End Civil Service 'Merit' Protection

Scott Walker’s proposal to end tenure in Wisconsin state universities is a great idea.  Here is another great idea that Governor Walker or some other brave Republican governor and legislature ought to implement: end the merit protection for state government employees.  Once that is demonstrated to work, propose the same reform at the federal level.

The Merit System was one of those odious “progressive reforms.”  It was intended to prevent politicians from placing their cronies in government jobs as a reward for support during campaigns and to prevent politicians in power from forcing government employees to support them in campaigns.

Has this reform “worked”?  It has worked about as well as all those other progressive reforms, which is to say that the Merit System has been a ghastly failure.  Witness the string of news stories following the VA scandal, the IRS scandal, the Secret Service scandal, and so on, all of which end with a variation of the phrase “so far, not a single employee has been fired.”  The Merit System makes it almost impossible to ever terminate a government worker.

One consequence of this fact is that supervisors never give government workers bad employee evaluations – that would be inviting even worse behavior – and when real horror stories break, the culpable employee has a sterling record of good evaluations, regular promotions, bonuses, and so on.  It also means that many more government workers are needed to do a job than would be needed in the private sector, because there are so many government workers doing little, if any, work.

Via: American Thinker

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Scott Walker Eyes Marco Rubio as His Running Mate

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is talking positively about a Republican presidential ticket — potentially announced even before the first nomination balloting — that would include Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate. 

In a Bloomberg Politics interview Thursday, the likely candidate also expressed agreement with President Barack Obama on the pressing issue of fast-track trade legislation.
Walker, 47, isn't expected to formally enter the race until early July, after his state has completed a two-year budget plan. Still, he's apparently given some consideration and had discussions already about a potential running mate, with the focus on Rubio.

"I've actually had quite a few people, grassroots supporters, donors, and others who have made that suggestion," he said when asked about a Walker-Rubio ticket.

"For now, you know, Marco is a quality candidate," Walker said. "He's going to be formidable in this race as things progress. And if we were to get in, we'd be as well, and we'll see where things take us."

Walker was in Utah to meet with potential financial supporters and to speak at a summit hosted by 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney that's attracted six declared and likely presidential candidates. The full interview can be seen on BloombergPolitics.com.
Walker said he and Rubio often hear the suggestion that they should combine forces, potentially even before the first nomination voting in Iowa in February 2016, as a way to stand out amid a crowded field. "We'd just probably have to arm-wrestle over who would be at the top of the ticket," he said.

Some who have talked privately to Walker about a possible pairing with Rubio say they have been surprised by how seriously the Wisconsin governor seems to be taking the prospect. At this phase of presidential campaign, the norm would be for a White House hopeful to summarily dismiss such a move, in public and in private.

Via: NewsMax

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Scott Walker and the Fate of the Union

In Wisconsin, where the labor movement took root a century ago, a campaign by the governor has broken its power. His political allies hope he can take a similar campaign nationwide.

On his first day of work in three months, Randy Bryce asked his foreman for the next day off. He wanted to go to the Capitol in Madison, Wis., and testify against a proposed law. Bryce, a member of Milwaukee Ironworkers Local 8, was unloading truckloads of steel beams to build a warehouse near Kenosha, and he needed the job. He has an 8-year-old son, his debts were piling up and a 10-hour shift paid more than $300. But the legislation, which Republicans were rushing through the State Senate, angered him enough to sacrifice the hours. Supporters called it a “right to work” bill, because it prohibited unions from requiring employees to pay dues. But to Bryce, that appealing name hid the true purpose of the bill, which was to destroy unions.

The next morning, Bryce, who is 50 and has close-­cropped black hair and a horseshoe mustache, woke up at 5:30, got dressed in his usual jeans, hoodie and Local 8 varsity jacket with an I-beam and an American flag stitched on the back and drove 90 miles to Madison in his gray Mustang. Despite the February chill, crowds had begun to gather in the square outside the Capitol. The scene was reminiscent of a similar one that played out four years earlier, in 2011, when thousands of people occupied the Capitol’s rotunda for more than two weeks to protest Act 10, a law that demolished collective-­bargaining rights for nearly all public employees. The protests in Madison were the first significant resistance to the ascendant Tea Party and helped set the stage for Occupy Wall Street. For Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, it was the moment that started his conservative ascent. “The Republican Party has a demonstrated, genuine hero and potential star in its ranks, and he is the governor of Wisconsin,”Rush Limbaugh said last year. The unions, Democrats and other perceived enemies, he continued, had “thrown everything they’ve got at Scott Walker, and he has beat them back without one syllable of complaint, without one ounce of whining. All he has done is win.” Walker is expected to announce in the next few weeks that he is entering the 2016 presidential race.

Via: NYT

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Hillary's huge lead over the GOP? Maybe it never existed

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston, Thursday, June 4, 2015. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

Through all of Hillary Clinton's recent troubles — emails, foundation, Benghazi — Democrats have taken comfort in their all-but-assured nominee's formidable lead over top Republicans in head-to-head matchups. Now that lead is shrinking, and the Democratic comfort level is falling along with it.

 

But it's possible Clinton's big lead was never as big as Democrats thought. Yes, some of the margins looked enormous:

* A CNN poll in March showed Clinton up by 15 points over Republican Jeb Bush, 13 points over Marco Rubio, 11 points over Rand Paul, and 15 points over Scott Walker.

* An ABC News poll in March showed Clinton up by 15 points over Rubio, 14 points over Walker, and 13 points over Bush.

* A CNN poll in April showed Clinton up by 22 points over Walker, 19 points over Paul, 14 points over Rubio, and 17 points over Bush.

Big margins. But at the same time, at least one other poll — by Public Policy Polling, the Democratic polling firm — showed Clinton with much more modest leads over her GOP rivals. A PPP survey in late February showed Clinton with an eight-point lead over Walker, a seven-point lead over Rubio, a seven-point lead over Paul, and a 10-point lead over Bush.

A PPP poll at the end of March showed Clinton with a four-point lead over Walker, a four-point lead over Paul, a three-point lead over Rubio, and a six-point lead over Bush — at a time the other polls showed Clinton far ahead of those rivals.

"I am definitely skeptical that Clinton was ever really up by 15 points like some of the early polls were showing," says PPP director Tom Jensen. The reason for those big leads, Jensen suggested in an email conversation, might have more to do with the other polls' methods rather than any overwhelming Clinton advantage.

We use tighter controls on who we call for our polls than most national surveys do. Although we don't do an actual likely voter screen this far out, we do pull lists based on people who have voted in at least one of the last three elections. So I think we end up with samples that are a little bit more conservative than if we were calling all adults or even just registered voters with no respect to voting history.

If Jensen and PPP are correct, then the core assumption of much political analysis in the last few months was little more than irrational exuberance. Now that Clinton is returning to earth in other polls as well — PPP has a new poll out in about 10 days — the question will be how Democrats react to the realization that there once-inevitable shoo-in president might not be an inevitable shoo-in after all.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Scott Walker Has Early Lead in Iowa Poll as Jeb Bush Faces Challenges

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has expanded his early lead in Iowa, while former Florida Governor Jeb Bush continues to face headwinds and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida shows upside potential in the state that hosts the first 2016 presidential nomination balloting.

A new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows more than a third of likely Republican caucus participants say they would never vote for Bush—one factor in a new index to assess candidate strength in such a crowded field. Forty-three percent view him favorably, compared to 45 percent who view him unfavorably. 

Read the poll questions and methodology here.

Walker is backed by 17 percent as the state enters a busy summer of candidate visits, a planned straw poll, and campaigning at the Iowa State Fair. Tied for second are Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent, with Bush and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee next at 9 percent each. 

They're followed at 6 percent by Rubio and 2012 Iowa caucuses winner Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania. With eight months to go before the 2016 caucuses, there's plenty of time for movement.

“Scott Walker’s momentum puts him solidly in first place,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of West Des Moines-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. “For the time being, he’s doing the right things to make the right first impression.”

Via: Bloomberg Politics

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EXCLUSIVE — WALKER: WE’D BE SENDING IN NAVY TO STOP ILLEGALS IF THEY WERE SWARMING OUR SEA PORTS LIKE THEY DO SOUTHERN BORDER

Republican Party 2016 primary frontrunner Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told Breitbart News exclusively that if the invasion of illegal aliens that’s currently swarming across America’s southern border were coming in via America’s sea ports, the government would be sending in the Navy to stop it. Instead, the federal government—despite not having to at all—chooses, he says, to leave the U.S. border with Mexico wide open.

Walker said in an interview over Memorial Day Weekend:

Earlier this year I went out with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his invitation—I was thrilled to go with him not just up in a helicopter for the day, but we went down to the border and didn’t just see it from the air. To meet with Texas Public Safety, to meet with local officials, as well as with many of the fine people who are in U.S. Border Patrol down there—and to just to see the massive challenges, more so in meetings than they even showed me up in the air—they clearly, clearly showed to me in video and any number of reports that this is a matter of safety. This is a matter of national security. This is truly a matter national sovereignty, in that if we were having people penetrate our water-based ports throughout the Gulf [of Mexico] or either coast, we’d be taking swift action initially with the Coast Guard and eventually probably with the Navy. Yet, we have international criminal organizations seeking to penetrate our land-based borders to the south—the push for drugs, for firearms and increasingly for people from a trafficking standpoint—it’s just horrific we’re not taking more action to truly secure that border.

Walker discussed with Breitbart News how on his trip to the border, officials showed to him that the list of country of origin of illegal aliens shows people from nations with terrorism ties trying to get into the U.S. 

Via: Breitbart

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Scott Walker: If I ran, I think we’d play anywhere — ‘other than maybe Florida’

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker suggested Tuesday that if he were to run for president, he could envision simply letting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio compete amongst themselves in the key state of Florida.

“If we get in as a candidate, we’re going to make a strong play in Iowa,” Mr. Walker said on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show. “The neat thing about being around the country is if we chose to get in, I don’t think there’s a state out there we wouldn’t play in. I mean, other than maybe Florida where Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are — listen, some of the polls [are] essentially tied, and they’re going to eat up a good amount of that financial advantage that Governor Bush is going to have.”

Mr. Walker was responding to a recorded comment from Mr. Bush that the former Florida governor “just [doesn’t] do straw polls.” Mr. Bush and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have indicated that they plan to skip August’s Iowa straw poll, which has traditionally served as an unofficial kick-off to the Republican presidential nominating contest.

Mr. Walker said he hasn’t made any such commitments that would be required of a candidate. Mr. Bush, though he is laying the groundwork for a White House bid, likewise has not officially declared his candidacy. Mr. Huckabee announced earlier this month that he was running for president and Mr. Rubio announced last month he was running.

Mr. Walker also pointed out that Florida Gov. Rick Scott spent around $100 million in his 2014 re-election campaign.

“There won’t be that much, but a good chunk of that’ll be going after the Florida primary, but short of that, I think our message — common sense conservative reform, if we were to get in this election — could play just about anywhere out there,” Mr. Walker said in the interview, which was first noted by Time. “And I think if we ultimately ended up being a candidate, we’d be focused on the caucus in Iowa and the primaries in places like New Hampshire and South Carolina on down the line.”

Via: Washington TImes

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EXCLUSIVE — GOV. SCOTT WALKER: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ‘TOO BIG TO FAIL,’ NEXT PRESIDENT MUST SHRINK IT SO IT’S ‘SMALL ENOUGH TO SUCCEED’

by MATTHEW BOYLE25 May 2015Washington, DC51

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview over Memorial Day weekend that he’s getting much closer to a decision on whether he’ll pursue a presidential campaign in 2016, a decision he expects will come in early July.

“My state budget is done at the end of June, and so obviously my number one responsibility over that period is to complete a state budget—and so I’ve said in state and publicly that I won’t make any declaration about my intentions until after that,” Walker said when asked where he’s at in his decision-making process. “It will be shortly thereafter, not too far after the first of July, but I owe it to the people of Wisconsin first and foremost to be focused on that and to make sure we pass and I sign a budget that continues to lower property taxes and is a reasonable and responsible budget.”

Walker is currently the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary in 2016 according to most polls—in many early state polls he’s got a double digit lead—and when asked why he thinks that’s the case, Walker said it’s because he’s someone who delivers results.

“Back in January remember when I was one of the speakers at the Citizens United-

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

79%

 jointly sponsored events in Iowa?” Walker said.

It was something some called a breakout speech. I think all it was was me just talking as I’ve done many times before on the stump the last four years when we won three elections for governor. The last two were obviously pretty intense. I think what happened was once there was all that big coverage by many in the media about this being a big deal, my personal belief and I think of many who are supporters, is there were a whole bunch of right-leaning Republican primary voters who had watched what we’ve done in Wisconsin the last four years but didn’t know if we were credible in terms of a potential campaign.

I think once word got out about that speech—at least there was attention given—then I think there was a whole wave of voters who said, ‘yeah. I like that guy. He doesn’t just talk about it.’ As one Tweet said in Iowa, ‘I like Scott Walker because he fights without caving.’ I think there’s this incredible sense, particularly amongst our base and primary voters is they don’t want someone who just talks about it. They want someone who can do it. Due to God’s grace and circumstances, we’ve been able to show time and again that we can fight and win on issues that matter to everyday conservatives.

Walker also told Breitbart News about his recent trip to Washington, D.C.—the belly of the big government beast–where he met with and dazzled more than a hundred Republican lawmakers as well as with conservative movement leaders.

Via: Breitbart

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Ben Carson Wins SRLC Straw Poll

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson topped the SRLC 2015 straw poll results Saturday with 25 percent attendee support.

Carson bested Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who came in second by 5 percent and beat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who came in third by almost 9 percent.

Below are the final numbers:

Via: The Daily Caller

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REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS: SCOTT WALKER DAZZLES ON CAPITOL HILL

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—the clear Republican presidential frontrunner according to almost all GOP primary polls, even though he hasn’t announced a 2016 campaign officially yet—dazzled Republicans across Capitol Hill in meetings all day Tuesday.

“I’ve always been impressed with Governor Walker as I am with a number of people in our field. I think we’ve got a good field,” 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

92%

 told Breitbart News’s Alex Swoyer in an interview on Tuesday afternoon. Jordan met Walker to say hello on Tuesday but didn’t have time to stay for the full meeting Walker held with nearly a hundred Republicans. “Look, whoever emerges as the finalist—I think is going to show up, and will contrast with Secretary Clinton. But Governor Walker is impressive, and he has an impressive record in Wisconsin.”

Walker’s staff told Breitbart News in a readout from Walker’s day that he met with about 80 or more mostly House GOP members in the morning, then has meetings in D.C. planned for throughout the day with conservative movement heads and some GOP senators. “He gave a few opening remarks and then took Q&A,” Kirsten Kukowski, Walker’s communications director, said of the morning meeting with House members in an email. “Questions about what he’s done in WI and needing someone who can govern that way in DC, what happened with collective bargaining, foreign policy, energy, immigration, religious liberty.”

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Scott Walker returns to South Carolina for Freedom Summit

This is how a presidential Candidate Should sound like

Via: You Tube

Liberal Media In A Frenzy Over Walker’s Pro-Worker Immigration Stance

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Monday immigration policy should be American-worker centered, apparently striking a nerve with the liberal media, who called it extreme and used tweets from a disgruntled former employee to criticize the move.

The Washington Post, MSNBC, and Huffington Post said the stance is a dumb move politically, because only a small number of right-wing extremists question the economic value of legal immigration.

“It’s not clear whether he understands that immigration is one way to boosteconomic growth,” Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote condescendingly. “(There is replete evidence that immigration boosts revenue, growth and does not take jobs away from native-born workers.)”

“We have remarked that the temptation in the GOP primary is to play to the loudest voices and the staunchest segment of the party, even though they do not represent a majority of voters in the party, let alone in the general electorate,” Rubin added.

Via: Daily Caller

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