A Happy Hello from the American Legislative Exchange Council

“I knew [Wisconsin union cuts, including schools] would be controversial. I just didn’t know the lengths that the unions would go to to retain their power. Their hyperbole about Republicans wanting to hurt children has hurt them, and made it hard to have a rational discussion. Nobody wanted to cut funding for schools. I felt really bad about it. But, when the only other option is raising taxes, it has to happen.”
— Wisconsin State Representative Robin Vos, co-chairman of ALEC, a group that drafts pre-fabricated legislation about privatization of schools and farming out student-testing (also privatized) to tie teacher salaries to “merit”-based results.

Two things:

1. If nobody wants to cut funding to something—say, schools—it might actually be a responsible act as a public representative to not cut funding for it.

2. When “the only other option is raising taxes,” that is actually another fucking option.

Fuck You, Warren Buffett

“Stop Coddling the Super Rich.” It’s about time someone said it. More touching still was the admission that many of The Super Rich are actually nice people. Whew! So many of us simply assumed, given every observable action ever, that they were sociopaths who owe as much of their success to cruelty and aggression as to insight and performance. We thought they — non-national, untouchable, controlling more wealth than many countries of the world — enjoyed and expected only the absolute best things that mankind has found for itself in its history. I admit, it is possible that, because of this mistaken impression, some of us may have harbored a shred of resentment at the mere existence of The Super Rich, believing them an affront to humanity, a stomping boot in the face of every starving, bleeding third-worlder, to every wage slave first-worlder, to every noble and brave idea of which we have ever conceived. 

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