Two nights ago Mark Levin told us Wisconsin was out of reach for Trump but in three weeks her support there has collapsed by 80%

It's Clinton by just +3 in Wisconsin among likely voters in the Marquette poll, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here:

"Three weeks ago, Clinton held . . . a 15-point lead among likely voters."

Police show restraint after rioting in Milwaukee, at least four businesses burn to the ground, alderman says "it may not have been right" but threatens more

Khalif Rainey, the thugs' man in power

Whattaya mean "may", alderman?

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports here:

After an hours-long confrontation with officers, police reported at 10:15 p.m. that a gas station at N. Sherman Blvd. and W. Burleigh St. was set on fire. Police said firefighters could not for a time get close to the blaze because of gunshots.

Later, fires were started at businesses — including a BMO Harris Bank branch, a beauty supply company and O'Reilly Auto Parts stores — near N. 35th and W. Burleigh streets, a grim and emphatic Mayor Tom Barrett said. He spoke at a midnight news conference at the District 3 police station at N. 49th St. and W. Lisbon Ave. ... The mayor said police had "shown an amazing amount of restraint" Saturday evening. ...

“This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country,” [Sherman Park Alderman Khalif] Rainey said. “Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away.”

Scott Walker could be the middle class' punk: Gabba Gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us

From a story here:

In an age when most potential presidential contenders are millionaires, Walker may end up being the closest thing to a middle-class presidential candidate that voters will see in 2016.

For most of the 1990s, the son of a Baptist minister made less than $40,000 a year from his salary as a lawmaker. As recently as 2006, Walker was making about $70,000 a year and living in a two-bedroom house with an unfinished basement, in part because as Milwaukee County executive he was giving a chunk of his salary back to taxpayers. ...

"They're as common as an old shoe," said Betty Balsley, who got to know the Walker family while the now-governor's father was serving as a pastor in Plainfield, Iowa.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ramones, Pinhead, here

Scott Walker's school voucher program is enormously popular with the poor in Wisconsin, but not with the establishment

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported here last May about applications for the school year just now winding down:

Under state law, the 25 private schools that receive the most applications are selected for the statewide voucher program. Because of a tie, 26 schools are selected for the upcoming school year.

Six new participants in the program are Fox Valley Lutheran High School in Appleton, Saint Paul Lutheran School in Bonduel, Winnebago Lutheran Academy in Fond du Lac, Twin City Catholic Educational System in Menasha and Neenah, and Saint Paul Lutheran School and Trinity Lutheran School, both in Sheboygan.

Each of the 26 schools will receive at least 10 voucher slots, with the remaining assigned through a random selection process. ...

A total of 1,000 vouchers are available, up from 500 in the first year of the program. ...

"Once again, applications far exceeded the cap," Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, said in a statement. "For the second year in a row we have thousands of parents — over 70% — on the outside looking in." ...

The statewide program, called the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, is in its second year and is separate from voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine. There are 1,220 students in the Racine Parental Choice Program and 25,397 in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, according fall enrollment data.

-----------------------------------------------

Governor Walker has proposed a complete elimination of the caps for the next two years, expanding the vouchers apparently at reduced amounts, and paying for it all by reducing allocations to the public school system by $150 per pupil in the first year.

School officials are predictably livid, as this story about a day long public hearing at Brillion High School recently reported:

Nearly all of the administrators who spoke opposed the expansion of the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, which allows low-income students to attend private or religious schools using a taxpayer-subsidized voucher.

-----------------------------------------------

Here's a novel idea. True "parental choice" would allow the taxpayers themselves to decide which schools their taxes fund. Imagine a check off list on your income tax form or property tax form like they have now for various charitable causes to which you may allocate all or a portion of your tax refund. Let's see how the taxpayers vote to spend their education money. Now that might really upset the establishment.

Let the people decide!

Jimmy Carter appointee in Wisconsin overturns Defense of Marriage Amendment

As usual, the meaning of liberalism is to overturn by the decree of a single individual what the voters have passed into law. In other words, to impose what they can't pass. In this case the now 75 year old judge waited like a sleeper for many years until Barack Obama made it safe to unleash rulings against the people.

Barbara Brandriff Crabb, who has been inflicting herself on the voters since 1979 thanks to an appointment to the US District Court by Jimmy Carter, has previously ruled in 2010 the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. A federal appellate court subsequently ruled she had no standing. She has also ruled in 2013 against the clergy exemption from income of housing allowances. In 2009 she ruled that Wisconsin's restrictions on judges against joining political parties, endorsing candidates and raising campaign funds violated their First Amendment rights.

Story here:

A federal judge in Madison on Friday overturned Wisconsin's gay marriage ban, striking down an amendment to the state constitution approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2006 and prompting an emergency action by the state to halt the scores of weddings that began in the state's two largest cities. ... In Wisconsin, voters in 2006 resoundingly approved the same-sex marriage amendment, 59% to 41%. Every county in the state except Dane voted for it.

Wisconsin Sends Rep. Paul Ryan Back To The House

Results here.

Have a nice time compromising some more with liberalism, Paul. You're good at it.

Unions Fail to Get Falk as Dem. Nominee v. Walker in WI

Politico has the story here:

Despite his late entry into the race, Barrett held a wide lead in the polls, aided in part by higher name recognition. Falk acknowledged that fact while campaigning in Milwaukee on Monday, saying she has always been the underdog.

“I have been all along because Tom [Barrett] just ran for governor a year ago,” she said.

Barrett’s victory came despite organized labor’s best efforts against him. Most of the state’s unions – including the AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the SEIU and the United Food and Commercial Workers – endorsed Falk.


The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel shows here the beating the unions' candidate received at the hands of Barrett, who will face  energized Republicans who turned out massively for Walker yesterday in the pro forma Republican primary:

Wisconsin Republicans Fail To Unseat Run Away Democrats In Senate Recalls

Story here.

Republicans retain control of the Wisconsin Senate 17-16.

Republicans Keep Senate in Wisconsin Recalls Despite Millions Spent by Unions

The Republicans retained 4 of 6 seats in the unusual recall elections yesterday, narrowing their hold on the Wisconsin Senate to a 1 seat majority.

But two Democrats still face recalls next week. If they lose that would return the situation to the margins of the status quo ante and suggest that all the sound, fury and expense since March signified nothing, except folly.

Upwards of $35 million is being spent on the recalls, launched by angry unions and Democrats against Republicans under Governor Scott Walker who successfully pushed through legislation to curtail public union power over salaries and benefits in Wisconsin.

Read all about it at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, here:

By keeping a majority in the Senate, Republicans retained their monopoly on state government because they also hold the Assembly and governor's office. Tuesday's elections narrowed their majority - at least for now - from 19-14 to a razor-thin 17-16.

Republicans may be able to gain back some of the losses next week, when two Democrats face recall elections.

The Left in Wisconsin is Falling Back, and Calling in the Lawyers for Cover Fire

So says the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Pat McIlheran, here, who moves on to a new assignment.

We wish him well.

Gov. Walker Wins in WI, Supreme Court Smacks Down County Circuit Court Judge as Usurper

As reported here by The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

In its ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court said it took up the case because the lower court had "usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the Legislature."

The Democrats, the unions and courts in Wisconsin all behaved disgracefully in trying to stop the legislatively elected will of the people to find its expression through the due process which the Republicans followed.

Trains for Transportation? Try Painful Transformation.

Patrick McIlheran for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here, describes a transportation policy being shoved down our throats as surely as was Obamacare, just saying No to which isn't going to stop them:

"Obama promised change, but it is you who will undergo it. In 2008, you were electing a whole new you."

To Unions Wisconsin is Shaped Like a Fist, Against Democracy

So Pat McIlheran for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, here:

Unions choose war because the warlike arts - fighting, regimenting, taking - are what unions do best. Conflict dominates their talk, just like that image of Wisconsin as a fist is all over their posters. The chief strategy of unions is to heighten complaint and to monetize dissatisfaction by organizing it.

It is war because the peaceful alternative, democracy, didn't work out for the unions. They lost; taxpayers won. Don't imagine they'll leave it at that.

Union Tactics in Wisconsin: Illegal Strikes and Physical Intimidation

The inimitable Pat McIlheran for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tells it like it is:

The [Wisconsin] public-sector union tantrums, meant to make lawmakers wobble, have an inadvertent message for the rest of us: Voters can vote all they want. We can elect a cheapskate governor and a Legislature to match. But come the moment, unions will have the last, loudest word.

They'll have it if takes marches. They'll have it if it takes what amounts to an illegal strike, with so many Madison teachers calling in sick Wednesday that the district closed schools. If it takes showing up for a we-know-where-your-family-is protest on Walker's Wauwatosa lawn while he was at work, the unions are sure they can outshout any election result.

This is exactly why Walker is right to limit the unions' power over government spending.

The governor should fire their sorry asses.

Read the rest here.

Tuesday, In a Nutshell

From the inimitable Pat McIlheran, for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Nothing was so fatal to House Democrats, especially newbies, than to have voted for Obamacare. Dozens fell, including Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Appleton). The one Republican who favored it lost.

Running against it saved the jobs of 11 out of 34 Democrats who had opposed the bill, and a popular Democratic governor won West Virginia's Senate seat only after he reversed to say he'd oppose Obamacare.

In Wisconsin, the Senate race became a referendum after incumbent Russ Feingold stood firm for Obamacare. Victorious challenger Ron Johnson spent the campaign telling how it was the bill's passage that goaded him into running. At every turn, he said he was convinced it is a government takeover that will kill innovation.

He pointed out repeatedly that fear of the plan's costs were depressing the economy.

Johnson won, 52% to 47%.

You'll not want to miss the rest here. 

Imposing A Century-Old Urge To Regiment Reality

Don't let the beginning fool you. The passage of just a few hours time has changed things, but not enough of them. By the time you get to the end of the article, you'll be running to find your pitchfork and a torch.

One of the finest writers around anywhere, Patrick McIlheran in "Health Care Designed in a Rug Bazaar" found here puts his finger on the wealth redistribution which is fundamental to the healthcare reform:

Congressional accountants say the cost of health care subsidies will rise 8% a year. ...

[T]he bill will mask this fundamental problem by taking money from some Americans - for instance, by more heavily taxing investments, and isn't that how to grow an economy? - and giving it to others. Families making $80,000 a year would get subsidies. By its design, the plan enshrines the idea that you consume health care someone else buys, the very mechanism leading to spiraling costs.

This plan is not single-payer, but it's not the improved market that backers claim. It is a parody of a market. You cannot choose to buy coverage but must buy it. Washington will design the plans - low-cost, high-deductible coverage, for instance, will be practically impossible. The prices will be controlled. The doctors will be told how to practice.

Your government will command, prohibit or direct every move in the belief that you're an incorrigible slob and your doctor is a fool. This plan does not build a single-payer hell, but pervasive bureaucratic control amounts to grading the site for it.

None of this is even new. By backers' own admission, they're doing what Teddy Roosevelt wanted to do 100 years ago. This is the imposition of a century-old urge to regiment reality. Previous half-steps toward that got us the mess we're in now, so how will this bring anything but disaster?

Follow the link for the rest.