Some hours after I posted Wisconsin: Turning the Tables, I added an update, pointing to a report that Dr. Kathy Oriel, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Madison Residency Program in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Department of Family Medicine had given an interview on WKOW TV in which she came clean about what the doctors handing out medical excuses to delinquent schoolteachers were up to.

There is now more information up at The PJ Tatler, which quotes from a story issued by the Associated Press:

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes covering public employees’ absences. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison [Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin], said he had given out hundreds of notes. Many of the people he spoke with seemed to be suffering from stress, he said.

“What employers have a right to know is if the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off of work,” Sanner said. “Employers don’t have a right to know the nature of that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it’s as valid as every other work note that I’ve written for the last 30 years.”

Among the doc tors from the medical school who were reportedly engaged in similar conduct were Professors Anne Eglash, Hannah Keevil, and James Shropshire. According to AP, the University of Wisconsin is investigating. “Right now,” says the PJ Tatler, “it appears likely that these doctors, as well as apparently committing fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, are also violating medical records laws, confidentiality laws, and may be a little out of the bounds of their malpractice insurance.”

It is, of course, possible that the University of Wisconsin will dodge its responsibilities in this matter, and it is entirely conceivable that the medical establishment in the Badger State will do the same. But there is in Wisconsin, I am told, a qui tam law, empowering ordinary citizens to prosecute malefactors whom the authorities decline to pursue. As I said yesterday, there is trouble a-brewin’.

As Sally and others have already noted, President Obama inserted himself into the Wisconsin budget battle by saying last week:

Some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where they're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.

President Obama continues to display his misunderstanding of the constitutional order by repeatedly inserting himself into matters reserved to the states and localities, such as the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, the location of a mosque near ground zero in New York City, and much of Arizona's immigration bill. In ignoring the proper division of responsibility between the national and state governments, Obama distracts the national political state from the pressing responsibilities on its own docket, such as spending no more than revenues and protecting the nation's security.

Obama's intrusion into all of these matters has not just created a track record of political misstep after misstep; it has also wasted the valuable political capital of the presidency on matters that are not its business. Ultimately, this will make Obama weaker when it comes time for him to call upon the powers of his office for something truly important, such as maintaining a surge in Afghanistan, correcting his mistaken views on Guantanamo Bay, or balancing the budget.

Obama's intervention also shows that he misconceived the constitutional priorities of his office. The president's primary job is to protect the national security and conduct foreign affairs. The chief executive's role in domestic affairs was primarily intended to be one of moderating Congress. Obama seems to wish that someone else would take the lead on national security, preferably the courts. And he seems to think his job is to push the domestic political system to extremes, not moderation -- hence health care and now his assault on Wisconsin. He also wants to deprive our system of one of its greatest virtues: experimentation in solving problems by the states. If Wisconsin is harassed by Obama and his national allies into giving up on their experiment in cutting public employee benefits, that is one more tool lost to solve our dire budget problems.

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The Battle For Wisconsin

What, I ask myself, would I be tempted to do in current circumstances were I Governor of the state of Wisconsin?

My answer is straightforward. I would be inclined to play hardball. To begin with, I would not give an inch. The struggle in Wisconsin is less about Scott Walker’s proposal with regard to contributions to pensions and healthcare insurance than about the capacity of the public-sector unions in the future to enforce their will on the Badger State first at the ballot box and then in contract negotiations. By shutting down the schools, the teachers’ unions have demonstrated their power – and, if the people of Wisconsin are to be masters in their own house, that power must now be broken. So I would stand my ground and call their bluff. I would wait for the delinquents in the state senate to return from their self-imposed exile in Illinois. In their absence, there will be no budget; and, in the absence of a budget, the salaries of those in the public-sector unions will in due course go unpaid. Scott Walker holds all the cards.

In the meantime, I would have a lawyer on my staff review the contracts binding those who teach in the Badger State’s public schools. There is no doubt provision in these contracts – explicit or implicit – for sick leave. My bet is that to be awarded sick leave one must, indeed, be ill and that the school can ask for proof. My further bet is that, in the absence of proof, the delinquent can be dismissed for breach of contract. That is what would be done with regard to workers in the private sector who lied to their employer in such a case, and that is where I would start.

Some of the teachers will no doubt be able to supply notes from medical doctors testifying to illness on their part. There have been reports that in attendance at the rallies at the state capitol in Madison were medical doctors handing out such notes promiscuously to all and sundry. The local schools should collect these notes and sort them. Should a certain physician be discovered to be a supplier to one and all, there should be a malpractice investigation and the errant physician should be removed from the roles of those licensed to practice medicine in the Badger State.

Finally, there is the question of the state senators who are playing hookey. As I have learned from reading the ChicagoBoyz blog, there is provision within the constitution of the state of Wisconsin for a recall of legislators. Article XIII, Section 12 stipulates that “The qualified electors of the state of any congressional, judicial or legislative district or of a county may petition for the recall of any incumbent elective officer after the first year of the term for which the incumbent was elected.”  This leaves some state senators temporarily exempt from recall, but those elected in 2008 (a Democratic year) are already vulnerable, and State Senator Jim Holperin (D-The Tilted Kilt), who won his seat in a squeaker with 51% of the vote that year, is in the latter group. All it takes to force a recall election is a petition signed by voters in his district equal in number to one-quarter of those in the district who voted in the 2010 gubernatorial election. The Tea Party should put Holperin and those of his colleagues who were elected through this ordeal. If the Republicans pick up only one of these seats, they will themselves make up a quorum in the state senate.

The longer this pot boils, the better. American voters tend to have short memories. But the Cheeseheads of Wisconsin will remember in 2012 what happened in 2011. Even more to the point, what happens in Wisconsin will go a long way towards determining what takes place in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Without these states – all of which he won in 2008 – Barack Obama cannot be re-elected President.

UPDATE: It looks as if the physicians handing out doctor's excuses come from the University of Wisconsin in Madison's Department of Family Medicine. In an interview, Dr. Kathy Oriel, who is Director of the Madison Residency Program has gone public about what they are doing. Read this entire post: http://punditpress.blogspot.com/2011/02/university-of-wisconsin-department-of.html. There is trouble a-brewin'.

MADISON, Wisc. – Thousands of Tea Partiers gathered in Madison on Saturday, in an effort to rally support for newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s deficit reduction plan.

Likely 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain, local Madison and Milwaukee conservative radio host Vicki McKenna, Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoff, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher and conservative media guru Andrew Breitbart each took their shots at the union bosses who were gathering their supporters on the other side of the state capitol building.

McKenna kicked it off calling for the Tea Party movement to stay strong and committed.

“They want to think that you don’t matter,” McKenna said, adding that she thinks the union bosses want Tea Partiers to “submit.” “Are you going to submit, Wisconsin? Are you going to bend over Wisconsin?” McKenna asked to resounding “no’s” from the crowd.

Cain followed McKenna saying that what’s going on in Madison is “Ground Zero” for what’s going to happen around the rest of the country. Cain said that union bosses and their crews represent only 10 percent of the population and that they use intimidation tactics to get noticed.

“My assessment of what’s going on out there right now is that the unions, which represent 10 percent of the workforce, they are getting 90 percent of the attention,” Cain said in an interview with The Daily Caller. “The 90 percent of the workforce, which works for the private sector, that voice has not been heard. I’m glad to see that the people here wanted to do something to get the other side of the message out.”

Tea Partiers echoed the message, too, that the reason that they hadn’t showed up in Madison to support Walker yet has been because they were working. The union protesters are supposed to be at work, so they are effectively protesting on the taxpayers’ dime, the Tea Partiers said.

Continue reading at dailycaller.com.

The language of "tough choices" threatens to make a mockery of the reckoning we face today. Not because we don't face tough choices in the way elected officials mean that we do. And not because, a level down from policymaking, flesh and blood human beings -- liberal, conservative, other -- are going to have to bear the consequences of policy in their daily lives. No, the real reckoning is with each other. We can see that happening already in Wisconsin. This kind of fury -- I almost said 'divisiveness' -- is going to get worse before it gets better, because the true stakes of our reckoning are only going to grow clearer.

The clarity is going to hit simultaneously at the level of principle and of practicality. As talk turns to the 'new class war', the concept of a class defined not so much by its net worth or tax bracket as by its economic (and therefore political) dependence on government will sharpen step for step with the reality of this class, which will be hitting home in all its gruesome implications for those outside and inside it.

So already we can see a reactionary confusion setting in on the left. Because Republicans are going after the government class as an idea and a reality, liberals and progressives are under intense pressure to follow Roger Ebert's lead in responding this way:

My dad was right. "The Republican Party is against the working man."

Anyone who responds to the current crisis by anointing unionized employees of the government as the epitome of 'the working man' is placing themselves, and I really do not say this lightly, at the mercy of socialism -- not just as an intellectual theory, but as an emotional promise of happiness. There has never been a viable, durable Labor Party in the US. But neither has the government class ever been so big or faced such an existential threat.

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JOHN YOO > How to Save California: Outlaw Public Employee Unions

My old friend Bruce Gatenby puts his finger on one of the reasons the Wisconsin protesters so rub me the wrong way: 

What do children do when they don’t get their way? They throw tantrums. What does American Idol have in common with the current teachers’ (non) strike in Wisconsin? Adults throwing tantrums. On American Idol we witness adults in their 20s (if anyone still living with their parents or living off the state can be called an adult. Perhaps the show should be called American Idle) throwing crying, screaming fits for not getting their way, followed by the wailing and gnashing of teeth that their lives are now over. Your life is now over? Sorry, bad news, but you’ve got at least 50 more years to make something of yourself. Hard to believe that while your grandfather’s generation had saved Western civilization and returned home to build families, farms and companies while in their 20s, your life is now officially over because you didn’t become a celebrity for your [expletive] rendition of a song you didn’t write. In Wisconsin we not only see teachers (adults) throwing tantrums because they will have to actually pay 5% of their salaries for their currently taxpayer-funded pensions, we see Democratic legislators flee the state because they don’t want to clean their rooms…I mean, show up and do their jobs.  This is what America has come to: an entire generation coddled into perpetual toddlerhood by government, parents, media, and institutions of higher education. Time for a time out, kiddies.

How appropriate to consider the notion that Barack Obama’s presidency could come unspooled in a city named for our fourth president and the father of the Constitution.

Watching the protests in Wisconsin and getting a sense that this is the beginning of a bigger wave that is going to the grip the nation in the near future, I’m struck by the fact that President Obama may be sewing the seeds of his own undoing.

I’ve been unhappily pessimistic about the chance for a Republican presidential candidate to win in 2012, because I’ve believed since the midterms that President Obama has done just enough nodding towards the center to keep his head above water. If next year features a weak Republican field and an economy that’s leaning even slightly into recovery I think that may be enough to get him by, albeit by very slim margins (that potential for an anemic incumbent victory is one of many parallels I see between 2012 and 2004).

If the fight with public sector unions comes to be a defining feature of 2011, however (and I think the odds are pointing in that direction) – and if the Obama Administration’s reaction continues to track with its response to the situation in Wisconsin – I think it’s very possible that it’s game over for the White House.

Having Organizing for America – a group that is an offspring of the Obama campaign – weigh in decisively on the side of the unions and having the president himself offer verbal support is an unforced error. And it exposes the fatal flaw of the Obama as centrist model: in moments of grand political import, the man is more committed to ideological orthodoxy than to political survival.

As a result, the White House has just allied itself with the most distasteful actors in the biggest domestic issue of our era. It has also reinforced the idea that there’s no corner of American life in which it won’t meddle. Apparently Washington’s ministrations to a benighted nation are going so smoothly that the White House has plenty of time (and competence) to weigh in on how Arizona should handle illegal immigration, how New Jersey should build tunnels, and how Wisconsin should structure public employment.

What’s worse, the President has essentially given up his moral standing as a fair broker by weighing in on this matter as an interested party. Having Organizing for America take the lead on this issue – and do so with a dramatically partisan bent – puts flesh for the first time on the epithet of Obama as “community organizer-in-chief”. And it makes all of his promises of fiscal sobriety sound like the sweet nothings of a man who has some experience getting you out of this bar and back to his place.

Obama knows that the unions are far too important a part of his coalition to abandon in a key moment. He doesn’t seem to understand, however, how deeply they’ve fallen out of favor with the public. The resulting wedge may finally sever what’s left of the bond between the president and the American people.

Look, we all have our favorites for 2012.  And I'm not really trying to start a conversation about specific candidates.  (We can have one, of course; might be fun actually, but...)

What I mean is this: there's a big deficit in government now, and it's a leadership deficit.

Sitting Republican governors are showing it.  Obama isn't.  He's looking smaller and more insignificant every minute.   We all know how Scott Walker is staring down the hapless, out-of-gas president.  My guess is he's about one week from becoming the most popular politician in America.  

He's not alone, of course: Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels are schooling Obama daily in what a real leader has to do to balance a budget.  Haley Barbour and Bobby Jindal -- I know, I know: Jindal talks funny and flopped a speech last year; let's get over it -- are both Deep South governors who showed real leadership and grit facing down the childish and destructive actions of the Obama administration last summer, during the BP oil leak.

Any one of these guys -- and probably there are a couple sitting Republican governors we haven't heard from yet -- have practical, recent experience doing things.  Any one of them could stand across the stage from President Obama in eighteen months and debate the stuffing out of him.

We've got something we've needed for years: clarity.  Our side is making tough decisions, hard calls, real progress for America's future.  Obama's side is dissembling, caviling, and -- literally, in Wisconsin's case -- hiding out.  Our side is standing for something; his side is kneeling before Big Labor.  Our side is has a sharp, unified message (as surprising as that is) and his side is all over the map.  Our side looks like the future.  His side looks like the past.

That's what winning looks like.  I say: bring it on.

President Obama thrust himself and his political operation this week into Wisconsin's broiling budget battle, mobilizing opposition Thursday to a Republican bill that would curb public-worker benefits and planning similar protests in other state capitals.

Obama accused Scott Walker, the state's new Republican governor, of unleashing an "assault" on unions in pushing emergency legislation that would change future collective-bargaining agreements that affect most public employees, including teachers.

The president's political machine worked in close coordination Thursday with state and national union officials to get thousands of protesters to gather in Madison and to plan similar demonstrations in other state capitals.

Their efforts began to spread, as thousands of labor supporters turned out for a hearing in Columbus, Ohio, to protest a measure from Gov. John Kasich (R) that would cut collective-bargaining rights.

By the end of the day, Democratic Party officials were organizing additional demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana, where an effort is underway to trim benefits for public workers. Some union activists predicted similar protests in Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Continue reading at www.washingtonpost.com.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Democrats on the run in Wisconsin avoided state troopers Friday and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks, potentially paralyzing a state government they no longer control.

The party's stand against balancing the state's budget by cutting the pay, benefits and collective bargaining rights of public workers is the boldest action yet by Democrats to push back against last fall's GOP wave.

But the dramatic strategy that's clogged the Capitol with thousands of protesters clashes with one essential truth: Republicans told everyone unions would be a target, and the GOP has more than enough votes to pass its plans once the Legislature can convene.

The 14 Senate Democrats left the state Thursday, delaying action in that chamber on a sweeping anti-union bill. Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who was among those who fled, said Friday that the group was prepared to be away for weeks, although he would like the standoff to end as soon as possible.

"That really, truly is up to the governor," he told The Associated Press in an interview Friday at a downtown Chicago hotel. "It's his responsibility to bring the state together. The state is not unified. It is totally torn part."

Erpenbach (URP'-ehn-bahk) accused new Republican Gov. Scott Walker of trying to rush the legislation, calling the governor's style "dictatorial" at times.

Continue reading at finance.yahoo.com.

In Wisconsin, public school teachers are still calling in sick to skip out on school, throng the state capitol, and protest Gov. Scott Walker's plans to require them to contribute more to their own health care and pension plans.  But as best I can tell from reading the news reports, school closures are concentrated in Madison itself, with schools operating normally--and, apparently, with most teachers still turning up to do their jobs--in the rest of the state.

A summary of where matters stand, followed by a question--a plea, really--for any Ricochetians in the Midwest.

Where we stand:

• Running for governor last year, Republican Scott Walker explained that the state was broke, then outlined what he would do about it, including his plans for dealing with teachers and other state employees.  Although polls indicate that Democrats outnumber Republicans in Wisconsin by some 36 to 24 percent, Walker won the election, defeating his
  
  Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by 52 to 46 percent.  

• Walker's election doesn't appear to have depended on his personality, to have represented some sort of fluke, to to have taken place in a way that can be written off or ignored.  To the contrary.  It represented part of a massive shift in voter sentiment.  Before election day last year, Wisconsin had two Democratic senators, a five to three advantage for Democrats in the House delegation, a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislatures.  After the election Wisconsin had a split Senate delegation, a five to three advantage for Republicans in the House delegation, a Republican governor--Walker--and Republican majorities in both houses--I repeat, both houses--of the state legislature.  As you'll see on the Associated Press's electoral map, most of Wisconsin's 72 counties went Republican red.  (Madison is located in Dane County, in the center of the state's southern tier.)

• Teachers, who are paid by the people of Wisconsin, are now calling in sick to engage in political protests.  That is, they're continuing to draw their salaries--which is money taken from the people of Wisconsin--to oppose the governor and legislature the people of Wisconsin just elected.

• According to news reports this morning, the teachers are being joined by hundreds--perhaps thousands--of students, many of whom attend the University of Wisconsin, located right there in Madison.  The people of Wisconsin are subsidizing the education of these students, in other words, and the students are repaying them by, again, cutting classes to oppose the officials the people just elected.

• The Democrats in the Senate have fled the state, preventing a quorum, while--see the pattern?--continuing to draw their salaries, of some $50,000 a year and their office allowances of more than $30,000 a year.

The press is concentrating all its coverage on Madison.  That's where the protests are taking place. That's where the embattled Gov. Walker emerges from time to time to issue another calm, but defiant statement.  But Madison, the home of state employees and the faculty and staff of the University of Wisconsin, is surely wholly unrepresentative of the state as a whole.  I just have to believe that a lot of folks in Green Bay and Oshkosh and Racine and Kenosha are just furious.

  Whereas the press is portraying Gov. Walker as embattled, to put it another way, my hunch is that out in the rest of the state his support is growing--and becoming more intensely committed to him by the hour.

Which brings me to my question:

Is there anyone who can tell us what's taking place in the rest of Wisconsin?

The surviving Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate have reportedly fled to Illinois en masse in order to deny the Senate a quorum and the capacity to do business – this in support of protecting members of the public-sector unions from having to contribute 6% of their salaries to their pension plan and 13% to their healthcare plan.

So where are these Solons holed up? Apparently, at the Clocktower Resort in Rockford, Illinois with its well-known dining establishment the Tilted Kilt – where ladies like the one pictured above preside.

Here is how the place represents itself: “We may be your hometown Kilt location, but we’ve got all the charm of a quaint little pub in Scotland and all the energy of a raucous party in Illinois. Whatever you want your Tilted Kilt experience to be, there are a few things you can always count on: ice cold beer and plenty of it, a mouthwatering menu full of the pub fare you love, a festive atmosphere full of fun and friends, and, last but not least…beautiful women eager to put a smile on your face and make you feel right at home.”

The Republicans in Wisconsin are going to have a field day.

Democratic legislators have run away from the capital rather than vote on a proposal by the new Republican governor to end collective bargaining rights for nearly all state workers. Gov. Scott Walker says that the measure is necessary to close a $3.6 billion budget gap. Thousands of professors and other state employees turned out for protests today.

Gov. Walker doesn't have to win. But if he does not back down, he is going to be a hero like Chris Christie. In fact, he's already getting words of encouragement from Gov Christie, Gov. John Kasich in Ohio, and House Speaker John Boehner. I don't think the protestors realize that their tactics are turning public sympathies against them -- and helping rather than hurting new Republican governors who are serious about returning their states to fiscal sanity.