Podcast 333

Licensing Yoga Instructors? Updates to start the week out right. This is the day Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will sign the state’s Right To Work law, making Wisconsin the 26th state to do so. Is Wisconsin so different from Minnesota? A University Professor says they didn’t used to be, but now that they advocate laws like ACT 10 and Right To Work they are. Fact is, Wisconsin has always been more industrial than Minnesota and was settled by people from different parts of Europe. Moreover, Wisconsin’s industrial base is a little older than Minnesota’s. Is it possible Wisconsin is facing the fall out from too much regulation and choking demands from unions in the public and private sector a decade or so sooner than Minnesota? With Target, and now General Mills laying off people, and businesses considering the Badger state’s friendlier attitude toward business, things might not be as rosy in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes as some think. While Wisconsin’s Assembly and Governor address these kinds of problems, Minnesota’s legislature is playing small ball, trying to break up the Minneapolis School District and brokering peace between warring DFL leaders. Is Minnesota too passive-aggressive to actually have the discussion about what is best for the future of the state, between progressives and conservatives? And in Colorado, the state legislature is considering requiring yoga instructors to be licensed, introducing higher costs and more regulation. The sponsors? A publicly traded company with lots of studios called ‘CorePowerYoga’. Suddenly crony capitalism wears Yoga Pants. In Minneapolis are you ready to pay for yet another Stadium. Rich Guy Bill McGuire and his rich friends including the Pohlads and Glen Taylor want the hard working tax payers of the state of Minnesota to foot the bill for a professional soccer team. And the artist responsible for all that triumphal Red Guard Propaganda in China during the Cultural Revolution, a man who flourished while others were being oppressed, will be painting the official portrait of Pope Francis. Wonder if the Pope will be wearing a green hat with a red star on it? He should. Sponsored by Complete Basement Systems. 

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The Bob Davis Podcast

Podcast 329

CPAC 2015. Updates for your weekend. This weekend CPAC kicks off the 2016 Presidential Campaign, at least on the Republican side and at least for the Washington Press Corps which doesn’t seem to have much to do these days, other than haunt appearances by one of the many potential Republican candidates. The latest political story line is about how the media giveth and taketh away from ‘untried’ candidates like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker. Walker most recently bristled to what’s referred to as a ‘gotcha’ question regarding the religion of the President. Walker lambasted the media for its coverage of his answer, raised money on the ensuing ‘viral’ stories about that, and wrote a piece in reply which appeared in USA Today. Really? Do you think the average person in this country pays any attention to this kind of high school nonsense? The Washington Press Corps in particular seems to think of itself as some kind of monolithic institution, with the job of ‘vetting’ future presidents. In reality they are a bunch of ninnies who couldn’t vet a lawn service, let alone a potential president. Moreover, Scott Walker has plenty of experience with bruising fights with media, given what’s been going on in Wisconsin in the last few years. Secretary of State John Kerry – with his fake plastic surgery square jaw – made a fool of himself again. Find out how in this podcast. So, terrorism’s cause is the plight of the poor. Poor people have no other choice but to become Jihadists, right? It was revealed this week that so called ‘Jihadi John’, the guy cutting people’s heads off recently, is in fact the son of a well to do family from London, and has a degree in computer science. The fight in Minnesota about state commissioner pay continues, and is brought into perspective with the revelation that over sixteen thousand federal workers made more than two hundred thousand dollars last year. Meanwhile Vice President Joe Biden says the wealth of the top one percent should be ’emancipated’, apparently not realizing he is talking about himself and most of the people who work for our Federal Government. It’s time to emancipate the taxpayer from the burden of perfumed princes who earn a lot more than people in the private sector. Drones have already revolutionized war, now they’re about to revolutionize farming. Soon drone technology may become one of two or three essential tools of the farmer. Whether flown by remote control, or autonomously, farmers of all people are adopting and adapting drones. Find out how. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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Podcast 327

Right To Work. As Wisconsin’s Assembly considers Right To Work legislation amid controversy, Minnesota conservatives wonder what’s wrong with Republicans in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. The Washington Post this week ran a piece decrying the decay of the organizational power of unions in the Badger state since ACT10 was passed in 2011. The reader is left with the idea this isn’t such a bad thing for local and state budgets, or the employees of counties, towns and the state either. Was this the intent? 24 states have passed right to work legislation, and Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker made history with legislation limiting the power of government unions. A brief history of collective bargaining for government workers suggests why the democrats and the left are terrified by Walker. At least two of the landmark government acts establishing unions in the public sector were executive orders. Given President Obama’s precedent setting use of executive orders and executive memoranda, think what a President Walker might do with the existing executive orders dating back to Nixon, regarding Federal workers and collective bargaining arrangements. Wisconsin is the home of AFSCME, and was the first state to pass a law allowing its public workers to unionize. How things have changed. The reality is collective bargaining in state and local governments created a gordian knot that must be cut, if authorities want to be able to get control of their budgets. The state cannot offshore its work, or move to a right to work state in the south, to cut costs. As the media tries to cover right to work laws negatively it is inadvertently showing how governors in democrat and republican states are able to cut that knot and get control of their budgets. Now, Minnesotans want to know why what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t happening in Minnesota. Minnesota Republicans seem content to play small ball; Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt is thrilled to act a peacemaker between warring democrat Governor Dayton and Senate Majority leader Bakk, and in the Senate, minority leader Nienow is thrilled to announce more spending for education than the Governor wants, which is saying something. Small Ball, indeed. Some might characterize it as small balls in fact. What should be advocated? What’s working in other states? Why are Minnesota’s Republicans unable to take a lesson from Wisconsin’s Republicans, who are having a better time of it. Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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