Is Gov. Scott Walker Public Unions' Iceberg?

Originally published May 31, 2012 at FOX BUSINESS Network (FBN), Stuart Varney says there is a pushback coming against public labor unions and not just in Wisconsin.

RELATED STORY

• Public Unions: Is California Next? (WSJ)

WISN’s Mark Belling covered this same topic on his program yesterday, as well.

Useful Idiots

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

—Opening page Dedication, Rules for Radicals By Saul Alinsky

"The MacIver Institute of Wisconsin reported today that the State’s teachers’ union (WEAC) is "being guided by the philosophy of radical leftist Saul Alinsky." In fact, the National Education Association (NEA) the largest teachers union in the United States included Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals on its members’ recommended reading list page. A check of the NEA website today revealed that this page has been scrubbed from NEA’s website.  Fortunately, we were able to locate this pdf copy that the bumblers at NEA evidently overlooked.

The blog BEFORE IT’S NEWS included a snap shot of the NEA’s original page in its July 15, 2010 post.

Saul David Alinsky is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. The late Conservative author, William F. Buckley said he was "very close to being an organizational genius.”

The Union News blog provides its readers with a stunning summary of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals that we are delighted to share with our readers.

The MacIver Institute of Wisconsin has been closely following the pro-union protests that started in Madison last year has done a great job of bringing to light interesting stories (fake doctor notes).  And it hasn’t disappointed with one of its latest videos, which takes you inside the courtroom as protesters try and mount a defense for why they disobeyed police in August and refused to vacate the capitol.

The following video does a good job of laying out the story, so we won’t bore you by repeating details. But what we will say is this: the protesters were eventually found guilty ($200 fine plus court costs), and just wait until you hear their defense.We're sure their English and history teachers would be proud of them.

Here's the bottom line, the protesters claim that when police told the group to vacate the building because it was closing, the cops never told each one individually. They also believe that police would have been able to do their job (close the capitol) even if the protesters were left to sit in the rotunda.  Our favorite line comes when defendant Damon Terrell claims he would have eventually gotten bored and left. How's that for conviction for "THE CAUSE."

Listen to college student and defendant Damon Terrell and his co-defendants, "colleges," as Terrell refers to them, defend themselves. in court.  This is what our schools and universities are turning out.

 RELATED READING

• Rules for Radicals By Saul Alinsky (Background Information)
• IAF is a leftist community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky (MacIver Institute for Public Policy)
• Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”! (RedState blog)

FDR's Ghost Is Smiling on Wisconsin's Governor

A history lesson for the Progressives and the public sector union leaders coordinating Governor Walker’s recall effort

Here is an interesting story regarding government unions published in Real Clear Politics on February 19, 2011.

Somewhere, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is grinning past his cigarette holder at Wisconsin's governor. They are on the same page regarding government unions.

Except that Scott Walker -- Republican cheapskate, his visage Hitlerized on signs waved by beet-faced union crowds besieging the Capitol -- is kind of a liberal squish compared to FDR. He's OK with some collective bargaining.  Walker, you might have heard, wants some changes in how Wisconsin deals with unions. He wants state employees to pay 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions (they pay almost nothing now) and he wants them to cover 12.6% of their health care premiums (their share would go up from $79 a month to about $200; the average private-sector sap pays about $330).

Unions are enraged. They've been calling such increases unspeakable since Walker was elected handily in November. Then, Feb. 10, Walker went further. He'd allow public-sector unions to negotiate only pay, not benefits, mainly because he wants HSA-style health plans and 401(k)-style retirements for state workers, and unions would fight that, tooth and ragged red claw.

So unions erupted. Teachers faked illness in such numbers as to close school districts for days. Mobs beat on the doors of legislative chambers. And in some heavenly Hyde Park, the great liberal god of the 1930s is saying he saw it all along. 

Roosevelt's reign certainly was the bright dawn of modern unionism. The legal and administrative paths that led to 35% of the nation's workforce eventually unionizing by a mid-1950s peak were laid by Roosevelt.

 But only for the private sector. Roosevelt openly opposed bargaining rights for government unions.

"The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place" in the public sector. "A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."  Read full story…