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Wisconsin State Sen. Frank Lasee May Run For U.S. Senate!
Wisconsin State Senator, Conservative Tea Party Republican, Frank Lasee says he’ll decide in the coming weeks if he will throw his hat into the ring for retiring US Senator Herb Kohl’s seat.
“I got elected to serve the people in the first senate district, and I want to serve them in a larger capacity,” said Lasee.
Senator Lasee is one of the names being thrown around in the run for Democratic Senator Herb Kohl’s seat once he retires. Others include two other republicans–former governor Tommy Thompson and State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald. Congressman Ron Kind and former Congressman Steve Kagen are among the democrats considering campaigning for the seat.
“I think it’s a good sign so many people want that job, but I think it’s going to be a very tough primary,” said political analyst James Morrison.
Morrison is surprised so many big names may be on the ballot for the U-S Senate seat.
“We’ve got a former governor,who hasn’t been around politics for awhile. We got Mark Neumann. We got Frank Lasee, who just got in the senate recently. And speaker Fitzgerald who is in the heat of politics,” said Morrison.
Morrison believes this race may heat up as much as the recall elections.
“The only bad thing about having so many name recognized candidates is it’s going to cost a lot of money again,” said Morrison. ”These people are going to spend a lot of money on the primary because it’s going to hurt them all. They won’t have enough to run for the general.”
We’re told candidates can’t make an official announcement until they organize a campaign committee or take other steps to launch a campaign.
So far, the only declared candidate is Mark Neumann who had been absent from politics for some time until last year when he ran for Governor, spent the better part of $6M dollars of his own money, and lost to Scott Walker by 20 points. He’s also said some vial, despicable anti-gay statements that only serve to alienate moderates and give liberals ammunition to malign Conservatives and Tea Party folks. For the record, Mark Neumann is not a Tea Party Candidate…Period!
Neumann told The New York Times in 1996 that “if I was elected God for a day, homosexuality wouldn’t be permitted, but nobody’s electing me God.”
Years later, he clarified the remark, explaining he would not want God’s job.
And in 1997, when speaking to the Christian Coalition [of America], Neumann said, “If somebody walks in to me and says, ‘I’m a gay person. I want a job in your office,’ I would say, ‘That’s inappropriate,’ and they wouldn’t be hired, because that would mean they are promoting their agenda. The gay and lesbian lifestyle [is] unacceptable, lest there be any question about that.”
It’s nice to see a real conservative alternative to Newmann & Liberal Republican Tommy Thompson!
Breaking: Audio From Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz says DOJ wants us to shut down US Manufacturing, use Madagascar labor
Tonight, in an interview on KMJ’s “The Chris Daniel Show,” Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz confirmed that the US government wanted Gibson guitars to use foreign labor over American labor.
[list type="tick"] [li] CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?
HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a <inaudible>.
CHRIS DANIEL: Excuse me?
HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that it a pleading.
CHRIS DANIEL: That your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor?
HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: Yes [/li] [/list]
Listen to the entire interview at http://www.kmjnow.com/pages/podcast in the Chris Daniel section.)
TMR Authors on Twitter
When we updated WordPress, we lost our twitter feed plugin. So for a while the Authors Feed Page was not working. So I decided to make a paper/li page for the authors tweets.
You can check out the contents widget on the Authors Feed Page or you can also find the paper/li page here.
You can also go check out the one I made for my followers here.
Solar Plant That Obama Visited Files For Bankruptcy, Fires Over 1,000 Workers
How’s that for the “model for green business success?”
President Obama visited the solar company Solyndra on May 26, 2010 to tout his $535 million loan guarantee. On August 31, 2011, Solyndra announced it was filing for bankruptcy and laying off 1,100 employees.
Excessive Regulations Mean “Higher Prices” For Families, Leave Job Creators “No Money for New Hires”
For example, Roskam visited Sara Lee CEO Christopher J. Fraleigh. According to Fraleigh, new federal regulations will restrict his company’s ability to advertise food products like hot dogs, turkey meat, and even chocolate Easter bunnies. While done “in the name of fighting childhood obesity,” Roskam says “[t]he regulation of hot dog advertisements at baseball games won’t create a single job. In fact, it would hurt Illinois jobs and families cost of living.”
Other local businesses agreed. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Roskam stopped at “White Metal Casting in Bensenville, where the CEO said new air quality regulations would leave him no money for new hires.” He also visited “the Federal Signal Corp. in Oak Brook, where the CEO said new regulations requiring the company to use different engines would be cost-prohibitive.”
And while the “stimulus” failed to keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent as promised, the White House wants more of the same: more spending, higher taxes, and more regulations.
In fact, the Obama Administration has 4,257 new regulatory actions in the works, at least 219 of which have an estimated economic impact of $100 million or more (a nearly 15 percent increase over last year). Seven of them alone could cost more than $100 billion. These regulations mean big costs for small businesses – and that means fewer jobs and higher prices for families, as Rep. Roskam argued.
Speaker Boehner said yesterday that “with our economy struggling to create jobs, it’s misguided for the federal government to be imposing so many new rules with such enormous costs, even when some of those rules may be well-intentioned.” The Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators is focused on removing the barriers and restrictions holding back private-sector job growth. Read more about it at Jobs.GOP.Gov.
Boehner To Obama: Sorry September 7 Not Available for Your Self-Aggrandizing Joint Session Fantasy Jobs Bill Speech
Ok! So that’s not exactly the language he used, but Speaker Boehner did respond to President Obama’s request to convene a joint session of Congress on September 7 to discuss his Jobs bill saying the date of September 7 would not be available and proposed September 8 instead.
Nice to see the Speaker push back on what was nothing more than political jiujitsu and posturing by Obama to try and diminish the Republican Presidential Debate taking place the same night!
8-31-11_speaker_letter_to_potus_on_joint_session_request
Unpredictability of Irene in NYC
In the days following Hurricane Irene, many New Yorkers are still cleaning up the mess. The aftermath of the storm, while not as bad as originally predicted, has caused the boroughs of New York City about $6 billion between damages and lost sales. The question many people were left with was whether the hype and worry was really all worth it?
With the national cost of the storm reaching close to $40 billion, the death toll reaching over 40 people along the east coast and some communities still cut off because of flooding and washed away roads, the rain may have stopped but the effects are still present.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a news conference, “All in all, we are in pretty good shape because of the exhaustive steps I think we took to prepare for whatever came our way.” With the worst case scenario calling for much of the five boroughs to be flooded by waters by up to 15 feet high from the storm surge, calling for drastic evacuation plans and preparedness was definitely warranted.
Praise came to many officials and FEMA for the responsiveness to this storm, especially after so much criticism for the lack of responsiveness and preparedness for Hurricane Katrina. While some may have found the hype and emergency planning for Irene inconvenient, saving the lives and property of what could have been a disaster up to Katrina standards was much more important.
The infrastructure in New York City was also a major concern. Many bridges and tunnels are listed as being not even moderately up to date in terms of safety. If the full force of Hurricane Irene came in at anything more than the tropical storm it landed as, major roadways connecting the metro areas of NYC and New Jersey would have been impassable, if not destroyed.
This is what caused city officials to make an unprecedented call to close down mass transit in NYC. There was fear of subways being flooded and destroyed. Fortunately, the subway tunnels did not flood and most of the city’s heavily relied on mass transit was almost running back to normal on Monday morning.
It’s rarely the case that a hurricane comes bararlying all the way up the northeastern coast, hitting almost every major city. Irene managed to do so as a category 1. And although most experts would consider this small, it was very slow-moving, yielding constant rain, wind and costly damage.
New York City and it’s surrounding areas were very lucky this time that the damage was not as bad as it was feared. If nothing else, the city’s and country’s response to the storm, as well as continued efforts to clean up, should be praised. The answer to the question then is yes, the hype and worry was worth it.
(Post submitted By PDE, Douglas Elliman Real Estate, brokers of New York City Condos.)
At N.L.R.B., Flurry of Acts for Unions as Chief Exits
From the NYT:
The National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday released a decision that would make it easier to unionize nursing home workers.
It is the latest in a flurry of moves favorable to unions that the board completed before the term of its chairwoman, Wilma B. Liebman, expired on Sunday. The board released two other pro-union decisions on Tuesday, both reversing decisions issued under President George W. Bush.
In the nursing home decision, the board ruled that the union, the United Steelworkers, could organize just the 53 certified nursing assistants at a nursing home in Mobile, Ala., as part of one bargaining unit, without including the home’s 33 other nonprofessional workers, including janitors, cooks and file clerks.
Groups representing businesses and nursing home operators attacked the decision, fearing it would make the homes more vulnerable to unionization drives.
“This ruling makes it easier for unions to gerrymander who is in a bargaining unit to help them be successful in organizing,” said Michael J. Eastman, executive director of labor law policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
The Fed’s Shadow TARP
From Politico:
In the run-up to the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve fueled the housing bubble with its easy money policy. Now, we know that after the crisis struck, the Fed secretly propped up elite bankers all the way from Wall Street to Brussels to the Central Bank of Libya.
A Bloomberg news investigation found that while the Treasury Department was pumping $700 billion into banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Fed was covertly operating its own bailout program – the biggest in American history. The Fed’s Shadow TARP issued $1.2 trillion in loans to domestic and foreign banks from 2007 to 2010, far more than Congress authorized Treasury to spend under TARP.
Read more @ Politico.com
Gallup: Only 52% of Amercans Approve of Labor Unions
Link:
In a year marked by contentious negotiations between state governments and public employee unions, a slim majority of Americans, 52%, approve of labor unions. That percentage is unchanged from last year and remains on the lower end of what Gallup has measured historically.
Gallup has asked Americans whether they approve or disapprove of labor unions periodically since 1936, and annually since 2001. More Americans have always approved than disapproved, with the lowest approval rating of 48% measured in 2009. A record-high 75% approved in two separate measurements in the 1950s.
The current results are based on Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll, conducted Aug. 11-14.
