Friday Ayem

Whenever I think about what's going on in Wisconsin, where they're about to strip the public unions of collective bargaining power, I get depressed. The whole thing is a mess. I think that the Democratic senators were wrong to leave the state, and that the legislature is wrong to remove the collective power. I would bet there will be serious repercussions from doing that. Messy ones, too. Then I find myself wondering if its somehow because the public unions there got too greedy (which I've read in some accounts, but I don't know if to believe them), or if there even is a fiscal crisis there (I've read not, but, to be honest, I think it likely there is -- lord knows there is, everywhere else).

My father was in the Teamsters when I was younger. I remember reading the union magazine that he would get. It always had a picture of a smiling Jimmy Hoffa in the inside cover, with a title something like "From the General Secretary". I remember thinking that he didn't look like a secretary; he looked like a dictator. Or a thug. It made me wonder just how much good that union did for the members, and how much for Hoffa, personally. Still, even with that, I think that unions are a good thing. They serve as a counterweight to the massive power of wealthy conservatives. They provide balance.

Guess I'd better get back to French.