Grade F for Wisconsin Dems Who Fled

Let me get this straight. We try like hell to raise our kids with a sense of right and wrong, do what’s appropriate and legal at all times, and work within the guidelines of our society, and then we cheer when a bunch of lawmakers abandon their jobs for a quick getaway to Illinois to avoid going to work? Are you kidding me?

[SIGNUP]This one has me really crazy, and I’ll tell you why. Politics aside, there is simply no way that the approach taken by 14 Wisconsin lawmakers can be in any way construed as anything but dereliction of duty and a gross injustice to the residents of Wisconsin. If these fleebaggers were employed in the private sector, they would have been fired before they checked into an Illinois hotel. Don’t we advocate and nurture the development of democracy all over the world? Don’t our young men and women fight and sacrifice their lives for people in foreign lands who yearn for a more democratic society? Then we applaud a bunch of arrogant lawmakers who laugh in the face of the process. It’s the process that we stand for. It’s the process that we profess to the rest of the world as the most well-designed vehicle of fair and just government … but, wait, not unless it proceeds the way these 14 schmucks think it should?

Look, I’m a parent. I’m just trying to figure out how you can look a kid in the eye and explain that you have to do what the parent says, or what the professor says or what the boss says, or the cop or the judge or the IRS says, while jokers like these act like children who haven’t gotten their way.

In 2006, a friend of mine’s son was living in a townhouse in Georgetown with 10 other students. The residential ordinance for the tony section of town allows for only six people in each house so the kids (smart bunch, you have to give them that) found that if they incorporated into a religious order the allowable number of residents rises to 15. The Apostles of O’Neill were born. Their parents thought they were little geniuses but the community went crazy. How dare they skirt the intention of the law by employing a loophole! It’s not right! It’s not fair! It’s an outrage!

Let’s look at it from my college-student daughter’s perspective. If a frat party is busted and 14 kids are arrested for underage drinking, they should all just not show up for court, they should call in from the next state and tell the judge that they’re not ready to face the consequences, to be part of the judicial process, to be law-abiding citizens. Can you say jail time? If her professor announced a pop quiz for the following class and 14 students felt it was unfair, too soon, that they hadn’t digested the material fully yet and so decided to boycott the class, my guess is the matter would end quickly with a swift grade of F for all those involved in the student mutiny. And who would argue with that? Isn’t that exactly what should happen?

Raising kids is hard enough without the terrible example of spoiled-brat behavior that these lawmakers have shown. Wisconsin voters should remember their names and come election day, give them all an F.