Striking Teachers

Recent stories about the county education system, I believe, answer the questions and issues raised in each. Last week the story was on why Anne Arundel County public school teachers are not "respected" by the residents and taxpayers in the county who are, after all, the folks that "elect" the school board, county council and county executive.

An estimated 800 teachers crowded inside and outside of county school HQ on Riva Road last week to protest this or that revision to the local union contract. First, the teachers better make up their minds. That is, do they want respect? Or do they want a union contract? After all, when you wield a union contract, you don't need the kind of respect the teachers want.

If teachers wanted to be "respected" and "valued" they would stop trying to make us believe that their working conditions are similar to those of steel workers and coal miners. No one does. Unlike sweatshops and factories of yore, teachers are not exploited by their employers who take advantage of employee dependence and force them to work for peanuts under dangerous conditions.

Instead the teachers should abandon the union and treat themselves like true professionals.

The other thing I find interesting when I hear teachers or union bosses complaining that they are not valued and respected (loved, applauded, revered, worshipped) is that they are talking about you and me! They are talking about their friends and neighbors! Who do they think they are actually affecting when they negotiate with the school board? Martians? So I find it insulting that my neighbors want more money out of me and assumes that I don't respect them.

This week I read a story about how it's only a few days before the deadline and no one has applied to run for the at-large school board seat. I wonder why?

Striking Teachers and The Bay

The Annapolis Kapital does not disappoint. Like the rising of the sun and the passing of the seasons we Marylanders especially in Anne Arundel County can count on reading about how the Chesapeake Bay is no more than a landfill after a hard rain and that we are exploiting our teachers.

Let's start with the Chesapeake Landfill. Democrats and their supporters in the press will trot out a canard that the Republican candidate does not "love the bay." This Bay hatred invariably turns on a single vote on a bill that probably had little to do with the Bay.

But the spectacle of Democrats, in Maryland, blaming Republicans, in Maryland, for the supposed ill-health of the Bay is just too much. But Mike, you can't deny that Republicans support business and industry and unchecked development that pollute the Bay.

Yes, most Republicans support public policy that encourages people, that's right PEOPLE, to start and keep a business or a business investment, whether it's a business like the Kapital-Gazette newspapers or the restaurateurs who buy much of the "iconic" Eastern Shore watermen's catch, in Maryland. How do Republicans do this? Good question. Since Republicans in the General Assembly have been a minority party for at least a generation, they mainly do this by OPPOSING legislation that would increase taxes on the evil business and industry (not people, mind you) proposed by the ...Democrats!

And as a minority party for as long as I can remember, how can the Republicans be blamed for perennial ill-health of the Bay? If the health of the Bay were so important, why haven't successive Democratic General Assemblies and governors done something about it? They could easily pass legislation over minuscule Republican opposition, if they really thought it was all that important.

Do the chicken farmers and kraut packers have undue influence over Democratic legislators? Are Democratic legislators misleading their constituents about their efforts to Save the Bay or their GOP opponents' efforts to destroy the Bay?

Or are Eastern Shore voters just too gullible for their own good?

Next....Exploited Teachers!

The Lost Generation - II: Meghan McCain

*****UPDATE: Michelle Malkin posts her take on Miss McCain.
I sent the letter below after watching yet another member of the Lost Generation stumble her way essentially to the same conclusions that proudly distinguishes the new Republican that "get's it" a la Margaret Hoover and Robbie Cohen.

Dear Miss McCain,

Please don't take this the wrong way: Leave the Party. I beg you to leave not because I think you'll damage the GOP beyond that already done to itself. Rather, I hate to see a nice girl like you get hurt. I have just read your latest Beast article and I can see bad things coming your way.

For example, it is patently obvious that you have never read any of Ann Coulter's books or articles. Most of her critics are similarly ignorant and delight in displaying their ignorance on national television. So you are hardly unique in the crowd that bemoans her "demeanor" which they characterize as hateful, extreme or "negative." This is how Bill Mahr has and will continue to characterize her. I have yet to read or hear someone actually successfully refute any of the "extreme" things that she has written. And you won't hear Bill Mahr refute them either. He doesn't have the time, patience and intelligence to do so.

If you one day hope to be taken seriously as a commentator or, God forbid, a politician, you need to stop watching MTV and The View and start reading. Until then Uncle Charlie (Gibson) and the rest of the mainstream media and just going to use you to further their own agenda of destroying the Republican Party you claim to love so much. And It doesn't much matter to them who you or I think is a "party icon," whether it's Ann Coulter or your father.

You have also displayed in your writings and "doing the media" an ignorance of the difference between conservatives and the Republican party. The Party is merely a vehicle, a political vehicle for turning conservative ideals into public policy. The "GOP ideals" to which you say you "find yourself drawn" are, in fact, conservative ideals. If all the conservatives left the party, the only GOP ideal would be "whatever it takes to get elected." This is what you saw on display over the past eight years, not conservatism. This is what you need to understand and this is what you need to explain to the "people like you" of the younger generation.

If you intend to stay with us then you need to learn what it means to be a conservative, especially the history of what conservatives have endured at the hands of liberals like Uncle Charlie, here and abroad. This will mean making a break with your father, with all you've learned at Columbia and most of what you've learned in grade school.

This will also mean taking a break from the YouTube University, picking up one of Ann Coulter's books (I highly recommend Treason) and reading.

Love,
Mike

I mentioned the letter on the train to an acquaintance (only slightly older than Miss McCain, if at all) who I had considered to be intelligent. His response was that he, too, doesn't like Ann Coulter. He finds her "rude and crude." He also admitted that he had not read any of her books and that his impression of her is based soley on her television appearances.

So were are doomed, as a culture, a civilization, by those future leaders of our nation for whom superficiality runs deep and for whom the third dimension is superfluous.

Nerve of Steele

As I have been reading this morning, there transpired over the weekend some illustrative and illuminating events involving the continual delight the liberals find in pointing out differences between Republicans and Conservatives (see Monoblogue and Blue Ridge Forum for the news).

It's amusing to watch the liberal end-zone dance whenever they are able to find a Republican party operative who just can't help himself and makes a remark that repudiates or even appears to repudiate the hated conservative base of their own party. I am not shocked or even mildly surprised. I have seen this happen and have warned about it for over a decade.

But Republicans everywhere, local and national, are apparently too concerned with "re-branding" and not offending anyone and winning ink and air-time in the liberal media to hear me shout, "Look out! You are about to be hit by bus!".

So Michael Steele, our new RNC Chairman, wandered into traffic and made the following mistake: Agreed to appear on the liberal CNN.

How many times do I have to say it? Liberal Media = Bad. Republicans continue to fly into the bug-zapper, even after watching and reading over and over and over how they will be burned. They mindlessly push their way to the edge of the cliff and scream all the way down. This is how Republicans earned the Stupid Party moniker.

'But Mike, we have to write the WashPo and NYT op-ed pages. We are trying to reach out to the liberal. We have to appear on Larry King, The View, CNN and NBC. We are trying to build the party up.' Look out. Stop. Turn back. Splat.

No, you don't have to subject yourself and the party to the liberal media. The people you are trying to reach are already looking in the non-liberal media for some evidence of leadership. They will hungrily seek you out. They hunger for someone they can respect. They are looking for a reason to come out and vote for a Republican again. You cannot give them that reason through the liberal media. The libs won't allow it.

But if you must, then Don't Whine About It And Don't Apologize. The second mistake Steele made was saying that he didn't mean what he said and that he doesn't want to offend anyone.

Neither does a corn flake that has been sitting in the milk too long.

Harris for Congress!

That's right. By now most people know Dr. Harris and what he stands for. And I have it on good authority that he will seek the GOP nomination next February and will defeat the incumbent next November.

We conservatives in Anne Arundel county see in Andy Harris some one who makes us proud to be Republicans again. And we thank Mrs. Harris for allowing us to take him away from her again on the long campaign. How proud, though, she must be of her husband who has the ability to inspire total strangers, incorrigible cynics and party faithful alike to see in him a faint glow, a flicker of light in the miserable fog that has been our political existence for the past twenty years.

OK. So I know you are all on board. There are a few things to remember as we take the next steps:

1. Website! - Go to the web site and make a donation!

2. No Libertarians - You guys, quite frankly, are not Libertarians, you are communists and we'll thank you to stay home this time, ok? Either that or just register as Democrats and vote for the Democrat.

3. No Rockfish Republicans - Just the join the Libertarians and stop stinking up our party.

4. No Eastern Shore Philosophy - Socialism, children, doesn't make a distinction between one shore or the other. Mr. Kratovil is discovering this right now. If you want to display how special you are and how much you think we need your chickens and corn then why don't you just blow the Bay Bridge or wall it off. Then we'll see how far your Eastern Shore Philosophy gets you.

Come to think of it, you would be better off if you start downsizing now, because if you send Kratovil back to Congress then there won't be too many people interested in your corn and chickens. Get a good price for your farms and stock now while you can.

5. All comers - at the same time! No half-way through, half-hearted, vote-sucking also-rans! Let's get everyone on the table from the get go. Right, Pipkin? Banks? You wanna play, you take the same risks as everyone from the jump. Otherwise you just cement your reputations earned in the last election as tools of the opposition and ballot buzzards. Thanks to people like you Andy now must face another liberal incumbent!

And a word of advice for Andy: Don't get sucked in by those jellyfish in the NRCC. You are meant for a higher mission. The NRCC does not represent conservatism. It is strictly an incumbent-protection racket. Take their money if you have to, but dump them as soon as get elected.

The History of The Crisis

Don't take it from me. Take it, if you must, from the NYT. I have removed the link to the Times article because I will not be caught dead patronizing or causing other to patronize that rag. However, I invite you to visit Ann Coulter's site where I found this and the link, intact.

I post this because I have friends who still believe that our current troubles lie exclusively at the feet of GWB and the GOP. While the Republicans were indeed in control of Congress, they were not always in control of themselves and Bill Clinton was still President.

So for the sake of starting a debate from factual premises rather than from cultish fantasies. I give you....HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS CAUSED THE RECESSION.

NYT Sept 30, 1999: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending: [F]annie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people . . .

THANK YOU, BILL CLINTON!

"In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans. In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."

CONSERVATIVES WARNED ABOUT THE RISK:
"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."

". . . Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage [I.E. YUPPIE SCUM HOUSE FLIPPERS]. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites."

There you have it. Let the debate begin. I am sure there are a ton of key words you liberals can use to find some flimsy grounds for your rebuttal.

In fairness, I must admit that I haven't read the NYT version of this truth. However, I have been reading about it for decades in the Wall Street Journal whose editorial pages have been warning at least as long about how Fannie Mae's business model was placing outrageous risks on the US taxpayer.