Cruising the Web

President Obama might pretend that he wants to hear innovative ideas from governors to bring down health care costs, but his HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, and the department sure aren't interested.

David Bernstein points out that Professor Stephen Walt who wrote a book demonizing the "Israel Lobby" was also receiving some nice money from Libya as a "consulting fee" and then wrote puff pieces about Libya. Other prestigious academics have received quite a bit of money from Khadafy for their consultant firm and then wrote pieces to polish Khadafy's image. It wasn't just the London School of Economics, but several prominent American academics who were taking such money from Libya to act as such "consultants." I guess the money is tainted only if it comes from the Jews.

I wonder what sort of kickback was involved in the laudatory piece that Vogue Magazine wrote about the wife of the Syrian dictator? Forget about the support for terrorism, the effots to get nuclear weapons, the intimidation of Lebanon, and the jailing of any Syrians who try to protest. No, what is really important is what brand of $700 shoes that Mrs. Assad wears.

How convenient that Obama had in lobbyists in to write an environmental bill to benefit and subsidize the companies that they represent. Remember when that was something corrupt that Democrats accused Republicans of doing?

How cozy that the new mayor of Washington, D.C., Vincent Gray, is blaming his aides for paying off a minor candidate in last year's race to attack his opponent, Mayor Fenty.

Ah, more coziness. The Department of Health and Human Services has now granted more than 1000 waivers from Obamacare. One more sign that the bill was poorly written and passed without any true consideration of its impact.

Here are some facts for the debate over public unions

When Governor Walker and the governors of other states are making their case against the public employee unions, here's a little factoid to throw into the mix.

A new report from the left-leaning Center for Public Integrity (CPI) shows union bosses would stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal salaries and Democrats would lose millions of dollars in campaign donations if governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states win their budget battles. The new CPI report calls into question union bosses’ and Democratic lawmakers’ true motives in those states, showing that they’re possibly more concerned about losing revenue and personal salary than they are with collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Salaries for the 10 largest unions’ bosses range from $173,000 for the United Auto Workers’ Bob King to $618,000 for Terence O’Sullivan, the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka makes about $283,000 per year. Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), makes $480,000. The AFSCME stands to lose the most from any of the governors’ budget victories, as it’s currently the nation’s powerhouse public sector union, with around 1.5 million members nationwide.

Public-sector workers who see that mandatory amount taken out of their paycheck each month might want to ponder if they're happy paying close to half a million dollars a year for the head of AFSCME. They might enjoy having those extra dollars in their paycheck and the ability to decide for themselves whether or not they want to pay those dues. And that is a right that the Wisconsin bill gives them. The government will no longer handle the dues collecting for the union that force workers to pay out that money to go pay for their well-compensated union heads and to buy more Democratic politicians. That's the real cut that has the Democrats so nervous and so opposed to the bill.

Wisconsin's long state nightmare

The WSJ is reporting that the Wisconsin Democrats are going to return home and allow the Republican bill to restrict public-employee unions' ability to collective bargain on their pensions and helath benefits.

Playing a game of political chicken, Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to stymie restrictions on public-employee unions said Sunday they planned to come back from exile soon, betting that even though their return will allow the bill to pass, the curbs are so unpopular they'll taint the state's Republican governor and legislators.

The Republicans rejected the idea that the legislation would hurt the GOP. "If you think this is a bad bill for Republicans, why didn't you stand up in the chamber and debate us about it three weeks ago?" said Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. "People think it's absolutely ridiculous that these 14 senators have not been in Wisconsin for three weeks."

It's not clear which party will benefit from this whole situation. I don't put much faith in the polls since it's a complicated issue which can't be summed up in one poll question. But it can be demagogued and mischaracterized by the media. A recent poll shows different responses depending on how the bill is characterized.

This is where it will be the job of Governor Walker and the Wisconsin GOP to make the case well and often to the public about what the fiscal situation is in Wisconsin that led them to vote for and sign this bill. They need to make the argument connecting those pension and health-care benefits to the fiscal problems facing the state. They need to explain the differences between collective bargaining between private sector union workers and their boss and a public sector union that manages to get their preferred politicians into power and then negotiates with those very politicians whose election they just bought. Union bargaining needs to be adversarial or else it just becomes collusion to get the taxpayer to pay for the election of Democrats and generous benefits for those public workers. It's not difficult to explain, but the case has to be made forcefully and regularly.

When explaining the problems that the public unions have brought the estate, he might want to quote from this editorial from, of all places, the New York Times.

At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago.

That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.

Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector.

In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York’s operating budget. Unless those costs are reined in, New York will find itself unable to provide even essential services.

Find the parallel statistics from Wisconsin and make them common knowledge. Of course, the Times, being the Times, still inserts a dig against Governor Walker and other Midwestern Republican governors who are trying to prevent their states falling into as deep a hole as New York. Apparently, the New York Times isn't interested in preventing such problems, only dealing with them when they reach the disastrous level now facing New York.

Governor Walker should take a page from Governor Christie and go meet people in town halls on a regular bases and explain these matters. He shouldn't be afraid of raucous meetings and hostile questions. Instead he should use such gatherings as a foil and rise above the Walker/Hitler slogans to explain why he has supported this measure. The arguments are there and he's been making them, but he needs to keep making them and he needs to go beyond media interviews and talk to voters. Otherwise the demagoguery of the unions and Democrats will win in the end. And this is too important a battle to surrender after it is seemingly won.

UPDATE: One Democratic state senator, Chris Larson posts on Facebook that there are no plans to return any time soon. I guess they're not so sure that they're winning the PR battle.

Cruising the Web

The New York Times celebrates a terrorist.

Look for some interesting education reform coming out of Nevada.

Peggy Noonan thinks that unions have lost their aura of being the ones out for the little guy. Now, they're the big guy.

As for unions looking out for the little guy, that's not how it's looking right now. Right now the little guy is the public school pupil whose daily rounds take him from a neglectful family to an indifferent teacher who can't be removed. The little guy is the beleaguered administrator whose attempts at improvement are thwarted by unions. The little guy is the private-sector worker who doesn't have a good health-care plan, who barely has a pension, who lacks job security, and who is paying everyone else's bills.

Ohio is inching towards true structural reform that will help it turns its economy around. The protests are ugly now, but the benefits of such institutional changes will will help Governor Kasich and the Ohio GOP reap the rewards in future years.

As oil prices soar, get ready for the battle over Obama's energy policy. His administration has done everything it possibly could to make life difficult for our country's oil and gas production. That's just not what the country needs now and they'll have to answer for it.

And it doesn't help when the Secretary of the Interior blows smoke about oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Is he ignorant or dishonest?

Awww. Matt Damon is no longer so impressed with Barack Obama. Reality is such a bummer compared to fantasy.

Walter Russell Mead lists the "World's Top Ten Gaddafi Toads."

Harvard is to allow Naval ROTC to return. Though the students will still have to go to MIT for classes.

The Washington Post explains why LIFO or the policy of "last in, first out" in letting workers go is such a terrible idea, especially in education.

Not only students but teachers, too, are hurt when they are treated, in the parlance of the New Teacher Project, like widgets or interchangeable parts. Why should the many fine men and women - who daily do heroic work often under difficult circumstances - be lumped indiscriminately with teachers who have given up on their students or who, as examples from New York City's case files show, forged doctor's excuses to explain excessive absences, committed corporal punishment against students or engaged in other misconduct? The time for timidity in changing this irrational process is long past.

Amen.

This has to be one of the worst ideas ever: Atlas Shrugged, the Musical.

For those who still believe in the efficacy of government

Here are some stories to open the eyes of even the most naive observer about the inefficiencies and structural problems of government

The numbers are eye-opening for the amount by which states have been understating the amount that they owe public employees for their pensions.

The pension funds for state and local workers in the United States are understating the amount they will owe workers by $1.5 trillion or more, according to some economists who have studied the issue, meaning that the benefits are much costlier than many governments and taxpayers thought.

Doubts about government pension accounting have been voiced by analysts for years, but with shortfalls in state and local pension plans exacerbated by the recession, the push to refigure pension fund shortfalls has gained political momentum.

The trillion-dollar gap arises from the government method of accounting, which several experts say significantly underestimates the cost of future pension payments.

"It's been a perfect storm," said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. When the pension liabilities are correctly tallied, "you get a very, very large number."

Such stories cast a different look at what governors such as Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and John Kasich have been trying to do. The states have been making overly optimistic projections about the returns on investments in those pension plans. Check out how big a shortfall your state is facing in 2012.

Here's another statistic to wake people up.

In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion in 2010 (according to Fortune 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4.

This is sobering news for the minority of Americans who (for some reason) continue to think that government-run health care is a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Last year, total outlays for Medicare were $509 billion; therefore, Medicare spent nearly 10 percent of its outlays on fraudulent or improper claims. Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.”

It kind of puts the efforts of the Democrats and Obama to put as much as possible of our health care under government control in perspective, doesn't it?

And if you had hope that a ban of earmarks would make a difference, Democratic Representative Jim Moran isn't concerned.

In response to a question about whether earmark bans have "curtailed" the Appropriations Committee's power, Moran responded, "No, and I have to say — and I'm going to be as candid as possible — the appropriators are going to be okay because we know people in agencies and so on. We will continue to do the best job we can for the country and to some extent for our congressional districts because that's our job as well."

It's nice that he can celebrate his back-door deals to grab a bigger chunk of federal money for his district. Sadly, he's probably right.

Cruising the Web

Flexibility to this White House means doing things their way.

Chris Matthews' version of the need for civility in public debate is to say that Newt Gingrich "looks like a car bomber" and "He's got that crazy Mephistophelian grin of his. He looks like he loves torturing." Ah, now that is sophisticated political analysis. Because all those car bombers are overweight guys in their 60s. It takes someone with the political acumen to sense these truths about politicians. I'm not a big fan of Gingrich, but isn't Matthews capable of analysis with a teeny modicum of substance? I guess that would be asking too much. And let's not start imagining what weird comparisons we could come up with for Matthew's own face.

Barack Obama told guests at a private White House dinner a year ago that "race was probably a key component" in the groups opposed to his policies especially the Tea Party movement. Yes, because he just can't imagine any substantive reason that anyone would oppose his policies other than race or bitter clinging to guns and religion.

Mickey Kaus explains why Governor Walker needs to hold firm against the public sector unions. As a liberal and Democrat, he worries that such unions cripple government.

There are $15 billion worth of federal buildings and property that could be sold off to raise money. Let's go for it.

Philip Klein explores the fantasy-thinking that underlies the billions to be spent to build high-speed rail system in California. Michael Barone has some more about why people will not take the train when they can fly or drive.

Ah, now we can understand the limits of what qualifies as modern art.

The type of corporate welfare and tax breaks that liberals support.

Democrats and teachers unions will go to the mattresses to prevent parents in Compton, California to improve their children's schools. And Jerry Brown is comfortable being their tool. It would be nice of Arne Duncan would speak up for those parents and kids, but don't hold your breath.

It takes two-five years to fire a bad teacher in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune has the explanatory chart.

Jeff Jacoby reminds us that the supposed "right" for public-sector unions to collectively bargain is not any sort of true right. ONly about half the states allow public employees to collectively bargain. And the federal government doesn't have much of that right. In fact, President Obama could unilaterally sign a pay freeze without a murmur from federal employees.

Harvard hasn't yet restored ROTC because they have to work through the "transgender" issues with the military.

This week in anti-Semitic rants. And they're not all in the Middle East.

I guess I'm not current enough with our raving loonies

Take the quiz: Charlie Sheen or Muammar Gaddafi? I only got two out of ten right.

They're both loons, but one has tanks and chemical weapons and isn't worried about using them. Maybe that's why it's rather a relief to relish Charlie Sheen's brand of lunacy.

The worst boss on Capitol Hill

It sounds like Sheila Jackson Lee takes the prize as the worst boss on Capitol Hill for her verbal abuse of her staffers.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas also hands out nicknames to the people who work for her. The Houston Democrat addressed one of her employees as “you stupid motherfucker.” And not just once, but “constantly,” recalls the staffer, “like, all the time.”

Another Jackson Lee aide recounts the time her parents came to Washington to visit: “They were really excited to come to the congressional office. They’re small town people, so for them it was a huge deal. They were actually sitting in the main lobby waiting area….[Jackson Lee] came out screaming at me over a scheduling change. Called me a ’stupid idiot. Don’t be a moron, you foolish girl’ and actually did this in front of my parents, of all things.”

Yet another staffer remembers requesting a meeting early on in her tenure to ask how best to serve the congresswoman. Jackson Lee’s response: “What? What did you say to me? Who are you, the Congresswoman? You haven’t been elected. You don’t set up meetings with me! I tell you! You know what? You are the most unprofessional person I have ever met in my life.” With that, Jackson Lee hung up the phone.

According to the same staffer, Jackson Lee “would always say, ‘What am I a prostitute? Am I your prostitute? You can’t prostitute me.’”

Capitol Hill is famous for its demanding, insensitive bosses. Yet even by the harsh standards of Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee stands out. She may be the worst boss in Washington. “It’s like being an Iraq War veteran,” says someone who worked for her. Strangers may say, “‘oh I know what you’ve been through.’ No, you really don’t. Because until you’ve experienced it…. People don’t tell the worst of the stories, because they’re really unbelievable.”

For some, a job in Jackson Lee’s office proved not just emotionally but physically perilous. One staffer recalls a frank conversation with his doctor, who told him he needed to quit. “It’s your life or your job,” the doctor told him, warning that the stress and long hours were wreaking havoc on his body.

Only a few on staff fought back. One of Jackson Lee’s drivers became so frustrated with her abuse the person pulled the car over and demand she stop: “She’s screaming and swearing. ‘M.F.’ everything. Finally I slammed on the brakes and told her to get the hell out of my car. I’m like ‘I can’t drive with you like this. Either get out, or you can calm down.’ And she’s like ‘you need to go or get fired.’ I’m like, ‘that’s fine. But I’m either leaving without you or you can calm down,’” the staffer said.

Jackson Lee then threatened to call the police and claim she was being held hostage in the car. But she finally did calm down when the staffer called her bluff, offering to flag down a Capitol Police officer to explain the situation.

The stories go on and on. She forces them to work late into the early hours of the day and makes them wait around for her, sometimes until midnight. Then she demands that they do everything for her with impossible alacrity, even going so far as to time them on how long it took them to get from the House floor to her office.

And then when she is criticized she jumps immediately to accuse critics of racism.

In 1997, for example, The Hill reported that the newly-elected congresswoman asked NASA officials whether the Mars Pathfinder photographed the American flag astronaut Neil Armstrong had planted on the surface of Mars. When it was pointed out that the flag in question was on the moon, not Mars, Jackson Lee cited bigotry. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then chief of staff wrote in a letter to the editor.

Jackson Lee recently blasted a Pepsi advertisement shown during the Superbowl in which a black woman throws a can of soda at her husband for ogling an attractive white woman next to them. “It was not humorous. It was demeaning — an African-American woman throwing something at an African-American male and winding up hitting a Caucasian woman,” she thundered from the House floor.

In 2009, she helped prevent Rush Limbaugh from becoming an NFL owner. “He does not represent the fullness of appreciation of athletes of all diverse backgrounds, no matter what he wants to pretend to say on his radio station,” Jackson Lee said.

In 2003, she demanded that more Hurricanes be named with African American-sounding names.

A former staffer recalls one revealing episode during the height of the financial crisis in the waning months of the Bush administration. Jackson Lee demanded a meeting with a top Treasury aide, even though she did not sit on any of the committees with jurisdiction over financial matters. As her car pulled up outside the Treasury, Jackson Lee told her driver to park directly outside the door.

Due to the proximity of the Treasury Department’s headquarters to the White House, Secret Service officers told the driver not to park there. After an argument with the agents, who kept telling the driver to back off, Jackson Lee finally emerged from the building.

As the car drove away, a Secret Service van flashed its lights behind them. “Keep driving,” Jackson Lee told her staffer. Ultimately, the driver pulled over in defiance of the boss’s wishes. At this point, Jackson Lee emerged from the car, screaming, “I’m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee! Who do you think you are?” to a team of Secret Service agents.

Jackson Lee accused the “white” agent at the gate of racism, claiming she wouldn’t have to deal with “this stuff” when Barack Obama became president. She then filed a formal complaint with the Secret Service, which prompted an investigation. A Treasury official later explained that the accusation had been dismissed because the agent in question was Hispanic, not white.

However, despite her propensity to see everything in terms of race, she seems to save her worst behavior for her African American staffers.

Read the whole article. You can judge the character of a person by how they treat those who are powerless against them. So Sheila Jackson Lee's character is quite clear to all.

The incredibly shrinking president

Ruth Marcus, not a raving conservative, expresses frustration with President Obama for being a "strangely passive president." She bemoans his lack of leadership on issues from the health care debate to the situation in Libya. She admits that she is ideologically supportive of Obama, but she sure wishes the guy would speak up.

Where, for example, is the president on the verge of a potential government shutdown - if not this week, then a few weeks from now?

Aside from a short statement from the Office of Management and Budget threatening a presidential veto of the House version of the funding measure, the White House - much to the frustration of some congressional Democrats - has been unclear in public and private about what cuts would and would not be acceptable.

By contrast, a few weeks before the shutdown in 1995, Clinton administration aides had dispatched Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials to spread the message that cuts in education, health care and housing would harm families and children. Obama seems more the passive bystander to negotiations between the House and Senate than the chief executive leading his party.

Well, she can take comfort in the tactical approach of Obama. If he doesn't say anything, then he doesn't open himself up to criticism for what he does or doesn't propose.

Marcus is waking up to the true character of President Obama that conservatives were highlighting back in 2007 and 2008. There is very little there there. He likes to make grandiose speeches with lots of fine rhetoric, but falls down when it comes to actual policy-making.

He performs best on a stage that permits the grandest sweep. He rises to the big occasion, from his inspiring introduction to the public in his 2004 Democratic convention speech to his healing words in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings.

The president has faltered, though, when called on to translate that rhetoric to more granular levels of specificity: What change, exactly, does he want people to believe in? How, even more exactly, does he propose to get there? "Winning the future" doesn't quite do it.

And when it comes to the major issue of our day - our nation's fiscal future, President Obama is ducking the question. He's fine with gestures, but not actual effort to address the looming crisis.

My biggest beef is with the president's slipperiness on fiscal matters. Obama has said he agrees with some of his fiscal commission's recommendations and disagrees with others. Which ones does he disagree with? I asked this question the other day of Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Here's what I got: "The view espoused by some of the . . . commission that we ought to do Social Security 100 percent off of benefit cuts for sure he doesn't agree with." But of course, the plan that 11 of the commission members endorsed did nothing of the sort.

I was unfair to Goolsbee because I asked him a question he didn't have the leeway to answer. You can't blame the aide for ducking when the boss fudges.

Where's Obama? No matter how hard you look, sometimes he's impossible to find.

Well, Ms. Marcus, he is just doing what he has done so much of his political life. He is voting present.

The idiocy of the UN Human Rights Council

The WSJ looks at what the UN Human Rights Council has had to say about Libya. Now that it's cool to condemn Libya, even the Human Rights Council is coming out against Gadhafi's leadership of his country. But just a couple of weeks ago, they issued its "universal periodic review" and all sorts of good things to say about Gadhafi's Libya.

The report notes that "a number of delegations commended [Libya] for the preparation and presentation of its national report, noting the broad consultation process with stake holders in the preparation phase. Several delegations also noted with appreciation the country's commitment to upholding human rights on the ground."

You'll be pleased to learn that the Gadhafi government offers a generous assessment of its own rights record. Cuba commended Gadhafi for "the progress it made in . . . primary education," and North Korea lauded Libya's "achievements in the protection of human rights." These were not surprise judgments.

But what to make of Australia, which "welcomed [Libya's] progress in human rights"; or Canada, which praised "the recent legislation that granted women married to foreigners the right to pass on their Libyan nationality to their children;" or Poland, which highlighted Libya's "achievements in recent years, including its efforts to combat corruption and trafficking."

The U.S., which joined the Council as a sign of the Obama Administration's good global citizenship, "supported [Libya's] increased engagement with the international community." At least the U.S. also "expressed concern about reports of the torture of prisoners" along with other rights violations. Similarly tepid statements of concern were offered by the Australians, Canadians and Poles. Too bad they couldn't muster the nerve of Switzerland, which tartly noted that Libyan "courts continued to pronounce death sentences and inflict corporal punishment, including whipping and amputation."

The Council will meet next month to consider the UPR, which is embarrassing enough given its timing and obsequious content. But the real embarrassment is that a human rights body with members like Libya and Cuba is taken seriously.

Anytime you hear someone intone about the necessity of involving the United Nations or express concern over the lack of love for the United States in the U.N., remember that this is the same organization whose ironically named Human Rights Council saw all sorts of progress and encouragement from Libya's "achievements" in human rights. What a joke!

Cruising the Web

Shocker from Iowa - Senator Grassley may vote against ethanol subsidies if such provisions are part of a deficit reduction package.

New York Magazine takes a look at Karl Rove's move back to political influence.

The chart to show why we are screwed.

How crazy is it that New York closed the rubber rooms but kept nonteaching teachers on their payroll?

The truth about RomneyCare - it's not working out well.

Is this the most irritating contest ever - ESPN's "Suggest Dickie V's Next Catchphrase" contest to win $10,000. His catchphrases are so overused and obnoxious and now he's going to put them up for a digital suggestion box? One shudders to anticipate the winning phrase being inserted every five minutes into the next several years of Dickie V's ruining basketball games. Why can't we have more Bobby Knight providing intelligent and informative analysis and keep Dick Vitale for some middle-of--the-night ad substituting for Billy Mays? And while we're at it, get rid of the nauseating use of Vitale in a Hooter's ad. That's a juxtaposition I'd prefer not to imagine.

Wisconsin follies

Bill McGurn notes the ridiculous position that the protesters and Democratic state senators are trying to get people to believe.

The idea that the demonstrators in the state capitol in Madison, Wis., and the Democratic state senators who fled the state to prevent a vote on the bill to restrict collective bargaining are upholding democracy rather than thwarting it is, of course, absurd. But it is an absurdity that represents the logical conclusion of a disconnect that defines today's Democratic Party and the union movement: Their almost total estrangement from the productive sector of our economy.

At the national level, that disconnect is reflected in a Democratic Party dominated by unions that are themselves now dominated by government workers. It's not just the increased spending, though that's bad enough. It's also an increasing contempt for the realities of the marketplace and the democratic process.

And these same people are declaring war on Michigan governor Rick Snyder, not for anything he's done, but just as a preemptive strike. They realize that any attempts by the Republican governors who were just elected to decrease state spending will come at the expense of their members.

The irony here is that though Michigan is in far worse shape than Wisconsin, Gov. Snyder's reforms are far more modest. This weekend he told the Associated Press that he's not here to "pick fights" over collective bargaining; what he wants is to get a sound budget passed. But here the Democrats and the public-sector unions are more aware than he is: They grasp that what is going on now in Wisconsin has implications for every other state. Mr. Snyder may not think he's at war with them, but if they declare war on him, it won't matter what he thinks.

Across the heart of the Midwest, the new Republican governors (and the reform incumbent in Indiana, Mitch Daniels) all start from two propositions. First, their states can't keep spending more than they take in. Second, they need to make their states attractive to business and entrepreneurs so that the economy will grow, create jobs, and bring in tax revenue. And they are working through the legislatures to do it.

In fact, even where they are in a minority, Republicans are playing by the rules. In Illinois, voters retained their Democratic majorities in the House and Senate while electing as governor Pat Quinn, who campaigned on raising taxes as the answer to the state's fiscal mess. No doubt many in the Republican minority in the Illinois House and Senate think this insane. But unlike their Democratic counterparts in Wisconsin and Indiana, you don't see these Illinois Republicans fleeing the state to prevent the legislature from functioning.

Fleeing their responsibilities seems to be a Democratic specialty. That's the path they've chosen, but don't try to tell us that you're doing so because you support the democratic process. And don't try to snow people into believing that there is any parallel to what is going on in Wisconsin with what is going on in Egypt or Libya.

How strange is this? The governor of Wisconsin has the power to veto individual words in an appropriations bill so that he can completely alter the meaning of the bill by excising key words like "not." So if the state Senate passed some sort of compromise on collective bargaining like reactivating the rights in a few years, he could simply cross those words out.

Notice how the Wisconsin unions would rather give up jobs for younger members than give up their political negotiating advantages. So it's not only the regular taxpayers that they're sticking it to; it's their own members.

And President Obama might be trying to mute his obvious support for the public employee unions, but his secretary of labor is out there in full-throated support.

One of those nice civil Democratic state representatives in Wisconsin tells a female Republican colleague after the vote on the state budget repair bill, "You are f-ing dead." And he didn't abbreviate the expletive. Charming. It's so nice when the Democrats practice civility. Or maybe those are the manners he mastered in his patronage of a massage parlor for which the hometown police cited him last week for paying having his "sexual parts."