Do Da, Do Da

Teachable Moment
The bill, which also bans collective bargaining rights for teachers, requires educators to contribute 5.8 percent to their pensions and 12.6 percent to their health care. Currently, educators pay 0.2 percent for their pensions and 4 to 6 percent of their health care costs.(Foxnews.com, 2/17/11)

Make no mistake, RedStateVT loves and admires teachers. They shape our lives. But fair is fair. Private sector employees have been shouldering larger and larger percentages of their own healthcare and retirement costs for years and years. In that context, and in the larger context that most states are broke, 5.8% and 12.6% sound more than fair.

You Don’t Say
Republicans say the Democrats have embraced the government employees’ cause because weaker unions would reduce crucial political support for Democratic candidates. Republicans have often denounced what they say is a squalid deal in which public-sector unions spend generously to elect allies to office and then those allies lavish generous wages and benefits on union members. (NYT, 2/19/11)

Could not have said it better!

Purple Barney
In the witching hours on Thursday night, Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, denounced the fight over a short-term spending measure as an “an orgy of self-congratulations,” and threatened to lengthen the already endless debate over the hundreds of amendments if he was not permitted to speak his mind about how much he hated the process.

So the Purple One “hated the process.” Well, what was the process?

But some Democrats took advantage of Speaker John A. Boehner’s willingness to allow almost all comers to offer amendments (a big shift in policy from the tight control of floor proceedings practiced by the Democrats when Nancy Pelosi was speaker). (NYT, 2/19/11)

It appears that Barney would rather that Boehner adopt Pelosi’s practice of cutting off discussion. Well, OK. Let’s do it.

Immunized
Political courage, it's said, is contagious. But Obama is cured. His political immune system is a wonder of nature. Immune to the urgings of his deficit commission. Immune to electoral repudiation. Immune to the warnings of economists and credit markets. (Michael Gerson, Washington Post, 2/19/11)