Mon Musings

Can it really have been since March 17...my last post, that is?  Wow!  Where does time go?
Sun's op-ed pages in the Oak Press were, as they say in the commercial, "priceless."  First, a letter-to-the-editor included this:  "Your editorials are normally boring and not woth reading, but when you do finally write about an issue of substance, you get it all wrong."  Boy, isn't that letter right on the money?

And two other op-ed pieces were noteworthy.  Walter Williams has been on fire lately, the last month or so.  His column this week had some relevant and realistic points, ones that are not always pleasant to confront.  He notes a number of things, including one of my favorite bogeymen, "fairness." He calls it "pain" or "harm," but it is the same thing.  To prevent harm to one person likely causes harm to another.  Rarely is there a "win-win situation."  A smoker who is prevented from "harming" a nonsmoker is, in fact, "harmed" himself.  Williams asks who is harmed more, a homeowner with a beautiful view out of his front window or a potential homeowner who wants to build a home across the street which would block the view and either builds or is prevented from doing so.  Here's one I've written about, in one context or another, many times.  "If it will save just one human life...."  That, to me, as Williams also points out, is like the concept of "fairness."  "If" what "will save just one human life?"  Of course, one of the most common targets are guns.  OK, but if saving "just one human life" is a goal, what about reducing the speed limit on expressways to 55?  That will save lives, more than banning guns will.  And, even without legislation, can't the "just one humann life" people voluntarily drive 55 mph?  What about, as Williams notes, banning airplane travel?  Lives again will be saved.  As usual, it's whose ox is being gored.  Are the lives not saved by lowering the speed limit not worth as much as the lives lost by shootings?  And, Williams also brings up the old "FDR's New Deal brought us out of the Depression."  He knows the New Deal likely lengthened and deepened the Depression, causing a great deal more anguish and poverty.  But our arrogant elitist media and hisorians perpetuate the myth that the New Deal and FDR were saviours.  That leads far too many people to demand of government, "Do something!"  No!  As the Wall Street Journal said of government a few years ago in the face of all this federal bailout and intervention business, "Don't do something.  Just stand there."  You can check out recent Grand Slams by Williams at his Web site.

And then, there's EJ Dionne.  I'm glad the Oak Press runs him every once in a while.  It's good to see he's always going to be the same.  This particular column concerns gun control and the NRA opposition to it.  Dionne cites NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  "The NRA's leaders...were interested in promoting a culture where people take the law into their own hands and face no consequences for it.  Let's call that by is real name: vigilantism."  Oh, boy!  So, are bar owners then to be assumed to favor drunk driving?  Gee, where was a Dionne column about the NRA and gun control a few months ago when a 9-month old baby was murdered by a stream of 40+ bullets fired into the baby's house?

I'm curious to see tomorrow AM's newspaper.  Will there be photos and stories of the protests at the U of M?  Will students and the "99%ers" be setting up shop aimed at the greed of the U of M?  Somehow I doubt it.  Big Oil, Wall Street, the bankers, and their ilk can be "greedy," but not the U of M.  U of M greed?  Yep...football tickets.  Can you imagine paying $95 to see a college football game?   Well, if you want to see the UM/MSU game next fall, start saving.  The average price for a Big Ten football ticket is now $65!  Gee, isn't that a bit greedy?  Nah, just like the local high school charging kids $1.50 for a bottle of water, when it can get a 24-pack for $3. 
I should mass e-mail this one, esp to those ObamaCare supporters. K and the secretaries now have HAP instead of MESSA, which the teachers still have. HAP is CRAP, as I say. K has been taking meds for migraines for a long time, 20 years or more. Now, some pencil-pusher at HAP said these meds won't be covered; she has to switch to another med. Let's see, the ones she's been taking have worked and worked well. As even HAP said over the phone, it's not known is the new meds will work or, if they do, as well. But, she must at least try them because HAP will only pay for the new ones, not the old ones that worked. So, like ObamaCare, K's medical decisions are not made by her or by her doctor, but by some bureaucrat. And who the heck has time to read the 2700-page ObamaCare law? Yep, I hope the ObamaCare supporters get crap like this thrown at them, and soon.

I got really upset last week over a newspaper article and a radio show that, both, seemed to blame the state's financial woes on teachers' (that is, my) retirement costs, "legacy costs" they call them. Oh, that grates me. I toyed with rifling off a nasty e-mail to each, but there's no doubt I wouldn't change their minds. First, they don't grouse when schools waste money on unneeded administrators.  Nor do they complain when schools build million-dollar athletic facilities, theaters, etc.--hey, these aren't professional athletes or Broadway stars; they're kids!!!!!! And do they whine about all the computers the schools have bought, most of which most of the time go unused? At any one time, for instance, at any high school, walk past a computer lab, with about 30 computers in each. None of the rooms is ever full and most of the time, 90% of the time!, there are half a dozen students in there.  Think of how many of the computers at the school I worked sat unused most of the time. Second, they didn't complain when their Republican buddies changed the retirement system back in the mid-90s so it wasn't self-sustaining, raiding it for money for their own pet projects. And they didn't gripe when we got little or no raises while private sector jobs where getting them, often hefty ones. We were promised good health insurance (and we got it) and a good retirement (which we have, but is in jeopardy). Third, I love their hypocrisy when it comes to the free market. "Let the free market work!" is their mantra. Well, they never let it work in education. (Of course, there are perhaps two roadblocks, administrators and the unions.) Why didn't they insist that I make more money than the architect down the street? (I use this example because of a three-way conversation about 25 or so years ago. This guy was making, I recall, $85,000 while I was getting about $40,000.  Another teacher said, "But we have great health insurance." Indeed, we did. But, I offered, "I tell you what. I will give him my health insurance and take his if he'll agree to trade salaries with me."  The other teacher wasn't ready to make that deal.  The architect was thinking about it.) Of course, they might argue that "Anyone can be a teacher" or "Not all teachers are good...." The first is blatantly ignorant and the second isn't my fault, but administrators' faults. If they really want "great teachers," then the "free market" would allow great teachers to be paid like lawyers, doctors, etc. (like in Finland, which they always cite as what should be the goal of our schools, but never finish the story on who gets to be teachers). At the least, I should have made more money than the guys they pay to do their taxes! I guess it's like everything else, whose ox is being gored. And, surely the state's financial mess must be tied to the auto plants, right? Sure, they say that, but blame the unions. Wait a minute! Who agreed to give the UAW all the ridiculous things it received? (Remember, the assembly line workers, with overtime, annually made two or three times as much as either of I did. They were given a $7000 bonus to ratify a contract that gave them $100,000 and a pension to retire, etc.) Oh, it was these same auto execs (making, "deserving" of course, their 7- and 8- figure salaries) who sold out the farm. Ah, but it's not their fault--it's ours!

Greed.  Fairness.  Value.  They are all pretty subjective terms, aren't they?