedness.” While authorities differ on whether “enormity” can be used to signify large size (“enormousness” is preferred), using the word “enormity” to signify the momentous nature or historical import of an event one wishes to portray as positive (as Miss Willoughby does in reference to the Boston Tea Party) is always wrong.

Let’s hope that Miss Willoughby doesn’t mind this brief vocabulary lesson. Certainly, it is more well-intentioned than the vocabulary lesson offered by a certain Wisconsin union thug:

You can tell he’s a public-school alumnus: His vocabulary seems to be comprised chiefly of monosyllabic words with four letters.

Wound + Salt = ‘Hey, Liberals, How Are You Liking That Wisconsin Result?’

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Yesterday afternoon, when it looked like liberal Joanne Kloppenburg had narrowly defeated Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, I was in abject misery. Now? Baby, I feel fine!

In a political bombshell, the clerk in a Republican stronghold released new vote totals adding a net total of 7,582 new votes in the tight state Supreme Court race to Justice David Prosser, swinging the race significantly in his favor.
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said Thursday that she failed to save in her computer and consequently report 14,315 votes cast in the city of Brookfield, omitting them entirely in an unofficial tally released after Tuesday’s election. The new totals give 10,859 more votes to Prosser from Brookfield and 3,456 more to Kloppenburg, she said. Smaller discrepancies turned up in two other communities as well.

National Review says this is “almost certain victory” for Prosser, and no doubt much bitter lamentation for liberals.

More at Instapundit. Read ’em weep, liberals!

UPDATE: Ace of Spades is totally in the Gloat Zone.

Meanwhile, my friend Jehuda has called to my attention some commenter at Ed Driscoll’s who described my reaction yesterday as “wailing and hand-wringing.” No: Despair is merely realism when the situation objectively sucks. And if Kloppenburg had won this thing, the situation would have sucked quite objectively.

I hate losing. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Show me a “good loser,” and I’ll show you a loser.

So when I’d stayed up until the wee hours Tweeting election results as they were updated, woke up five hours later to see Prosser hanging on to a slender lead, and then in the afternoon seen Kloppenburg declared the winner by 204 votes, I was ready to say, “To hell with Wisconsin.”

Write ’em off. Screw those losers. Might as well be California.

But now? Yeah, that was beautiful. Way to go, Wisconsin GOP: Get the liberals all gloaty for about 24 hours and then break their little hearts.

The objective suck is now on the other foot.

Gone, Wisconsin!

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Joan Kloppenburg has declared victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election — apparently winning by a margin of 204 votes — and thus dies whatever hope there had been for the state’s economic and political future.

Gov. Scott Walker and the newly-elected Republican majority in the legislature had begun the only possible reform that could have saved Wisconsin: The disestablishment of the government employee unions that were strangling the state’s economy. Now, with a cleverly orchestrated campaign, the AFL-CIO has replaced state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser with a pro-union hack to block implementation of the GOP’s reform agenda.

What is interesting to note is that, in November, Walker was elected with 1.13 million votes — 52% of more than 2.1 million votes cast.

Now, barely five months later, his election has been effectively undone by Kloppenburg, who won with a mere 740,090 votes, roughly two-thirds of Walker’s November total.

It appears that nearly 400,000 people who voted for Walker in November simply stayed home on Tuesday. With their state’s future on the line, they were MIA.

Thus ends — gone! gone forever! — all hope of liberating Wisconsin from the job-killing government-union stranglehold.

Good-bye, Wisconsin!

UPDATE: Ace is remarkably stoic about the End of Wisconsin, while The Rhetorican foresees a Greece-like future for the Land O’ Cheese.

Prosser Wins in Wisconsin
UPDATE: Kloppenburg Steals It?

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Yeah, I know that’s not the headline this morning. “Too Close to Call,” they say, but with 99% of precincts reporting and conservative Justice David Prosser leading by 585 votes in the state Supreme Court race, I’m calling it: Prosser wins.

Even if the unions finagle the recount and manage to steal this thing for JoAnne Kloppenburg, the fact is the high-profile election was not — repeat not — a repudiation of Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP majority in the state legislature.

The unions lost. Their claim that their rage-filed protests represented an overwhelming majority of Wisconsin voters? Repudiated.

UPDATE: Two hours later, Kleptoburg’s attempt to steal the election is proceeding as expected: Now she’s “ahead” by 224 votes.

UPDATE II: As of 3 p.m. ET, it appears Kleptoburg has stolen the election by 204 votes. We await the media’s declaration of a landslide triumph for the AFL-CIO.

UPDATE III: It should be noted that the reported totals are unofficial returns, and that communities have until April 15 to submit the official certified results. Then there will be a deadline of April 20 to request a recount.

UPDATE IV: Congratulations, liberals — you just killed Wisconsin.

New Motherf–g Tone: Wisconsin Woman Arrested for Death Threats to Republicans

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Who knew “civility” was a felony in Wisconsin?

A 26-year-old woman was charged Thursday with two felony counts and two misdemeanor counts for allegedly making email threats against Wisconsin lawmakers during the height of the battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.
Katherine R. Windels of Cross Plains was named in a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Criminal Court.
According to the criminal complaint, Windels allegedly sent an email threat to State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) March 9. Later that evening, she allegedly sent another email to 15 Republican legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).
The subject line of the second email was: “Atten: Death Threat!!!! Bomb!!!” In that email, she purportedly wrote, “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.”
“I hope you have a good time in hell,” she allegedly wrote in the lengthy email in which she purportedly listed scenarios in which the legislators and their families would die, including bombings and by “putting a nice little bullet in your head.”

The Underground Conservative reports that Windels is — wait for it — a pre-school teacher. Charlie Sykes at Milwaukee talk radio station WTMJ had complained that the district attorney’s office was dragging its feet in investigating death threats against Wisconsin Republicans. (Via Memeorandum.)

In other “civility” news, The Underground Conservative reports on a Milwaukee County employee (and AFSCME activist) who apparently used his work computer to call the blogger a “f–ing a–hole.”

UPDATE: Ann Althouse reports that AFSCME is resorting to protection-racket tactics, demanding that businesses put up pro-union signs.

Organized labor and organized crime: There’s a difference?

UPDATE II: Underground Conservative now has his own Memeorandum thread, with commentary by  Another Black Conservative, American Glob, Pat Dollard, Weasel Zippers, and Sister Toldjah

 PREVIOUSLY:


Fortunately, It’s Wisconsin …

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. . . so liberals will have plenty of cheese to go with their whine, as the new law limiting the power of government-employee unions is enacted. Note the biased implication of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel headline:

Collective bargaining law published despite restraining order

Yes, despite the judicial majesty of Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi, as if thousands of years of ancient legal precedent enabled a county judge to prevent the enactment of a state law.

Evidently, Republicans haven’t won anything in Wisconsin for so long, Democrats have forgotten what defeat looks like.