This Just In ...

Recommended Reading (03/27/11)

Posted by Kevin Fischer on March 27, 2011

Recommended reading

Here are, in my view, interesting, noteworthy columns and articles from the past week that I highly recommend (You will note that on occasion, I do not endorse the opinions of the author and may point that out. Despite my disagreements, I still feel the piece is worth a read).


Gov. Walker’s legislation has unions caving already

“With Walker’s legislation set to become law once it clears legal hurdles, the unions are suddenly coming to their senses. They are jumping at the chance to extend their collective bargaining agreements, in exchange for meaningful concessions that will help schools survive the financial crisis.”


A Retirement Tale

“Among Wisconsin public employees filing for retirement are Mary and Len Herricks, both teachers in Oshkosh. They put in their papers in mid-March after lawmakers voted to rein in most public-employee collective-bargaining rights.

‘Not only am I losing salary and benefits and facing a bigger work load, but now they are taking away my rights,’ says Ms. Herricks, a 56-year-old elementary school teacher. A teacher for 35 years who earns in the high 50s, Ms Herricks can now retire and collect nearly her former salary. ‘Retirement was supposed to be something happy. I'm so sad.’...

Let's run the numbers.”


Moms know government unions unfair

"Women busy juggling car pools, kids, and more often than not, jobs, may have tuned out the recent uproar in Wisconsin, when a dozen of the state's elected representatives absconded to avoid doing their jobs, and protestors stormed the state capitol to prevent legislation changing the rules for government-worker unions. Yet as these mothers learn more about how government-sector unions operate, they should recognize and recoil from the unfairness of what was business-as-usual in Wisconsin, and remains business-as-usual in too much of the country."


Kloppenburg and the left’s expectations

"It would be better for voters to judge on philosophy. Prosser's is plain: He believes in judicial restraint and sticking to the constitution. Kloppenburg speaks platitudinously of "independence," but beyond that what? She's got no judicial record, since she's never been a judge. She's instead been a litigator for the state on environmental law, chalking up notable victories against people who got permits to build houses on land that, unknown to them, the Department of Natural Resources had declared wetlands.

It's a legitimate living, but it gives us some insight, as does her support for publicly financed lawyers to help the poor sue others. That and the fact she's a regular donor to Democrats and never once to Republicans make it plain: Kloppenburg's a liberal."


ObamaCare’s biggest (freeloading) fan

“We do know that the administration is using him as a prop in order to promote Obama’s hugely unpopular health care law that just hit the one-year mark.”


Flunking the citizenship test

“Anyone who’s ever seen Jay Leno do one of his ‘Jaywalking’ segments on NBC, locating average Americans and asking them factual questions on street corners, knows there are far too many Americans who know next to nothing about just about everything. They can’t name our first president, or don’t even know what the phrase “founding fathers” means. Ask them to name our current vice president and watch the brain waves flatline.

Newsweek magazine recently announced its disgust after it offered the government’s official citizenship test (the one we require immigrants to pass before being naturalized) to 1,000 Americans. Thirty-eight percent of the sample failed. Newsweek worried in its headline: ‘The country's future is imperiled by our ignorance’.”


Parents need to step up in style wars

"We, I'm sorry to say, are scared to death," Meg Meeker, author of "The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers," says. "Mothers are afraid to follow our instincts. When our intuition tells us that our daughters really shouldn't leave the house scantily clad, we assuage our guilty conscience with cheap excuses such as 'we were young and wild once and we did OK, so they will too'."