A few short blurbs that deserve expansion, but were pulled from the "drafts" file and posted anyway...
As a Catholic I am usually pegged as being a single-issue voter. It is usually assumed by people I talk with that I will blindly pick whichever candidate advertised themselves as being the "most pro-life/anti-abortion" candidate. Perhaps this was the case years ago, but even now I would feel myself tugged to vote the same way. My choice now, however, would be the result of careful thought and study about what would ultimately be at stake. Respect for each individual life is what acts as the basis for the validation of all of other rights. Without such a fundamental respect for life nothing else really matters.
Addendum: To make this more current, I'm glad to see plans to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Some will probably cry out about "all the good" they do aside from abortions and that no federal dollars were ever spent on abortions, but that doesn't change the fact that it is basically a eugenics program whose founder espoused some extremely vile ideas. If people want such an organization to survive it will have to do so without federal help.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
To Madison's Protesters:
Blind devotion to an ideology is never a good thing; no matter what side a person is following. Man clearly has an advantage in being able to fall back on reason and most times a degree of rationality to solve problems and develop ideas. Blind devotion, however, utilizes neither and we run the risk of being controlled by any somewhat-compelling voice that comes along. If you really believe in something, know what it is you are believing in and be able to defend it without resorting to just being able to out-shout the other party.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Potential walk-on role in an Althouse video
While jogging around the capitol today I happened to notice Meade and Ann Althouse taking video of and conversing with protesters. I didn't stop long enough to interrupt their conversation, but I might show up as "that guy in the background" in some of their footage later.
Awards won too soon
So now that Obama is embracing even more of the Bush Doctrine does he have to give up his Nobel Peace Prize or does the committee just have to award one to Bush as well?
This is a great time for the anti-war crowd to show that they really meant it and weren't just another anti-Bush group of people. I was personally not a fan of the most recent President Bush, but I like hypocrisy even less.
This is a great time for the anti-war crowd to show that they really meant it and weren't just another anti-Bush group of people. I was personally not a fan of the most recent President Bush, but I like hypocrisy even less.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Old News in Wisconsin
Getting back into this, forgive me if i ramble...
Going into the fourth or fifth week of protests against Governor Scott Walker and his endeavors to limit the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions here in Wisconsin. As a resident of Madison I must be excited to be right in the thick of things, right? Quite the opposite. I can certainly get fired up about this issue, but outside of altering my running route to avoid throngs of people chanting the same tired slogans they came up with on day one I haven't been too concerned. My attitude essentially stems from disappointment in representatives of both sides of this issue. Governor Walker didn't make the right or strong enough case for his position early on, and the protesters show a real lack of understanding in what they are really doing.
Governor Walker should have done a better job explaining how collective bargaining works for public employees and how it is fundamentally different from what goes on with unions in the private sector. In the private sector, the unions sit down at the bargaining table with management and negotiate over how to share corporate profits. The unions represent the employees and management represents the board of directors and shareholders of the company (two groups almost certainly to be at odds). In the public sector, the unions sit down with legislators and negotiate over apportionments of tax revenue. The elected officials, more often than not, were put in office with the help of union backing so when it comes to negotiating both sides are really already on the same side. Also, neither side is negotiating with their own money and by the time real bills come due the politician probably won't be in office anymore to answer for misusing the people's money. The only time the tax payer is really represented is when a majority of the legislators are not buddies with the unions.
The protesters themselves don't seem to understand this and have, in numerous ways, really begun to annoy me:
1. Chants of "this is what democracy looks like." Democracy also looks like legitimate elections. This goes along with the mindset of majority rules which I've noticed is really only popular if you're in the majority. Elections have consequences, people. I hate to be bitter, but democrats stayed home or switched back to republican and now you should just wait for the next election to fix it. Recall efforts for everyone eligible now just make it seem like the first election had no real meaning. Is this even a recall-worthy offense? Even the very pro-union FDR didn't think union rights extended to public employees.
2. The outright hypocrisy of Democrats complaining about how the Republicans are handling the issue. It's the exact same thing that democrats did when they held majorities after the 2008 elections. And don't forget Doyle trying to "ram things through" while he still had power in the state.
3. Private sector unions joining in. You are different. You are, in my mind, hurting your already tenuous standing by mixing with this. Especially when you bus people in from out of state. It's your right to assemble, but it seems silly to me.
4. Class warfare. If you really wanted to bring up class warfare you would find the public employees, who have it pretty nice, on the "bad guy" side of the aisle pretty quickly. i.e. more hypocrisy. By association...the fascination with/hatred of the Koch brothers. The public employee's retirement fund owns Koch industries bonds. Shouldn't you want them to do well so they can keep paying on those bonds? Utter hypocrisy. Another, though distant, example. Union retirement funds are also some of the largest holders of blocks of Walmart and Exxon stock. Lambast the hand that will feed you when you don't feel like working to feed yourself any longer. sigh.
5. How they've treated the building and surrounding areas around the capitol. Seriously, the ground is shit now and much of it will probably have to have new sod put down. The rotunda was covered with signs. Stuck on walls with the wrong type of tape and needing to be scraped off. War memorials were covered with protest crap (disgraceful).
6. This will be the end of this list for now and speaks to part of the ideology of the protesters, especially the teachers who have become the focus of all this hubbub. It's not really "for the children" just admit it. Although, I am thinking of using that as my ideologically ambiguous protest sign for when I march around the capitol.
A parting question to public employees (mostly the teachers because they made it all about themselves, not public employees in general over the last few weeks) because it's late and I do have to work tomorrow: Do you really think so little of the services you provide that you must force people to buy them through government mandates and subsidies? If they insist on being paid more why not let the market decide? To be very hard and logical we don't really know the value of a school teacher because no true market exists. Once that is actually established I bet teachers especially would be compensated a lot better.
If this whole debacle opens up some real discourse on education reform it will have been worth it.
Going into the fourth or fifth week of protests against Governor Scott Walker and his endeavors to limit the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions here in Wisconsin. As a resident of Madison I must be excited to be right in the thick of things, right? Quite the opposite. I can certainly get fired up about this issue, but outside of altering my running route to avoid throngs of people chanting the same tired slogans they came up with on day one I haven't been too concerned. My attitude essentially stems from disappointment in representatives of both sides of this issue. Governor Walker didn't make the right or strong enough case for his position early on, and the protesters show a real lack of understanding in what they are really doing.
Governor Walker should have done a better job explaining how collective bargaining works for public employees and how it is fundamentally different from what goes on with unions in the private sector. In the private sector, the unions sit down at the bargaining table with management and negotiate over how to share corporate profits. The unions represent the employees and management represents the board of directors and shareholders of the company (two groups almost certainly to be at odds). In the public sector, the unions sit down with legislators and negotiate over apportionments of tax revenue. The elected officials, more often than not, were put in office with the help of union backing so when it comes to negotiating both sides are really already on the same side. Also, neither side is negotiating with their own money and by the time real bills come due the politician probably won't be in office anymore to answer for misusing the people's money. The only time the tax payer is really represented is when a majority of the legislators are not buddies with the unions.
The protesters themselves don't seem to understand this and have, in numerous ways, really begun to annoy me:
1. Chants of "this is what democracy looks like." Democracy also looks like legitimate elections. This goes along with the mindset of majority rules which I've noticed is really only popular if you're in the majority. Elections have consequences, people. I hate to be bitter, but democrats stayed home or switched back to republican and now you should just wait for the next election to fix it. Recall efforts for everyone eligible now just make it seem like the first election had no real meaning. Is this even a recall-worthy offense? Even the very pro-union FDR didn't think union rights extended to public employees.
2. The outright hypocrisy of Democrats complaining about how the Republicans are handling the issue. It's the exact same thing that democrats did when they held majorities after the 2008 elections. And don't forget Doyle trying to "ram things through" while he still had power in the state.
3. Private sector unions joining in. You are different. You are, in my mind, hurting your already tenuous standing by mixing with this. Especially when you bus people in from out of state. It's your right to assemble, but it seems silly to me.
4. Class warfare. If you really wanted to bring up class warfare you would find the public employees, who have it pretty nice, on the "bad guy" side of the aisle pretty quickly. i.e. more hypocrisy. By association...the fascination with/hatred of the Koch brothers. The public employee's retirement fund owns Koch industries bonds. Shouldn't you want them to do well so they can keep paying on those bonds? Utter hypocrisy. Another, though distant, example. Union retirement funds are also some of the largest holders of blocks of Walmart and Exxon stock. Lambast the hand that will feed you when you don't feel like working to feed yourself any longer. sigh.
5. How they've treated the building and surrounding areas around the capitol. Seriously, the ground is shit now and much of it will probably have to have new sod put down. The rotunda was covered with signs. Stuck on walls with the wrong type of tape and needing to be scraped off. War memorials were covered with protest crap (disgraceful).
6. This will be the end of this list for now and speaks to part of the ideology of the protesters, especially the teachers who have become the focus of all this hubbub. It's not really "for the children" just admit it. Although, I am thinking of using that as my ideologically ambiguous protest sign for when I march around the capitol.
A parting question to public employees (mostly the teachers because they made it all about themselves, not public employees in general over the last few weeks) because it's late and I do have to work tomorrow: Do you really think so little of the services you provide that you must force people to buy them through government mandates and subsidies? If they insist on being paid more why not let the market decide? To be very hard and logical we don't really know the value of a school teacher because no true market exists. Once that is actually established I bet teachers especially would be compensated a lot better.
If this whole debacle opens up some real discourse on education reform it will have been worth it.
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