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Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Kids Alone!: A Wisconsin Bedtime Tale

We cannot win the future if we lose the race to educate our kids. – President Obama

Time for bed, kids. What story do you want to hear? The Wisconsin story? Really, you heard that before. Can’t dad tell another one? Okay, Wisconsin it is.

Yes, Wisconsin is a real place. I know Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Menomonie & Manitowoc sound like noises your body makes after eating too much dairy, but they are real places. Yes, they wear cheese on their heads, and green and gold sweatshirts are proper attire to wear to their places of worship. Yes, their four seasons are different from the rest of the country: almost winter, winter, still winter, and “maybe we should put the beer in the frig to keep it cold.” Their five food groups are brats, beer, fish, cheese and venison. Yes, they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon without embarrassment, or making faces. Little one, most of the men wear moustaches, the women know how to use jumper cables, and it is not out of the ordinary to see either gender at a social event wearing hunting clothes. Yes, when their children ask where they came from, the story usually starts out, “Your mother was wearing her flannel nightshirt and tube socks,” there are a few “You betchas” sprinkled in and ends with, “Nine months later you were born. Go get your pop a beer.” The people and their children are round and white, like the snowballs they throw. All in the land of Wisconsin was good and peaceful.

This story takes place in a city called Madison, or as Wisconsinites call it “where those crazy liberals live.” It was an exotic place, well, as exotic as anyplace that sells Old Milwaukee beer could be. Between birth and the neighbors finding you slumped over next to your running snow blower, those in the land of cheese and high blood pressure, valued education. Minnesota kids might have been able to run faster, Iowa kids jump higher, Illinois youngsters might be able to throw a ball harder, but no child, and I mean no child, was going to out think or out polka their children. The polka, you want to know what the polka was? The polka was like the dance version of Utah, a place where rhythm and common sense vanish.

Let me get back to the story. A severe recession fell on the land because some magicians called Wall Street bankers made the money disappear. The people in the rest of the nation had no cash to buy the Wisconsinites’ fine beer-battered meats, their alcoholic beverages, and cheeses. These magicians also sold worthless paper to Wisconsinites’ teachers’ retirement funds, promising these pieces of paper were completely safe. This is how good these magicians were, instead of being mad at the magicians, and throwing them into a land called jail, where they were made to wear makeup, and be someone’s number one squeeze, the magicians got more gold called bonuses and retirement packages. Only one magician got in any trouble, his name was Bernie and that was because he ripped off other magicians and rich people. Some people even blamed the teachers, because they thought they were wealthy, even though the teachers made 25 percent less than those who had the same educational levels who did not work for the state. They saw those teachers’ ten-year-old cars with their AM and FM radios, yes, they had both, and their giant student loans and huge mortgages, and they were jealous.

A black prince tried to save the people. He was from Kenya. No, the black prince was from Hawaii, but when you are old and racist, Kenya is the same as Hawaii in your mind. The black prince fought many battles. He saved a rare species of animal called the “American automobile industry.” He saved the economy from a depression. He began to close down two foolish wars. He understood that the thing that was going to cause the most problems in the future was a dragon called Health Care Costs which kept on going up and up, to the point where even rich teachers would be eaten by it in a few years. Forty-five thousand Americans die needlessly every year because of that dragon, and most of them worked very hard at their jobs. It was a dragon he probably should not have fought, but he knew it would be the dragon that would destroy us all if he did not do something, and that battle left him bruised and battered. Unlike previous princes who did nothing and pretended like the dragons did not exist, he fought too many battles and many hated him for it. The prince was even going to take on a dragon called The Debt once the recession ended.

Yet, the recession did not end as quickly as people wanted. Wisconsinites went to all their gods, both Catholic and Lutheran, but the recession still enveloped the land. An organized army was raised up against him, the prince lost control of large parts of his empire and had to retreat. One of the kingdoms he lost was the land of Wisconsin. With their three main spices, salt, pepper, and ketchup, on their breath, they voted out their Senator, turned the state house and congress over to the other party and elected a new governor who had big plans for himself.

Now, being lord governor of Wisconsin usually means using the words “thank you for inviting me to this fish fry” in every other speech, but this new governor saw himself as a future prince. He needed to do something big to get noticed. He decided to break the teachers’ union. Why? Because teachers’ unions had supported the black prince and people like him. The lord governor thought he would be a hero and other governors would follow his lead. The new lord decided to set a trap for the teachers. He would use the budget crisis against them, which, compared to other states, was not much of a crisis at all. He would claim that the teachers’ union was the cause of the problem. Never mind that there is no correlation between various state budget crisis and teachers having unions. In fact, those states without teachers’ unions have bigger debt problems (Virginia, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Arizona and Arkansas, all in the bottom ten states when it comes to education of the youth). The new lord governor said to the people, “Why should we be proud to be second in the nation in education, let’s follow Mississippi’s lead. Maybe we can feed our children tapeworms while we are at it. If we dare to dream, we can be forty-eighth in the nation in education someday.”

It was the perfect plan, cutting off a leg to fix a financial hangnail. One little problem, turns out teachers were pretty good citizens in the land of Wisconsin, even with their evil old book learning. Want us to pay more of our health care costs? “You betcha!” Pay freezes? “Doggone it. We can buy our Miller and Blatz in bulk.” Suspend collective bargaining for the next three years? “Believe you me, we’re no Mud Ducks or Fibbers. Well…I s’pose.” Give up my rights forever? Basically kill my union? “Oh, yah?” (Wisconsin for “that’s bull.”)

Still, the governor went through with his plan. One little problem, the Wisconsin Democratic State Senators ran away to an undisclosed location, cough, cough, Chicago, cough, cough to stop the vote. The teachers spit out the brats and, even though it is ice fishing season, they march on that exotic little town of Madison. “They have NPR there, don’t you know.” It was like the summer of love all over again, except everyone weighs about fifty more pounds, smell like cheese curds and frozen custard, and knows what the hell a “bubbler” is. Meaty Midwesterners took to the streets. The governor was shocked and thought about putting thugs in the crowd to disrupt the protests. The fact that thought was even discussed, tells you what kind of man he is.

What? How do I know that the lord governor of Wisconsin is full of bunk when it comes to his claim that balancing the budget is his primary concern in crushing the teachers’ union? Well, daddy had excellent teachers who taught him to use his brain, not just believe what people tell him. First off, the most abusive pension systems to the taxpayers of Wisconsin are those of the fire and police departments, the unions that supported the lord governor. They are not touched. Second, it is going to cost the land of Wisconsin more in refinancing the debt costs and recall elections (by both sides) than the state will save by crushing the union because governor has been so stubborn. Politics is about doing the reasonable thing.

Looks like you are getting sleepy, little ones. How does the story end? Do the teachers save their union? Does the lord governor replace the black prince in six years, and do other lord governors follow his lead? I wish I knew how the story ended. I don’t. I am scared. Whatever hope we have rests with you, and that means you getting the best education you can, that means having teachers who want to be there and are secure that their rights are protected. Are unions always right, no, but you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Dream sweet dreams, little ones. Make sure to thank your teacher in the morning.