McIlheran Gets Schooled

A couple of weeks ago, Patrick McIlheran crowed about a school district that chose another health care provider besides WEA. In McIlheran's world, anything to do with teachers is obviously evil, and thus should be condemned as such.

Too bad for Paddy that reality, as usual, is not on his side on this issue. Thus comes the schooling:

I am writing in response to columnist Patrick McIlheran's angry attack on my company, the WEA Trust.

He wrote in a Dec. 2 column on Perspectives that my company just lost the Milton School District as a health insurance customer because we were outbid. That is true. We competed in a fair bid process, and in this instance, the school district chose another carrier.

But McIlheran went on to make a series of unfounded and unwarranted statements that we must refute. He concluded that because we lost the business, my company, therefore, "sucks away scarce school money" from all of our state's schools where we do business. It's a choice between "more taxes or more ignorance," he says.

That's outrageous.

If P-Mac holds true to his nature, any day now he will be putting up a blog ridiculing the corrective post.

The funny thing, though, is that I never would have thought McIlheran was so much against the free market system.

H/T Illusory Tenant

Kevin Hates The Free Market

Airlines everywhere are dealing with rising fuel costs and trying all means possible to do so without raising ticket prices. Just about all have raised fees for extra baggage and bulky items.

What does Kevin think of these free market solutions to an ongoing problem?

The airlines are in full "stick it to the passenger" mode, finding creative ways to add on new charges.

It seems that Kevin doesn't believe that there's a problem so big that he can't make it go away by closing his eyes and saying he doesn't believe in it.

Exception to the rule

The Nation says we should celebrate a recent victory in Congress:

With a voice vote that confirmed the near-unanimous sentiment of senators who had heard from hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding that they act, the legislators moved to nullify an FCC attempt to permit a radical form of media consolidation: a rule change designed to permit one corporation to own daily and weekly newspapers as well as television and radio stations in the same local market.

Of course, in Milwaukee we live in a different dimension, where one company already owns the only daily newspaper, a television station, AM and FM radio stations, and a flock of suburban weeklies.

It's what the talkers on their radio station like to call the free market.

The Not So Free Market

McIlheran loves the free market. He feels that it is the panacea for whatever ails you.

No matter the subject, from education (school choice) to heathcare to global economics, free market strategies will clear it right up.

Well, almost any subject. Apparently, McIlheran feels that the free market isn't as important as one's God given right to smoke a cigarette. He is very upset because a condo association has banned people from smoking inside their own homes.

This isn't a government telling the people that they can't smoke. It's not the nanny state either.

It is the residents themselves, telling each other they can't smoke in their own homes.

If McIlheran really believed in the free market system, he would be behind this ban. He would just tell the smokers that if they didn't like the ban, they could just move. Like he does if someone is opposed to a WalMart being built in their neighborhood.