Hey, kids! If the Brits can put a scare into Prince Charles and Camilla -- if angry mobs can run wild in Dublin, Athens, and Paris -- then why shouldn't Madison get in on the fun? We are seven weeks out from November's general election and the Prog-Lib dyspepsia over THE OBVIOUS FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY is growing ever more toxic. Time for some street action!
Time for a little revolution. Off with their heads!
In Wisconsin, the popularly elected governor is sworn into office on January 3. The Squire of the Stately Manor intends to escort his lovely bride to the Inaugural Ball that evening.
Greg Humphrey at Caffeinated Politics suggests that we should be confronted by "a sharp and pointed protest." I hope not as sharp as the stick that goosed Camilla but for our Prog-Lib acquaintances (for they ARE our acquaintances) now is not the time "to play nice," Greg warns.
There Should Be Protests at Scott Walker's Inauguration in Madison, Greg says. But what, exactly, would the protest signs say? How to verb the chants? It would have to be something rhyming.
He has the tacit support of The Capital Times, whose editorial policy is that the one, true Prog-Lib ideology trumps the wishes of the people every time:
"The Wisconsin progressive tradition is too rich, too vital, too important to this state and this nation to let it be diminished by election results."
Election results? Don't need no stinkin' ...
Burning down the house
Violence and protests are never far from the committed Prog's reveries. A DailyPage Foron named Dulouz(ional) writes "If the state union rank and file have any balls [not to mention: matches], the Beil, Decker and Plale households should be burnt to the ground by morning."
I hope Mr. Delusional got a chance to watch CBS' Sixty Minutes last night; state governments across the nation are in trouble. States in the worst difficulty are high-tax states like Wisconsin and New Jersey -- where Gov.-elect Scott Walker and one-year governor Chris Christie (respectively) are changing the way their states do business.
New Jersey ... has the highest taxes in the country, a $10 billion deficit and a depressed economy when first-year Governor Chris Christie took office. But after looking at the books, he decided to walk away from a long-planned ... rail tunnel into Manhattan. ... "I canceled it. I mean, listen, the bottom line is I don't have the money. ... I literally don't have it." [CBS: The Day Of Reckoning Has Arrived]
Don't count on Washington bailing them out -- it's been tried. That's where most of the original $837 billion stimulus went -- to government.
In the Congress, Democrats are livid at the tax deal which does not lower taxes for anyone, much less "billionaires" but merely keeps rates as they have been. But they have only themselves to blame, as the Washington Post reports:
President Obama negotiated with Republicans only after Democratic lawmakers refused for months to address the issue of the expiring Bush tax cuts, raising alarm at the White House. Economists said a partisan standoff could have wreaked havoc on the economy by increasing withholding in virtually every worker's paycheck ... The bipartisan tax talks had another benefit: Unlike the pork-laden, $1.2 trillion annual spending bill [written by Harry Reid's Democrats, btw] ... the tax bill is virtually free of unrelated add-ons.
About that "pork-laden" spending bill, Washington Post has this to say:
The majority leader's surrender on the spending bill marked a final rebuke for this Congress to the old-school system of funding the government, in which the barons of the Appropriations Committee decided which states would receive tens of millions of dollars each year.
Doyle's drunken sailors
In Madison, one must question whether the Doyle Democrats knew how to govern. They have bequeathed the state with a $150 million I.O.U. for the remaining six months of the current biennium and a $3.3 billion structural deficit thereafter.
The last days of the staggering and reeling Doyle Democrats would have shamed the drunken fraternity in Animal House.
On the eve of turning into pumpkins, the Doyle-istas sprang substance abuser Jeff Wood from the hoosegow to cast the deciding vote in the Assembly to approve a contract with its 39,000 unionized state employees that was already 18 months late. The ridicule went national; wrote James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal on-line: "Wow, when Wisconsin lawmakers spend like drunken sailors, they don't mess around!"
That was too much even for the Democrats' leader in the upper house; Russ Decker cast the deciding vote against the contracts.
Wisconsin State Journal called it: "Dysfunction on Parade." As for The Capital Times ... embarrassed silence.
So, go ahead, my Prog-Lib friends, take to the streets. Chant the slogans. Paint the signs. Hang the effigies. Parade the papier-mché puppets. March up and down State Street. Look as foolish as a saggy panted hip-hopper at a CPA convention.
Be sure to keep warm.