Walker Beginning To Look A Little Like Reagan

Just as Ronald Wilson Reagan faced down the air traffic controllers, Scott Walker is facing down his own unionized public employees:

But Walker said while the state enjoys a lower-than-average unemployment rate — about 7.5 percent compared to 9 percent nationally — about 5,000-6,000 state workers and 5,000-6,000 local government workers could lose their jobs if they don’t accept changes to their benefits plan.

“I don’t want a single person laid off in the public nor in the private sector and that’s why this is a much better alternative than losing jobs,” Walker told “Fox News Sunday.”

The budget vote was supposed to take place last week, but was delayed when state Senate Democrats fled to Illinois to avoid having to vote on the plan, which would cost public sector employees about $300 million over two years, or less than 10 percent of the deficit total.

“If we’re going to be in this together, (cut) our $3.6 billion budget deficit, it’s going to take a whole lot more than just employee contributions when it comes to pensions and health care,” Walker said. “But it’s got to be a piece of the puzzle because as I saw at the local level, it’s like a virus that eats up more and more of the budget if you don’t get it under control.”

Basically, Walker is saying the cuts are gonna have to come somewhere for the state to stay solvent… and if they won’t accept the cuts he’s already suggested, then they will have to come from job cuts. Knowing bureaucracies, I imagine there’s a lot of deadweight that could be cut out without significantly impacting services… and once they’re cut and the sky doesn’t fall, it’ll be a lot harder for the pro-huge-government types to argue that those positions are needed.

Governor Walker has indeed thrown down the gauntlet… good for him.

Dem Politician Calls Tea Partier “Buckwheat.”

Great moments in double standards:

A Broadview Heights woman is accusing state Rep. Robert F. Hagan of using a term that some believe has a racist connotation on a social networking site.

Hagan, D-60th, of Youngstown, used the term “buckwheat” in a Facebook posting Saturday.

He said the posting wasn’t racist, and the attack on him is the tea party’s attempt to make him look bad.

[…]

Rachel Mullen Manias, a GOP activist from Broadview Heights, outside Cleveland; a man named Kevin Crowther and others joined the discussion.

The discussion continues, with Manias, Cook and Crowther, who is black, arguing for the need for cuts and Hagan against what’s bee n proposed.

Manias then wrote, “I’m guessing your (sic) from an entrenched area ripe with corruption. I don’t recognize your name as a Cuyahoga County resident, but I’m guessing you’re from the land of Traficant…”

Hagan responds that she’s not making sense. Two others comment and then Crowther returns to the discussion of public unions.

Then Hagan writes, “I ran against Traficant buckwheat … so take your personal shots, and shove them where the sun don’t shine.”

To start with, it looks like Hagan is himself using “personal shots,” while decrying them in others… so that’s one set of double-standards right there.

However, there’s a bigger one… the last time a politician used the term “buckwheat,” the NAACP regarded it as a racist term.

So… let’s see if the NAACP denounces Hagan for the term, shall we? Whether or not they do, we will learn something about where the NAACP really stands… that is, for those out there who don’t know already.