Now heroic Coloradans just recalled two anti-gun state legislators:

An epic national debate over gun rights in Colorado on Tuesday saw two Democratic state senators ousted for their support for stricter laws, a “ready, aim, fired” message intended to stop other politicians for pushing for firearms restrictions. Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron will be replaced in office with Republican candidates who petitioned onto the recall ballot.

Party insiders always said Giron's race was the harder one. Although her district is heavily Democratic, Pueblo is a blue-collar union town. Morse's district included Manitou Springs and a portion of Colorado Springs — and more liberals.

The turn of events made Morse and Giron the first Colorado state lawmakers to be recalled. Former Colorado Springs councilman Bernie Herpin will take Morse's seat in the Senate, while Pueblo will be represented by former Deputy Police Chief George Rivera.

It's unclear when the city of Pueblo was last represented in the Senate by a Republican.

“Coloradans … sent a clear message that politicians who blatantly ignore their constituents will be held accountable,” said Dustin Zvonek, state director of Americans for Prosperity. “Perhaps this will serve as a lesson that one-party rule in Denver doesn't give the majority license to take things to extremes or run roughshod over the values and rights of Coloradans who just happen, for the moment, to be in the minority.”

“Tonight is a victory for the people of the state of Colorado, who have been subject to the overreach of a Democrat agenda on guns, taxes and accountability to the people,” said Tim Knight, Founder of the Basic Freedom Defense Fund and the “father” of the recalls. “Since day one, they said it couldn't be done. Tonight, this is a victory for the people of Colorado, and we share this victory with them.”

There's a lesson here for California Republicans, who like their brethren and sistren in Colorado have had a hard time lately: Back Second Amendment gun rights and you'll win.

My suggestion for the 2014 CA GOP: Adopt a 100 percent pro-gun platform. This should include:

1. Passing a state initiative allowing conceal-carry permits to all Californians who are 21 or older and don't have a felony conviction.

2. Repealing California's restrictions on so-called “assault weapons” ownership.

3. Repealing whatever anti-gun laws the California Legislature passes, and Gov. Jerry Brown signs, this year.

 Colorado has shown the way back to freedom.

The first is that he simply can’t stay in office. Now that all nine City Council members say he must go and statewide officials are issuing increasingly personal calls for him to quit, Filner is dead meat. He knows he can’t beat a recall push that will kick into gear in a week, so why prolong the ordeal.

The second is that he will never leave office unless he can parlay his resignation into both a plea deal in a federal corruption investigation that seems increasingly serious and into the city agreeing to pay part or all of his legal expenses from pending lawsuits over his treatment of women while mayor. (Filner can’t escape footing the bill for lawsuits from when he was in Congress and hitting on rape victims who came to him for help.)

I think the second conventional wisdom is on far firmer ground. This approach insulated Spiro Agnew and lots of other pols gone bad from the full consequences of their actions.

Someone this weird may not think conventionally

But there is also another angle to raise: Filner is so off the chart weird and different that no one should assume he will think conventionally. He has been relentlessly obnoxious for 35 years in his political career and it’s somehow paid off for him with a long, successful run. He doesn’t see anything wrong with making open declarations that as mayor, he is running a pay-for-play administration — telling companies seeking city permits, “you don’t get free things.” He doesn’t see anything wrong with hitting on rape victims.

Why would anyone assume his motivations are conventional when he displays industrial-strength depravity and thinks it’s just another day at the office?

“So far, three plausible checkmates have received the most attention: resignation … ; recall, if more than 100,000 signatures can be gathered in the relative blink of an eye; and criminal prosecution, a clear-cut verdict even our thick-skinned mayor could not ride out.

“Less remarked upon, however, is the rarely invoked Section 3060 in the California Government Code that empowers county grand juries to bring accusations of ‘willful or corrupt misconduct in office’ against public officials.

“If the grand jury gives its blessing, a Superior Court trial can take place. If found guilty of one or more accusations, the official is removed from office. No civil or criminal penalties are imposed. (As I understand it, criminal cases and civil lawsuits can take their own course.)

“In 2002, the mayor of Mountain View, a city in Santa Clara County, was accused of violating the city’s charter by skirting the city manager’s authority for gain.

“Empowered by 3060, the grand jury heard evidence and charged the mayor. The Superior Court jury found the mayor guilty not of corruption but of  ‘knowing and willful misconduct.’

“Just like that, Mayor Mario Ambra was thrown out of office.”

‘Progressive paranoids for Filner’

Meanwhile, some of San Diego’s hard left are standing by their man, as I wrote about in a brief editorial:

“It doesn’t take long for followers of local social media and news websites to come upon defenders of Mayor Bob Filner offering conspiracy theories to explain his current troubles. Not just commenters but some San Diego alternative journalists — especially self-styled ‘progressives’ — suggest the real reason Filner is facing sharp criticism is because he has crossed powerful downtown business interests. …

“This scandal — and it is a real one — began a month ago when three of the mayor’s longtime liberal allies denounced his treatment of women. Since then, there has been a parade of women coming forward with credible stories about Filner’s harassment or unwanted advances.

“This has led scores of the mayor’s fellow Democratic elected officials, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, to call for his resignation. At this point, it’s astounding that anyone would see these developments as part of a nefarious scheme.

“On the other hand, it may be the best defense they can come up with for Mayor Grabby Grabby.”

This is from a U-T San Diego editorial I wrote:

“The decision of two recall proponents — land-use consultant Michael Pallamary and gay activist Stampp Corbin — to combine their efforts to oust Mayor Bob Filner is good news for those who believe in direct democracy.

“That is the system established in California in 1912 to allow voters to use signature-gathering campaigns to directly enact laws and remove lawmakers. In recent years, it’s been subverted on many fronts …. .

“The monkey-wrenching has been led by political forces who want to preserve the status quo that is targeted by signature-gathering campaigns for initiatives or recalls. Initially, it looked like that was Corbin’s goal. As 10News reported, Corbin told Susan Jester, head of the local Log Cabin Republicans, that he intended to sabotage the recall.

“But Corbin insists that he was joking. On Friday, he promised to work constructively with Pallamary in gathering signatures of San Diegans who are tired of Filner’s mistreatment of women, his bullying of everyone and his ethical breaches.”

Filner’s temperament was well-known

In another piece, I took on the goofy idea from the East Coast media that Filner was protected by a fawning media. Just because that’s how D.C. treats the president doesn’t mean that’s the norm for how a big-city mayor is treated on the other side of the nation:

“As the national media descend on San Diego to cover our sexist caveman of a mayor, some wonder how career politician Bob Filner could have made it to age 70 without being exposed as a serial cad. The answer, of course, is that until last month, no woman was willing to come forward with public accusations. The idea that his behavior was covered up by a fawning media is absurd. Filner’s temperament was a constant focus of the 2012 campaign.

“[This is why no one] in local media and political circles is surprised by Filner’s scandal. He has a long history of thuggishness — one that has led to brushes with law enforcement and endless tales about his insolent belief that the normal rules of conduct and decorum simply don’t apply to him. It’s no surprise that this thuggishness leads Filner, in his word, to act like a ‘monster’ toward women.”

His misconduct extends far beyond this

“This thuggishness has been on ample display in his eight months as mayor in other areas besides his dealings with women. He has thrown tantrums at City Council meetings, both in public and in closed session, including once using his security force to eject a representative of City Attorney Jan Goldsmith on spurious grounds. He has been caught in lies about his possibly criminal efforts to force a developer to give $100,000 to his pet causes before getting a key project permit. He has used a silly cover story as a pretext to force out the head of the city employees’ pension board. Why? Because the official didn’t want to go along with what he saw as the Filner administration’s attempts to resume the pension underfunding that got San Diego into such terrible straits in 1996 and 2002.

“Filner’s arrogant contempt for anyone who gets in his way is reflected by his staff. Officials simply refuse to comply with state openness laws. His chief of staff, Lee Burdick, appeared to be interfering with sex-harassment investigations by interviewing potential witnesses. She also makes the bizarre claim that since she is an attorney, her communications with the mayor are privileged — though she’s not the mayor’s attorney.”

Recall invokes several scandals — dubiously

The mayor’s broader history of corruption, malfeasance and contempt for the law is cited in official declarations filed by lead recall proponent Michael Pallamary. I think that is a big mistake. Some of the other scandals can and will be depicted by Filner and his allies as him standing up to a city status quo that protects downtown business interests. That produces a Pavlovian response among progressive voters, who can’t believe a longstanding Democratic registration advantage has yielded a relatively tight-fisted government that has pushed big reforms on benefits, pay and provision of services, led by former Republican Councilman Carl DeMaio, a libertarian.

Just focusing on the sex harassment would have been a much easier sell. But I don’t buy the conventional wisdom that a lot of money will be needed for the recall to win. The disgust with Mayor Headlock is broad and deep, and tens of thousands of people aren’t going to need persuading to sign a recall petition.

The conventional wisdom is that the big event was Filner becoming toast because of the public emergence of seven accusers, many prominent — and the absurd twist that one of Filner’s past victims appears to be the new superintendent of the city’s vast school system.

But maybe it’s the brazen attempt of a supporter of the twisted mayor to monkey-wrench the recall process. This is from the Voice of San Diego:

Triggering deadline for signature-gathering

“One of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s most ardent supporters has taken the first steps to recall him, possibly foreclosing other efforts to kick out the embattled mayor.

“Local LGBT activist Stampp Corbin has taken initial steps to start circulating petitions to recall the mayor, citing the sexual harassment accusations leveled against Filner in recent weeks. …

“But by starting a recall process, Corbin might be making a strategic move to prevent other groups from doing the same.

“City recall rules don’t clarify whether more than one recall campaign can run concurrently once another process has started. And if a recall process fails, opponents would have to wait another six months before trying again, according to city rules. …

“Getting a recall on the ballot is a significantly difficult task even for someone highly motivated. To get a recall on the ballot, Corbin would need to collect at least 101,596 valid signatures in 39 days. …

“Corbin’s publication was one of the most faithful backers of Filner’s mayoral bid, specifically in its reporting on Filner’s opponent Carl DeMaio, who is openly gay. LGBT Weekly purported to reveal private details of DeMaio’s relationship with rival gay media publisher Johnathan Hale and pushed a theory that Hale was involved in the Balboa Park lily pond vandalism despite there being no evidence.”

Gay-baiting gay activist has new role: scam artist

So are you following here? The gay-baiting gay activist who has no issues with heterosexual women being harassed is trying to raise practical and legal obstacles to a recall, possibly triggering signature-gathering deadlines and almost certainly ensuring a time-consuming turf war between rival recall groups — one actually trying to thwart a recall, one serious about the effort.

This is going to be entertaining.

Oh, wait. I live in San Diego.

This is going to be a tiresome ordeal.

By Chris Reed

At 11 a.m. today, there will be another press conference by the three longtime liberal supporters of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner who called on their fellow Democrat to resign last Wednesday over alleged sexual harassment. Former Councilwoman Donna Frye and environmental attorneys Marco Gonzalez and Cory Briggs are expected to offer specific details of allegations from “numerous” women. An alleged victim or two or more might show up to put a human face on the Filner scandal. If they do so in believable fashion, it could be over for the 70-year-old misanthrope who won narrow election as mayor in November.

On Friday afternoon, Filner’s fate seemed to be close to sealed after the former head of the San Diego regional labor council — Lorena Gonzalez, recently elected to the Assembly — called for him to go. Gonzalez had helped clear the field for Filner in 2011 so he was the only prominent Democrat running in the 2012 mayor’s race, wielding labor’s clout in his favor at a key moment. People watching from afar who think Gonzalez is a minor player don’t understand how she has consolidated the labor movement behind her.

But over the weekend, there were no new major defections or revelations. The only real news was the Twitter confirmation by Marco Gonzalez of the Monday news conference.

Hate, bile and conspiracies: Dumb de dumb dumb

What was arguably of most note in the first days of the Filner scandal was how completely unsurprised everyone was who’s ever dealt with him. After that what was probably most of note about the mess over the weekend was how much extreme stupidity it generated from so many online commentators.

How is it any dumber than the usual trolling, radibly predictable partisanship and idle onanism that makes smart, thoughtful comments rarer than honest early-career John Perez resumes?

Because of the dynamics of this scandal. If Filner is forced out of office, it was because people on the left such as Frye found that he was not remotely living up to his putative progressive ideals in how he dealt with women. On Friday, Filner himself directly admitted to indefensible behavior, said he was seeking “help” for his treatment of woman, and asked for forgiveness.

Yet even then, for many angry commenters, the fact that Filner was under fire at all showed that the criticism had to be illegitimate and coming from the right. This is how a commenter put it on the U-T San Diego website after Filner had admitted to intimidating women.

“This is not a dictatorship. these legislators cant bully him into resigning. WE r the only ones who get to demand he step down not them. This is a coordinated coup by the developers who r throwing a tantrum that they could not steal balboa Park the legal way.”

A stunning number of people seemed ready to throw Frye under the bus, too, and some in coarse and mean fashion. This is one of the tame comments.

“Donna Frye has chimed in in an obvious effort to jump start her failed political career….playing the feminist card for all its worth.”

In CA, being Dem means never having to say you’re sorry

But then all this was foreshadowed last year in the mayor’s race, when Filner and his allies went after Republican rival Carl DeMaio with tactics that should turn the stomachs of “progressives.” Cal Watchdog commenter Bill Gore nailed it:

“Also there’s the tremendous irony of the union-financed gay bashing campaign that put this clown in office in the first place. This smoking gun has Lorena Gonzalez’s prints all over it. They were so terrified of DeMaio that they resorted to tactics that expose them as raging hypocrites. The ads were sleazy, dirty and loaded with homophobic innuendo aimed directly at DeMaio’s sexuality, right out of the 1950′s. And they got away with it.”

But it’s 2013. The ends justify the means, and gay-bashing is OK if you’re dumping on a Republican gay, and racially loaded remarks are OK if you’re dumping on a Republican judge, and all in all, no standards apply if you’re going after the loathsome scum whose views you disagree with.

The right does this sort of thing as well. On a national level, the hypocrisy is evenly divided, as the Internet era continues to act like a centrifuge and push people to extremes. The recent Travyon Martin trial social-media fallout featured an orgy of stupidity on both sides, with some people on the left pretending the case was airtight and some people on the right treating George Zimmerman as a hero.

But in a state like California — where the left is so much more powerful than the right, and so loudly self-righteous, and rarely gets the media pushback it merits — the left’s hypocrisy is more noticeable and influential.

Expecting apologies from Filner’s enablers? Be serious

So will even one person on the San Diego or the California left admit to having been wrong about Filner and dumb to have gambled on a guy with this much baggage? Nah.

OK, commentators. That’s your cue. Drag out your paranoid theories. Trash Donna Frye. Trash me. (Those pieces I wrote that show I’m far from a rigid righty? Forget them and just pretend I’m a one-note Charlie.) Or play the ageism card and suggest Filner at age 70 couldn’t be doing what he’s insinuated to have done, so this is just another example of the War On The Old.

You’re always right. The other side is always wrong. You’re always on the moral high ground. The other side is always Hitlerian. Sheesh.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — During recent travels to Madison and Milwaukee for some research about reform-minded Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s survival of a union-backed recall, I found little residual anger among the friendly folks there, despite seemingly endless pitched political battles that divided families and led to angry water-cooler discussions.

Perhaps the central issue — Walker’s Act 10 plan that rolled back collective-bargaining excesses — has been resolved, or perhaps Wisconsinites simply got tired of two historic recall elections, legislators who bolted the state to avoid voting on legislation, endless national media attention and union protesters swarming the Capitol and screaming into their bullhorns.

Midwestern culture values community and “nice,” and the ongoing events in Wisconsin strained the social fabric. Californian residents, typically oblivious to events east of the Sierra Nevada, owe a debt of gratitude to the folks in Packer country. Had Wisconsin voters replaced their governor and other Republican officials, the message would have been heard nationwide: Pension reform, and efforts to rein in the public-sector union power at the root of the problem, would be dead for years.

Instead, Walker is becoming a national GOP figure. Another budget reformer from Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, is on the GOP presidential ticket. And Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, from Kenosha, will no doubt tout the Wisconsin reforms as Republicans gather in Tampa for their national convention.

Wisconsin’s Progressive political tradition rivals California’s, which only highlights the disparity between the two states as California’s leaders refuse to even acknowledge fiscal reality, let alone confront it in a serious way. Walker and his reforms were sparked by a $3.6 billion budget deficit, which is a rounding error in California budget terms. But his understanding of the core issue — the abuses perpetrated by the privileges and greed of public sector unions — may have stemmed from his stint as the county executive in Democratic Milwaukee County, where he had to clean up an ugly pension scandal where government workers were granting themselves outrageous bonuses.

Wrote Bruce Murphy in the Madison alternative weekly called the Isthmus, “In the bitter aftermath of the failed recall, there will be many blaming a vast right-wing conspiracy, out-of-state billionaires like the Koch brothers, and Gov. Scott Walker’s polarizing, take-no-prisoners style. But Democrats and unions might want to take a look in the mirror. For it was their willingness to abuse government benefits — with sweetheart deals benefiting only a minority of workers — that led directly to defeat.”

Sweetheart deals

In California, sweetheart deals are a daily occurrence. In San Francisco, police and fire officials are granting themselves half-million-dollar payouts as they leave government “service.” The ranks of the $100,000 pension club are escalating rapidly, even as Moody’s Investor Services warns of a coming tsunami of municipal bankruptcies across the state. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which has itself been through a disgusting “pay for play” scandal, believes that bankrupt Stockton ought to stiff its bondholders — the same ones that gave the city $125 million in pension bonds to help it make good on pension promises it couldn’t afford to pay — rather than trim the lucrative pensions received by city retirees.

Meanwhile, cities slash public services and the state’s leadership demands higher taxes even as they embrace costly new programs (i.e., high-speed rail) that will mainly benefit government employees and special interests.

The ongoing state parks scandal is a poster child for the problems here. As the San Jose Mercury News reported, “With state leaders scrambling to find out how state parks officials kept tens of millions of dollars hidden for more than a decade, California’s top finance officials Tuesday acknowledged what could be a far bigger problem:

“They have no system in place to account for $37 billion in ‘special funds’ scattered throughout state government. Instead, finance officials revealed, they rely on an honor system to track money that could be stashed away in untold accounts similar to the funds that turned up last week, sparking a scandal in the state parks department.”

Parks officials were allowing many parks potentially to be closed while they had money “stashed away” in hidden accounts. Thanks to this “honor” system, dishonorable state employees were granting themselves huge vacation buyouts, all done secretly, accounting for it through Post-It notes to “avoid a paper trail,” as the Sacramento Bee reported.

Serving themselves

This is the same basic storyline repeated across the state: Government is not serving the people, but the people within government are serving themselves. This touches on the nature of government, although overly large and unaccountable ones are more plagued by such corruption than others. As the free-market writer Frederic Bastiat wrote, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” We should at least recognize the truth and not deceive ourselves about talk of “public service.”

These attitudes — the raiding of public treasuries for personal gain, the refusal to rein in unsustainable pension benefits that dwarf those earned by people in the private sector — reflect a “corruption” of public service, in the words of San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, a progressive reformer. That’s what these debates are about, and what people in Wisconsin — despite the discomfort of it all — decided to hash out in a series of elections and budget reforms.

Unfortunately, Californians are steadfastly avoiding that needed debate. Perhaps voters here are still burned out from the 2003 recall election, in which voters booted a terrible governor and replaced him with someone not much better.

Or perhaps it’s a reflection of California “exceptionalism” — the idea that the normal rules don’t apply here, and that we can have everything without making any tough choices.

Either way, we need to learn some lessons from the Badger State and have our defining debate over unions, or watch helplessly as cities go under and services deteriorate.

Steven Greenhut is vice president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. He is based in Sacramento. Write to him at: steven.greenhut@franklincenterhq.org.

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — Before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became a recall target for his efforts to reform collective bargaining in his state, I was a guest on a Madison radio show discussing the influence of public-sector unions and the significance of the state’s unfunded pension liabilities.

Instead of “Wisconsin Nice” — a euphemism for the polite, conflict-avoiding nature of Badger State culture — I faced a torrent of angry callers who accused union critics of trying to destroy the quality of life for working people. I asked one caller: What do we do about unfunded liabilities, those debts that current pension promises place on future generations?

“I won’t answer your question,” he said, refusing to dignify this perfectly reasonable question with a response.

The radio show was a preview of what was to come in Wisconsin — a season of angry diatribes, militant union marches, not-so-nice attacks on a governor who, after all, has done nothing more than reform a debt-laden system and has actually saved union jobs and saved unions.

Rather than engage the issues, the Left has chosen to echo the approach taken by callers to that radio show – stomp their feet, yell and scream and absolutely, positively refuse to provide an alternative path.

There’s something bizarre in all this, a reminder that the once-proud movement of working people has morphed into an upper-middle-class movement of coddled public employees who do not care about debt levels and eroded public services. They have their gold-plated pensions, and no one had better touch them or else.

Progressives used to pride themselves on their desire to help the poor, but in Wisconsin these days they’d rather throw the poor under the bus — a public bus, of course, with a union driver — to protect the relatively wealthy class of workers who administer government programs. So we’ve watched the antics – legislative Democrats heading to Illinois to deny the governor a quorum for his budget vote; truckloads of union activists and boatloads of union money pouring into the state capital; attempts to portray Walker as someone who is destroying the state.

Wisconsin rebounding

But a funny thing happened on the way to the recall. Wisconsin’s economy is rebounding, its debt receding. The state is gaining jobs everywhere except in downtrodden Milwaukee, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett serves as mayor, and where union control has its tightest grip.

At this late stage in the race, it’s purely a numbers game as both sides bring out the ground troops to get their voters to the polls.

Democrats will surely resurrect dead voters in Milwaukee, so I’m hoping that Walker’s margin of victory — poll late last week showed his lead at 5 to 7 points — is strong enough to exceed the expected margin of voter fraud.

Both sides are being careful, avoiding anything that might backfire.

For the pro-recall movement, that means desperately avoiding the central issue. For instance, the Barrett campaign website features a story on Walker’s supposed attack on hunting – yes, hunting – because of a privatization effort he is spearheading. Walker’s website isn’t too much better, as it focuses on crime problems in Milwaukee.

Many national pundits are focusing on the implications for the national presidential race, and on President Barack Obama’s chances of being re-elected. There are some clues in it, as national Democrats steadfastly avoid the state. But we all know that the Walker recall is a referendum on public-sector union reform.

One of the nation’s biggest problems involves public employees, their compensation levels and the degree to which their special privileges and demands are destroying public services and bankrupting cities, especially in California. Wisconsin is arguably an even more progressive state than California. It was the first state to allow public-sector workers to evolve into the equivalent of Teamsters.

But California has taken the matter much further than anywhere else in the nation.

California used to be the model for the nation in terms of public services. But without political competition, there has been no push-back as the unions grab more and more. No wonder the Golden State’s roads are crumbling, and our services are tarnished. The only answer from the union movement and their Democratic patrons, including Gov. Jerry Brown: higher taxes. The real question is whether Wisconsin voters want their state to turn into California but without the warm winters.

Collective bargaining

In particular, the Wisconsin governor recognized that collective bargaining is the core problem, in that it remains the key obstacle to improving public services through competition and truly progressive reform.

“The collective-bargaining component of Walker’s plan has yielded especially large financial dividends for school districts,” Christian Schneider of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute wrote in City Journal magazine. Individual districts have saved millions of dollars because they can send their plans out to bid rather than buying from the union-monopoly health trust. That’s money they used to save teaching jobs.

Progressives should applaud; instead, they march on Madison. What phonies.

While California’s government is hopeless, we are seeing serious reforms at the municipal level, often spearheaded by progressive Democrats. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed is promoting a pension reform initiative on Tuesday’s ballot, and he’s doing so with support from progressives in his city. Reed says there’s a big difference between union Democrats and progressive Democrats. The former are protecting one special interest group, and the latter have the public good in mind. It’s a compelling argument as we head into the final days of the Wisconsin recall.

If Walker wins, reform will spread across the country. If he loses, Wisconsin will head down the path of California or maybe even Greece, where rising debt, soaring taxes, a surly union movement and crumbling public services will be the order of the day. No wonder the recall movement wants to play on emotion rather than answer serious questions.

By Brian Calle

Californians know a thing or two about recalls.

Only two state governors in U.S. history have been removed from office via recall; the first was North Dakota Gov. Lynn J. Frazier in 1921. Of course, the second was California’s Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.

Public-sector unions in Wisconsin — with their national counterparts cheering them on — hope Tuesday to make Gov. Scott Walker the third governor recalled from office because he dared to challenge union power and influence in state governance.

But compare Walker with California Gov. Jerry Brown — and contrast Wisconsin’s progress since Walker enacted his union-bucking policies with California’s continued decline under Brown’s union-friendly leadership, and you see two different outcomes.

Walker and Brown, who both took office on the same day, Jan. 3, 2011, faced tremendous budget deficits and squawking public employee unions demanding higher taxes. Brown obliged; Walker would not.

Faced with a $3.6 billion deficit, Walker lowered taxes — freezing property taxes and bringing down school property taxes. He also painted a realistic and honest budget picture for his constituents and pushed for painful but necessary reforms that cut collective bargaining rights for government unions and created more competition, like allowing private vendors to bid on health insurance contracts for school districts, which reduced costs.

Seventeen months later, Wisconsin is projected to have a $154 million surplus by the summer of 2013. And, the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute reported that Walker’s reforms have saved taxpayers $1 billion.

In California, Gov. Brown, returning to the post he left in 1983, sided with unions from day one. Early on, he appointed a California Teachers Association lobbyist, Patricia Rucker, to the state Board of Education. He also presented Californians with an unrealistic budget that projected far more state revenue than what eventually came in.

Partially as a result of such budgeting gimmickry, the state’s projected $9 billion budget shortfall has ballooned to $17 billion.

Brown’s plan to close the gap is to convince voters in November to inflict higher taxes on themselves, an approach blessed by unions. Should his tax increases pass, they would raise only about $8.5 billion, a far cry from the $17 billion needed to close the budget hole. And that means California will continue on the path of dysfunctional budgeting and sidestepping meaningful reform.

Unlike Walker, Brown has yet to challenge the stranglehold that public employee unions have in the state — if anything, he has emboldened them. That is one of the reasons he prefers seeking new taxes to making deeper spending cuts or expending political capital on reforming unsustainable public-employee pensions.

Also, unions had been a pillar of Brown’s political career for decades. They helped get him elected again to the governorship in 2010. Early in his first administration, Brown signed the Rodda Act in 1975, which bestowed collective bargaining rights on California public school teachers.

Walker in many ways is the antithesis of Brown.

As Douglas Belkin and Kris Maher wrote for the Wall Street Journal: “Public-employee unions in Wisconsin have experienced a dramatic drop in membership – by more than half for the second-biggest union — since a law championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker sharply curtailed their ability to bargain over wages and working conditions.” Specifically, Walker stopped the practice of automatically withholding union dues from the paychecks of employees — the main source of funds for union political operations.

“Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers — fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011,” Belkin and Maher reported.

Examining Brown and Walker’s records, one might argue the recall efforts ought to focus on the former, rather than the latter, as the California governor continues to preside and perhaps enable the Golden State’s fiscal calamity.

Walker’s day of reckoning comes Tuesday, and, fortunately, the latest-available polling data, including a poll from Marquette University, indicated he would prevail, with about 52 percent support.

Brown’s day of reckoning will come in November, when votes are cast on his tax increase ballot measure.

What happens in Wisconsin in a couple days will have significant repercussions for those hoping, eventually, for similar reforms in the Golden State. If Walker keeps his job, other governors, like Brown, well could find themselves with more leverage with their unions. If Walker is recalled, unions nationwide will be emboldened.

I’ve had enough. Four and a half months of Gov. Jerry Brown, Part Deux, is four and a half months too much.

Last October, even before he was elected, I was the first to demand: Recall Gov. Jerry Brown. Even before the election, in the Cheyne-Stokes of Meg Whitman’s pathetic campaign, it was clear Jerry would win — and win big. And it was clear he would be a disaster as  governor.

After he actually was elected, I figured I’d give him a break. His tax increase plea was predictable. At least he wanted to give voters a chance to give it a thumbs up or down.

But his May Revise is an outrage. We taxpayers worked ourselves into a frenzy to bring him more revenue. And we delivered: $6.6 billion more than he projected in his original, January budget proposal.

Our reward? He wants to increase spending. And to pay for that, he still wants to increase taxes for five years.

Most galling is that he wants to raise taxes to pay for bonds that haven’t been issued yet. He calls this responsible governance.

Here’s an idea: If you don’t have the money, don’t buy something. Don’t issue the bonds. Do we really need to blow $9 billion on that dumb high-speed rail boondoggle? Which means $18 billion in costs to taxpayers because of interest payments.

No, we don’t need it. And we don’t need this governor.

Recall Gov. Jerry Brown!

May 17, 2011