Posse Incitatus

Keeping the stories straight

Had Mitt Romney run a commercial last fall declaring that Barack Obama was an empty suit utterly preoccupied with playing golf and basketball who had no idea what his government was doing, the outrage would have been deafening. 

Yet that is now what his own spokeman expects us to believe.  He had no actual awareness of events in Benghazi or the talking points created in response to the terrible events there; when the IRS admits wrongdoing and apologizes, he's not really up to speed on it; a wide-ranging probe of Associated Press reporters eludes his attention and he'll have to read up on it.

Even his condemnations are weak - if events which have already been proven to have happened have in fact happened, he will condemn them.  Of course.

While the press may be suddenly interested (no doubt because many fear that they, too, maybe under secret investigation), close observers find nothing new in these developments.

As far back as 2010, the president admitted he had no idea what was going on with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and had to find out who was responsible so he could kick their ass.

Fast and Furious also evaded his awareness - those guns apparently sold themselves to Mexican drug lords.  Things happen.  Mistakes were made.  And Eric Holder remained his attorney general.

To the casual observer, this response makes no sense - it is well past its expiration date.  An actual leader does not tolerate misbehavior on the part of his subordinates. 

In a normal administration, the IRS administrator and AG would already have resigned in disgrace.  The Secretary of State would have left under a cloud well before the inauguration.

But this is not a normal administration.  It truly believes the rules don't apply.  This is less a function of ambition or a hunger for power than a psychological viewpoint stemming from their social class.

Among the liberal gentry their is a belief that they are Good People and while Good People may make mistakes, it would be wrong to punish them for good faith efforts.

This is the exact opposite of Gen. Curtis Lemay's famous dictum that "I have neither the time nor the inclination to separate the incompetent from the merely unfortunate."  Lemay - clearly the product of another, more serious, time - was interested in results, not intentions.

But in this jaded age, intentions are all that matter.  This is why abortionists that kill live infants and their mothers cannot be given too much scrutiny.  The result - dead children and harmed women - is less important than the intention - protecting abortion.

This also explains why the same administration that purposely sold guns to criminals can work itself into a frenzy in support of legislation that it admits will not stop violent crime.  The intentions are pure, which is what counts.

As an added bonus, their enemies suffer.  This 'punitive liberalism' defines policy victories not in terms of helping society but in crushing the opposition, and it is a key part of the administration's strategy.

It clearly influenced the IRS, which wasn't really interested about money in politics or the integrity of the law but what instead interested in punishing the right people.  Former Obama staffer David Plouffe offered a revealing defense of this scandal by noting that all the abuse didn't really hurt anyone, so no big deal.  I highly doubt if it could be proved that the abuse was effective and tipped the election that Plouffe would be more apologetic.

In the meantime, the administration is reduced to lamenting the fate of it's second term agenda - because apparently transforming the government is more important than running it.  As I've noted before, conservatives are always looking for a tipping point where the media turns on a Democrat administration, and it never actually happens.

Still, I must admit that the combination of using the IRS as a political weapon and snooping secretly on reporters are two things that might actually move the needle.  Most liberal reporters justify their devotion to the Democrats by arguing that as bad as things are, Republicans would be even worse, so better to take what they have.

At this point, only the most partisan can maintain that fiction.  The press is now like an oft-abused spouse who has finally found out that the sweet nothings whispered after each beating really were lies.  He really doesn't need them or really care about them.  No one likes being used.  We'll see how that plays out.

 

Time to change the channel

What an education Obama's supporters have had in the last two months.

A man who once seemed to stand as a colossus on the American political scene is now consumed with scandal and doubt.

His signature issue - gun control - collapsed due to an intraparty rebellion.  The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Lightbringer allowed a Republican arch-Libertarian to outflank him on civil rights and the morality of drone strikes.

And now we learn that the Internal Revenue Service was playing Nixonian games with tax exemptions, using its investigative power to target the president's political opposition.  It's enough to shake one's faith in the Party.

One of the evergreen questions posed by conservatives is when liberals and their media allies will have "enough"  and turn on their leader.  Each time a scandal emerges, someone can be counted on to say "This is when they turn, this is when they remember their principles."

Except they never do.

Partisan politics are best understood as a tribal exercise.  The actual political positions - gun control, abortion, scope of government - are best understood as identifiers rather than actual beliefs.

This is how an anti-war movement can support a man who has ramped up combat operations in Afghanistan and how Constitutional scholars who called the Iraq campaign illegal can rally behind the Libyan adventure.

It's a tribal thing.

But even tribal loyalty has its limits.  There comes a point when self-respect demands some sort of reaction.  One can only eat so  much excrement before questioning the Party line that it tastes delicious.

For the anti-war street theater people, the point has been reached.  They are stirring from their long hibernation and demanding action.

Not from the president of course.  No, they are taking their show to National Guard bases to protest the use of drones.  The fact that the National Guard does not set the policy regarding them is irrelevant.  The fact that they should be lying down in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue rather than the front gate at Syracuse is lost on them.  They may reach that point, but not just yet.

For now they know only that something is wrong and something must be done.  For now, they remain loyal.

The Benghazi affair has also strained that loyalty and the IRS revelations will add further burdens.

I do not believe the tribe will turn on him - the Great Defection that some conservatives hope for will certainly not come.  But what will happen is that the tame media will lose interest.  Just as the anti-war movement has turned to protesting obscure bases, the media guardians will look elsewhere.   It's always easier to change the subject than face unpleasant facts.

The end result will not be wall-to-wall scandal coverage, but rather a cessation of presidential coverage altogether.  Washington will recede into the distance.  The fawning profiles, the magazine features, the tongue-bath interviews - all of this will cease.  The fawning adulation will be replaced with embarrassed silence.

And maybe it's better that way.  The President-as-celebrity has not worked out well.  We could use a break. 

Whodunit in Boston

Perhaps the most disturbing development in the Boston Marathon bombing is that it was anonymous.  No one has taken credit for it.

This is highly unusual, and the resulting information vacuum is being filled with every kind of speculation.

My esteemed co-blogger is correct in that radical Islam has had very bloody hands for the past 20 years.  Before that it was usually Marxists and their affiliates who cornered the market on bombings.

The problem is that we still have no idea why this happened.  What we do know is that whoever turns out to be responsible will be quickly forced into the left-right bipolar struggle for dominance.

While I think he went too far, T-Mo is right to note that for all the left's fevered dreams and speculation, most bombers tend to share their core beliefs. 

I also disagree with his take on the president's reaction.  I think the president should have said nothing - certainly his lengthy remarks added no new information and served no other purpose than to remind us that he cares - as if that needed to be pointed out.  It was filler, and I for one am amused at how this modern urge to get the president's views on everything from individual murders to basketball games comes back to bite the White House when  they are asked to comment on something they'd rather not discuss.

Given that Robert Redford has now produced a movie about "retired" Weather Underground-type terrorists, I'd love it if a reporter will ask him if he'd be willing to finance a similar rehabilation effort 20-30 years down the road for whoever killed and maimed the innocent people in Boston.  I know, Redford is old - maybe he can put the money into escrow.

As much as commenter Childe Roland may resent it, the fact of the matter is that in this time and place, all crime is a political issue.

I'd much prefer a focus on helping victims and noting that the price of a free society is that a tiny minority people will abuse that freedom.  Yet the solution cannot be to eliminate freedom.

The revelation that one (at least) of the bombs was built from a pressure cooker should give us all pause.  Even if guns vanished tomorrow, those bent on harm would still have the means to do great harm.

The lesson is that banning this or that item will not make us safer.  The weapon here was a cook pot and some loose metal.

No, the key takeaway is to look after one another as individuals.  If the flawed human condition is the source of our suffering, it is also the greatest hope for our succour.

A great evil visited Boston, but a great kindness came in its aftermath.  Ultimately there is no solution for the problem of man's inhumanity to man, but the best we can do is reach out to one another as individuals.

I am sure that the coming days will see much political sport, and proposals to prevent this will cover the ideological spectrum.  Based on precedent, I can fearlessly predict that the government will request more power, more money, and a greater ability than ever before to watch what everyone is doing.  It will also want to limit our access to things that might do harm.

But creating a federal Department of Never Letting Bad Things Happen will fail, as such efforts always do.  Bad things will happen, and all we can do is offer prayers and help to turn an act of evil into an occasion of kindness.

 

After the end

Looking at our unsustainable spending, massive debt burdens and the inability of the political class to even acknowledge the problem, it is easy to predict impending doom.

It is also boringly repetitive.  Whether one ones to get the daily dose of pessimism from Mark Steyn, Richard Fernandez, Victor Davis Hanson or Zero Hedge, the theme is numbingly familiar:

We are doomed.

I’ve written in that vein myself, but that was back when it was fun and edgy.  Now it’s being overdone.  We owe it to our readers to provide original content, not just recycled hackery (though to be fair, hackery does pay more if you can get a job with the major networks).

Today I’d like to discuss what happens after the end – because there is always an “aftermath.”

If one considers the epochal events in history – from the fall of Rome to the Civil War to the World Wars, the end of one era also ushers in the beginning of the next.  Let us contemplate what that means.

Consider the possibility of currency collapse.  This is something Zero Hedge brings up on a regular basis, and while it is cause for concern, it will not necessarily bring the equivalent of zombie hordes or extinguish the sun.  Some things will change, and then life will go on.

While the elites in Washington focus on winning the next news cycle, the underlying fiscal situation is grave.  The federal government is spending well beyond its means and it is funding these deficits in large part by borrowing from the Federal Reserve – itself.  The Fed then counts these bonds as assets which it can use as collateral to borrow more.

It is a fiscal perpetual motion machine and sooner or later it will come crashing down.  Given the amount of debt we have accumulated, there are only two realistic options:  Default or inflation.

Default is the cleaner of the two, but also one that would require more political will.  An easier option (and therefore more likely) would be to inflate our way out of the mess.  This has the virtue of not requiring any over political action by an elected official – it would be all in the hands on the Fed, and politicians could blame them (as they did during the 70s).

As anyone who studies world events knows, hyperinflation is quite survivable.  It is not the end of the world, merely the end of your savings.  Debtors do quite well – and America has a lot of debtors.

The inevitable result is a “reset” of the currency – either by issuing new denominations or somehow stabilizing the existing money supply.

The trick is knowing what to do while all this is going on.  While inflation starts to climb, the government will take all manner of actions – as we are seeing in Argentina.  Price controls will invariably lead to shortages and the financial markets will be in chaos.

In Weimar Germany, the situation got so bad that people had to carry currency in bags and wagons to buy even simple commodities.  There is the famous story of the Hausfrau who set her basket of Reichsmarks on the sill of an open window and then turned away for a moment and found the basket stolen, but the Reichmarks left behind.

In any societal breakdown, the old mores tend to weaken, and Weimar Germany was notorious in this respect.  It is worth noting, however, that Imperial Germany was far more socially restrictive than we are, thus I do not expect a wave of loose morals because are morals are about as loose as they can get.

The exact nature of the economic disruptions is impossible to predict, but there are a few things that sensible people should keep in mind.

The first is that a breakdown in law and order is not necessarily foreordained.  As we have seen with recent hurricanes and other disasters, affected communities will react in ways appropriate to their organization.

Indeed, the “collapse” may be surprisingly orderly. People expecting riots and gunplay may be in for a great disappointment.

Secondly, food supplies and sanitation will remain paramount needs. Nothing concentrates the mind like the immediate need to survive. Right now we squander enormous amounts of wealth in failed jurisdictions simply because we can afford it. Once that cushion is gone, the tolerance for such practices will be much less.

To put it another way, when food is short – really short, there current indulgent attitude towards waste will disappear.

In the preface to his memoirs, Churchill discussed the remorseless change that transformed the world during his lifetime:

 When I survey this work as a whole I find I have drawn a picture of a vanished age. The character of society, the foundations of politics, the methods of war, the outlook of youth, the scale of values, all are changed, and changed to an extent I should not have believed possible in so short a space without any violent domestic revolution. I cannot pretend to feel that they are in all respects changed for the better.

 Indeed. And yet the change came all the same and those who failed to adapt suffered the greatest loss.

 

It is a curious fact that the movement that calls itself “Progressive” is actually committed to stasis – that far from “progressing,” it wishes to go back in time. Its leaders wish to restore the social spending of the 1960s, the cultural conformity of the 1950s, labor environment of the 1940s, the railroad dominance of the 1900s, and the industrial policy of the Luddites. They even view nature as something that should be frozen in time – every year should feature average temperatures and average storms and any variation is proof that the delicate mechanism is out of balance.

 

The change could be wrenching and violent, or it could come incrementally, bit by bit and in such a way that people will look back and marvel at the difference in their lives.

Why AR-15 are so popular

One of the most popular posts on this site remains my 2004 review of the Bushmaster AR-15.  Looking back on it, there are a few things I would add in the current debate.

The first is that ARs are now far more modular than they were.  With the expiration of the badly named "Assault Weapons Ban", manufacturers were free to introduce whatever cosmetic changes they wished.  The result was an proliferation of features to improve the ergonomics of the devices.

For example, a telescoping stock allows users to achieve the optimum fit, enhancing accuracy.  It also makes it possible for shooters of widely differing stature to use the same rifle without any awkwardness.

The alternative is to have multiple versions of the same long weapon with different-sized stocks.

People with no knowledge of shooting - this by definition includes gun control supporters - don't understand this.  But anyone who has ever picked up a rifle or shotgun knows that the shape and length of the stock is very important to achieving a comfortable position.  Adjustable stocks are therefore a great way to for multiple people of different sizes to use the same rifle with ease and comfort.

Similarly, pistol foregrips increase the user's control and enhance accuracy.

Add in the modular nature of the AR platform, which can be converted to a different caliber in a minute, and you have one of the most flexible and ergonomic firearms ever devised.

Now gun control supporters look at comfort and ease of use as a bad thing.  These paragons of virtue would prefer that firearms remain as they were 70 years ago - heavy, massive implements of wood and steel firing massive cartriges with punishing recoil.

What this would do is effectively reduce the shooting sports to an almost entirely male-dominated activity - no women need apply.

This is of course deeply ironic considering how many self-identified feminists support gun control.  Because firearms are the great equalizers, women derive a far greater benefit from their use than men.

Women would effectively be forced to rely on men for self-defense - a situation that should be intolerable to any self-respecting proponent of sexual equality.  Then again, we by now know that gun control has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with control.

The surge in AR-15 sales is therefore very understandable and was underway long before the current Presidential saber-rattling over gun control.  Indeed, if it were not for the blatantly obvious ignorance of the gun control lobby regarding every aspect of firearms, one could argue that the attempt to outlaw these ergonomic features was a last-ditch attempt to stop women from becoming irrevocably attracted to the shooting sports.

Once guns become widely used by husbands and wives, sons and daughters, the constituency for banning them shrinks even more.  Can't have that.

(Isn't it interesting that the President never let his daughters participate in his alleged skeet shooting.  Why?  Was it not lady-like enough?  Are guns a "boy" thing?  How sexist.  Someone should ask him when they are going to get their shooting lessons.)

Of course gun control supporters aren't that clever.  Their policies are the result of emotion, not reason.  Engage any of them in serious debate, particularly the downstream consquences of their policies and they quickly fall back on "you want children shot dead!" style arguments.

That is how they are able to ignore the fact that the practical effect of their  policy is always greater violence against the weak.  This does not bother them since they have body guards and/or live in affluent low-crime areas.

The AR-15 is a threat to their vision of a weakened, helpless world because it is so useful.  One rifle can serve the shooting needs of the whole family.  It can be fully tricked-out to fire pistol rounds, heavier rifle rounds, adjust the stock and optics and will, and even switch the foregrips for differing degrees of control.

Even the bayonet mount - villified for its evil intent, is highly useful.  Instead of a knife, one can mount a flashlight - very useful for home defense when someone breaks in at night.   Thus even here we see something that is supposed to be sinister is actually extremely useful for law-abiding citizens.

 

Kerry is the perfect Secretary of State

While there is the usual grumbling about John Kerry being made Secretary of State, I think it is a splendid position for him.  Who better to stand cooling his heels in the anterooms of defiant tin-pot despots?  Who better to feel first-hand the immediate effects of waning American influence?

By now it should be very clear that this administration views foreign policy as a distraction from their business of reshaping the republic.  It is simply not a priority.

That is why Hillary! was chosen to lead the State Department - it placated her base and kept her out of the way.  In this respect the Obama administration is similar to the "spendid isolationism" of Great Britain when the Foreign Office was more of an exile than a prestigious appointment.

Kerry will reliably follow Obama and his nomination will sail through the Senate.  Partisan Republicans like getting him out of the upper chamber and are relishing the thought of an open seat they can pick up via a Scott Brown comeback.

None of this has anything to do with Kerry's actual qualifications, but like Hillary!s, these are irrelevant.  Otto von Bismarck would be unable to salvage the US strategic position under this White House.  What is coming will come.

The White House knows the press will do its part to cover things up.  Any bad news abroad can be buried on page A24 or given a 30-second cursory tidbit on the nightly news - assuming it gets mentioned at all.

As we saw in the 1990s, bombing barracks, embassies and warships are insufficient to generate much public interest if the press covers them up.

At the risk of sounding like a Leninist, the storm is coming, and Kerry is the perfect person to be associated with it.

When precedent fails

There are periods in history when the old order had reached the point of no return but the actors of the period are unaware of it.  I believe we are at such a time.

Looking back over the years, it seems clear that the old conventions no longer apply.  The rules of society I grew up with are simply inoperable.

I'm not the first one to notice this of course, but today's screaming Drudge Report headline about the president imposing some sort of gun control by executive order got me thinking.

My first thought was:  "Ah, so they forgot to give the veep his meds again."  After all, Biden is the source and if there was ever someone who could be counted on to create a crisis simply by shooting his mouth off, the veep is our guy.

But upon reflect, I wondered:  why not?

The goal of this administration was to somehow gain the second term.  They promised everything and anything to get there, and now the goal is achieved.  What's the point in hiding any more?

Even with media support, gun control is a losing political issue.  One would think that the authors of Fast and Furious would be particularly reluctant to get into federal laws when so many have already been violated - but as I said, the old rules don't apply any more.

I don't believe that a Constitutional crisis is imminent or that our liberties are about to be abolished or severely curtailed.  I am an optimist in that respect.

But I am convinced that we are at a point where the people who are in charge are out of their depth in predicting the results of their actions. 

The classic cause of conflict is a miscalculation in the face of crisis and I see plenty of opportunity for that happening.  Heated rhetoric is nothing new, but we are reaching the end of the financial tether.  One need not be a doom-sayer to wonder why, after years of pumping new money into the economy, nothing is happening. 

Right now much of our debt is being financed by a perpetual motion machine:  The Treasury sells bonds to the Federal Reserve Bank, which in turn counts them as collateral against money it then lends out.

Most people don't know this, but I find it deeply disturbing.  We are effectively debasing the currency and that never ends well - from the Crisis of the Third Century in ancient Rome to the revolutions of more modern times.

In all cases, the elites figured things were going just fine - until they weren't.

To be clear:  I don't think the president or his advisors are purposely destroying the economy.  All of them are very wealthy (don't let the rhetoric fool you) - and they all very much value the money they have earned.

They are certainly not going through the trouble of piling up all cash they have accumulated simply to watch it become worthless.

That's part of the problem: they really have no idea what they are doing.  By now the economy should have recovered.  By all precedent we should be in the third year of solid growth.  And none of our leaders know why that hasn't happened.  So they demogogue and have the Fed print more money.

And I think that is what frightens me the most - the awareness that the ship of state is totally out of control.

To put it another way:  No one wanted the disaster in Benghazi to happen and no one could stop it once it started.  Rather than address it, they are trying to hide it because they have no idea what to do if it should happen again.

I've remarked on the Abyss before and my fear that we may enter it.

What if we're already there and just don't know it yet?

President Fast 'n' Furious pushes gun control

I think the biggest thing that has me upset about this new push for gun control is that it is being done by the same administration responsible for Operation Fast and Furious.

Questions for the president:  Did the shooter in Connecticut use a weapon like the 2,000 your Justice Dept. sold to Mexican drug gangs? 

If "assault weapons" are too dangerous for the American public, why did your administration give them to the narco-terrorists?

Did they sell-high-capacity magazines as well?

How did that make us safer?

If one of those guns is used in a massacre, who is criminally liable?

Two years have passed since this scandal came to light and the same people hyping gun control over the death of two dozen people in Connecticut seems utterly uninterested about the U.S. government's complicity in the death of hundreds of innocent Mexican men, women and children.

One of the old arguments against gun control is that the government is no longer interested in enforcing the laws we have, so why add more?  That argument just got a lot stronger.

How can he stand up there at the podium, how can his spokespeople stand up and say with a straight face that we need to look at gun laws when not one person has even been prosecuted for such a large-scale, blatant violation of the law?

Hell, we don't even know who authorized the program!  It just sort of happened!  Ask the Justice Dept. and they will tell you they are looking into it.

So why would anyone believe that if they were given more authority they would not abuse it?  If I were paranoid, I might suggest that they would take a ban on high-capacity magazines and use it to selectively target some people for prosecution while leaving others alone - but they already beat me to the punch.  It already happened.

It's all well and good to wish we could wave a magic wand and make evil go away.  I for one would love to buy the world a Coke and teach it to sing in perfect harmony, but it isn't going to happen.

Good intentions are not enough to make a policy succeed and based on their actions, there is no reason to trust Eric Holder's Justice Dept.

SNYDER FOLDS:  Well, that was not much a surprise.  Gov. Rick Snyder's veto of updates to Michigan's still-inadequate concealed carry law will spare him some additional grief, but as a policy matter, it was a mistake. 

We need to examine what works.  Declaring certain areas "gun-free" without armed check points only invites mayhem.  All the public attention to the matter coupled with the press once again turning a killer into a posthumus celebrity virtually guarantees another atrocity - regardless of what gun laws we pass.

THE REAL ISSUE:  The problem is MENTAL HEALTH.  These people are not sane and need treatment.  Trying to take away guns will not work - they can get them on the street or they will use gasoline to burn the building down.  These unfortunate people are the true lethal weapons and unless we do something about it, we will find them using new and inventive ways to express their psychological problems.

In which the Posse defends guns while sounding like a hippy

Horrible news from Connecticut, and what can one do but pray and hold loved ones close?

Well, one could try to capitalize on it for political gain, but that would be stating the obvious.

Whenever a story like this comes out, one can predict with absolutely certitude two things:

1.  Gun control will be brought up as a solution, and

2.  The shooter will have turned out to have left a string of blindingly obvious hints as to his intentions.

What gun control does is absolve us from individual responsibility to take care of people who have serious mental or emotional problems.  People who are in pain and suffering can be left to their agonies so long as no one else is impacted.

Gun control is therefore the opposite of true compassion.  It outsources caring to a bureaucratic machine - the same bureaucratic machine that failed to help the perpetrator in the first place, incidentally.

The illness we speak of manifests itself all over the world, and gun control has no effect on it.  Even in heavily regulated jurisdictions like Great Britain and Germany, these people commit their heinous crimes.

In Japan and China, they use blades and their victims are just as dead.

For people wishing to take action in the wake of this horrific event, I suggest you take a close look at the people around you.  Are they pain?  Are they in need?  Instead of shrugging off someone's death-obsessed facebook posting (and then recalling it afterward to a sympathetic reporter), engage them NOW, before the vile deed is done.

I oppose gun control because it doesn't work, and it pains me to no end the callous politicians who make jokes about prison rape and cavalierly drive off in their limosines while their constituents struggle in crime-ridden streets claim moral superiority by virtue of their position on this issue.

Saying that we can cut crime by banning guns is like saying we can reduce rape by banning short skirts.

It is not a compassionate position, it is a lazy one.

Let's face it:  it is easier to blame an object than hold our mental health system accountable.

Capturing the citadel

 

More than a year ago I predicted that the Wisconsin recall elections and Michigan’s proposed Constitutional amendment making the closed shop permanent were the Big Labor equivalents of Germany’s last-ditch Western Front offensive in 1918 (a.k.a. Big Labor's Kaiserschlacht).

Thought the speed with which the Michigan GOP has acted has astounded long-time political observers, it is in fact a tribute to the experienced legislative team first-term Gov. Rick Snyder has assembled here in the Great Lakes State.

Setting aside the merits of the policy, its tactical execution has been flawless. Would that the Republicans in Washington were so skilled.

Few press accounts have reflected the difficult position and limited options available to Big Labor. While “It’s not over” makes a good sound bite, in a practical sense, the debate is over. The law will take effect this spring, and there the Dems can do about it. Here is why:

1. Unlike the Emergency Financial Manager bill, which was defeated in a statewide referendum this fall, there is no recourse to a ballot initiative because it contains and appropriation. Under the Michigan Constitution, measures with an appropriation become referendum-proof. This tactic was successfully used to push through Public Act 381, which reformed Michigan’s concealed carry laws.

Before that law took effect, gun control opponents attempted a lawsuit to strip out the appropriation, but it failed. The balance on the state Supreme Court has not changed since then, and it is extremely unlikely to overturn its precedent.

2. Recalls won’t help. As I noted elsewhere, Michigan’s Constitution does permit a recall, but it is a yes/no vote on the incumbent. Should an incumbent be removed, a new election is then scheduled. This means that recalling Gov. Snyder, would put Lt. Gov. Brian Calley temporarily in charge, and he is even more anti-union than Snyder.

During the madness in Wisconsin, the Dems did manage to recall a Republican legislator – who was promptly replaced by another Republican.

It should also be noted that because the state House just stood for reelection, recalls against them are not viable. The Dems could attempt to recall the state Senate, but the GOP majority there is overwhelming (26-12).

3. A new ballot initiative is too expensive. This will take time and money, and the unions are unlikely to prevail. Again, the same thing happened in regarding concealed carry, which had less support than right-to-work. Once the law took effect, people got used to it and the polls shifted even more against it.

Right now, Big Labor is in big trouble. Over the last election cycle, they have thrown everything they had into the effort to permanently enshrine their status in Michigan. They are now short on cash and will have an increasingly difficult time getting more.

In addition, the public is simply worn out. Liberals may treat politics as a hobby, the voters are already tired of it. Even the media are picking up on it: Mlive.com actually offers morning news summaries that leave out all mention of right-to-work because so many of their readers are tired of hearing about it.

Once the law takes effect, it will be a done deal and that will be that. Unless the Dems can take over state government in 2014 (a daunting proposition without all that union cash), right-to-work is here to stay.

BONUS BAD PRESS:  Not much national coverage, but state media is noticing the thuggishness of the "mostly pleaceful protesters."  Helpful hint to Big Labor goons:  Be careful whose cart you knock over - it may be a local fixture beloved by the community.