Voter Fraud?

Althouse says quoting from AP:

Winnebago County's numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg's 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg's 18,421.

I live in Winnebago County and no one I know here voted for Prosser. Or Kloppenburg. In fact I can state categorically that neither was on the ballot.

Fraud? Well it is Illinois.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

David Prosser appears to be the winning in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

Precincts counted 2146/3630
Prosser 468,532 51%
Kloppenburg 458,108 49%

But Dane County - a Democrat stronghold is only half counted. So far that means a net 50,000 votes in that county for Kloppenburg. If that holds up in the final tally Prosser will likely lose.

Update:

Final totals

Precincts counted 3630/3630
Prosser 739,886 50%
Kloppenburg 740,090 50%

Two hundred and four votes difference. Prosser loses.

Update: 9 April 2011 1716z

Commenter Xiaoding reminds me that I failed to update this post. I note that the AP has not revised their totals. The LA Times says that a net of 7,500 votes for Prosser were not included in the final totals. And the mistake was made by a Republican.

Rockford's Fifteen Minutes

The Daily Show on Facebook

My #2 son sent me a link to the above video. The scenes in the video are really from Rockford. Our 15 minutes of fame are now up I guess. At least until the next suicide bomber decides to attempt to blow up a mall in Rockford.

Terms Of Surrender

It looks like the Wisconsin 14 may be suffering a RIF.

"There's six, seven, eight, nine of them that are starting to say, ‘Listen, we're starting to look like we're out of touch with what's going on in Madison, and it's time to get back.'"

"I think some of them feel like they're boxed in and they can't come back to the Capitol right now."

They are now negotiating the terms of their surrender. My guess is US. Unconditional Surrender.

Busing In Outside Agitators

A commenter at Althouse said:

They are clearly talking about Union Thugs being bused in from out of state.

In reference to a video link some one posted up thread (225 comments long last I checked).

This sparked remembrance of the civil rights marches of the 60s (I went to a few) and the cry from pillars of the community that "outside agitators" were coming in and disrupting peacefully segregated communities.

The old "outside agitators" ploy.

It is a good thing. The union funds for 2012 will be trimmed. I read of one union taking out a $90 million loan to fight this battle. Even if they win it has got to hurt in 2012.

Weaken them and when they are weak go for the (word meaning demise by external forces). How is that for civility?

H/T Instapundit

Wisconsin Teachers Mafia - What Is The Difference?

Question: What is the difference between the Wisconsin Teachers Mafia and a tapeworm?

Answer: Tapeworms don't try to tell your children what to think.

Pricing Yourself Out Of A Monopoly Market

Thanks to Instapundit I was perusing the comments at Althouse and came up with this really great one about the Wisconsin Teachers Mafia.

Seven Machos said...

3. Your union foolishly raised wages and benefits to a point where it priced itself right out of a monopoly market -- really fucking hard to do, but as we have seen, possible if you are absolutely committed.

Instead of willing to be a nail fungus they were trying for ebola status. They are at least up in tapeworm territory. Yeah. I know. Too rough on tapeworms. Tapeworms don't try to tell your children what to think.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Wisconsin Teachers Mafia - Follow the Money

When you want to know what a fight is all about - it is often helpful to follow the money. So where is the money in Wisconsin's fight with the Teachers Union?

We recently issued a report titled, ” A Crucial Challenge for Wisconsin Schools: Escaping the Shackles of WEA Trust Insurance.” After hours of investigation and research, we were able to demonstrate that WEA Trust is the most expensive form of school employee insurance in the state, and schools could save hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars, by switching to different insurance carriers.

We also pointed out that WEA Trust has a grossly unfair advantage in the Wisconsin school insurance market, allowing the company to charge inflated prices without losing a great deal of business. The problem is that state law makes the identify of the school insurance carrier a topic of collective bargaining. That allows local teachers unions to come to the table demanding WEA Trust coverage, because their state union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), created and is closely associated with WEA Trust.

We polled administrators from 20 school districts that managed to break away from WEA Trust coverage in recent years. All of them saved, or expected to save, at least $100,000 per year while still offering quality health coverage to employees. McIlheran wrote about one of those districts, Milton, which expects to save $1 million per year.

Well what do you know? It is not about teachers pay at all. It is about union profits.

The Chicago Boyz have more details.

Would someone please note that Unions make the great lion’s share of their $ from negotiating “benefits”, not salaries… or collection of dues.

This is why the decoupling of the Salaries and Benefits is so important to Unions in Wisconsin. And why the Union’s have countered the way they have. They’ll give up Salary and Jobs for Teachers in a second, but they will fight to death for the Benefit negotiation position. In another life as an executive in CA, I used to do administration for two Teamster’s “Health and Welfare” benefit packages. Do your research, but you’ll find I’m correct about motivation of Unions. I also believe that the amount of money kept by Unions will be very interesting to both your viewers, and the tax payers of the US of A. The way it works is that the Unions negotiate with the “Employer” regarding how much money per member/per month they will need to support the benefit options required in Union contract. In the case of WI, they negotiate with each of the 77 counties. Then the Unions negotiate the terms of benefits with “providers”/Ins Co’s, etc. They make the lion’s share of their money off of what is called the “breakage” created by Employees choosing between plan options, and the administration of the programs.

A commenter at the Boyz puts it in clear dollars and cents terms.

Mike Says:

February 20th, 2011 at 9:50 pm

Average annual cost of family coverage for the teachers in the school district our business is located in $22,000 with no employee contribution required. Average annual cost of family coverage in our business $12,000 with employee contribution of 12%. We just received our May 1st renewal up 16%.

My advise to WI teachers. With all due respect, go back to work, carefully consider the “value” of your union and consider firing them. And lastly, stop whining and make the best of a not so good situation like the rest of us are. Maybe its just me.

So in this one case each union member is worth $10,000 a year to the union. Over and above union dues and any other money the union gets from the teachers. Talk about your sweetheart deals.

Here is some more information on what honest deals might do to the union.

[Waukesha, Wisc…] Wisconsin school districts are saving millions of dollars by switching health insurance providers away from WEA Trust, but the teachers union is not making it easy.

WEA Trust is affiliated with the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) [the State affiliate of the NEA - ed.], the union representing some 98,000 employees within Wisconsin schools. The MacIver News Service has learned some districts across the state have discovered they can provide equal coverage at a lower cost through soliciting bids from other companies in the health insurance marketplace.

For example, this year Campbellsport School District switched to the Wisconsin Counties Association’s plan and will save $100,000. The Slinger School District switched to United Healthcare and saved $200,000. Waukesha switched from WEA Trust as well and indicates it will save $2 million.

“United has a larger pool and can provide the same coverage at a much lower price,” said Todd Gray, Waukesha Superintendent.

This trend has caught the attention of the WEAC, and their locals are fighting to stop it. In Campbellsport, the Master Agreement between the union and the district allows the school board to switch insurance providers as long as the coverage is identical. The union there claims the district violated that agreement and filed a grievance and a prohibited practice complaint against the district.

“Since becoming effective July 1, 2010, the change in health insurance carriers has been almost seamless, without any loss in the level of benefits,” Dan Olson, Campbellsport Superintendent, said.

The school board decided to take up the grievance at an August meeting, and publicly posted the item on August 3 to comply with open meetings law. At that meeting, the board decided to take up the grievance in open session.

“In these tough economic times the residents of the Campbellsport School District deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent, including the efforts the District is taking to save approximately $100,000.00 in costs,” said Jay Miller, Board of Education President.

There are more details on how the union fought a change in insurance plans at the link. Hmmmmmm. I think I smell MONEY.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air goes even deeper into the money. Good material. But I think you get the general idea. The Union is skimming from the members Health Care Plan. They seem to do that sort of thing on pension plans when they control them. This is starting to look like a pattern of practices and behavior.

This book might be a good guide to those patterns and practices:

Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement

Charles Krauthammer says Wisconsin represents the shot heard 'round the world in America's efforts to right the ship.

Wisconsin is the epicenter. It began with economic issues. When Gov. Scott Walker proposed that state workers contribute more to their pension and health-care benefits, he started a revolution. Teachers called in sick. Schools closed. Demonstrators massed at the capitol. Democratic senators fled the state to paralyze the Legislature.

Unfortunately for them, that telegenic faux-Cairo scene drew national attention to the dispute - and to the sweetheart deals the public-sector unions had negotiated for themselves for years. They were contributing a fifth of a penny on a dollar of wages to their pensions and one-fourth what private-sector workers pay for health insurance.

The unions quickly understood that the more than 85 percent of Wisconsin not part of this privileged special-interest group would not take kindly to "public servants" resisting adjustments that still leave them paying less for benefits than private-sector workers. They immediately capitulated and claimed they were only protesting the other part of the bill, the part about collective-bargaining rights.

Indeed. Walker understands that a one-time giveback means little. The state's financial straits - a $3.6 billion budget shortfall over the next two years - did not come out of nowhere. They came largely from a half-century-long power imbalance between the unions and the politicians with whom they collectively bargain.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club (who quotes an article I recently wrote) thinks if America can right the ship it will be an example for the rest of the world.

...what’s important to remember is that the United States is the fulcrum of fate. Unlike other world crises, in which there were rival centers of hard power, the suddenness of this storm happens while the US remains, and will remain for the short run, the center of hard power.

Not that it will be used, and therein lies the key redeeming feature of the struggle. The world does not have the capacity to break out into global war because, with the exception of Russia, their nuclear arsenals are “too small” and they cannot cross the seas to attack each other because they have no power projection capacities and cannot challenge the USN.

That means that if America regains rationality, it can hold the ring and the world crisis will not spill over into international chaos. This can be a global velvet revolution instead of a bloody one. If America regains rationality

And that is the key. Rationality. Which is why I'm a TEA Partier.

1. Fiscal Responsibility
2. Constitutional Government
3. Free Markets


Click on the above image and learn how to spread it around.

H/T Linearthinker for the Wretchard link.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Wisconsin Teachers Mafia II

Wisconsin Teachers Mafia:

We are holding your children hostage.

Hide Away In Rockford

H/T Hot Air

Cross Posted at Classical Values

We Are The Middle Finger

The above image is from Looking At The Left where you can find a larger version plus many other images. The occasion was a union rally in Denver supporting the Wisconsin Teachers Mafia.

H/T Instapundit

Bursting The Lower Education Bubble

What is going on in Wisconsin is the bursting of the lower education bubble. You heard it here first.

Welcome Instapundit readers.

Take The Bastards Down

I think they have the wrong bastards in mind. But if they want smashing this 66 year old is up for it. Let them fire the first shot. Then give them some serious counter battery fire. Two for range and then fire for effect.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

What Madison Is All About

Chuck Sweeny - a Rockford Register Star reporter that I know from his days of covering the local Libertarian Party - gets to the heart of the goings on in Madison and explains why it is so critical for the unions to win against Governor Walker and the Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature.

But Democrats can’t compromise on ending collective bargaining rights, because that would weaken their party’s key political bloc. Democrats know that Walker’s gambit to break the unions is part of the national Republican strategy in the run up to the 2012 elections.

Chuck thinks that the Republicans, who only need one Democrat to show up to pass their agenda, will fold in the face of union pressure. I don't think so. It costs real money to bus in all those protestors and keep them fed and housed. Every day Walker can keep the protesters on the street further weakens the Democrats for the next election.

What Chuck also leaves out is that recall elections can be called by petition in Wisconsin one year after a person is elected. All the Republicans have to do is collect about 25,000 signatures from a Senate District, get them verified, and six weeks later there will be an election. In a district that was barely won by a Democrat and with sentiment favoring the Governor there is a good chance that in 12 or 16 weeks Walker will have enough Senators to make a quorum and the unions will lose a LOT. Can he hold out that long? Walker has been in politics for a while and he has a reputation for not backing down. Time will tell.

As Chuck points out the Democrats depend on that union money to elect Democrats who will do the unions more favors so they can get their cut. But the marks are staring to wise up. My take is that the longer he holds out the stronger he will get. And he doesn't have to get everything to win. A couple of things would do it: yearly union elections and no automatic deduction of union dues. The last point alone would mean a raise of a few percent for those who didn't want to pay. In these hard times who wouldn't like a raise or even a smaller cut in pay?

Wisconsin is only the first battle. Ohio is next. Indiana is even going after private sector unions. And a labor leader emphasizes Chuck's point:

Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation's largest public-sector union, said the moves in various state capitals to target state employees were an explicit effort to undermine a key source of Democratic funds.

"They know how much we spent in the last campaign," he said. "They're going to try and shoot us down."

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME last year tapped emergency accounts and took out loans as it poured more than $90 million into Democratic campaign efforts in the mid-term elections.

Overall, unions put around $400 million into the 2008 campaign to help elect Mr. Obama and other Democrats.

That is quite a war chest. I think the Republicans would like to flatten it. I think they can.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Perfect Metaphor

H/T Hill Buzz

The Wisconsin Legislators Are Gone

As you may or may not know 14 Wisconsin Senators were camped out in Rockford. The first mate and I had gone out today for a late Valentines Day lunch (we often celebrate holidays early or late depending) at Aunt Mary's on State Street which is owned by Sam from Albania. We had the best Reuben sandwiches in Rockford plus a really decadent chocolate fudge cake for desert. When we got back home we were really full and decided that a Valentines Day snuggle was in order. Yummy. We stared the snuggle at about 3:30 PM local time and I didn't get up until a little after 9 PM. And I look at my e-mail and all heck has broken loose. Tall Dave (who blogs at Classical Values among other places) sent me an e-mail with the Gateway Pundit link above. And there were others like these:

Patriot Action Network

Rockford Tea Party - Facebook

Plus my favorite link resource:

Instapundit

I was planning to make it to their hide out at the Clock Tower tomorrow and take some pictures so I decided to watch the local news for an update - something I rarely do - and found out that the Wisconsin guys had left town. Dang. But you know a man has got to know his priorities. My personal coverage of the event would have meant lots of blog hits. Snuggles (naked) with the first mate? Priceless.

Cross Posted at Classical Values