I'm not a public school teacher, so I don't have an extravagant pension coming some day. Thus, my family has to make do with the really small thrills. Last night we had fortune cookies! Woo hoo!! I actually lucked into a pretty good one: "you will soon witness a miracle." I'd love to witness a miracle. I'd actually love to see our elected representatives being honest about what they are trying to accomplish, and then accomplishing as much as they can while, inevitably, compromising with other's who have different goals and/or different visions for achieving their goals. For example, I would love to see Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, come out and say that he wants to weaken, if not destroy, unions operating in the public sector. It would be great if he could add that he would like to sell off public assets. It would make me weak in the knees if he just admitted that this isn't about a budget. I'd pass out from sheer joy if he said that he would like particular companies who have been campaign contributors to benefit from all of this, but that might go beyond what can be accomplished by a miracle. Now I know that being honest would probably weaken Walker's position, because if the voters who now support this 'budget' legislation knew what this was really all about, it is highly likely that they would not all remain supporters. I know it is unreasonable to want politicians to stop appealing to anger, fear, and ignorance to gain support rather than arguing the true merits of their cause ... but I'm unreasonable. You can ask my wife. There's not much that can be done about that, though ... even miracles have their limits.
For a good perspective on this, see these articles: http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/313/2011/february/24/the-fat-cats-attack-on-labor.html & http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/02/22/starving_wisconsins_unions_108973.html
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