Wisconsin Ranger, Part II

Last week, I supported Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to impose modest benefit concessions on all public workers to avoid laying off thousands of them.  I have changed my mind; he should get rid of as many of them as possible.  

No, seriously - the fewer the better.

The public employees’ protests over the past few days have convinced me that we do not need to compensate our public sector employees reasonably; we need to keep as many of them as possible as far away as possible from doing anything that is remotely important. 

When the keynote speaker at a UWM rally on the importance of a union education sounds like a Valley Girl with Tourette’s Syndrome, I don’t want any of them teaching our kids – not at any price.  

If you have not seen the YouTube of that speech, I urge you to do so, just so you get a full appreciation for what your tax dollars are buying in the way of state-funded union education.  For all I know, she has an IQ with a comma in it, but her 14-plus years of union education have made her dumber than a box of hair. 

The only purpose of education is to prepare children to succeed as productive adult citizens.  Dropping F-bombs and rambling in incoherent thumb-language does not make you productive; it makes you a worthless parasite that will not survive a day on your own.   

To all of my friends who belong to public unions, I can only beg you to decertify before this gets any worse.  Save yourselves while there is time.  We don’t hate bus drivers, or road crews, or policemen, or social workers, or teachers; but every time you have a rally, your leaders give us another reason to start.  Pick anyone else and they will do better – here are a few tips to get started:

First of all, if you are going to make an appeal to our better nature, don’t start by calling us mentally retarded.  You don’t get very far talking to the boss like that.

Second, don’t expect much sympathy when you can’t even turn out 1,000 to rally on your own day off, but then you bus in tens of thousands on a workday when you are on the clock.  This does not impress us.      

Third, making school kids leave class to carry your picket signs at the Capitol was so stupid even that Tourette’s Valley Girl can’t string together enough “effin’s” to describe it.  The kids in China and India were too busy learning math today to carry signs for more teacher pay, and that is why they are kicking our asses.   

Fourth, if you have a better idea – check that, ANY idea - of how to close Wisconsin’s $3.3 billion budget deficit, then please, PLEASE, spell it out for us.  If not, then shut the “eff” up, to borrow a phrase from UWM’s YouTube Miss Congeniality.

I’ve been asking for two weeks to see Plan B – I will print it here if you will send it to me.  You guys are math teachers, economists, political science professors, and actuaries.  The public sector is your field, not ours; you have had about a dozen years to see this day coming, so let’s hear your plan to avoid default.  

Here’s the deal: a guy with about a month on the job put together a plan to fix the state’s budget gap.  You guys don’t like it, but with your millions of years of experience and tens of thousands of advanced university degrees you have no alternative to offer except to hold your breath and stomp your feet. 

And you expect that will make us side with you?  What kind of bubble do you live in where no plan beats a plan?  Where name-calling beats a respectful explanation of position?  Where you walk off some of the best-paying jobs in the state to complain about a benefit reform that leaves you twice as well-off as the people paying your compensation?  You work hard – we get that.  Everybody works hard; checkmate.  And you broke the cardinal rule when you went to the Walker residence - we're all done listening to you now.

So far, state employees’ unions have offered nothing but name-calling and threats, and Governor Walker is going to win this battle by default.  Not because his plan is brilliant, but because he has the only one out there.  State workers have offered no credible alternative, and the reservoir of good will they once enjoyed was poisoned forever with that stupid stunt in the Capitol. 

Those are our kids; the unions were very foolish to use them in that way.  And now it is the taxpayers’ turn to bargain collectively. 

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”  

P.S. from Dr. Tim.  Here is a link to the "Miss Congeniality" speech:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1582221884217