Hennessy's View

Doing the right thing is hard.

Doing the right thing after years of practicing the wrong things is even harder.

When your senate separated the fiscal responsibility provisions affecting union collective bargaining powers from a bill that previously included tax and spend provisions, you took a big step toward fiscal recovery.

For years, public sector unions have dictated states’ taxing spending policies through brute force.  These unions were not elected by the people, but the people were forced to pay—or borrow—what the unions demanded.

Economically, public sector unions are not workers, but part of the of government.  They are management.  They imposed their demands directly on the people who pay the bill and who created their functions in the first place. 

Unlike politicians, though, unions have refused to yield to the electoral process.

Your governor, Scott Walker, and your 18 Republican Senators displayed courage and decency throughout this ordeal, brought on by Democrats who shirked their duties by fleeing the state.  You, the people of Wisconsin, show tremendous patience and courage, too, but standing behind your elected officials who are trying to govern.

When Ronald Reagan fired the illegally striking PATCO workers, leftist pundits predicted mayhem.  They were wrong.  The skies remained as safe after as they’d been before. Federal workers learned a new respect for the American taxpayer.  And the US economy, eventually, healed into a nearly 20-year expansion.

You, Wisconsin, have set an example for us all.  So I lift my glass and toast you with your governor’s brother, Johnny.

Forward.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I am very pleased and honored to tell you this news:  Trent Humphries and the good people of the Tucson Tea Party have asked me to speak at their Third Annual April Tea Party on April 30, 2011, at 11:00 am.  The theme is Reduce Taxes, Spending, and Waste. 

Of course, they’re not really inviting me to speak; they’re inviting the thousands of St. Louis area activists who have done so much to advance liberty and defend freedom over the past 25 months.

Trent Humphries put out a request for speakers after the rogue sheriff of Pima County began an intimidation campaign against Tucson Tea Party speakers.  Gateway Pundit and 24th State’s editor brought the incident to my attention, and I offered to speak. 

I also emailed Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, requesting his response to allegations of intimidation.  Having received no answer in the month since the request, I am left assume that he does not deny the charges.

The Tucson Tea Party won’t be silenced, and neither will we. That’s why I’m going to Tucson April 29 and 30 thanks to the generosity of the Trent Humphries and Tucson Tea. I hope you will either join us a the tea party or make a donation to the Tucson Tea Party to help defray the costs of working around their sheriff’s attempts to silence us.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’ll participate on KSDK Channel 5’s post-SOTU discussion panel Tuesday following the State of the Union speech. (I being Bill Hennessy, in case you’re reading this from a news feed.)

I don’t know who my fellow panelists will be, but I think it’s pretty cool that a local network invited a tea partier to help break down the President’s State of the Union speech.

The speech starts at 8:00 p.m. CT Tuesday, January 25 on  KSDK 5. The analysis follows. 

Please tune in and tell your friends.  (Tweet, Facebook, email a link to this post, using the buttons below.) 

Other ideas to make the evening more meaningful:

* Start an office pool on what I wear

* Do a shot every time Barry says “perfectly clear”

* Draw a picture of Nancy Pelosi when John Boehner announces the President

* Have your kids interrupt with applause every time you say something really, really witty at the TV

* In the comments below, post the snarky answers I should have given instead of the lame, unintelligible responses I actually give

* Add your own ideas below

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is my opinion, and it’s not all about politics.  Nor are they necessarily in any particular order.  Save for one.  (You’ll see.)

• Nancy Pelosi, Phil Hare, and other Democrats admit their contempt for the US Constitution.
• Barack Obama continues bowing to tin-horn dictators . . . who really are his superiors.
• Rep. Russ Carnahan funnels millions of tax dollars to his family business.
• The business world discovers “gamification,” an idea that will turn marketing upside in 2011.
• Europe suffers third consecutive frigid winter.
• Republicans gain 63 House seats to take it back after only two terms in the minority.
• Republicans gain six seats in the US Senate, placing that body within easy striking distance for 2012.
• Barack Obama’s popularity hovers at 40 percent, the traditional “point of no return.”
• Wikileaks embarrasses the White House and endangers intelligence operatives’ lives. But Obama only reacts because of the embarrassment.
• The Tea Party becomes a long-term movement that continues to disrupt and surprise.

That’s the top ten list.  But the top story is not here. 

The top story of 2010: Republicans gain more than 600 state legislature seats. 

Why is that important? Because those new legislatures give the GOP a conservative bench to dominate national and state policy for generations.

Popularity: 1% [?]

No, not Marie Antoinette.  Too clichéd and too . . . ancient. Rather, Michelle Obama’s opulent life rekindles  fond memories of Imelda Marcos.

Imelda Marcos was the wife of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos was more a dictator than a president.  Another parallel.  In 1986, the Filipinos and the world had enough. Marcos was deposed and Imelda’s extravagance exposed.

Imelda Marcos’s closet contained 2,700 pairs of shoes. That’s a different pair of shoes every day for  7.3 years. Undoubtedly, some would have gone out of style by the time she got to them. Others would have come back in.

The Obamas vacation.  So much so that the White House has taken to lying about trips that they cannot conceal.

In this post-Great Recession era, we’re told consumerism no longer is about things about experiences.  The super rich, the executive class, and the wanna-bes don’t buy more than is necessary; they do more than is necessary.

Since taking office, the Obamas have vacationed like a Fortune 500 CEO given a year to live. Obama is on a mission to have slept in more places than George Washington. The overseas record has already fallen.

For the record, it appears the Obamas took three vacations in May, two in June, one in July, and plan three more for August. My counting could be off.

In between, there have been more than a dozen parties, barbecues, balls, dinners, date nights, boys’ nights, girls’ nights, and day trips.

Opulence and extravagance don’t always end up in a closet.

In 1986, Lance Morrow wrote an essay about Imelda Marcos’s shoes for Time.

Consider her profligacy in another way. What is the purpose of riches? To buy freedom–to purchase choices, immunities from the will of others, or of fate. If Imelda kept a collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes, it was not because (as some candle-snuffing moralists might think) she should be expected to wear them all, and must be judged a wastrel if she did not, but because the 2,700 pairs gave her options. Her step no doubt grew lighter in the knowledge of such freedom. Did she display her shoes the way that Jay Gatsby reveled in his wonderful shirts?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961002-2,00.html#ixzz0vxroQRww

Ironic, isn’t it?  That Barack and Michelle Obama abuse their freedom even as they deny us ours. As they steal away your children’s futures, they flit about from Spain to Martha’s Vineyard.

Filthy creatures.

The Obamas are using your money and mine to life a lifestyle unattainable from their chosen careers. Neither makes the kind of money required to live as they do at the taxpayer’s expense.  They vilify the rich who earned the privilege of lives of leisure. But it’s okay for them to steal such lives from working people. And the unemployed.

Perhaps Obama knows that dusk is falling on his day in the sun. The Summer Solstice is more than a month behind us.  In November, the American people—his subjects, as it were—will elect a new Congress.  That Congress might very well clip his wings.  He may want to get it all in before the music stops.

No matter his reasons, Obama has earned the scorn of the American people. During the Gulf oil spill, he golfed and giggled with celebrities.  With 9.5 percent unemployment (and rising), he vacations or sends his family on $350,000 junkets.  His determination to remain aloof has exposed his underlying arrogance.

About Marcos, Morrow wrote:

Christ said, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” Marcos did not wish to wait. He turned Christianity upside down. He took nourishment from the mouths of the poor and transformed it into his treasure on earth. Such venality is not a matter of either Freud or metaphysics. It is just a brutal habit, the crocodile reflex of a man too long in power. It is a subdivision of the banality of evil.

Except for the time in power, the parallels are remarkable.

Popularity: 2% [?]