Dan from Madison

Jesse Jackson, Ambulance Chaser, and the Shores of Western Michigan

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I had to admit, a month or so ago when the protests were in full swing here in Madison I was surprised to see Jesse Jackson show up. Then I thought about it, and I wasn’t surprised at all. Jesse always shows up to events such as the protests to get his face on TV. Does anyone really listen to him anymore?

Once again, I saw Jesse on the news today. The city of Benton Harbor has had its mayor (or is it city manager) and the entire city council tossed on its ear in the name of a financial emergency. The state of Michigan has empowered an emergency financial manager to run the place until it can get back on its feet. So who showed up? Jesse Jackson, imploring the people of Benton Harbor to sue the state (rather than showing up five years ago and imploring the people to fix the mess, but that is besides the point).

On a personal note, I have vacationed with my family for the past decade on the shores of western Michigan and we absolutely love it. Every community there has cashed in on the warm summer waters of the Lake and developed their shores, and held nice festivals for the tourists such as myself and my family and the hordes from Chicago. Every community, that is, except Benton Harbor.

We have stayed in neighboring St. Joseph, a tiny community just to the south of Benton Harbor, many times. Once we got lost and were driving through Benton Harbor and we all of a sudden had to lock the doors and zip through there. What an absolute dump. We could hardly believe that every small city we had visited was so nice, and Benton Harbor was so trashed. Something was clearly amiss, but we didn’t know what it was – we just wanted to get out of there.

I am not surprised that Benton Harbor is in financial straits, nor that Jesse Jackson showed up to lead the “fight” to save their elected government that Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm declared to be such a basketcase that she had to appoint the emergency representative to rescue. I read a few documents on the situation and they didn’t even have basic accounting principles employed.

Madison Teachers “Sickout” = Wildcat Strike

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From time to time on these pages we take credit for an idea or prediction that comes true. I am not one to toot my own horn…oh hell, who am I kidding. Commence the toot parade.

Back on February 18, I posted here about the “sickout” that the Madison teachers had. If memory serves, the students that the teachers care so much about missed four days of school that week. That is four days that they will have to make up somewhere else, and four days of child care and other costs that the parents had to incur to go to their jobs. I said we should really call the “sickout” what it is – a wildcat strike, plain and simple.

Now the evidence has come out. Seems that a Madison teacher who was operating a phone tree dialed the wrong number by one, and someone saved the message and has made it public. You can hear the message at the link.

So now that the issue of whether this was a wildcat strike or not is cleared up, what to do? I know what I would do, I would fire everybody and blow the whole union up (figuratively, of course). But that isn’t going to happen. What will happen?

I will tell you what will happen. Basically nothing. Most of the people inside Madison are on the teachers/unions side and any sort of aggressive prosecution will be picketed, protested and rallied against. I think that the Madison schools are so deep in the teachers union pockets that there may be nothing done.

I would at least like to see some sort of symbolic fine or maybe one teacher made an example of for this clearly unlawful behavior, but I am not holding my breath. I am happy to be proven correct though. Then again, this wasn’t the toughest prediction I have made.

First Winter Down

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We have been operating our hobby farm in full force for a whole year now and MAN have we learned a lot. Honestly, it is my wife who is out there every day doing the daily chores, which she admittedly enjoys.

We now have a skillset that might be valuable someday, and it might not. We learned that in our situation live barn cats are better than poison or traps. There was a mice problem in our barn last year. We got two cats from the feral cat humane society here. Yes, I know it sounds silly to actually pay $25 ea. for cats but we wanted them for a couple of reasons. We wanted them to kill. Domesticated cats do kill, but don’t have as good survival instincts as our “little tigers” as I like to call them. We have seen evidence of nary a mouse all winter – last year we couldn’t reset the traps fast enough. Now that it is warmer the rodents will head outside for food and we won’t have to deal with that problem for a little while.

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