Posted by
William D. Dannenmaier on Monday, February 21, 2011 9:55:03 AM
Among my birthday presents from Sheila – which I have begun to use a bit early, is “Barbarians Inside The Gates” by Thomas Sowell. I began reading the darned thing when I couldn’t find the murder mystery that I was re-reading at the time. It was horrible! The darned book is a collection of short, witty, thoughtful essays on a wide variety of subjects including our society, politics, the economy, judges, education and racial topics. Sheila – and Dr. Sowell – have disrupted my pleasant easy slide into thoughtless senility. I have trouble putting the book down. Now half way through, I have encountered only one essay that I considered mediocre. Dr. Sowell begins by tracing, and documenting, his slide from being a Marxist to Conservative. He uses facts and reasoning to destroy one liberal shibboleth after another. I highly recommend it. There is, of course, that danger that has happened to me if you read it. Dr. Sowell is, obviously, a brilliant man. His humorous, fact-filled, attacks on liberalism and government control may make you think, which is something most of us prefer to avoid.
Essays I’ve read on the boondoggle in Wisconsin have been interesting. No wonder the teachers of Madison are on strike. Who can live on a guaranteed average income, including salary and benefits, of a hundred thousand dollars for nine months of occasional work? After all, consider how successful they are. Approximately 45% of the students graduate from high school (approximately 35% of blacks) and, possibly, many of those can read and write. The state government should be ashamed of asking teachers to help pay for their own health and retirement benefits. President Obama, Pelosi, Jesse Jackson and the Democrats in the State Senate are all supporting the strikers and protestors. They are even bussing people in from other states to protest. Why should a governor elected promising to restore fiscal sanity do what he promised to do before the election? Few of them do. If all else fails, bring in the SEIU thugs, bring on mob rule. Anything is better than an honest politician permitting people to have what they voted for.
When running as the Republican candidate for the Presidency, Mr. Reagan said that he had always been a Democrat, but that the Democratic Party had abandoned their principles and deserted him, he had kept his principles as a Republican. I have always believed that the Democratic leadership had deserted the people, working for their own selfish interests, and that friends of mine who voted Democrat were voting for their memories and wishes, not their reality. This was brought to mind by a recent article in “OregonLive.Com” (February 19, 2011). Congressman Wu, of Oregon, while running for re-election, was behaving very oddly at times, in public as well as in private with his aides. His behavior worried his staff members who advised him to seek psychiatric help. He refused. Several of them, who later resigned, urged him to seek help for his emotional problems. He refused. In short, Democratic Party leaders knew that one of their Congressmen was increasingly suffering from emotional problems, which had reportedly occurred on occasion during his tenure in the House, but they were content to have an emotionally ill person remain on the ballot, represent the people of Oregon and help determine laws for the nation as a whole. The value to them? Another Democrat in the House, doing as Pelosi told. The public be damned.
Returning to the Wisconsin mess, I have several questions that I have not seen addressed in any reports. First, will the Senators who left the state and refuse to return be paid for the time they are refusing to work? My second question arises from all the articles I’ve read on how much the “rich” business leaders are being paid. I have never seen a report concerning how much union leaders are being paid in salaries and benefits. I would like to know. This seems particularly important in Wisconsin where public employees, teachers included, are required to join unions. One article I read said that if teachers did not have to pay union dues their paychecks would actually be higher even after the proposed health and retirement benefit charges were deducted from their salaries. The union bosses must be doing very well indeed. No wonder they are fighting so hard to avoid passage of a bill which would make union membership voluntary. Those union bosses would have much less money for their own salaries and benefits.