"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Lord Acton)

.....I'm really getting depressed.  Depressed and confused. It seems that all of the protesters over there are driving their dictators to seek succor over here.  Take one of them for example: Gov. Walker of Wisconsin.  I'm not actually claiming that he's come from over there--just that he has apparently studied and learned from them. And he's learned that they don't cotton to unions.  So, he's not governing in Wisconsin-- he's dictating--or at least trying to with the help of his misguided, tea partyish, imbecilic, Republican robotic legislature.  Or perhaps Walker wants to morph into a Royal Family and pontificate from his palace; or perhaps he'd prefer, rather, to Pontificate as a Pontiff.  Is there doubt that his primary aim is to use his power and his supporters to bust the unions in his state? It's the story once again of the Emperor's New Clothes.  He's naked (not nude; nude is too elegant a word for him).  Well, go ahead all of you anti-union people out there.  Tell me how wrong I am and how right he is.  But, hear you this; if the protests grow significantly, he will not hesitate, (like his idols in Arabia) to call in the National Guard.  And claim (as I've heard it said) that "...this is what America wants"!  To believe this requires suspending some of our critical thinking faculties and succumbing instead to the kind of irrationality that drives the logically minded crazy.

.....I'm still a member of a union--the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).  I started teaching at $3000 a year with two mouths to feed, and if you count my wife--three.  Oh, and mine also; that makes four.  And, of course, I needed a car to get to work; so I borrowed to pay for it.  During my second year at the high school in Cranford, NJ, I was asked by my colleagues to speak for them to the Board regarding a raise in salary.  So, I did.  So, I got fired.  So, I wound up in Sea Cliff where, if it were not for a strong union with collective bargaining rights, I might still be working, or perhaps holding a cardboard sign at the entrance to the Turnpike, saying "Hungry. Will work for food."  Instead, my union assured me of a pension that I could live with when I retired.  Of course, I contributed toward my pension as I should have--but so did the Board, and so did the parents in the community, as they should have, to entice good teachers to work and stay in their schools.  It could not have been done without collective bargaining rights.  Gov. Walker wants to eliminate that right of public employees.  And have his rich buddies pay them Chinese factory workers' wages.  No, no, not dictator, not King, not Pope--but Emperor is his short term goal.  Don't even think about his long term plan.