"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Madison Update - Somewhat Idiosyncratic Notes from the Right Curmudgeon

Apparently the camp-out in the Capitol has returned, with protestors spending the night in the rotunda.   Three items of interest to me that suggest how nuts the Left is on this issue.  

First, apparently driving back from Illinois, a Democrat State Senator, Chris Larson said Wednesday night regarding the limitations on public employee collective bargaining, "If they decide to kill the middle class, it's on them."   How exactly does limiting the rights of public employees to collectively bargain for health and pension benefits "kill" the middle class?   I know a lot of middle-class people (I am one), and nearly all of them can't collectively bargain for health and pension benefits at their jobs, and most will still be paying substantially more for health and pension benefits than Wisconsin public employees will under Walker's bill.   (In my case, I pay 100% of each; I don't feel like I'm being "killed" by this.)   Do they really think this kind of transparent hyperbole helps their case?  

Second, another Democrat State Senator, Mark Miller, the Minority Leader, talking about the possibility of recalling Republican legislators, stated ""The people I don't think knew what they were getting when they voted last November, so there will be a do-over."    Wow.... I don't remember President Obama running on a platform of nationalizing health care.   Do we get a "do-over"?   No, and you haven't heard any Republicans talking about a "do-over."   "Do-overs" are for children.

Third, there was this picture of protestors last night.



As they say in academia, let's deconstruct this picture.   Do any of these protestors look like union members?  Like public school teachers?   Not to me.... to me, they look like college students or graduate students or some of the assorted lefty hangers-on that live around college campuses, the types that work at pizza parlors or Kinko's or have a gig as a research assistant for some sociology professor.   And look at the guy on the left.   He's holding a sign saying "Stop the Attack on Wisconsin's Families."   But he's also got a girl lying in his lap.    It's a fair bet, unless these layabouts are paying a babysitter, that they don't have any children, and I'd bet 1000 to 1 they aren't married.   (As I've noted before, left-wing demonstrations from the Sixties onward have often been about meeting girls, and this one has been no exception.)  

So whose "family" are they saying is being attacked?   Not theirs.   And it's a fair bet that they don't give a damn about my family with my three children, for whom I'm saving desperately to send them to college, having to pay higher taxes so that public employees can keep their pensions and free health care and retire at 55.    They literally don't even consider the question of who pays for all the things that they want, because, quite obviously, they don't.  

Wouldn't you be surprised, looking at this motley crew, whether any of them are paying an income tax at all?  

UPDATE:

Protestors were finally forcibly removed from the Capitol this morning.   Here is a photo of some of them: 


Again, do any of these kids look like they're members of a public employees' union?  Do they look like they have jobs?   Nope.  Didn't think so.  

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