Walker’s office issued this statement:
“I'm sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I'm sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts.
“Furthermore, I’m sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin.
“I’m sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.” http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/117101638.html
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According to Ashley Parker at the New York Times, Obama's fitness czar Cornell McClellan comes out to D.C. every week: [from Chicago....]
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The NYT reports on fracking, a method to be used in Michigan: So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.
But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself. The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?emc=eta1
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The Week wrote: "Former President George W. Bush canceled a trip to Switzerland, citing security concerns arising from planned protests. But international human-rights groups said they had been prepared to indict Bush in Switzerland for approving the torture of detainees by waterboarding and other means.. A case can be filed when Bush travels to any of 147 nations that have signed the Convention Against Torture." [Anyone who has read the President's recent book will know that he considered the protection of Americans as his top priority, and received affirmation from the Justice Department lawyers that waterboarding was not against the Geneva Convention. Willing to take the blame if his successful methods were later condemned, he ordered only three people to be waterboarded, and they gave up critical information that saved many thousands of American lives.]
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The Week reports from the NTY: Blacks, Asians and Hispanics accounted for 79% of the U.S. population growth between 2000 and 2009, according to Census data. In 10 states whites are now a minority among people 18 and younger, a harbinger of the future.
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The Week reports: A widespread drought in the Amazon rain forest last year caused the forest to produce more carbon dioxide than it absorbed, according to a study by British and Brazilian scientists. [This] raises fears that the massive rain forest could accelerate, rather than slow, emissions of heat trapping gases. If events like this happen more often, the Amazon rain forest would reach a point where it shifts from being a valuable carbon sink slowing climate change to a major source of greenhouse gases that could speed it up."
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American Thinker opines: The Republican majority of the Wisconsin State Senate has at hand the tools to end its stalemate now. The Wisconsin Constitution assigns the state legislature the responsibility of crafting rules and definitions governing how voting is to be conducted, i.e., the mechanics of voting. Article IV, Section 7 empowers 51% of the elected legislators in each house of the Wisconsin legislature to do the following:
- 1) Define a quorum to include those legislators who have the ability -- if they choose -- to vote absently, either by electronic means or proxy. This would ensure that no citizens are ever deprived of representation in the state legislature even if their representative is in the hospital or out of town; and/or
- 2) Pass a statute (or legislative rules) that any legislator who refuses or fails to represent his constituents by participating in the deliberations of that body for more than 30 days is to be regarded as having resigned his office. Once again, this would ensure that no citizens are ever deprived of representation in the state legislature even if their representative is in the hospital or out of town or just refuses to show up for work.
- Such a statute or rule for Wisconsin's legislature would state that so long as a member can reach a telephone and is able to record a vote, that member should be counted as part of a quorum. The act of not voting, that is abstaining, has never been counted against a quorum. It's the ability to cast a vote that is all that has mattered.If the 19 Senators who have shown up for work wish to do the people's business, they have the power to do it. It is very plainly given to them in Article IV, Section 7 of their state's constitution. There is nothing in the Wisconsin Constitution to prevent them from doing that immediately. http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/two_solutions_to_the_wisconsin.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The UK Telegraph opines: The débacle of Washington’s handling of the Libya issue is symbolic of a wider problem at the heart of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. The fact that it took ten days and at least a thousand dead on the streets of Libya’s cities before President Obama finally mustered the courage to call for Muammar “mad dog” Gaddafi to step down is highly embarrassing for the world’s only superpower, and emblematic of a deer-in-the-headlights approach to world leadership. Washington seems incapable of decisive decision-making on foreign policy at the moment, a far cry from the days when it swept entire regimes from power, and defeated America’s enemies with deep-seated conviction and an unshakeable drive for victory. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100077875/do-tyrants-fear-america-anymore-president-obama%E2%80%99s-timid-foreign-policy-is-an-embarrassment-for-a-global-superpower/
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- The Wall St. Journal online writes: The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.
These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703749504576172942399165436.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
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The Weekly Standard reports on another example of Democrat civility on display: On Monday, Milwaukee AM 620 WTMJ radio host Charlie Sykes detailed an encounter between Democratic State Rep. Gordon Hintz, who had previously been busted in a prostitution sting, and Republican State Rep. Michelle Litjens, in which the rules of civility were completely ignored after a vote to “engross” a state budget repair bill.
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“After the vote to engross, he turns to a female conservative Republican, who is also from the Oshkosh area, looks at her and says, ‘You are f—ing dead,’” Sykes said. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wi-dem-assemblyman-admits-he-threatened-republican-colleagues_552659.html
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Good going, Gov. Walker....I really doubt that Obama has any knowledge of the details about pay and benefits for Federal employees vis-a-vis other union workers or private sector employees...He is just singing the Union tunes as they have paid him to do !!!!
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