Tag Archives: Milwaukee

News

Milwaukee teacher union fights for right to taxpayer-funded Viagra

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AP story is her. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

With the district in a financial crisis and hundreds of its members facing layoffs, the Milwaukee teachers union is taking a peculiar stand: fighting to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.

The union has asked a judge to order the school board to again include Pfizer Inc.’s erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.

The filing is the latest in a two-year legal campaign in which the union has argued, so far unsuccessfully, that the board’s policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs discriminates against male employees. The union says Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and others are necessary treatment for “an exclusively gender-related condition.”

But lawyers for the school board say the drugs were excluded in 2005 to save money, and there is no discrimination because they are used primarily for recreational sex and not out of medical necessity.

Teacher unions are overwhelmingly Democrat.

My previous story on Viagra was about how Democrats voted in favor of subsidizing Viagra for child molesters and rapists. Democrats think that abortions and drugs to provide recreational sex are “health care”. In Canada, the government provides taxpayer-funded sex changes and in vitro fertilization because they are “human rights”. Is that the direction that the Democrats want to take us in? Who is supposed to pay for all these unnecessary goodies?

News

How Obama’s environmentalism caused 1000 jobs to be outsourced

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Story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

Up to 1,000 jobs at Bucyrus International Inc. and its suppliers could be in jeopardy as the result of a decision by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, funded by Congress, to deny several hundred million dollars in loan guarantees to a coal-fired power plant and mine in India.

About 300 of those jobs are at the Bucyrus plant in South Milwaukee, where the company has 1,410 employees and its headquarters. The remaining jobs are spread across 13 states, including Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana.

On Thursday, the Export-Import Bank denied financing for Reliance Power Ltd., an Indian power plant company, effectively wiping out about $600 million in coal mining equipment sales for Bucyrus, chief executive Tim Sullivan said.

The fossil fuel project was the first to come before the government-run bank since it adopted a climate-change policy to settle a lawsuit and to meet Obama administration directives.

“President Obama has made clear his administration’s commitment to transition away from high-carbon investments and toward a cleaner-energy future,” Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg said in a statement. “After careful deliberation, the Export-Import Bank board voted not to proceed with this project because of the projected adverse environmental impact.”

Ed Morrissey writes:

This decision won’t stop one carbon molecule from hitting the air.  In fact, it will likely make carbon emissions worse.  India will look for other vendors to supply the equipment, probably from neighboring Russia or China, as they will continue to build and operate the plant.  Both nations compete in the same marketplace as Bucyrus, but they don’t work as cleanly as the American company does, which means the end result will be lower efficiency and more pollution.

Democrats like Obama keep talking about eeeeeevil corporations that export jobs overseas to save costs rather than keep them in the US.  Well, Obama and his Congress just sent 1,000 jobs overseas — jobs Americans lost, and jobs that either Russian or Chinese workers will get instead. And instead of bankrupting this new coal plant, they just made it dirtier.  Good job!

When you attack corporations, you lose jobs. It’s that simple. Families are going to suffer for Obama’s climate change delusions. Let’s hope that the voters of Wisconsin have learned their economics lesson.

News

Obama administration investigates Wisconsin pro-lifers

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From Life News. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Department of Homeland Security admitted today that it improperly conducted a threat assessment on pro-life and pro-abortion groups in Wisconsin. The assessment came before an expected rally last year in response to the University of Wisconsin Hospital board decided to allow abortions.

In February 2009, pro-life advocates planned to protest the hospital’s decision to open up a new Madison Surgery Center doing abortions.

The Associated Press reported today that the department said in a memo that it “destroyed all of the copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence gathering guidelines about ‘protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security.’”

AP indicated the assessment was reportedly only shared with the director of Wisconsin’s intelligence-sharing center and local police in Middleton, Wisconsin, the site of the rally.

[…]In response to an open records request by the Alliance Defense Fund and Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Middleton Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice, along with the Department of Homeland Security all refused on February 4 to release copies of the threat assessment.A few months later in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights concluded the investigation was an improper use of department resources.

The conclusion said the department inappropriately directed against activities protected by the First Amendment, in which law enforcement inappropriately engaged in “the collection, retention and dissemination of U.S. person information regarding protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security and… violated [DHS] Guidelines.”

I guess that dissent is all of a sudden not patriotic any more, now that the fascist left is in power.

And did you see this story from Life Site News?

Excerpt:

In what critics are calling an unprecedented act of bias, pro-abortion Ohio House Speaker Armond Budish (D-Beachwood) has denied Shelby County teen Elisabeth Trisler a routine legislative honor, evidently because he objects to Trisler’s pro-life values. Budish is refusing to allow Trisler on the House floor to accept a legislative resolution, authored by Rep. John Adams (R-Sidney), which honors Trisler’s accomplishment as the National Right to Life Oratory Contest winner.

[…]”Surely Speaker Budish can put aside his partisanship for 10 minutes to honor the accomplishments of a talented and optimistic teenage girl,” said Ohio Right to Life Executive Director Mike Gonidakis.  “Perhaps his real message to Ohio’s teens is that excelling in public speaking isn’t worth being honored if their views are different than his.”

[…]However, on January 29th, the House Clerk informed Rep. Adams’s office the presentation would not take place because the Speaker “had a problem with the subject matter.” The clerk advised the representative’s staff to take the matter up with the Speaker. Speaker Budish supports abortion.

The good news is that the Speaker changed his mind after being pressured by citizens.