Free Republic

Scott Walker has formed a Testing the Waters Committee, which I assume has something to do with Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union in 2013. (Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.) The new committee will provide him with an additional conduit to raise funds between now and when he announces his presidential bid in July. But at the same time, he’s making some other moves, particularly in the area of tenure for professors at public colleges and universities. As Republican Gov. Scott Walker prepares to campaign for president as the...

A federal court judge sentenced the former president of the Cincinnati Organized and Dedicated Employees union to more than four years in prison, Local 12 reported. Diana Frey pleaded guilty to stealing more than $750,000 from the union that covers mid-level managers in Cincinnati government. Frey has 60 days to report to prison. She has already repaid a small amount, but the court ordered Frey to repay the remaining $740,000 she embezzled. Prosecutors said Frey took money from three union accounts and used it to support a “more lavish lifestyle than she otherwise could afford.” Frey was also sentenced to...

What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into "one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever," as the Washington Post's Paul Whoriskey and Dan Balz reported in a day-after piece. Fifty thousand volunteers made phone calls and knocked on 1.4 million doors to get out the vote against Gov. Scott Walker. Mr. Walker's supporters, less deeply organized on the ground, had a considerable advantage in money. But organization and money...

Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide. The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries. About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by...

The Arizona legislature is considering making it illegal for local governments to pay workers for time they spend doing union work. This so-called “release time” is bargained for alongside salary and vacation and sick pay and included in many local contracts. One version of the legislation passed the Senate but stalled in a House committee. Now Senate leaders are attempting to resuscitate the measure by sending it directly to the House floor in an unrelated bill that the House has already passed. Supporters of the legislation say paying union leaders to do union work is an inappropriate use of taxpayer...

Madison - About a dozen law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, visited the home of a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker on Wednesday as part of a growing John Doe investigation. The home on Dunning St. on Madison's east side is listed in property records as belonging to Cynthia A. Archer, who was until recently deputy administration secretary to the Republican governor. "We're doing a law enforcement action," one of the FBI agents told a reporter. He didn't identify himself or provide further comment but confirmed that he and three others were with the FBI and that sheriff's...

The main reason why so many state and local governments are bankrupt, or on the verge of bankruptcy, is the combination of government-run monopolies and government-employee unions. Government-employee unions have vastly more power than do private-sector unions because the entities they work for are typically monopolies. When the employees of a grocery store, for example, go on strike and shut down the store, consumers can simply shop elsewhere, and the grocery-store management is perfectly free to hire replacement workers. In contrast, when a city teachers' or garbage-truck drivers' union goes on strike, there is no school and no garbage collection...

We've all heard of Furlough Fridays - well, at the San Francisco office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, they had a "Missing Monday" when nearly two-thirds of the staffers didn't show up. In all, 20 of the 34 staffers at the Fell Street DMV office who had been forced to take Friday off without pay took Monday off as well. DMV spokesman Armando Botello said the department had to bring in workers from other jurisdictions to help out with the "higher than usual absences." Naj Alikhan of the Service Employees International Union, which represents the workers, said he hadn't...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A multiracial group of police officers stood with the white officer who arrested a black Harvard scholar and asked President Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick apologize for comments union leaders called insulting. Officers say they resent any implication that race played a role in Sgt. James Crowley's arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home near Harvard University last week. At a news conference Friday, union leaders said Crowley acted appropriately when he arrested the scholar for disorderly conduct. .. Obama said the officers "acted stupidly." Patrick, the state's first black governor, said the...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is telling labor unions that it will order two-day-a-month unpaid furloughs for state employees beginning in February to help the state save cash amid its budget crisis. . . . The furloughs would apply to all general fund and special fund employees and amount to about a 10 percent pay cut, Blanning said. The unpaid furloughs would begin in February and continue through June 2010, he said.

Michael Shires, professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine scratches the itch of why government is so expensive in California; including local county and municipal governments. Shires argues that it is just not a matter of increased taxes v. cutting services; this is how Democrats and Republicans in the California legislature paint the picture. Rather, revenue declines are only a small part of the problem. While services and their cost actually do not increase, the annual increase of secretly negotiated salary, benefits, and cost-of-living increases benefitting unionized public employees is killing budgets, savings, and family finances statewide.Shires writes: “Most public employees...

So a special election is a big risk even for a celebrity politician considered by many to be invincible. If there's no compromise with the Legislature on these proposals, there'll be a bitterly partisan shootout between Schwarzenegger and Democrats — between his special interests and the Democrats' interests, including the potent California Teachers Assn. The Terminator could meet his match in teachers — and schoolkids and parents.