Right Opinion

Recommended Reading: Oh, to Be a Teacher in Milwaukee!

Leave it to a prof at the University of Arkansas -- specifically, an economist in its Department of Education Reform -- to go to the heart (and guts) of what all the fuss is about in Wisconsin. His name is Bob Costrell, and he's put his finger and calculator on the essence of that state's problem. In an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal last week, the professor detailed the sweet deals that Wisconsin's public-employee unions have negotiated for themselves over the free-spending years.

Caught in the Middle East Minefield

America seems trapped in an exploding Middle East minefield. Revolts are breaking out amid the choke points of world commerce. Shiite populations are now restive in the Gulf monarchies. Not far away, Iran's youth are sick and tired of the country's seventh-century theocracy. Astride the Suez Canal, Egyptian demonstrators just threw out the Mubarak regime. On the coast of the southern Mediterranean, Tunisia and Libya are in upheaval, just a few hundred miles from Europe.

ABC Hates Budget 'Chain Saws'

When President Obama's budget came out in February, with the greatest expansion of federal spending in American history, some sycophantic media outlets like The Washington Post ridiculously tried to sell the concept that Obama was pushing "deep cuts." It was a publicity line that collapsed on itself within 24 hours. The Democrats are doing nothing to rein in the spending that is leading America into bankruptcy. What the Republican leadership is proposing, with its minuscule cuts, is next to nothing.

Ruled by Regulation

The Fighters vs. the Fixers

"Pawlenty's attacks get more pointed," announced a headline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "He's betting sharper rhetoric will spring him from GOP pack," clarified the subhead. Did the former Minnesota Republican governor call the president a Muslim? A socialist? Nope. He declared that the country's mounting debt was a "pile of poo." Clearly, the guy running the bleep button for the GOP primary debates isn't worried about Tim Pawlenty.

Teachers Unions 101: 'A' Is for 'Agitation'

If public school teachers spent more time teaching in classrooms and less time community-organizing in political war rooms, maybe taxpayers wouldn't feel as ripped off as they do. Before the Big Labor bosses start complaining about "teacher-bashing," let's be clear: An increasing number of rank-and-file teachers feel exactly the same way. Retired New York teacher Vinne Cusimano, who was required to pay forced union dues in order to work, wrote me this week after receiving the March 2011 edition of his union's monthly publication. The cover of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) magazine reads: "Defend What Matters! Educate. Collaborate. AGITATE." Inside the pamphlet, NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi rails against "malicious politicians" in Wisconsin and elsewhere proposing "extreme anti-union" budget cuts. He urges his members to join "advocacy" efforts to "maintain critical resources" and lectures about the need to "value education over ideology and greed."

An Academy Award-Winning Movie, Stuttering and Me

Because "The King's Speech," a movie about King George's effort to overcome stuttering, won the Oscar for best picture, reporters have been interviewing me about my stuttering. Some ask why they don't hear me stutter on TV. Others wonder why a stutterer is on TV in the first place. Here's my explanation. Since I was a child, my stuttering has come and gone. Sometimes I was sure the problem had disappeared -- then it would return with such a vengeance I'd fear saying anything. I'd stay silent in class. I avoided parties. When I was old enough to date, sometimes I'd telephone a girl and try to speak, but nothing would come out. I'd just hang up. Now, because of caller ID, stutterers can't do that.

Obama's Narcissistic Personality Disorder

During the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton suggested that if the emergency phone rang at 3 a.m. in the White House, you wouldn't want President Obama picking it up. She was wrong. Obama wouldn't pick it up in the first place. He'd let it go to answering machine. He'd be too busy chasing the nearest camera. Obama is the "Girls Gone Wild" president: Stick a lens in front of him and he'll take off his shirt, mince about like a coed, and babble nonsensical nothings to an audience oddly fascinated by his antics.

'Tiresome Squabbles of Discontented Affluence'

In the same weeks that are seeing the Middle East (with all its oil and geopolitical significance) begin to transform itself into we know not what, important economists are predicting that, if current trends continue, not only China, but India also will within a generation have larger economies than ours. And, of course, with strong economies almost inevitably come equivalently strong military capacities. So as we enter the great deficit and debt fights of this budget season both in Washington and the states, the question that enters my mind is: Will the people of the United States be content to merely settle down and become a relatively affluent, second-level satellite to a great Chinese colossus? Are we Americans prepared to play Britain to a post-WWII America? And is it likely that China is prepared to be so benign a giant as we have been -- and are?

Public Employee Unions

With all of the union strife in Wisconsin, Indiana and New Jersey, and indications of more to come, it might be time to shed a bit of light on unions as an economic unit. First, let's get one important matter out of the way. I value freedom of association, and non-association, even in ways that are not always popular and often deemed despicable. I support a person's right to be a member or not be a member of a labor union. From my view, the only controversy regarding unions is what should they be permitted and not permitted to do.

Mitch Daniels' Pot Luck

Last week, Mitch Daniels, Indiana's governor, told The Daily Princetonian that "justice was served" when he was arrested for marijuana possession during his junior year at Princeton. But like many pot smokers who became politicians, Daniels -- a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination -- seems to have two standards of justice: one for him and one for anyone else who does what he did. Although Daniels was caught with enough marijuana to trigger a prison sentence, he got off with a $350 fine. Yet he has advocated "jail time" for "casual users" -- a stark illustration of the schizophrenic attitudes that help perpetuate drug policies widely recognized as unjust.

On the Road to New Orleans

There are few better ways to go back in time and ever deeper into the South, which are much the same thing, than to drive through the Delta down to New Orleens Land of Dreems. Mile by mile, the dreamscape unfolds like an old map, falling into familiar place after place. As the road narrows to two lanes, the residue of the past begins to float by. You pass abandoned cotton gins, long empty houses by the side of the road, their roofs slowly, majestically caving in, as if they had all the time in the world to disappear. They already seem archaeological, like forgotten monuments. The testify, like a stove-in old man at a camp meeting, to both the malice of time and the persistence of memory. Something, something powerful, lives on here. The evidence of it is all around.

Cash Drains From Treasury as Republicans and Democrats Dither

Were it your personal bank account, you would get it -- and change your ways. But it is not your personal bank account, it is the Treasury of the United States -- funded by your tax dollars and money borrowed in your name -- and it is now controlled by elected officials of both parties who do not seem to get it at all. If you want to take a look at the Treasury Department's latest statement for its bank accounts, it is available online now at fms.treas.gov/dts/index.html. The statement is like a fiscal snapshot of a nation rapidly descending into bankruptcy.

Gadhafi's Cult Leaves Libya Bereft

Libyan rebels on the outskirts of Tripoli foreshadow the demise of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's four decades of dictatorship. But Gadhafi's not gone -- yet -- and the Libyan Civil War of 2011 may or may not end even if he goes in a coffin or on a jet into Venezuelan exile. In comparison, Tunisia's and Egypt's revolts were quite restrained. Popular protests broke Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's Tunisian regime. Ben Ali essentially ran a family mob operation. Skimming billions was his objective. Can't spend it dead. When the Tunisian Army refused to back him, he fled to Saudi Arabia.

Tax or Spend? The Final Chapter

I am reluctant to join the chorus of scolds who chide Republicans for opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to put a tax-increase extension on a special election ballot in June. But I will join the chorus, though first I must point out that GOP Assembly members and senators didn't spend California to the brink of ruin. The Democrats and nominally Republican former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger share that honor. I also am reluctant to blame the GOP because I believe that the necessary two GOP votes from both the Assembly and Senate will materialize.

Should Boys Be Wrestling Girls?

Around Washington, D.C., if you mention Iowa, the first thing that will pop into most people's minds is "caucuses." But in Iowa, if you asked a local about the matchups, he'd most likely assume you were talking about wrestling. That's right, the non-metaphorical, sweaty, rough-and-tumble on the mat sort of wrestling. This year's Iowa state championships attracted attention nationwide when the promising high school sophomore Joel Northrup (the fifth-ranked wrestler in the state) defaulted on his first match. He had drawn Cassy Herkelman, a female freshman, as his opponent, and he could not, in good conscience, wrestle a girl.

Evolutionary Law

President Obama has said his view of same-sex "marriage" is "evolving." Apparently he thinks that the law should be based on a kind of Darwinian jurisprudence which allows it to "evolve" and become whatever the ruling politicians at a given moment say it is (or isn't). How else to explain the decision by the president and his attorney general, Eric Holder, not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996? The Senate vote was 85-14; the vote in the House was 342-67, an indication of overwhelming public support to keep marriage for opposite-sex couples.

Organized Coercion

The more it changes, the more it's the same, hmmm? In this present instance, meaning our country's seemingly fresh-scented wrangle over union power. The scent isn't fresh at all, nor is the wrangle. The arguments are old, the question at stake is old: namely, when is the public interest served by giving organized coercion its way? Lately, we haven't thought much about that question in America; which is why Wisconsin takes us by surprise -- the raging public employees, the adamant governor and the fugitive Democratic senators, hiding out to avoid a vote on stripping public employee unions of most collective bargaining rights. What's this? Teachers abandoning the students whose parents pay them?

Is Democracy Viable?

Those who see hope in the Middle East uprisings seem to assume that they will lead in the direction of freedom or democracy. There is already talk about the "liberation" of Egypt, even though the biggest change there has been that a one-man dictatorship has been replaced by a military dictatorship that has suspended the constitution. Perhaps the military dictatorship will be temporary, as its leaders say, but we have heard that song before. What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government.

An Empty WorldView

My friend Jill is one of the lucky few who seem to eat all day, yet never gain a pound. Last weekend, she stopped at Panera Bread for lunch, simply ravenous. But it was one of those days when the lunchtime lines were long, circling back to the door. The cashiers worked as fast as they could, greeting customers cheerfully, taking their orders, and moving them on.