POWIP Piece of Work In Progress – Former Abode of Dan Collins

UW Prof in NYT: Scott Walker’s not Sen. McCarthy, but he’s a lot like him, really [UPDATED]

While social-welfare states all over the world are discovering that they're broke, Professor William Cronon (of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) takes to the pages of the NYT to tell us that if they're not quite anti-American, Scott Walker's activities have been anti-Wisconsinite.* Read the whole thing, but here's the kicker:

Scott Walker is not Joe McCarthy. Their political convictions and the two moments in history are quite different. But there is something about the style of the two men — their aggressiveness, their self-certainty, their seeming indifference to contrary views — that may help explain the extreme partisan reactions they triggered. McCarthy helped create the modern Democratic Party in Wisconsin by infuriating progressive Republicans, imagining that he could build a national platform by cultivating an image as a sternly uncompromising leader willing to attack anyone who stood in his way. Mr. Walker appears to be provoking some of the same ire from adversaries and from advocates of good government by acting with a similar contempt for those who disagree with him.

The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect. Joe McCarthy forgot these lessons of good government, and so, I fear, has Mr. Walker. Wisconsin’s citizens have not.

I don't know whether or not the good Professor bothered to read the news (as Bingley pointed out, suitably buried on A-19), also in the New York Times, that a Rosenberg co-conspirator fessed up to helping them pass along secrets to Soviet agents, for love of the USSR. Until now, he had maintained for all those years, just as the Rosenbergs did unto death, that he was framed. I am sure that you'll be right there helping to rehabilitate the reputations besmirched by leftist propaganda.

As I have chronicled on this blog, and others such as Steve Eggleston have, too, the behavior of the teachers unions in Wisconsin has been increasingly un-neighborly for many years. All of that reached a peak, in the wake of the Ament scandals, when the Democrats tried to force through union-favorable legislation in an extraordinary January lame-duck session--only the second ever in Wisconsin history--so that the incoming legislature would be hamstrung. To do so, they got an imprisoned Senator sprung from prison, and timed their vote to capitalize on the absence because of vacation of a Republican Senator. But every Republican Senator who could showed up to vote against the measure, rather than fleeing to neighborly Illinois to avoid having to vote, after far less floor time was permitted for debate.

The Mayor of Madison colluded to delay the publication of the Walker bill once it was passed, in order to gain more time for municipalities so disposed to cut their own deals with teachers unions. And some of them jumped at the chance, saying to recession-strapped taxpayers, some things are more important than our representing you. You can bet that all of those negotiations were open and transparent. The state's ethics board made a terrible but unanimous ruling that campaign funds could be used to pay for the expenses one racked up evading their responsibilities.

For all of the talk about excellence in education in Wisconsin, there are problems. They seem not to be getting the results that they have continuously promised would come with throwing more money at schools. They like to point to SAT scores, but as is demonstrated here, that's a red herring.

The bottom line is that Wisconsin is broke, and has to make hard decisions about how to dig itself out of the hole. There will be no federal bailout. As opposed to EEEEEEVIL CONSERVATIVE Scott Walker, Governor Moonbeam has given walking papers to 19,000 California teachers. I'm sure that was much more neighborly. Half of Detroit's public schools are shutting down, some of them probably in what remains of neighborhoods. A much better question is how did public servants become so damned greedy that they think that they are owed privileges that other workers--even federal workers--are not?

It hasn't worked out. The welfare state hasn't worked out. Try to get a clue about how neighborly it is to insist that other people spend their money on a failed system. For the children. And don't lecture us on civility, sir, when we see how wonderfully civil the apoplectic left is when they aren't given what they want.

That's what democracy looks like? Go to hell, you supercilious douchebag.

NB: Professor Cronon is different from Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, but remarkably very much the same, simultaneously.

* It's important for obvious reasons that he limit the consideration of "transparency" to Wisconsin. As we know, the teachers unions have been perfectly transparent concerning things like the health care gouging. Governor Doyle never hid a thing about his budgets, or the high-speed rail stuff, either.

More "transparency."

Tangentially related: Jerry Wilson recommends Palin supporters develop some Honey Badgerism regarding her critics.

UPDATE:

Source, via, via.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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