Not sure about you, but I was absolutely thrilled last week when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed the legislation ending most collective bargaining rights for government worker unions. The more these government employee unions get slapped around by reality, the happier I am.
I want to talk about the college students we saw protesting in Wisconsin ... but first, let me remind you that this whole stink wasn’t really about collective bargaining rights. The real foreign object in the punch bowl for the unions and for Democrats was the end of dues check-off; the end of the union’s ability to have dues deducted from member’s paychecks rather than relying on the members to pay those dues voluntarily. Some surveys have shown that over 50% of government union members would stop paying their dues if they had to actually write their own checks. Some of these union members pay more than $1000 a year? Big money. Think about this: When 50% of union members stop paying their dues this means a lot less money in the pot to pay union leaders. Not only that … it means much less money for union leaders to donate to political parties. Last year about 46% of union members in Wisconsin voted Republican, yet the government worker unions sent 93% of all union campaign contributions to Democrats. Maybe those union members might want to stop paying dues if the contributions are going to go to a political party they don’t support! This would certainly not be good news for Democrats … and now perhaps you have a clearer understanding of just why The Community Organizer sent his “Organizing for America” troops to Wisconsin to keep things in check!
OK … now for the college students. Surely you saw them at the protests last week. For the most part their more cogent moments were spent standing in the Wisconsin Capital waving their fists in the air and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Now you gotta love a bunch of college students yelling “shame.” The benefits of higher education on display. Shame? Just how much under-age drinking, bong hits and Gawd-knows-what-else went on in Madison the night before?
I’m here to help. I’m here to speak for you and to send a message to these college students -- with your permission of course. If you agree that I have spoken for you then just forward this column by email to a favorite college student of yours. You can also print this and send it by snail-mail. The USPS could use the cash. Here we go:
To America’s hot-to-protest college students:
With all due respect … would you please just …..
Sit down and shut the hell up!
Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It really ought to be one of the first things you study in college. Wikipedia has an entry for you to read if you want to actually learn something. Here’s your link! Dunning-Kruger is about illusory superiority … illusory because a person rates their ability much higher than it actually is. This would pretty much address your pompous positioning in Madison ... this idea that since you are now an actual college student you suddenly are imbued with some superior knowledge that other people – if they just realized how brilliant you are – should tap for the benefit of all mankind. You, and only you, had all the answers to the union vs. the taxpayers impasse in Wisconsin. Congratulations.
You really need to – like -- get a grip on your bad selves. You and the rest of your pampered protestor posse are, at best, three or four years away from your parent’s complete control. You’re still not on your own. Since leaving home you have like existed in the protected environment of a college campus where harsh punishment awaits the slightest utterance that might like hurt your feelings or cause “offense,” God forbid.
Tell you what: When you’ve like been away from your mommies for a while; when you’ve shown that you can handle the rigors of academia … and, most important, when you’ve actually like spent some time on your own like earning your own living, taking care of your own needs, filing out your own tax forms, and living free of the parental and academic umbilical cord … then maybe we’ll be willing to listen to something you have to say. Until then, please like spare us the spectacle of your moronic moral exhibitionism. Simply put, you don’t have a clue. You know it, and we know it. We also know that your participation in these protests is seen by you as some sort of a like right of passage. Maybe you should try passing some classes instead of passing your ignorance off to the taxpayers who are shouldering the cost for a huge part of whatever education you will actually receive before the harsh, cold winds of reality hit you right in the face.
If you really want something to do … gather together the student body presidents from our country’s 100 largest universities and go over there and like fix Haiti. Do that and maybe we’ll listen. Till then … well, just go back and like read the bold print.
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