Governor Scott Thompson of Wisconsin has set off huge demonstrations and blowback with his state budget cutbacks. There are throngs of state workers who object to his cuts in benefits, his anti-unionism, and especially his threat to call out the National Guard to disperse the crowd.
In Colorado, Governor John Hickenlooper has proposed similar cuts, but there’s not outrage, no demonstrations, nothing.
Both Thompson and Hickenlooper are radical right wingers who are afraid to challenge wealth, hold unions and workers in contempt, and are smitten by the anti-gubbmint neurosis so effectively marketed from 1980 forward.
Why is it that one encounters such resistance, the other not? Could it be that Thompson is a Republican, and Hickenlooper a Democrat?
Could it be that Democrats, as usual, are asleep at the wheel when a guy with a “D” after his name holds office?
Of course. Democrats are, after all, the problem.
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PS: Years ago, not too long after Bush took office, Karl Rove talked about building a “permanent Republican majority.” I scoffed a little bit, knowing Republican’s proclivity to self-destruct. Little did I understand back then that the road to that permanent majority was going to be through the Democratic Party. It’s easy to see looking backwards, however. Merely change the “R” to a “D”, put them in office, and they do your work for you while the base sleeps.
Piece of Mindful 
Really Mark, you don’t give the Dem’s enough credit.
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We all know that people who are employed by the government don’t work hard, and are stupid to boot. It’s odd, though, because I put five kids through school, and I really only remember one bad teacher, a religious nut. The rest were all pretty good, patient, mostly dedicated, and putting in longer hours than most because of the amount of work they had to do at home.
But that’s just my lying eyes again. You surely have the inside track on this one.
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… I really only remember one bad teacher, a religious nut.
Hey! I had district approval to do those animal sacrifices in class!
I’m glad you liked all the other teachers, but I imagine the Tokarski clan could have been educated to their station in life for less money: Jaycee Dugard educated her kids to grade level (Dugard was the California child kidnapped and raised in a parolee’s backyard).
Education spending is a bloated affair, but to suggest even a cut in the rise of spending sends the local Iman off to revoke my virgins in paradise. Where spending pays off the most is at the high end, in PhD research, and this gets the brutal end of the stick. Particle physics funding from the feds is a couple of hundred million. It makes me cry. But we need the money to pay for social services for illegal immigrants so Mark Tokarski can get his precious people of color to replace the native population. There are winners and losers here: you win, I lose.
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I remember a lot of mediocre people, because most of us are mediocre. Yes, “us.” Me too. There’s myth running around that talent is what separates us, when it is really passion. And what drives a person to accept a low-paying job loaded with under-performers distracted by popular culture whose parents are, like you, convinced that the schools are the problems when it is the homes?
I cannot think of a less rewarding career than teaching, save perhaps a visible role in the forest service or some such magnet for right wing nuts to bash and threaten. But these people are drawn to it, they do it, and they are somehow rewarded for it – I’m not talking about the money, because it ain’t the money. Your attitude makes me sick.
All that said, schools are by design worker factories, with the bells, the punching in and out, the memorization of dates and teaching to tests. That’s not teachers that make it so, but rather parents who fear that their kids will be “indoctrinated” while they are being indoctrinated. Our schools turn out kids that are so clueless that they voluntarily go and fight our lie-based wars, so devoid are they of critical thinking skills. And that is a large part of the problem with schools – our society does not want people who can think.
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Your attitude makes me sick.
I trust you keep a barf bag handy.
There’s myth running around that talent is what separates us…
Myth?
like you, convinced that the schools are the problem
You misunderstand me. I’m not saying schools are the problem, I’m saying schools are overrated. If Jaycee Dugard could educate her kids to grade level, we could probably get the same society wide educational result we do now with less resources. We’ve tripled our spending per pupil since 19__ and standardized test scores have gone down.
I cannot think of a less rewarding career than teaching
Let’s not pile it on so thick.
Our schools turn out kids that are so clueless that they voluntarily go and fight our lie-based wars
You mean such lie based wars such as the war on poverty, the war for diversity, the war for left-wing political correctness, the war for the mainstreaming of homosexuality/feminized males? That war?
And that is a large part of the problem with schools – our society does not want people who can think.
There you go blaming the schools. Grab the bag.
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It’s one of those arguments where there is plenty of wrong to go around. It’s been so long now that teachers are products of the system they promote. The idea that kids have to punch in and all read the same books and salute the flag is regimentation, originally designed to produce factory workers.
That’s an aside. It’s about unions. They are still a public good.
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1) I disagree with your characterization of schools as “factory work”, but what is so wrong with factory work anyway, if we can use it to make more in less time? (And use the saved time to better our lives.)
2) Public unions are problematic, what with the tendency of elected officials to reward their supporters, etc.
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Let’s be precise: The current model for American education came about as a result of the industrial revolution. We needed factory workers, and did not want kids who were overly curious or critical in their thinking. Such people make bad employees.
I was being precise. I have no problem with honest work of any kind, and realize that most people cannot think for themselves no matter what.
We have public unions because governments are just like corporations – given a chance, they will bear down on employees and exploit the daylights out of them.
The tendency of elected officials to reward supporters is offset by tenure and unions, where workers cannot be fired and replaced at political whim. So the rewarding that goes on is in high-level patronage and the revolving door where people who serve corporate interests are rewarded with corporate support while in office and corporate jobs after leaving office.
That is what ought to trouble you.
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the rewarding that goes on is in high-level patronage
You’re probably thinking here of the Al Gore level of politics, where we do need that cohort to resist craven corporatism to some extent.
I’m concerned more with the lower levels: city, county, lower federal, where GS 15s can be good guys by maxing out grade and step advancements each year despite performance. How can such resist any union pressure? Elected mayors or city managers don’t “bear down on employees and exploit the daylights out of them”: they’re spending other peoples money. One more degree of separation by putting a union in there just turbo-charges the ramp up. We’ve got modest sized California cities paying safety officers $300,000 a year, and almost their entire budgets go for wages, little for physical improvements.
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Another wacky right wing notion is that government does not produce anything. Production of goods and services is a dynamic where government and the private sector support one another.
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Thousands of state-supported communists gathered in Madison, Wisconsin, on Thursday, protesting a bill that would strip teachers and other public loafers of most of their collective bargaining rights and increase their contributions for benefits.
Demonstrators spilled into the state’s Capitol building, chanting, “We are leeches!” and “Give us blood!” voicing their opposition to the bill.
–CNN (Alternate Stream)
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Where’s the civility?
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I was at this rally. When they found out I was a conservative, I was raped by a mob.
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