Oh, How We Love Those Liberals!

So CBS just reported: Liberals Threaten Not To Vote In November Over Disappointment With Obama.
Yes.  Liberal logic.
I am so mad that things are not going my way, that I will shoot myself in the foot and show everybody just how mad I am.

Emotional Madison Liberals trying to recall Governor Walker as his popularity continues to rise in Wisconsin

Kind of like the whole Governor Walker thing.
I am so mad that Wisconsin’s people are leaning toward conservatism, that  I will skip work, demonstrate, break laws, blow vuvuzelas in people’s ears, lie, cheat and force the whole State to go through a year of uncivilized recall misery, wasting $125-130 million (which could have employed about 2,000 people for a year) during a time of austerity and recession. This will show everybody what a temper tantrum I can throw when I cannot get my way.  I will alienate so many people, that even union member’s families will vote for Governor Walker, helping to re-elect him by a much larger margin than in his original election.

If  you shoot yourself in the foot,you do or say something  stupid which can cause serious problems for you.  For example, bad behavior like blaming people around you, annoying them by focusing exclusively on yourself, or thinking you are smarter than they are and letting them know it, can spoil a situation for yourself.

Forward, Democrats!
You are our biggest asset!
Ramp up these tactics for November!
Clearly, the beginning of a very auspicious June.
Gotta love those Liberals!

One down (Wisconsin Victory), a few more to go…. President Obama is already helping us.  People love and support their local government?  How ’bout the President shoots himself in the foot by publicly blaming and damning local governments?

Nice job! Keep it up.

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Addition:
Thanks to my friend Elizabeth, for this thank-you letter to liberals read on WSN 1130 AM this week:  Audio of the Letter to BlueFisters (click)

AFL-CIO Poster claiming to represent Wisconsin

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“BlueFisters” is a reference to union posters which have plagued Wisconsin for the past year, claiming to stand for Wisconsin, while actually standing for unions and their tactics.

Text of the Taxpayer’s Letter to BlueFisters:

To all leftists, occupiers, unionistas and malcontents,

Thank you! What an election! We couldn’t have done it without you. Without your tantrums, outbursts and boorish behavior we might have stayed home for this election. Without your filthy, pot smoking hemp -headed minions occupying and violating the Capitol we might have been complacent. Without your obnoxious protests, boycotts and other actions from your union playbook, we might have sat this one out.

But you couldn’t hold back. You couldn’t restrain yourselves and behave like adults. You couldn’t accept the 2010 election results. We sat and watched as you erupted in a juvenile hissy fit that embarrassed Wisconsin. The spectacle you created is what motivated us. And thanks to your ill-mannered behavior, we won. We turned out. Big time! And now we are organized and energized. Committed. “All in”. And we aren’t going away. We now have our own organizations (no dues required), an army of volunteers and the means to communicate. And countless new sources of funding, including a donor base from all 50 states. And we have “iverifythe recall” to ferret out your infiltrators in our future local elections.

So thank you Mike Tate, Graeme Zielinski, Fred “Loonie” Levenhagen, Ismael Ozanne, Maryanne Sumi, Noble Ray, Charles Tubbs, Joanne Kloppenberg, Segway Boy, John Chisolm, public employee union members, UW TA’s, WEAC, SEIU, MTI, AFSCME Council 24 in Union Grove and WI prison guards,. Thanks for the death threats, the intimidation, the bullying, belligerence, thuggery and goonish behavior. The lack of ethics and the failure to enforce rules and laws. Thank you for putting your selfish, greedy motives on display for all taxpayers to see.

Your antics might have made you feel good but they didn’t make you look good. They sickened the rest of us.

Thank you Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley. Your petty politics woke us up. Thanks you Miles Kristan for dumping the beer on Robin Vos’s head. Thank you University doctors for writing the phony excuses; Madison teachers for calling in sick or dragging your students to the protests without permission. Thank you Katherine Windels for making death threats against the Governor. The noontime capitol singers who taunted Sheboygan high school students. Thank you WEA Trust for raping Wisconsin taxpayers. Thank you Gwen Moore for your embarrassing minstrel show. And thanks all of you for harassing the Walker family at their private home.

You have all been exposed. Your tactics have been rejected. Your bad behavior has been forever captured on You Tube.

Thank you Peter Barca and fellow Assembly members for donning your foolish orange T-shirts and screaming “shame” at legislators just doing their jobs.

Thank you Mark Miller and all 14 senators for fleeing the state and making fools of yourselves in the process. Illinois need a few more village idiots. Thanks for showing us what democracy doesn’t look like.

And Mayor Barrett. How grateful we are that you chose one low road after another in your issue-less campaign against the Governor. This was your strike three. You are out. Take a seat on the bench and stay there. I have a hunch this was your final at-bat.

All of you helped turn Wisconsin permanently red. Your Governor, Scott Walker, will not just complete his first term, he is all but assured as many future terms as he seeks. He will be your governor for a long, long time. Get used to it. And his national “rock star” status just might lead him to be your President some day. Just think, it couldn’t have happened without you! So to all of you blue fisters, thank you from the bottom of my happy, red heart.

Sincerely,

A Wisconsin taxpayer

“Walkerville” or Ghost town?

How many participants and tents in “Walkerville?”

"Walkerville" Day 3, noon rally at the Capitol; where is everyone?

The “tent city” established in downtown Madison (by public unions in protest of the limitation of collective bargaining) is not a City at all, but a group which has shrunken to twelve overnight campers and some 20 empty tents. Many families are bigger than that.

This is not news. Even if Madison’s City Council permitted family reunions on Madison’s Capitol Square, all of Madison and Wisconsin would not want to read about it over morning coffee. Yet Madison’s media continues their sympathetic coverage of “Walkerville,” publishing close-up shots of individual (empty) tents and describing what the last family left camping at the Capitol had for dinner last night.

I live 3 miles from Capitol Square, and my parish Church is 3 blocks away. Irritated by completely nonobjective reporting on public union issues, I’ve tracked events myself and I’ve taken some photo tours around the Capitol (photos and links below).

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"Walkerville" Day 3: row of empty tents

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Is Walkerville really similar to Hooverville?

On a typical day, there are about 20 R.E.I.-type tents with electric fans and cases of Dasani outside, 30 attendees at a noontime rally dominated by hot pink Planned Parenthood T-shirts (WHAT does Planned Parenthood and abortion have to do with teachers unions?

Hot Pink Planned Parenthood T-shirts dominate "Walkerville" rally on Day 3 (30 attendees)

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Do teachers unions officially support the abortion of their future students?).  There are typically 6 people carrying protest signs, a lone vuvuzela trumpeter, a lone plastic bucket beater, some posters showing vulgar comments, and very little else visible in downtown Madison. What IS visible resembles Yuppie Ghost Town more than it resembles Hooverville, after which unions named Walkerville.

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Hooverville, 1932, Washington DC

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It is somewhat shocking to compare teachers who have upper middle class lifestyles and benefits which dwarf those of the rest of America—shocking to compare these privileged individuals to the starving and jobless people of Hooverville during the Great Depression .

Hooverville 1932

Opposition to public unions growing

It is not surprising that support for public unions in Madison seems to have fizzled out.

"Walkerville" Day 3 noon rally :attendance fizzling

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Some are even dubbing Madison “Entitletown,” and accusing unions of clinging to benefits while the rest of the nation is forced to sacrifice.

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A noise complaint against “Walkerville” was even filed with police by the wife of Democrat

Senator Risser

minority leader Senator Fred Risser.  Apparently the Senator and his wife live a block away from the Capitol Building, and the poor lady could not take the loud drumming noise any longer.  Risser was one of the fourteen democratic senators who fled the state for Illinois in February to stall Walker’s proposed reduction of collective bargaining rights for most public employees. Risser also led the effort to impose sex education programs authored by Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion provider) on public school children in Wisconsin.

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Vuvuzela: lone protester using volume to get attention

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Debbie Brown, a retired state employee and Democrat writes (letter to the editor, Wisconsin State Journal) :  Walkerville a tantrum, not a helpful event: “To the demonstrators (current state employees, graduate students who may not even be from Wisconsin, and educators), you are behaving like children, throwing tantrums because you’re not getting your way.”

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Was this the drumming Mrs. Risser could not take when she called the police? Unbelievable volume this fellow achieved!

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Where have all the protesters gone?

Why has support for public unions fizzled out since the massive demonstrations in downtown Madison in February?

Some speculations:

• People may be tired of demonstrating.  The novelty may have worn off. Reality is setting in.  Walker is the face of reason and responsibility.
• Unions may have run out of funds to bus thousands of protesters into Madison and to cover their expenses over extended periods of time.
• Some teachers, particularly the younger ones, may have realized that their jobs are being sacrificed to the economy so that senior union members could retain their privileges (which they call “rights”).  Union leadership has NOT been considering the welfare of ALL teachers, only that of senior teachers.
• School is out – so teachers can no longer be paid to participate in union activities such as demonstrations.  Now they would be giving up their vacation time or their summer job incomes (Yes, many teachers DO have summer jobs, despite the median teacher salary of $71,000 per year!).
• UW Madison is out— the semester is over, and 40,000 undergraduates are gone from Madison dormitories just a few blocks away.
• The weather has not been kind to Walkerville – ranging from 95 degree temperatures to severe thunderstorms, flooding and soaking Walkerville and whipping away tents  during the past week.

More to come?

More demonstrations to come? Or fizzled out? Madison's Capitol looks back to normal after $8million security and restoration following February's demonstrations.

Today, with the GOP state lawmakers preparing to make another run at passing Gov. Scott Walker’s reduction of collective bargaining for public employees, it will be interesting to watch what activity the unions will be able to muster downtown.  Stay tuned, more camera tours will be posted on this website.

“Rights” or entitlement philosophy?

Few people want cutbacks or belt-tightening, including my family, which has already suffered 15% cuts here in Madison, Wisconsin.  We don’t enjoy it.

However, when the choice is 15% cuts for everyone, versus senior workers (like me and my husband) hogging tenure and privileges while the young are fired, then we welcome the cuts. The American spirit of sharing burdens and walking together through hard times must prevail.

As people start to realize that protests are organized by senior public union officials who are not poor by any definition of the word, who are clinging to their luxurious bubble lifestyle of the past, while young teachers are losing their jobs and the rest of America carries an unfair share of the burden—as people realize these things, the support for public unions shrinks, and the support for Governor Walker grows.

Vacant tents, vacant Capitol Square -- 15 min before scheduled Russ Feingold rally 6-12-11 at 5 PM.

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I have great compassion for those who don’t want to give up the privileges they previously enjoyed, and for those who don’t want to give up their dreams of a cushy retirement. I belong to that group. However, the public union officials don’t seem to realize that at this point in the economy, if they cling to their very generous slice of pie, they are depriving others of having any pie (or bread, for that matter) at all.

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For those who are unaware of the “cushiness” senior union members have carved out for themselves, or of the effects of this comfort on the rights of children, see The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Teacher’s Rights and Children’s Rights– What is Fair?

Where's everybody? Apparently, a few blocks away, at the UW Memorial Student Union Terrace.

Ducks are at Memorial Union Terrace, too.

More links and photos:

“Walkerville:”

Pre-Walkerville:  Thursday, June 2nd, Protesters disrupt budget committee meeting, several carried out.

Day 1: Saturday night, June 4th :Camp set up(You Tube), ~80 tents, 100 people

Day 2: Sunday morning: ghost town —You Tube -biker rides around the Capitol filming, finds 30 tents, few straggling demonstrators. 4 people shouting “Recall Walker”.  You Tube interviewing several participants — attendance sparse.   Badger Herald posts photos.

Day 3: Monday: Public Service Day March: 300 supporters attend, plus 2 tractors, one fire engine, megaphones, bagpipes, vuvuzela. Eggs tossed at Walkerville camp.  Isthmus slide show of March.

Day 4: Tuesday:Lunch rally attracts 30; ~20 tents, 6 demonstrators

Day 5: Wednesday: Union demonstrators dressed as zombies interrupt the Special Olympics ceremony scheduled at Capitol Square.  Severe thunderstorms threaten “Walkerville” campers.  Isthmus sets up live blogging on Walkerville. Down to 12 overnight campers.

Day 6: Wisconsin State Journal covers the campers, reporting that they “show spirit.”  CNN reports, misleadingly showing large crowds from February demonstrating.  In actual fact,  “Walkerville” houses at most two dozen people.   Public News Service discusses “tent city” without mentioning that the population is a couple dozen.

Day 9: AFL-CIO live blog with photos and schedules.

Day 10: Sunday 5PM, Russ Feingold scheduled to appear:  no crowds yet at 4:45 PM; about 20 demonstrators with one vuvuzela and one plastic bucket.