What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (28 page)

The other part of the Left’s mission is more sinister. It’s to redistribute wealth—in this case, profits from Big Oil—and plow it into those alternative energies, which can only meet a tiny fraction of the energy demand in America. But the kooks want their money and they’ll whip the market into submission to get it—even if it means much higher gas prices.

The irony is that the Left loves accusing the Right of wanting to take America backward. Yet they spend so much of their time focused on crushing the industries that are responsible for our own Industrial Revolution. The leftist obsession with windmills and waterwheels is a surefire way to bring America back to the days of
Little House on the Prairie
. Ask yourself: Would the landing craft on D-day have worked without fossil fuels? Would Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong have been able to plant the American flag on the moon without fossil fuels? Would the police, firefighters, and rescue workers on 9/11 have been able to get to the scene and help the victims without fossil fuels?

Obama knows perfectly well how a properly regulated free market works. He just rejects it. He actually wants you to believe that being unemployed and getting paid for even
more
months to sit on your ass are boons to the American economy. The more chaos in the economy, the more customers the leftists have for all of their beloved redistributionist programs. Under their direction, the old Depression-era line, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” has now become, “Uncle Sam, cough up a bigger unemployment/food stamp/Medicare/Medicaid payment!” As a practical matter, then, Obama and the kooks need the economy down, unemployment up, and growth weak to keep their redistributionist gravy train rolling.

The leftists also knew they couldn’t just rely on the beauty of their neo-socialist ideas to power their “fundamental transformation” of America. They also needed some muscle. Cue the unions.

President Obama! This is your army! We are ready to march! Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong!

—Jimmy Hoffa, general president, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, September 5, 2011

In the mid-1990s, the Whole Foods supermarket franchise was under constant attack by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Speaking to a reporter, Whole Foods’ CEO, John Mackey, let loose with a particularly colorful description of the union damaging his business: “The union is like having herpes. It doesn’t kill you, but it’s unpleasant and inconvenient, and it stops a lot of people from becoming your lover.”

Thug tactics? No problem. Economic extortion? Yes, we can. Arm twisting? All in a day’s work. But being compared to a case of herpes? Over the line! The union protested, picketed, and boycotted (more than usual) after Mackey’s comment, but ultimately neither the UFCW nor any other union could stem the decades-long move away from unions in the private sector.

In response, the kooks have worked relentlessly to alter the balance between the private and government sectors by rapidly growing government, its unions, and its unions’ funds and power. They became huge and fearsome. Not even a bad case of herpes could stop them. But to tell you the truth, having herpes seems like a better deal than waking up every day and having to look to Obama, Reid, and Pelosi for leadership.

The unions had a tight, unquestioned grasp on power through their corrupt stranglehold on the Democratic Party, particularly at the state level—until a young cheesehead arrived on the scene.

It was a cold day in mid-February 2011 when the leftists watched stunned as the padlock got thrown on the door of one of their favorite redistributionist candy stores. The new Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, proposed a budget repair bill to begin to bring his state’s finances under control. Facing a huge budget deficit, Walker decided to tackle the very source of the fiscal nightmare—and a potentially lethal political third rail: government-sector unions and the state’s unsustainable benefit and pension obligations. In order to close the candy store in which the corrupt unions and Democrats pigged out, Walker needed to eliminate most collective bargaining privileges for state workers—a gutsy move in a state known as the birthplace of both “progressivism” and union collective bargaining in state government.

By restructuring the relationship between government and the government-sector unions, Walker sought to do the one thing that governors of both parties had previously failed to do: protect the taxpayer. In the past, governors had negotiated huge and fiscally unsustainable pension and benefits packages and then would tell everybody the blatant lie that it was all doable. Walker decided to put an end to this nefarious, bankrupting, and vote-buying scheme. The governor was also counting on history: it wasn’t just progressivism that was invented in Wisconsin. It was also the birthplace of the Republican Party.

The centerpiece of the bill was the elimination of most collective bargaining privileges for government workers, except for police and firefighters, whom Walker cited as critical for public safety. For all other government workers, the bill put everything on the table except for wages. It required additional contributions by state and local government workers to their health care plans and pensions, amounting to about an 8 percent decrease in take-home pay. Walker argued that asking employees to pay half the national average for health care benefits was reasonable, given that workers in the private sector must pay far more for their own benefits—which were, in many cases, less lavish than the ones enjoyed by government employees. Unions were barred from seeking pay increases for government workers above the rate of inflation unless approved by the voters. Most devastating to the government unions, the bill directed them to hold annual votes to continue representing government workers and ended their ability to automatically deduct union dues from government workers’ paychecks. The practice of the government essentially wielding its tax power on behalf of the unions made it a tool of those unions. This was an incredibly corrupt arrangement fiercely guarded by the government unions. When Walker moved to end the state’s role in dues collection, the government unions realized they were losing their enforcer. These Wisconsin union shops were being run like Satriale’s Pork Store on
The Sopranos
. In the past, government protected and even assisted with the thug union enforcement, so if an intransigent Republican politician popped up, he would end up lunch for the union. Troublemakers would be brought in through the back door while gourmet deli meats would go out the front.

The unions predictably went berserk, claiming that Walker sought to bust the unions. Walker calmly explained that during the campaign he said he would use all available means to bring fiscal sanity back and that, contrary to busting the unions, he was making sure that government employees retained protections under the civil service laws. More important, Walker reminded the unions that without the bill, thousands of those same employees would have to be laid off. He was trying to save their jobs, not destroy them.

Walker’s reforms hit at the heart of the perverse love-in enjoyed for decades by Democrats and their union sugar daddies. Democrats funneled ever-increasing amounts of money into the government unions in an endless spiral of wage, benefits, and pension increases. In turn, the unions poured massive amounts of money into Democratic campaign coffers (and a few Republicans’ campaigns too). Meanwhile, the taxpayer was forced to fork over more and more of his own money to finance this corrupt merry-go-round. But for the Democrats and the government unions, their incestuous relationship needed to be protected at all costs.

Walker promptly put an end to the government union/Democratic hookup, and all Hades broke loose. It looked like the table-throwing episode of
The Real Housewives of New Jersey
, minus the leopard coats.

Unions from across the country mobilized thousands of the usual left-wing suspects to storm the state capitol, where they remained camped out for weeks, vandalizing the capitol building, screaming about their comfy “rights,” and comparing Walker to Hitler (sooooo 2004). The Reverend Jesse Jackson alighted on the scene, because what’s a leftist accident scene without their Number One Ambulance Chaser? Michael Moore also descended into Madison for the free corn dogs and to bellow, “America ain’t broke!” Meanwhile, in a scene out of
Escape from Alcatraz
, all fourteen Democratic state senators took a powder. Knowing that the bill would pass if they stayed since Republicans controlled their chamber, the state Democratic senators tried to deny the governor the vote by fleeing into the neighboring People’s Republic of Illinois. There they checked into a no-tell motel, ordered up pay-per-view, and set about washing their underwear in the motel sink. At one point, a few of them grabbed a bag of pork rinds and a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. Then they got real nutty and threw some pocket change into the vibrating bed.

Meanwhile, as the Wisconsin state senate Democrats made their break for the border, one state assembly Democrat indulged his inner Hugh Grant. During the budget circus, Democratic state representative Gordon Hintz received a municipal citation connected to—wait for it—prostitution. Hintz apparently enjoyed visits to a “massage parlor” that provided happy endings. This was the same Representative Hintz who told a female Republican state representative that she was “(bleeping) dead” for supporting the budget repair bill. I’m surprised Mack Daddy Hintz didn’t try to keep it real by throwing Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’” on and then attempting to beat the woman with his shoe.

So while the Republican governor was trying to fix the state’s fiscal mess, the state’s Democrats were running around like Charlie Sheen, complete with the hookers, being AWOL from their jobs and the manic profanity. The only thing missing for the Wisconsin Democrats? The briefcase full of blow.

Ultimately, the Democratic fugitives returned, the bill passed, and the government unions went on another rampage. They tried to overturn the law through the courts, but the state supreme court upheld it. They then tried to defeat a conservative state supreme court judge, but he survived the challenge. Then they launched recall elections against six GOP state senators, four of whom survived to retain the GOP majority. Union spending on the legislative recalls rang in at about $28 million, not exactly a good return on investment. Not ones to accept defeat gracefully (or at all), the government unions also moved to recall Walker himself. Organizing for America, Obama’s state-level campaign operation, helped to coordinate the senate and Walker recall efforts by connecting the unions, local Democrats, and recall volunteers. This is how the leftists roll: what they cannot win at the ballot box they’ll try to score through liberal judges and short-circuiting recalls.

But any Republican too noodle-kneed to take on the government unions should pay close attention to what happened in the Badger State: when the Wisconsin Republicans held the line on economic and government union reform, Wisconsin voters then held the line for them. In Ohio, however, where Governor John Kasich went even further and moved to eliminate collective bargaining privileges for most government-sector employees, including police and firefighters, the unions were ready. They poured big money into a repeal effort, which succeeded. But the lesson of both Wisconsin and Ohio ought to be that national and state Republicans must be fearless like Governor Walker—and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, and others who have taken on, to varying extents, the powerful government unions in their states. In a necessary effort to deal with its underfunded or flat-out broke pension funds, Rhode Island’s Democratic state legislature passed and Independent governor Lincoln Chafee signed a sweeping pension overhaul. Of course, the government unions called it a “betrayal” and threatened to sue, as they did when Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo moved to renegotiate some state benefits and pensions.

Many cities are also drowning in debt thanks to government unions. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel took on the powerful Chicago teachers’ unions and laid off hundreds of city workers. The unions went bananas, but you can’t get blood from a stone—and even the most hardened Chicago union thug is afraid of Rahm, especially when he’s standing right in front of you, naked in the shower, angrily poking you (with God knows what) in the chest. But what the Republican and Democratic efforts to rein in the government-sector unions in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island, and Chicago have shown is that where there is a political will, there is a way.

Most tellingly, when reform is carried out, it’s effective. Despite the hysterical union and Democratic warnings of an imminent apocalypse, disaster has not befallen Wisconsin. To the contrary, Walker’s reforms have truly begun to bring order to the state’s finances. Local school districts obtained the ability to renegotiate union contracts, saving money and teachers’ jobs. In many communities across the state, local officials were able to ditch the union-affiliated health insurance plans and go with less expensive competitors, in most cases saving hundreds of thousands (even millions) of dollars that could then be put back into the schools (and, as the leftists always say, it
is
all about the “children,” isn’t it?). As of January 2012, Walker’s reforms had already saved Wisconsin’s taxpayers $476 million.

Furthermore, after Walker halted the state-run dues collection, the unions’ coffers began to dwindle, along with their power and monopoly. The state’s budget is being brought into line, and job creation is occurring. And at long last, the Wisconsin taxpayers are being protected. Evidently, once the burly, knuckle-dragging shakedown enforcer stops showing up to rob you, most Americans don’t feel they need to continue giving him money out of charity.