Since Governor Scott Walker signed the Budget Reform Bill, limiting collective bargaining for state employees to wages only on March 11, Wisconsin school districts and cities have been rescuing their budgets.  No longer, for example, were the districts forced to purchase health insurance from the teachers' union insurance company (WEA Trust Insurance) at exorbitant rates.  The savings have been substantial (all figures and quotes compiled from local news reports):

Ashland  School District - saved $378,000 on health insurance.

Kimberly School District - saved $821,000 by dropping WEA Trust Insurance.

Edgerton School District - dropping WEA Trust, expecting to save at least $500,000.

Pittsville - will see a 9%  decrease in the school portion of their property tax levy. "This is the first  year we have not needed to short-term borrow," stated Board President  Strenn.

Appleton School District - will save $3.1 million just in health  insurance costs due to being able to bid out the coverage and being able to  drop WEA Trust.

Have you noticed that many in the political class are absolutely shameless in trying to protect themselves and their colleagues from legitimate inquiry into their activities? For instance, Congress has passed a number of whistle-blower statutes, including the "financial-reform bill," to protect government and private-sector employees from retaliation when reporting the misdeeds of their superiors. Yet, the staff of members of Congress - precisely the people who are most likely to know about political corruption - enjoy no such protection.

Congress, under the guise of "campaign-finance reform," has repeatedly tried to find constitutional ways of limiting the free speech of real and potential opponents. What is even more remarkable, some members of Congress are not content with just trying to protect themselves, but have gone so far as to try to protect corrupt foreign leaders from those who may wish to expose their wrongdoing.

The product of a long -term relentless indoctrination in the progressive radical school, President Obama has never varied from his life mission.

Yes, a portion of Americans absorbed the staccato of the "One" , the chant of "change we can believe in" and the seduction of the healer. Many simply "wanted" to believe in something that never existed. It was a mirage. An imagery and technique right out the text book of tyrants from across the ages.

However the truth was always there for all to see. The only surprise is they didn't.

Now as the Obama Presidency is in free fall, the gesture and notions of accommodation are being fully discarded. Now the creation of imagined enemies and emasculation of the virtues that made this country great be it free enterprise, individual rights, or capitalism are laid out as evil in the quest for that fool's gold of the left:  "fairness".

This twisted logic is at the fraudulent core of the soul of socialism. It is a primary mover of their mania and a mantra which overshadows each act.

Wasn't that just the greatest State of the Union speech ever?  All that pent-up expectation that Zero was going to channel Bill Clinton as The Comeback Kid pivoting off the humiliation of facing a newly-elected Republican Majority to join them in declaring "The era of big government is over" - well, he certainly burst that balloon, didn't he?

What a turkey of a talk - so bad it may be right up there with Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech.  It's being ridiculed as his Sputnik Speech for his stupid "Sputnik moment" shtick, and his WTF Speech for his witless "Winning The Future" slogan that deserved the acronym everyone knows has another meaning.

The HFR prefers to entitle Zero's 2011 SOTU - in honor of his paean to "solar shingles" as an example of "tomorrow's energy" as opposed to "yesterday's energy" of filthy hydrocarbons - as his Solar On A Shingle Speech.

Even better, he phoned it in.  It was a going-through-the-motions, desultory, listless performance with no fire.  "I struggled to keep my eyes open, Jack," one Congressman told me.  "He droned on and on, blathering about what he wants when he knows there's not the slightest chance we'll vote it.  He even said he wants us to revive the dead DREAM Act!  What a space cadet... we're all calling him President Sputnik now."

A sweetheart deal between a corrupt French president and Saudi Arabia has hurt the U.S. defense industry.

Former French President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) is almost certain to be accused of overcharging Saudi Arabia for French military equipment. The Saudis overpaid for 100 French military helicopters through a deal worked out by a Saudi fixer, Khalid Bugshan of the Bugshan Group. The overpayments apparently were spread liberally to French politicians.

The trial is likely to provide at least a partial open window to some of the corrupt practices in international arms dealings. Khalid Bugshan and his group had their agreement with the French, and their contacts included French government officials and some in the inner circle of the Saudi ruling family. One of the interesting questions is: “How much did the Saudi ruling family know about the overpricing - or was Bugshan primarily running a rogue operation?”

If the Saudi royal family knew, were they doing it to purchase political influence and/or tilt French foreign policy?

The presidential debates are looking more like symptoms of our problems than they do like part of the solution. Maximum style, minimum substance. Focus on sizzle, forget about the steak.

These events are supposed to be about quality information, raising the bar, and producing a thoughtful, informed electorate. But they are being produced to provide entertainment, and we are barely getting that.

Technology doesn't take the place of substance. YouTube and real-time polling are not substitutes for thoughtful, provocative questioning.

Can it really be, after all the heat he has taken on Social Security, that Rick Perry was not pushed on how specifically how he would reform it?  Can it be, as expert after expert has laid out the long list of failures of Romneycare in Massachusetts and its unquestionable similarities to Obamacare, that Mitt Romney was not called out on his sidestepping and denials?

Can it be that, on a day (9/20) where the stock market in our country dropped 3.5 percent and in China by 5 percent, that candidates were not asked what they think is wrong with the global economy?

We begin with an important announcement:

The dates of the Vegas Rendezvous are Friday, May 6 to Sunday, May 8.

Miko is nailing down the best hotel - although he says he'd like to know if you prefer one Downtown (less expensive) or on/near The Strip.  Let him know at miko@tothepointnews.com.

We'll have details soon.  But we wanted you to know the dates so you could begin planning.  See you in Vegas!

*  *  *  *  *
There's little doubt about who is the HFR Hero of the Week, right?  Who else but Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, along with all 174 members of the Republican Study Committee, "the caucus of conservatives" in the House, proposing budget cuts of $2.5 trillion.

They are going to teach Americans a civics lesson that will be the most memorable in modern history.

This is the lesson of the great legislative asymmetricality enshrined in the Constitution only rarely taught.  Finally, this supreme example of the genius of the Founders will be learned, to the enormous benefit of America and to the utter anguish of the Left.

Last week, it was reported that the sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico seem to have weathered the oil spill without much problem. But they are still unnecessarily endangered.  In fact, they always will be, because of people behaving like juveniles who have a hard time understanding the consequences of their actions.

During the past several months, we have seen much of the political class in Washington increasingly act like juveniles, making the rest of us suffer. But first, let's go back to the turtle.

Why are sea turtles endangered, while chickens and cows are not? The answer, quite simply, is that chickens and cows are privately owned and turtles are not - thus they suffer from "the tragedy of the commons."

When things are owned in common - socialism - no person takes responsibility for protecting the property, and thus it most often ends up being neglected or even destroyed - hence the fate of the sea turtle.

In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Guns of August," Barbara Tuchman chronicles how a cascading series of seemingly minor developments led inexorably to World War I and the worst carnage known to man up to that time. In the future, historians may point to the present "Diplomacy of September" as the catalyst for the next horrific conflict now in the offing in the Middle East, and potentially beyond.

Specifically, this means three agenda items slated to take place in the United Nations or on the margins of its meetings in coming days.  Combined, their synergy could lead to a horrific war.

Whoa.  Let's hope the rest of 2011's weeks aren't as intense as this one.  Here's one key focus.  Remember two weeks ago (12/31/10), the HFR predicted that 2011 would see Black Swans of the Right?

That "black swan" game-changing events out of the blue precipitating a crisis, which the left specializes in using to expand government power, would now turn in our favor instead?

That's what happened when the Loughner Left jumped the shark with the Arizona Massacre.  The very term "Loughner Left" has gone viral on the Web.  The label I gave the Enemedia on Tuesday (01/11) has stuck and quickly. 

What didn't stick is the Enemedia's grotesque attempt to blame the Arizona Massacre on Sarah Palin, the Tea Parties, and all conservatives in general.  The great majority of Americans laughed at the accusation - and so did John Boehner and the Republicans in Congress.

Thus Boehner & Cantor are proceeding with the straight up-and-down vote on HR 2, to take place next Tuesday (1/18).  They even shrugged at the Dems' demand they change the bill's name due to it's "violent" rhetoric.  It remains entitled: Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.

Note the word:  repealing.  As we saw in Making Boehner's Bones, Boehner intends to repeal ObamaCare outright, not just defund it piecemeal.

Where is the historical evidence to show that big increases in government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) lead to faster economic growth and more job creation? Answer: There isn't any.

Compare the first four quarters after the bottom of the recession in 1982 that resulted in an average quarterly growth rate of 7.8 percent, versus an average quarterly growth rate of just 3.2 percent in the first four quarters after the bottom of the 2009 recession.

In addition, unemployment fell sharply - 2 percent under the Reagan tax-rate-cut solution in 1982-83 versus no drop under President Obama's greatly increased government spending "solution" - in the first four quarters of the recovery from the bottom of each recession. Tax rate cuts trump government spending increases.

Tell this to those who want even more spending, such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and you'll get Krugman's silly rebuttal: