Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Fourth of July Greetings!

Hello everybody! Your favorite Peasant wishes you, my great
and wonderful readers, a happy, safe, and joyful Fourth of July!
I shall be with you all again after our grand country's birthday
with more political and economic news stories to pore over.
Meanwhile, I shall finally be making my move to my new home.
After some places fell through for various reasons, I now have
a lead which is materializing in time for me to move into
before the holiday. I also have started a business in which
to have another stream of income, and shall be busy both in
preparation for my residential change and tending to my
customers. My new enterprise? I do yard work, including
small-scale landscaping, along with heavy-duty housework,
which I define as cleaning out basements and garages. I have
a growing list of customers and solid repeat business; one
family who hired me has me on retainer for the entire summer!

While it has been a longtime desire of mine to create multiple
streams of income (this blog being but one), it is an imperative
in these strenuous economic times. My shrunken bank account
is currently making a comeback with my entrepreneurial
efforts, and of course I am applying and interviewing for
career-relevant (financial) positions all the while. This is the
American way! Let's not allow Obama & Company to take
it away from us! It is part of our way of life to be able to better
our lives financially, to be able to provide more bountifully for
ourselves and our families, to make a more comfortable life.
This is what has attracted millions of people from other lands
to our nation, the opportunity of achievement transcending
social status and becoming what was denied them in their native
countries according to class, creed, or other criteria for the
purpose of keeping them down while raising others to lofty
levels. This is a wonderful way in which to celebrate our
great nation on its birthday and every day!

So enjoy the Fourth, see some fireworks, go to some
picnics, and we'll get together again soon afterward!
God bless America! And God bless you, my fantastic
readers!


MEM




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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Victory for Wisconsin Taxpayers!

Your alert Peasant learned that yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme
Court ruled, in a 4-3 decision, that Governor Scott Walker's union
law provision in his budget for the state can take effect! Governor
Walker's reaction was succinct: "The Supreme Court's ruling
provides our state the opportunity to move forward together and
focus on getting Wisconsin working again."

Walker has stated that the law was necessary in order to do two
things; to address the Badger State's $3.6 billion budget deficit,
as well as to give local governments some leeway regarding labor
costs to assist them in coping with the coming cutbacks in aid from
Madison. The Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling will likely be
followed by lawsuits aplenty from the public employee unions
and their allies; they were recipients of a knockdown punch and
want to go at least one more round. But Republican legislative
leaders Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly
Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (they're brothers, in case you, my very
observant readers, are wondering), said in a joint statement that
they always believed in the legality of the bill and were confident
of its holding up well under constitutional scrutiny.

The law also requires public employees to pay more for both their
health care and their pensions. For this, thousands of protesters
occupied the state capitol for weeks to pitch a royal one, the
biggest ever witnessed in Wisconsin's history, and the entire
Senate delegation of Democrats played hide 'n' seek to prevent
a vote on the bill. Perish the thought that the people should ever
have a say in how their government operates and how much the
cost should be, think the unions and their comrades! Why, they're
just peasants; they don't matter! They're here to serve the public
workers' unions and the Democrat Party, their handmaiden, not
the other way around! News flash for you left-wing bullies:
You ARE here to serve the people! And of late you've been
doing an appallingly poor job of it! We the citizens of Wisconsin
are not your piggy bank, your ATM, your money tree! It's high
time that your power be curbed and you are reined in! During
this harsh economic climate, which your pal Obama and his
fellow Dems in Washington have made even harsher, we ALL
have to make sacrifices in our personal budgets, our family
budgets, our businesses' budgets, and our government budgets.
What makes you selfish jerks think that you're so special that
not only should you not have to share in the belt-tightening
but that you should receive even MORE money and benefits
with no letup?

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi was found by the
Wisconsin Supreme Court to have gone above her authority
with her ruling that GOP lawmakers had violated the state's
open meeting statutes in the days before the budget bill's
passage and declared the law void. Dane County District
Attorney Ismael Ozanne, who filed the lawsuit, was also
slapped down along with Judge Sumi. When the Democrat
"fleebaggers" fled to Illinois to try to scuttle a vote on the
legislation, the Republicans countered by convening a
special committee to remove fiscal elements from it and
hold a Senate vote without a quorum. The bill passed and
Walker promptly signed it into law. Ozanne filed his suit
a week later claiming that the GOP lawmakers didn't give
the proper public notice of the meeting, thus violating the
state's law regarding open meetings. But your faithful
Peasant's state's top court rejected that argument, saying
that "the doors of the Senate and Assembly were kept
open to the press and members of the public ... Access
was not denied."

Your diligent Peasant has discovered that a big coalition of
Wisconsin unions has filed a federal lawsuit today challenging
the constitutionality of the state's budget bill. They claim that
the bill violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the
U.S. Constitution by stripping away rights to collectively
bargain, organize, and associate to engage in union as well
as political activity from most of the Badger State's public
sector employees. To this your studious Peasant says that
unions for public employees are a relatively new phenomenon
in our country's history, with President John F. Kennedy having
signed legislation granting these employees the right to organize
into law during the early 1960s. There has neither been a
provision nor an impediment in the Constitution to public
workers forming unions, but past Democrat presidents and
congresses have shied away from enacting such legislation
for concerns over bargaining with them over labor contracts
with money not their own, but that of the public --- the money
from the people's taxes. The reasoning was that the government
would not feel as restrained in offering sizable wages and benefit
packages if it were dealing with public money. But the temptation
to buy the votes and the loyalty of certain interest groups over
time proved to alluring to elected government officials. Now, it
is your favorite Peasant's understanding that the state workers
have more leeway in their ability to bargain for their benefits than
does their federal counterparts. This is something that I shall
research and shall share my findings with you, my beloved
readers, in the days ahead. But as I post this piece, there are
other states doing or contemplating doing what Scott Walker and
the Republicans have done here in Wisconsin. What ultimately
happens in Wisconsin shall have a far-reaching impact on the
rest of the country.

And with our courageous governor and legislators having the
momentum, the prospects for the other 49 states looks very
bright.


MEM



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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

One Hundred Posts; One Million Thanks!

My wonderful, loyal, fabulous, fantastic readers,
today we shall mark and celebrate a momentous
milestone: This is the 100th posting of "Peasant
With A Pitchfork"! We have reached this bench-
mark after having begun our journey through the
political landscape of our great country back on
September 23, 2009. We have gotten together for
our visits, usually once each week, sometimes
more often depending on what stories broke that
your faithful Peasant felt urgently moved to share
with you and to comment on. We have had fun
examining the political and economic stories of
the day, identifying and praising the heroes while
sticking it to the villains, and my jabbing my
trusty Pitchfork into the backsides of the latter.

We have covered many topics and events; Obama-
care, capital punishment, taxes, government spending,
debt, the leftist protests in Madison, misbehaving
congressmen, the Tea Party movement, and the
arrogance of some in both the Democrat and
the Republican parties toward our movement and
the American people in general. And these are but
a few of the things that we took on! Still more,
much more, lies ahead. And as long as we're together,
as long as we stay focused on our goal, which is
of course to reclaim our country from the statist,
elitist, cavalier, self-styled overlords in the White
House, in Congress, and in some of our state governors'
offices and legislatures, and in some of our mayoral
offices and municipal halls, along with their allied
groups of political hangers-on; as long as we take
appropriate and immediate action to wrest our
communities, our states, our country free of these
forces, we shall prevail!

Let us always, always, always, believe in God,
believe in ourselves, and believe in our great and
wonderful country, the United States of America,
and the principles on which it was founded. Stay
positive, stay strong, stay active. And stay tuned
for your weekly dose of analysis, commentary,
and inspiration from your favorite Peasant!

Thank you all for your support! God bless you!
And God bless America!

MEM

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Weiner Roast, Anyone?

This just in:

U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) got into
a rather embarrassing predicament quite recently. The
pugnaciously combative left-wing House member is
believed to be the person shown in a photo sent via
Twitter to a 21-year-old female college student in
Bellingham, Washington, exhibiting an underwear-
clad male crotch --- quite obviously a male crotch,
for it had a prominent bulge --- and nothing else.

My great and wonderful readers, this is likely but
another case of a congressman with too much time
on his hands and too many hormones to control.
Remember the Democrat "Tickle Me Congressman"?
And the newly-elected Republican rep who advertised 
on a social media site geared for ostensibly romantic
connections, got discovered, then abruptly resigned
his seat in the House? And, by the way, he was a
married man. Say, your diligent Peasant just thought,
all three of these cavalier congressmen come from
the state of New York! Gee, what the people of that
state must be thinking about their elected representatives
that they sent to the House; those reps that haven't yet
gotten so embroiled in scandal, they must be getting
closer scrutiny from their constituents back home
with these constituents wondering about their reps'
character and if they will pay attention to the business
at hand or if they will engage in monkey business.
What a mess.

Anyway, Rep. Weiner has insisted in subsequent
interviews that his Twitter account was hacked,
and that the hacker(s) perpetrated a juvenile prank
at his expense. Weiner even got into a heated exchange
with two CNN journalists over the matter, and called
one of them a "jackass", then stating that he wouldn't
say anymore about the flap. But on Wednesday,
June 1, the harried, married, six-term representative
averred that the crotch shot sent to the young coed
might just be his own after all. When asked by an
MSNBC reporter if the picture was of Weiner, he
replied "You know, I can't say with certitude," and
"My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated,
pictures can be dropped in and inserted." This brief
(no pun intended, but oh what irony!) exchange was
reported in the New York Post today.

Weiner eventually went on seven cable news shows
in a desperate attempt to exercise damage control,
but was on the defensive throughout. Finally, after
several days of this Weiner as good as admitted to
the photo being his own; he stated that he didn't
actually press the "send" button that sent the image
of his enthusiasm to the belle in Bellingham.
"When your name is Weiner, it goes with the territory,"
he nervously cracked.

But one does not necessarily have to live up, or down,
to one's name. The New York City Democrat's antics
may well have doomed his family name to many years
of pointed, painful humor. His family, and his consti-
tuents, will all suffer the ramifications of his behavior
to varying degrees.

The people deserve better from their elected officials.
And families deserve better from their members.


MEM

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

A Capsule of the Latest Political and Economic News

Did everyone have a wonderful Memorial Day holiday?
Here is a quick look at the latest political and economic
news stories; your favorite Peasant has no single big story
for us to pore over, but I do have some smaller yet still
important stories on tap.

JoAnn Kloppenburg, the left-wing challenger for the seat
on Wisconsin's State Supreme Court currently held by
conservative Justice David Prosser, decided not to pursue
a court challenge to the already much-contested election
results, having lost the recount that she requested and which
her supporters demanded. But she isn't going gentle into that
good night; Kloppenburg railed against what she perceives
to be the state electoral system's vote reporting flaws,
especially in regard to Waukesha County --- the county
whose clerk failed to add the vote totals from Brookfield,
which, like the rest of the county, is a bastion of conservatism.
The votes from Brookfield would not, and did not, favor
the feverish Kloppenburg. Hey JoAnne, don't go away mad,
just go away!

Congress recently raised the debt ceiling while not cutting a
penny's worth of spending from the budget; although this is
hardly a news flash, the Republicans in both the House and
the Senate at least made it so that the Democrats are now
on record as to both their voting to raise the debt ceiling
and voting against pairing the action with any spending
reduction. We voters will take note and remember this
vote come 2012! We shall NOT allow Obama and the
Democrats to march us off to the Poor House! Our
country shall NOT become a huge, lumbering, stumbling
banana republic at the whimsy of a power-drunk,
spending-addicted cabal of statist, elitist poltroons!
On Election day next year, we shall be busy writing
and delivering lot of pink slips to our laughingly-termed
public servants in Washington and in our state governments
as well.

And the Great and Powerful Obama had a busy Memorial
Day; he visited Arlington National Cemetery and delivered
a speech in tribute to our country's fallen warriors, then
dashed off to play a few rounds of golf. Now, your beloved
Peasant does not begrudge our president a little R&R,
but it seems as though this president is on the links, or on
a vacation trip, or at least a gaudy day out with his family
every time one turns around --- and to dart off after a
solemn affair commemorating an auspicious day in
which we as a nation honor those who sacrificed all
for our country's freedom and way of life just to hit the
links is poor judgement and insensitivity. Couldn't the
sportsman-in-chief have scheduled his golf outing for the
day before Memorial Day, or perhaps the day before that?
After all, it is one of our three-day holiday weekends.
Obama just gave the impression that he couldn't wait to
leave Arlington, get back to the White House, change
into his golfing attire, grab his clubs, and zip out to the
golf course. Mr. President, it might have done you a world
of good if you would have, while making your way from tee
to tee, reflected on what all our military people did, what
they gave, what they suffered, what they sacrificed so that
you could have a carefree day on the links. My loyal readers
and I can only hope that you did so reflect.

Anyway, I hope that you, my wonderful readers, had a most
enjoyable Memorial Day. In closing, your grateful Peasant
wishes to thank all of our fellow Americans who have served
in uniform for your brave work. My thanks extend from our
current warriors fighting in the Middle East and in Afghanistan
all the way back to the colonists who wrenched our land from
the grasp of the British Crown, thus creating our proud and
sovereign nation. And my deepest thanks, though they can never
truly suffice, go to those who lost their lives in battle to keep
our nation so.
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MEM