CSotD: Ich bin ein Käsekopf.
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One of those rare two-fers, in part because I don't think this general topic is going away soon but I don't want to turn into a one-issue blog, and in part because, while I like both cartoons, they feature different but critical takes on the issue.
At the top, Clay Jones goes after the alleged "financial crisis" that sparked this move. Wisconsin may be broke, but it didn't stop Walker from putting in place a major tax break for his chums. In the clip below, Rachel Maddow goes into more detail about the phoney baloney excuse, but meanwhile I think it's important to note that Walker and his cronies are working to destroy American faith in the middle class and working class, to undermine their trust in each other, by spreading the notion that other people's work is not valuable and that they are leeches collecting a paycheck for nothing.
It is amazing what people will believe. I do understand why, if you've never taught, that 180-day schedule may look soft. If you don't realize what hours teachers put in during the school year, correcting papers and preparing for class, not just on the five working days but on the weekend when you're kicking back, as well as the paperwork and prep work they do during those vacation periods, and if you have never experienced the stress of doing "eight shows a day" in the classroom, it honestly is understandable to think that teaching is a pretty easy gig. Fair enough.
But teachers aren't the only ones being accused of sloughing off. I only did construction-type work for one summer, and it was simple maintenance at a summer camp when I was 16. But you don't have to do very much of that sort of thing to understand that there are very few road repairs or similar jobs in which every member of the crew is simultaneously working. Even when the Irish and Chinese were laying track in the 19th century, there were drillers and there were diggers and there were blasters and they didn't all work at once.
Yet people who want to believe the worst of each other will drive by a construction project and see a couple of pipe fitters waiting for the pipes to be uncovered so they can fit them, and be outraged because "they aren't working." And the Scott Walkers and other Fat Cat Allies want to exploit that empty-headed hostility to help paint public sector employees as parasites.
Which brings us to Tony Auth's cartoon. Besides "the financial crisis is forcing us to do this," the other Big Lie* in this crisis is "We're all in this together." We're not. It has long been a tradition of populist demagogues to live a whole lot better than the people they claim to be part of, but it's never been as blatant as it is today.
How can people watch the news and hear that the unions have offered to make the financial concessions requested if Walker will shelve the union-busting demands, only to have him reject the compromise, without realizing that Walker is simply out to destroy organized labor on behalf of his corporate masters?
It is a puzzlement. But Rachel has some interesting backgrounders to help explain what is really happening. Tony and Clay may be excused. Everyone else should listen up. This will be on the exam in 2012.
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* I mean "Big Lies", of course, only in an Orwellian, fictional, theoretical sense. I understand that it is grossly unfair to ever draw parallels between a living politician and anyone in the history of the 20th century who actually used the "Big Lie" to gain political power. It makes elephants weep, and we don't want that. I simply mean in the sense of a work of fiction that has nothing to do with any actual historical figures, living or dead, and probably shouldn't be taught in our schools anyway.
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