Obama Off Teleprompter - Killing Osama

Obama Now Decides What Is Constitutional

When Public Sector Unions Win, The People Lose

The ferment in Wisconsin is no workers' uprising against the rich and powerful. It is instead political muscle-flexing by a well-funded special interest group, which is limbering up for President Obama's re-election bid. Obama's campaign, operating as Organizing for America, is bussing protesters to the state capitol and manning phone banks to apply pressure to state legislatures. Obama himself has called Gov. Scott Walker's bill curbing government-sector collective bargaining "an attack on unions."

While liberal writers wax romantic about a workers' uprising (former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on Twitter "Wisconsin is spreading to Ohio -- America's microversion of Tunisia and Egypt. People are taking to the streets to get their rights"), what we're really seeing is the labor movement acting as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party.

Liberals and the White House try to blur the issue by lumping together government unions and labor unions in general. Obama wrongly calls Walker's bill "an attack on unions." It is, at its heart, a measure changing the way the state government procures labor -- Walker would end single-source contracts with a politically connected special interests.

Government unions in Wisconsin perfectly match the definition of "special interests," a term Obama often invokes. Four of the top six Wisconsin contributors to the 2010 elections were labor unions, with the state's teachers union giving $119,342 and the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees spending $83,888. The teachers union gave 96 percent of its money to Democrats, while Wisconsin AFSCME gave Democrats every penny.

Government unions spent $573,868 on Wisconsin's 2010 elections -- almost all of it going to Democrats -- while government employees spent another half million, with most going to Democrats.

Another characteristic of "special interests" is that they benefit at the expense of the public interest. Start with teachers unions that often work against students. Even setting aside the Wisconsin teachers abandoning their students last week in order to protest for higher pay and benefits, the teachers union has fought on the state level to interfere with Milwaukee's trail-blazing school choice program, which is so popular that Democrats in 2009 voted to cap the number of enrollees.

And of course, there's the budget question. Wisconsin has raised taxes in recent years, and is still facing a multibillion-dollar deficit. Other state programs are being trimmed, and Walker's effort would be about spreading the pain -- specifically shifting some of the government workers' retirement contributions from taxpayers to the workers. If the government unions win, they guarantee more pain for everyone else, especially taxpayers.

In the romantic liberal vision of this union uprising, determined workers are standing up to the powerful. But there's no fat-cat owner wanting to pocket more profits here. The unions' target in Wisconsin is the taxpayer.

At bottom, this is the unions versus the people.

For much of the Left, though, this about protecting the power of labor. Again, this ignores the fundamental difference between public-sector unions and private-sector unions. Even Franklin Roosevelt said, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, campaign contributions by government-sector unions, collected through mandatory dues, help elect the public officials who are then supposed to negotiate with them: "The unions sit, in effect, on both sides of the bargaining table."

With this kind of leverage, it's no wonder that unions are thriving in the public sector -- only 6.9 percent of private-sector workers are unionized while 36.2 of government workers are. Moreover, as conservatives have long argued, when unions overreach in the private sector, they drive their employers out of business, and so unions only flourish under those employers -- governments -- that can't go out of business.

While governments won't go out of business, they are going broke. The electorate apparently now has an appetite for austerity, as evidenced by the Tea Party's success, Chris Christie's election in New Jersey, and Walker's election in Wisconsin.

Obama has shown how the Democrats will play this: as an opportunity to rally the base and try to pump more money out of the unions that spent tens of millions of dollars to elect him. It could backfire if taxpayers see the likes of Walker as a rare grown-up under attack by opportunistic and utterly politicized unions populated by overpaid government workers.

It's still unclear how Republicans will play this, though. Walker seems to be following the Christie model of standing up to the unions. Knowing Ohio Gov. John Kasich's temperament, he'll do the same. But will any GOP governors feel tempted to go the Arnold Schwarzenegger route of playing ball with the government unions?

With state budgets in crisis and the Democratic machinery already in all-out campaign mode, war has already been declared -- and if the unions win, the people lose.


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Obama's Supporters Want to Declare Him an Atheist, But Even They Don't Really Know

President Obama‘s coddling of Islam has many Americans questioning his national-security judgment, if not his intentions. In his administration’s muddled response to the crisis in Egypt, one clear message came from all the president’s men: A new government in Cairo “has to include a whole host of important nonsecular actors,” as stated by White House spokesman Robert L. Gibbs. The hitch is that in the Middle East, nonsecular means radical Islamist, like the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, in the middle of this global clash of civilizations, Mr. Obama‘s own religious disposition is being questioned – and not from the right, but the left.

On his HBO show “Real Time” on Friday, host Bill Maher said of Mr. Obama, “I think he’s a centrist the way he’s a Christian – not really.  … His mother was a secular humanist and I think he is.” When Princeton University professor Cornel West challenged Mr. Maher‘s point about Mr. Obama‘s religion, saying, “He changed his mind on the God question, brother Bill,” the comic retorted, “It’s like when he says ‘I struggle with gay marriage’ – you don’t struggle with gay marriage, you’re fine with gay marriage.” Another guest – who insisted Mr. Obama has “always been pretty centrist” – helpfully reminded that Mr. Obama “did go to church before he was a candidate for the presidency.” That church, of course, was presided over by the racist, anti-American, hate-spewing Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
  
Bill Maher can be a funny guy. His website flashes the crack, “It doesn’t make me un-American to say I’d rather live in Paris than in places where cheese only comes in individually wrapped slices.” Aside from the fact that bashing France is a national pasttime and a pretty reliable measure of patriotism, a man who prefers unpasteurized fromage can’t be all bad. That said, his humor has a very tangible dark side, especially when it comes to faith.

In the past, Mr. Maher has called Christianity “the ultimate hustle” and ridiculed the fight of good versus evil as a shakedown: “If God gets rid of the devil – and he could, he’s all powerful – well, then there’s no fear. There’s no reason to come to church. There’s no reason to pass the plate.” 

Liberals hate it when anybody throws their own gaffes back in their faces. Media Matters can chuck bricks at us all they want for taking purported cheap shots at the president. This debate over Mr. Obama‘s religion is happening among his most ardent supporters, just like the birther flames being fanned by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Hawaii’s Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie. Mr. Obama‘s critics just sit back and laugh while Democrats do their dirty work for them. With friends like Mr. Maher, Mr. Obama doesn’t need enemies.

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