The second ad released by Scott Walker in response to the recall effort features a Wisconsin teacher. Anti-Walker commenters at TPMDC identify her full name. The first ad is here.
I think this hits the right theme, sour grapes and Walker doing what’s right. I would call this preparing the battlefield and shaping the debate. More direct and aggressive attacks on the union-led effort can come later, particularly if and when there is an opponent (which would be only if enough signatures are gathered).
The recall reportedly has obtained 105,000 of the 540,206 signatures needed, and is bragging that they are on there way soon to 200,000. That likely is the low hanging fruit in Madison and among union members. While I expect them to get the amount needed, we’ll see how long it takes. They have 60 days, ending January 15.
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Comments
They’ll get 550,000, maybe 600,000.
But how many of those will be forgeries, fakes, and frauds?
The GOP should just start filing challenges to EVERY signature now. There have been more than enough documented irregularities to justify it.
I thought “Democrats” believed in the democratic process? The public unions serve to subvert our representative government. As their members are employed in service to the citizens, and are funded through involuntary exploitation (e.g. taxation), it is a deep conflict of interest that they be permitted to negotiate further exploitation of the taxpayers whereby they bypass elected representatives and the voting referendum.
It is a pathetic state of affairs that there are people who would condemn fraudulent exploitation while wholeheartedly embracing involuntary exploitation. Both the public unions and this latest “occupy” movement are of the same predisposition. They both approve of redistributive and retributive change through authority. While the former “change” is a normal part of establishing and developing a society, the latter is a reflection of vindictiveness that individuals and groups bear that transcends generations. The former, however, is also a principal source of corruption of individuals and society when it is progressive.
The government is just begging for fundamental reform. As it, at all levels, spends in excess of $7 trillion annually, accounting for nearly 1/2 of the national GDP, it has become more than unsustainable. Its annual expenditures of several hundred billion dollars to control indigence and even homeless has been a progressive failure. As they seek to realize “good intentions”, they have shifted the burden to the most productive, and in the process have introduced massive distortions into the market, which has been a progressive burden on all Americans.
The federal debt now exceeds the national GDP. The civil servants, and their unions, should reconsider their demands.
It’s ironic that the “occupiers” protest the very sector of our economy that has enabled their profligate dreams of both physical and material instant gratification. I don’t recall their kind protesting progressive involuntary exploitation — the highest form of corruption.
People’s dreams of physical and material instant gratification through redistributive and retributive change effected through a perversion of established authority is the cause of fundamental corruption. The other temptations to which all people are vulnerable is the cause for corruption in the exception. While the former is controlled through society’s common morality, the latter is held accountable by individuals with a granted authority. Our society has failed in both the first and second levels of assurance necessary to preserve liberty. Since the failure of the first, we have been operating on a false premise, which assured the second would be insufficient to mitigate occurrences of progressive corruption.
What a mess. I have often wondered why civil decay is a periodic event throughout the world and history. The first step is the normalization of policies which denigrate individual dignity and devalue human life, followed by the inevitable progressive corruption of individuals and society.
“Never again” seems to be a recurring murmur.
How long before she’s found dead in the school parking lot?
Indeed, she is a very brave woman in the face of the lawless thugs in WI. It has been amazing to see the police take political sides instead of the side of democracy.
Thanks to Governor Walker she’ll at least be able to defend herself. Maybe Tea Party Wisconsin could arrange to have a few members in the area.
Scott Walker for Prez 2016.
If he beats the recall, I’m predicting VP 2012.
To win the recall, someone will probably extract a pledge from him to serve out his term. Such pledges may expire after 18 months, but not after 6!
Other observers seem to think Walker’s opposition may have difficulty gathering the required signatures in part due to the calendar (holidays and poor weather).
I don’t buy that for a second. The threshold number of signatures is way too low. The bar to remove a duly elected governor ought to be much higher than it currently is. But whatever. The rules are what they are.
At any rate, the most valuable asset the national labor unions bring isn’t the money and resources, it’s their organizing skills. The labor unions are first and foremost staunch Democrats and the Democrat Party is the party that invented community organizing. I have little doubt they’ll use those organizing skills to get the low number of signatures to force the recall.
Then it’s a matter of Walker using effective messaging to motivate enough sane Wisconsinites to turn out to vote. Because, once again, the Democrats have the organizing skills to get people to the polls to vote against their own self interests and they have a special skill at abusing absentee balloting (see the revealing Daily Caller interview with Democrat Artur Davis where he talks about Democrats widespread use of absentee balloting to commit voter fraud).
Since the repubs knew that the dems were planning this recall, I don’t see why they didn’t pre-empt the dems by filing their own recall petition and thereby upset the dem strategy. The repubs could have sat on the petitions for sixty days and the recall problem might have vanished.
Currently the weather here in the northern half of the state is pretty nice. The signature gatherers were out in force along the streets near the shopping centers today and earlier this week. Sadly finding 500k to sign the recall won’t be as hard as it should be.
Petitions require a buffer, typically 30-50% depending on the strictness of the state’s petitioning law and the quality of the petitioners. So they need at minimum 700,000 and maybe over 800,000 to deter or pass scrutiny. That’s almost 1 in 4 of all registered voters, or more than 1 in 3 of the voters who cast ballots in either of the last two gubernatorial elections. Of course, in Ohio the unions collected 1.3 million signatures for Issue 2 (34% of the votes in the last gubernatorial election) of which 915,000 (~70%) were valid. They only needed 231,000. But they also had 90 days not 60 days to do it. They went all out in Ohio on an issue they were almost certain to win, so it is not a given that the more iffy recall petition will succeed.
I hope that she keeps good records regarding her absences and past evals vs future evals because they are going to do everything they can to fire her.