Category: Indiana

Unions File Suit Against Mitch Daniel’s Right-To-Work Law And His Hairstyle, But Mostly The Right-To-Work Law

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by Smitty

Mitch Daniels came under attack from The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, who appear to have smoked a staggering amount of that new ‘Pelosi’ material circulating in Progressive circles. Emphasis mine:

The lawsuit argues that the “defendants have exacted compulsory service and/ or involuntary servitude from the Union through the combination of the passage of the Right to Work law and the existing federal requirement of the duty of fair representation” and that the union is “compelled to furnish services to all persons in bargaining units that it represents but it may not require payments for those services because of the Right to Work law.”
The union also claims the right-to-work law “requires dues-paying members to work alongside non-union personnel, and that is compulsory service within the meaning of the thirteenth amendment.”

Don’t I remember seeing this argument in a book once? (click to embiggen):
Why, yes: yes, I do.
But, if you believe that ObamaCare is Constitutional, you might have smoked enough Pelosi to become happy about it.

via Breitbart

More at Daily Pundit.

Update: in other Hoosier news, what’s with this upstart Mourdock nipping at Lugar’s heels?

Mitch Daniels Boomlet Ends

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He just threw Scott Walker under the bus:

Democrats went into a behind-closed-doors meeting Monday, refusing to return to the floor. Today, sources told The Indianapolis Star that Democrat lawmakers have left the state.
Daniels, a Republican, supported their right to deny Republicans a quorum to do business and the rights of labor unions to protest at the Statehouse.
“The activities of today are perfectly legitimate part of the process,” he said. “Even the smallest minority, and that’s what we’ve heard from in the last couple days, has every right to express the strength of its views and I salute those who did.”

The Underground Conservative was never on the Daniels 2012 bandwagon, but he’s sure as hell off it now:

Daniels took another step toward revealing himself as a Not Ready For Prime Time Player today when he told Indiana House Republicans to drop the Right-to-Work bill . . .

If you don’t support the right to work without interference from union goons, you’re not conservative:

Gov. Mitch Daniels signaled this afternoon that Republicans should drop the right-to-work bill that has brought the Indiana House to a standstill for two days and imperiled other measures.
Daniels told reporters this afternoon that he expects House Democrats will return to work if the bill dies. It would be unfortunate if other bills are caught up in the turmoil, he said.

One of Daniels’ pundit fans, Jim Geraghty now says he’s “extremely disappointed.”

UPDATE: “Alternate headline: ‘Apparently, Mitch Daniels not running for president.’”

Philip Klein bids for the Understatement of the Year Award: “In another move unlikely to endear him to conservative primary voters should he decide to seek the presidency . . .”

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin: “Unfortunately, GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels has gone and made himself an honorary fleebagger.”

Hey, you know who benefits from this?

VIDEO: 9/12 DC Mike Pence Speech

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by Smitty

Mike Pence was the ranking speaker of the day. Very easy to edit, and served up in seven pieces a tartar for your red meat delectation, 51, 281, and 1:

 

Clip 2 unambiguously calls for ObamaCare repeal:

We don’t consent to runaway Federal spending. No new taxes: Reid his Pelosi.

No new taxes, continued, plus the class warfare quote:

Chases class warfare with a twist of Reagan:

Doom and gloom is ours, if we don’t remember in November:

Doing freedom’s work is proclaiming liberty throughout the land:

What an impressive leader. Thanks, Hoosiers, for sending such to Congress.
Separated at birth?

Election 2010: Senate Primaries in Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina

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10:45 p.m. ET: It’s all over for progressive Jennifer Brunner, who got electorally date-raped by the Democratic Party good ol’ boy establishment:

Fisher outperformed Brunner in fundraising, had the support of Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and was the preferred candidate of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. . . .
One of Fisher’s top priorities is to forge party unity with Brunner, who accused Fisher’s allies of trying to push her out of the primary, and to replenish his campaign fund to stay competitive with Portman, who had nearly $7 million more in the bank than Fisher as of mid-April.

Let’s hope Brunner tells Fisher to shove his “party unity” where the sun don’t shine. Tell him to beg campaign cash by peddling his corrupt ass to Tim Geithner’s buddies at Goldman Sachs, so he can buy a bunch of TV ads telling Ohio what an “independent voice” he is.

10:30 p.m. ET: Yep — definitely a runoff in North Carolina. With 92% of counties reporting, it’s Marshall 36%, Cunningham 27%. So, who gets the runoff endorsement of Lewis? My guess is he’ll back the establishment candidate, Cunningham, although I doubt that endorsement will actually swing many votes. And if Cunningham can’t beat Marshall head-to-head with the DSCC’s thumb on the scales, how strong is he, anyway? All in all, the omens favor Burr’s re-election.

9:55 p.m. ET: With two-thirds of counties reporting in North Carolina, it’s old white woman Elaine Marshall 37%, establishment-backed white guy Cal Cunningham 27%, and idealistic black guy Ken Lewis 16%. So the two crackers are likely heading to the Democratic runoff, which pretty much guarantees a weak Democratic turnout in November. Life is good.

9:45 p.m. ET: Chris Cilizza on the Fisher-Brunner mess:

In Ohio, Fisher quickly united state and national party leaders behind his candidacy but struggled to put away the challenge from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
National Democrats insist that Fisher had righted the ship a few months ago with a change in campaign manager but his fundraising in the first three months was weak and, as a result, fell further behind former Rep. Rob Portman (R) in the chase for campaign cash.

Fisher emerges from the primary weakened, having spent $1 million to crush Brunner’s dream — demoralizing and alienating her progressive supporters — while Portman is sitting there like a GOP Godzilla ready to go stomping through Tokyo. Life is good.

9:26 p.m. ET — Happy, happy, joy, joy! In Ohio’s Democratic primary, the sold-out establishment candidate, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, is crushing the progressive dreams of nutroots favorite Jennifer Brunner. With 23% of precincts reporting, it’s Fisher 56%, Brunner 44%, confirming suspicions of the Democratic “base” that their party is controlled by a corrupt elite.

9:20 p.m. ET — With 29 percent of precincts reporting in the North Carolina Democratic primary, Elaine Marshall is at 39% — just shy of the 40% needed to avoid a runoff. She’s easily leading the DSCC’s favorite candidate, Cal Cunningham, and the black community’s favorite candidate, Ken Lewis. Not very likely any of them can beat incumbent Republican Sen. Richard Burr, but the inherent divisiveness of the Democratic primary — the establishment backing the white guy against the old lady and the black guy — is good news for conservatives. A runoff would be sheer heaven.

9:10 p.m. ET – Wow, that was quick — Coats wins Indiana GOP primary:

Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) has won the Republican primary for his old seat, holding off a late charge from a state senator with conservative backing.
Coats led state Sen. Marlin Stutzman 40-30 with 65 percent of precincts reporting. The race has been called for Coats.

7:15 p.m. ET – Polls just closed in Indiana and so far — from the Indiana Secretary of State’s office — it’s Dan Coats 5,479 (54%), Marlin Stutzman 3,101 (31%) and John Hostetler 1,072 (11%). Obviously, these are just the very earliest returns. Polls in North Carolina and Ohio close at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Primaries in 3 States: ‘If Stutzman Wins, DeMint Is Going to Look Like a Genius’

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There are primaries today in North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana, where Jim DeMint’s backing of conservative Republican Marlin Stutzman inspires this reflection from Jim Antle at The American Spectator:

DeMint has endorsed state Sen. Marlin Stutzman and has helped him raise over $220,000 in a matter of days. If Stutzman wins, DeMint is going to look like a genius — nobody in Washington and relatively few people in Indiana gave him any chance. Even DeMint seems uncertain, saying, “I’m not sure if I got in soon enough.”
But what if the conventional wisdom pans out and former Sen. Dan Coats wins, former Rep. John Hostettler finishes second, and Stutzman runs third? People are going to ask whether DeMint helped a conservative candidate of the future (Stutzman) at the expense of a conservative who could have won the primary today (Hostettler). If Hostettler wins or Stutzman finishes second, there will be less room to quibble.

At least since 1995, when Bob Dole was GOP Senate leader, Republican senators have been the most effective foes of conservatism in Washington. One reason for that is the NRSC’s disastrous habit of recruiting and/or defending unprincipled moderates in contested Republican primaries (e.g., Chafee, Specter, Crist). Even if Stutzman comes up short in Indiana, DeMint is clearly onto something in trying to find viable conservative alternatives to the supposely “safe” candidates preferred by NRSC.

This isn’t a call to “purge” moderates from the GOP, but rather to say that it is time for Republicans to stop being afraid of their own party’s conservative grassroots. Nearly six decades after Buckley published God and Man at Yale, and three decades after Ronald Reagan was elected president, conservatism is now a respectable mainstream political philosophy.

However, too many Republicans still have a defensive flinch reflex that causes them to back down from a fight and to treat the common-sense beliefs of GOP voters as embarrassing “extremists.” The real extremists are the left-wing wackos who are backing the unelectable Jennifer Brunner in Ohio’s Democratic primary because Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is (allegedly) not liberal enough.

The nutroots backing Brunner and the Republicans who backed Charlie Crist are de facto collaborators in the same project: Driving American political discourse leftward. 

An effective political movement cannot be organized on the basis of appealing to “centrists.”  For starters, as Dan Schnur says, “There’s no such thing as a raging moderate.” What one finds among so-called “independent” voters is not firm principle but, rather, ignorance of and disengagement from the political process. The greater the voter’s knowledge and involvement, the more likely he is to be a firm partisan of one party or the other. “Independent” voters tend to be bandwagon-jumpers who like to vote for the winner, and their opinions are thus lagging indicators of political trends.

Democrats labor diligently to make liberal ideas acceptable to these alleged “moderates,” while too many Republicans respond to the mainstreaming of liberalism by saying, “Me, too! Open borders! Carbon taxes! More federal funding for public schools! Miranda rights for al-Qaeda!”

It does no good for conservatives to win the “war of ideas,” if they elect Republicans who are afraid to fight for those ideas. And the key to success in this regard is for grassroots conservatives to get directly involved in the political process, as Professor Glenn Reynolds points out:

In many states, Tea Partiers are taking over the local GOP apparatus, running for precinct chairman or other low-level offices, as they try to take over the party from the ground up. . . .
[R]allies without follow-through are just rallies. And the Tea Party movement is now following through with the grunt work of politics: Organizing precincts, waging primary battles, registering voters, and compiling mailing lists.

As the professor observes, that kind of “grunt work” — e.g., working a phone bank in Pennsylvania — isn’t glamorous or exciting, but it is the only alternative to leaving politics in the hands of insiders and elites.

Will ObamaCare Lead To Increase Or Decrease For Butt Drugs?

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by Smitty (via Ukulele & ATJ via The Agitator)


One one level, the whole notion of ObamaCare could make it the most expensive suppository in human history. On the other hand, the pros from Dover, who couldn’t lead two nuns in one minute of silent prayer, are guaranteed to accidentally wreck any sort of local business. Customer service being unfair and antithetical to bureaucracy, you know.