Washington State: Senior Moment
Wow, they must be really pulling out all the stops in Washington State. My dad, a former Marxist, SDS member, president of the local chapter of College Democrats, and all around lefty who has, under my influence, converted to the Neo-Conservative faith (I’m working on getting him to start reading some libertarian-type stuff) just got a call from one of his old commie pals from 40 years ago, trying to convince him to take a bus to Madison and “fight the system” or some such nonsense. Dad, being the good neo-con that he is, calmly explained to his old buddy, who seems to have never realized that once you reach Social Security age you are irrevocably part of “the system” no matter how radical your politics, that he hoped Governor Walker would call out the National Guard and clear the streets with, as Napoleon might say, “a whiff of grapeshot”. I can say that I don’t entirely disagree.
But the point is, if Organizing for America and the unions are canvassing the decrepit precincts of the left for hoary old radicals, greying long-hairs, and ex-hippies turned loafer-wearing retirees this fight over collective bargaining must be a big deal.
For my part I think the entire debate is totally disingenuous for two very good reasons: Firstly the Budget Repair Bill, as it’s clumsily called, limits collective bargaining to increases in public employee pay over and above current levels plus inflation. In other words the outrageously large salaries of incompetent public school teachers will stay just as outrageous in real terms. They simply can’t negotiate for even higher pay or for any of those charming little fringe benefits that are slowly bleeding the tax-paying public white.
Hell, for 50,000 a year, the average salary of a teacher in Wisconsin (including benefits its closer to 80,000), I’d be delighted to crank out class after class of semi-literate rug-rats every year. And while Wisconsin has lavished money on it’s school system over the past few decades, student performance has remained lacklusterly flat.
But the second thing that makes this fight so unbelievable to me is that THIS IS WISCONSIN. Wisconsin, the home of Progressivism, Liberal-Republicanism, and Scandinavian political neurosis. How long will it be before the Democrats, or some big-government Republican, take the state over again and scrap the law? Does anyone honestly think that repealing the ban on collective bargaining will not be priority number one for Democrats the millisecond they retake the Wisconsin Assembly and Governorship?
So, to review, the Dems and the unions have turned Madison into Kent State for what, about two weeks now, so that teachers and public sector bureaucrats can collectively bargain for even larger salaries for another 8 years. Amazing.
