Promoted from the diaries by Bill S.

Jim Wallis, the longtime leader of Sojourners, a Washington D.C. based ministry dedicated to articulating “the biblical call to social justice,” used the opportunity in a February 24, 2011 column, “This is Not Fiscal Conservatism. It’s Just Politics,” to take an errant shot at recent Congressional Republican budget proposals and Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker.  Reverend Wallis, as you may recall, was a religious adviser to Candidate Obama in 2008 and, over the decades, has never been shy to level sharply worded and religiously-steeped criticism at any federal or state legislative effort which he believes challenges his claimed core constituency, the poor, or his allies in the call for ’social justice.’

Criticizing Wallis, in turn, is not easy - not because he’s never wrong, but because challenging him immediately draws familiar and convenient retorts that the critic isn’t reflecting Christ’s values, or worse yet, simply doesn’t care about the poor.  Conservative commentator, Glenn Beck, found himself at the end of such Wallis’ barbs early last year.

In February and March, 2010,  Wallis and Beck went toe to toe for weeks - Beck urging Christians to run from churches that preached Wallis’ notion of ’social justice,’ as reminscent of communism’s call for redistribution of wealth and loss of personal liberty, and Wallis, for his part, responded in kind, urging that Christians should stop watching Beck altogether.  Frankly, neither the charge, nor counter-charge, nor the particular methods of delivery were particularly worthy of Christ or Christian adherance.  Admittedly, Beck did succeed in piercing Wallis’ shield of impenetrability, which for decades has been cloaked in his increasingly implausible claim that his adherence to ”God’s Politics” elevates him above the political fray, as neither a Republican, nor Democrat, and neither conservative, nor liberal.  This claim, as Beck accurately pointed out, is simply not true.

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RedState Morning Briefing
For March 3, 2011

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Since the Left seized on civility as the solution to all problems political, it’s been fascinating to see them in action. The public union uprising, especially, has produced some revealing moments (everything from punching, swearing, pushing, yelling, denial of service attacks). And now, the incivility has extended to threatening Republicans on Facebook.

In this most recent case, Michael Sarge Piotrowski who self-identifies on his LinkedIn page as being the General Counsel to the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, threatened sitting Ohio Republican Senator Frank LaRose [click to enlarge on new page]:

Here’s what he says:

“Funny thing about cops, they hold a grudge,” says Piotrowski on a Senator’s Facebook page. That seems to be awfully threatening rhetoric directed at a public official and just more evidence of creating the climate of hate. And, according to this lawyer, the words “union thug” is equivalent to the “n-word”. Only in the lefty universe where there’s a racist around every conservative corner would “union thug” be considered racist. (For information about what has Piotrowski so upset, please read Moe Lane’s post about Ohio SB5.)

After Piotrowski was challenged by other commenters about his threatening statement, he seemed to realize how it sounded and walked back by saying this:

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Welcome to the remarkably early Tech at Night tonight. When I have my initial preparation done by 6pm, I’m not going to stay up until midnight to do the actual writing. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.

We start with some mild bad news: the resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality has been delayed. Fred Upton is getting recognition for his active work challenging the Obama administration on its overreaches, and Greg Walden’s subcommittee seems to be following suit nicely, but we will have to wait on this one particular vote.

The Democrats are definitely worried, though. Apparently it’s a bad thing that the FCC’s ability to act ahead of the Congress. Haven’t these Democrats ever heard of actually passing legislation to deal with new challenges?

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RedState friends, I’d like to present to you here a guest post from one of the intellectual free-market leaders at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom Bill Peacock. I’m proud to call Bill a colleague, and he’s been in the trenches fighting for good policy for well over a decade.

The topic Bill writes about here, eminent-domain reform, is of profound national interest in the post-Kelo world. Given Texas’s outsized role driving our national economy in the past decade, it’s going to take on an increasing role driving national policy as well. If there’s any state that must get private-property protection right, it’s Texas.

Thanks for welcoming Bill Peacock — and TPPF — to RedState!

Texas seems to be at or near the top of about every major ranking of the states one can find: jobs created, Fortune 500 companies, attracting new business, and overall economic performance. We may even be the national leader in lawsuits against the federal government.

However, one area where Texas notoriously lags behind: the protection of private property rights.

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The bill is SB5, and it will limit future collective bargaining for Ohio state employees to base salary: it passed the Ohio Senate with a one-vote margin (all hail the power of having a strong enough majority to allow you breathing room: elections matter, folks*). The bill now goes to the House, where the GOP has a 59-40 advantage: and a simple majority constitutes a quorum in the Ohio legislature, which means that the bill will likewise almost certainly pass there with sufficient margin to permit a defection or two. Governor Kasich will of course sign the bill once it is law.

While this is all of course good news for advocates of reform generally, it does also have a bearing on the specific situation in Wisconsin. The time has come for union leadership and other Democrats in that state to ask themselves what they want to do. To wit: do they want to start an armed insurrection against the legitimate government of Wisconsin? Or do they want to start preparing their supporters for what promises to be a crushing defeat of their (misguided) hopes?

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This is a great video that takes apart Annie Leonard’s (of Story of Stuff infamy) new video “The Story of Citizens United v. FEC.” Watch the whole thing, it’s an absolute fisking of a serial propagandist.

You can see more videos from How The World Works here on the youtube channel.

This past weekend, when ethically-challenged U.S. Secretary Hilda Solis told a cheering DNC crowd that “the fight is on” (referring to the Battle of Wisconsin) she openly declared her devotion to union bosses, as well as her disdain for the 88% of Americans who are union-free and stuck with the tab. Though it shouldn’t be a surprise as Solis was a board member of the American Rights at Work—the union “shadow group” mouthpiece pushing the hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act—while she served in Congress, such a blatant provocation on behalf of a particular constituency from an official in a cabinet-level position is a good reminder of just how far America has fallen.

Over the last few weeks, the once-quiet debate that has been brewing for the last couple of years has become a front-page news story due to the Battle of Wisconsin and the power of public-sector unions to hold taxpayers (the people who pay the bills). While the root cause of the Great Recession is the politicians in Washington, DC (past and present), like jagged rocks in a shallow pool, the decline of the stock market exposed how precariously fragile the house of cards had been built as it relates to union entitlements in both the private and public sector.

In the private sector, unfunded union pension liabilities are around $165 billion, the unfunded liability in the public-sector may be as high as $3 trillion. In the private-sector, without a taxpayer bailout, the problem is not on the back of the taxpayer. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the public-sector where unions and their political puppets have gamed the system, saddling taxpayers to shoulder the costs. This is why the Battle of Wisconsin (and other states) is so critical to the future financial stability of the country.

When unions have the ability to pour hundreds of millions into working to put into office politicians who expand the role and size of government—at the expense of taxpayers—they have gamed the system. This is why the Wisconsin battle has unions and their Leftist allies flailing spasmodically. They know that, if Scott Walker succeeds in limiting collective bargaining (not eliminating, as has been portrayed) It is an “insidious relationship,” as Senator Jim Demint noted Tuesday.

“It’s a bigger issue than people think, and it’s something that I’m going to work a lot on, because I really don’t think that collective bargaining has any place in representative government,” DeMint said on WVOC radio.

Demint is not alone in believing that collective bargaining has no place in government.

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From the diaries by Jeff. No “Mute” button here - this is very important.

Now comes news that House Republican Leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) is refusing to commit that the Pence amendment to defund Planned Parenthood will be in the final version of the bill which will fund the government for the rest of the year -– the “long-term continuing resolution.”

This, despite the fact that Planned Parenthood, which performs 324,000 abortions a year, could, according to some insiders, collapse if denied the $350 million it annually receives in taxpayer dollars.

So, given a Schindler’s list with 324,000 names, why would anyone who believes the unborn are human beings not move heaven and earth to protect them?

Said Cantor: “…we’re trying to demonstrate right now that we don’t want to see a [government] shutdown…”

Really!

In fact, the House had, weeks earlier, passed its version of a resolution to fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year –- until September 30, 2011. If government funding is not yet guaranteed -– if a shutdown has not been rendered impossible — it is because Harry Reid and Barack Obama refuse to consider the House’s resolution because it contains provisions unacceptable to them, such as defunding ObamaCare.

But hold on a minute: Cantor and his colleagues campaigned on the promise that they would repeal ObamaCare –- or at least defund it.

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Earlier today, Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated his insouciance to the plight of the American consumer of oil and gas.  Chu told members of the Senate Budget Committee that there is no need to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves because it will be corrected by spare world oil capacity:

“we have spare capacity, we expect naturally that the market forces will take care of this.” “But we are concerned and we will watch it very carefully.”

Well, it is nice to know that Chu actually has faith in the free market.  It is just a shame that the market of “spare capacity” is controlled by Saudi Arabia and not our own energy production- thanks to Chu and his boss.  Imagine if George Bush had refused to release the Strategic Petroleum Reserves in 2006 out of deference to the market forces.

The broader issue is that we are only discussing the strategic reserves because the Obama administration has malevolently extirpated our domestic energy production of oil, gas, and coal.  But fear not, Secretary Chu has a long term solution for high oil prices.  This is what he told reporters following the Senate hearing today:

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It seems geography isn’t Andy Barr’s strong suit - nor is actual reporting.

When covering Texas Governor Rick Perry’s (R) “sit down with reporters on Monday,” Barr reported that “the Texas governor incorrectly identified Juarez — located across the Rio Grande, and border, from El Paso — as ‘the most dangerous city in America.’”

“After an aide informed the governor of his mistake,” Barr concluded, and “Perry clarified that Juarez indeed belongs to Mexico, not Texas.”

Of course, what Perry said is completely accurate, despite Barr’s own idiotic reporting and embarrassing lack of geographic knowledge.  As even Andy Barr should be able to see from the clearly labeled map below, Mexico is, in fact, “in America.” This, of course, is exactly what Perry said, according to Barr’s own cited quotes.  Nowhere does Barr relate that Perry declared Juarez to be “the most dangerous city in Texas,” which his hackish and geographically challenged reporting suggests the Republican governor actually said.  In other words, unless he has data to prove that another city in America is more dangerous than Juarez, Andy Barr is an utter fool.

In fact, the only problem I see here is that Gov. Perry actually corrected an already correct statement, an act which gave the appearance of enough uncertainty that blithering idiots in the audience like Andy Barr were able to convince themselves, in turn, that Perry had said something wrong.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Roger Bate to discuss the need to criminalize the trade of counterfeit drugs in international law, then Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Mike Huckabee.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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