Good News from Wisconsin!

Following up on my previous post, looks like the Republicans in Wisconsin survived the recall attempts in elections held yesterday. They did lose two seats (out of 6) but didn't lose control of the state senate.

From Newsmax:
"John Fund: Unions Spent $35 Million to Defeat Wisconsin Gov. Walker — and Lost" by Jiim Meyers and Ashley Martella
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/fund-walker-wisconsin-recall/2011/08/10/id/406835?s=al&promo_code=CCF2-1

This is what unions are doing with their members' money. Not just in Wisconsin, mind you. Money came pouring into the state from all over the country to fight the common sense reforms Walker has enacted. Fighting for the right to keep confiscating their members' money.

According to John Fund, interviewed in the article:
"It was astonishing to see labor unions spend $35 million of their members’ dues money to beat back Scott Walker’s labor reforms. But the astonishing thing is that for all the money they spent, mostly unsuccessfully, their ads against the Republican incumbents they were trying to recall never talked about the labor law reforms."

"They talked about ending Medicare, which is a federal issue, not a state issue. They talked about Paul Ryan. They talked about cutting budgets for education. They talked about everything except the issue of whether or not labor unions should have the right to withhold dues from their members if they didn’t want them to go to politics."

"That was the core of the issue that brought 75,000 people to the Madison state capital in February and March. And that was the one issue the labor unions didn’t want to bring up because I suspect that would have opened up a whole can of worms about union privileges and how much better public employee unions were paid, and how much better their benefits were than people in the private sector."

"Republicans retained control of the state Senate. His reforms are working. You’re seeing school districts all over the state being able to avoid layoffs. In fact they’re adding teachers and reducing class size. They’re saving lots of money because the health insurance monopoly that used to be controlled by the teachers’ union has been broken."

"All over the state, you’re seeing the reforms starting to work. I think when parents send their kids back to school in September they’re going to see the schools are still there and in some cases are probably performing better because of the flexibility now that schools boards have in negotiating labor contracts."


It will be interesting to see if Democrats follow-through on their threat to launch a recall effort against Walker, himself. Stay tuned, this isn't over yet.