Saturday, 11 Aug 2012 12:23 PM

By Matt Kibbe

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up. No sir, Not I, Not me, So there!

– “Peter Pan” the musical, 1954

WAUWATOSA, Wis. — This state, the first to let government employees unionize, was an incubator of progressivism and gave birth (in 1932 in Madison, the precursor of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) to its emblematic institution, the government employees union — government organized as a special interest to lobby itself to expand itself. But Wisconsin progressivism is in a dark Peter Pan phase; it is childish without being winsome.

Wisconsin has produced populists of the left (Robert La Follette) and right (Joe McCarthy). On Tuesday, in this year’s second-most important election, voters will judge the attempt by a populism of the privileged — white-collar labor unions whose members live comfortably above the American median — to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

In this Milwaukee suburb, a pro-Walker phone bank is conducting mobilization, not persuasion. Is any voter undecided? For 16 months, Wisconsin, normally a paragon of Midwestern neighborliness, has been riven by furious attempts to punish Walker for keeping his campaign promise to change the state’s unsustainable fiscal trajectory driven by the perquisites of government employees. His progressive adversaries have, however, retreated from their original pretext for attempting to overturn the election Walker won handily just 19 months ago.

He defeated Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee. A recall is a gubernatorial election, and the Democrats’ May primary was won by … Barrett.

In 2010, government employees unions campaigned against Walker’s “5 and 12″ plan. It requires government employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay to their pension plans. (Most were paying less than 1 percent. Most private-sector workers have no pensions; those who do pay, on average, much more than 5.8 percent.) Walker’s reform requires government employees to pay 12.6 percent of their health care premiums (up from 6 percent but still less than the 21 percent private-sector average). Defeated in 2010, the unions now are demanding, as frustrated children do after losing a game, “Let’s start over!”

The testimony of Banks High School student Coryn Nelson before the Oregon Board of Education about banning Native American mascots has ignited quite a stir across the state. Nelson’s testimony has even received TV coverage. Lars Larson’s posting on his face book page of our MOOCountyNews article (“15 Year Old Banks High Student Schools Oregon Board of Education”) with Coryn’s complete testimony brought an amazing number of hits(Thanks Lars).

To all of you folks who are supporters of the Warrenton Warriors, your mascot’s days may be coming to an end if the State Board of Education has its way. That unique statue of the Warrenton Warrior, actually fashioned by Warrenton students years ago, may be headed to the politically correct scrap pile.

Doug Beghtel/The OregonianThen-Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., speaks at a town hall in Portland in April of 2011, less than four months before his resignation.

Former Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., continues to spend money out of his old campaign fund, without providing much explanation for where most of it is going.
A new report filed with the Federal Election Commission showed that Wu was reimbursed nearly $4,000 for unspecified expenses during the first three months of the year. Wu resigned in August following a sex scandal.
All told, Wu’s old campaign fund – which has been renamed the “Education & Opportunity Fund II” –reported spending nearly $20,000 in the first quarter of 2012. The committee spent more than $1,200 on travel and more than $7,000 on legal expenses.
Just two of the expenditures showed a clear political purpose. In February, he gave $500 checks to both the Clatsop and Yamhill County Democratic central committees.

Let’s put Rep. Boone onto Social Security and a PERS retirement in 2013

They’re Back!

Remember back in 2009 when the Democrat controlled Oregon Legislature passed tax increases that were supposed to “save” education and social service funding? And remember when our liberal friends in Portland and Salem and the other environs of “Our Oregon” (henceforth to be known as “Their Oregon”), along with their Democrat panderers, told us that if we didn’t defeat Measures 66 and 67 (that would have overturned the tax increases) that Oregon‘s future ability to fund those services was at stake. Remember that? Yep, all we had to do was increase the taxes on those nasty corporations and all those nasty millionaires and by golly we’d get the State of Oregon back on its feet (or at least the part that lives off of taxpayers). Well it seems it hasn’t quite worked out that way. As old Gomer Pyle used to say to the Sarge: “Surprise, surprise“.

State tax revenues are now stagnating, if not declining and the 2013 Legislative session looks to be another battle over who to fleece to keep the bureaucracy afloat. Enter “Our (Their) Oregon”. Read more….http://moocountynews.com/here-come-the-taxers-again-p650-1.htm