“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

The title above is a quote from Al Shanker.  He spoke these words when he was the president of the American Federation of TEACHERS.  You know them.  They are the folks who are letting schoolchildren twist in the wind, having deserted their posts in Wisconsin's schools to protest in Madison, Wisconsin, because they are only doing it for the kids.  They have the audacity to claim that they abandoned the children for the good of those children.  Sounds quite a lot like the old lie that "this is going to hurt me more than it does you."

However, this sort of avariciousness should be expected from the leaders of an organization that exists solely for the purpose of extorting money from the public.  From the federal level all the way down to local county school boards, these bureaucrats have their grabby little hands in the pockets of those who actually pay taxes.  Perhaps it is at the local level that they are most furtive, devious, and greedy.  How expedient is it for them that school boards are comprised almost exclusively of members, or former members, of the National Education Association, AFT, or their ideological brethren?

School board members are responsible to negotiate in good faith with teachers' unions on behalf of taxpayers.  Education union members on local school boards negotiate compensation packages with fellow union members and the public pays the bill, including board members' salaries.  One might conclude that there are very good reasons that the compliant and complicit media has paid so little attention to what seems a blatant conflict of interest.  Electing their own bosses is good work if you can get it.  So firmly entrenched, arrogant, and untouchable are these education guilds that they have even published a manual, entitled "Electing Your Employer," that describes the process in detail.

This article raises some salient points.  "There’s a dirty little secret in public school governance: for a few thousand dollars, unions can run the table. How? Elect the school board. Then, at negotiation time, they’re sitting across the bargaining table from their friends.

Who is looking out for taxpayers? In far too many school districts, no one. The inmates are running the asylum."  County commissioners could enact laws to require that before becoming school board members, candidates must wait five years after leaving teaching or ending their union affiliation.  The absence of such laws could be directly related to the volume of campaign contributions from government education unions' members.

However, people are starting to push back against union-controlled, government-run schools.  "Some have proposed banning unions from giving campaign contributions to those that would oversee collective bargaining agreements." That’s a good move.

The union in Michigan has brazenly gone so far as to actually initiate recall campaigns to take out board members who don’t see things the 'union way.' It’s right out of the Jimmy Hoffa handbook.

And if there’s a reform-minded, troublesome superintendent? Take over the board and fire him!"

It is time to disenfranchise public unions since one primary reason for their existence is to act as money launderers for corrupt politicians.  Jonah Goldberg writes that "[t]raditional, private-sector unions were born out of an often-bloody adversarial relationship between labor and management.  Government unions have no such narrative on their side. Do you recall the Great DMV cave-in of 1959? How about the travails of second-grade teachers recounted in Upton Sinclair's famous schoolhouse sequel to "The Jungle"? No? Don't feel bad, because no such horror stories exist.

The argument for public unionization wasn't moral, economic or intellectual. It was rankly political.  The plan worked perfectly -- too perfectly. Public union membership skyrocketed, and government union support for the party of government skyrocketed with it. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME -- the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- gave nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections, with 98.5 percent going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Why would local government unions give so much in federal elections? Because government workers have an inherent interest in boosting the amount of federal tax dollars their local governments get. Put simply, people in the government business support the party of government. Which is why, as the Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga has been chronicling for years, public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.

This is why FDR believed that "the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service," and why even George Meany, the first head of the AFL-CIO, held that it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."

So what can taxpayers do to protect themselves from Corruptocrats and their lackeys in education unions?  Support candidates at the federal, state, and local levels who favor disenfranchising education collectives; become involved in local school board election campaigns, and learn where candidates get their money; attend school board meetings; support everyone who wants to eliminate public sector unions.  Remember the words of Tip O'Neil: "All politics is local."

May your gods be with you.

The Democratic Slogan for Election 2010: We May be Incompetent, but They're Crazy

The time has come to disenfranchise public unions; they are merely special interest groups, all of them.  From the federal level to local school boards, union leaders are working against the very people who pay their salaries.  This article reveals that $100 billion dollars of the Theftocrats' porkulous hustle was appropriated for the federal Education Department.  This "effectively doubled the agency's budget from 2008 to 2009." 

No other federal department's budget was doubled, so why education?  It is all about the money.  The "National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers(AFT)--contributed more than $70 million to campaigns during the 2007-2009 season, with 95 percent going to Democrats and left leaning causes."  First, the Theftocrats steal the money from taxpayers and give it to the government education unions who give it back to the Theftocrats to get them re-elected.  This smells quite a lot like extortion and bribery.

Recently, the Obomunista Congress donated another $10 billion to the the educrats under the guise of saving 100,000 teaching jobs.  This amounts to $100,000 per job in comparison to the $54,000 average teacher's salary.  From this welfare, "NEA and AFT have $24 million in dues" that they will realize from this con job.  It is hardly a coincidence that Pelosi the Pink called the House into a special session to approve this handout just prior to the November elections.

Michelle Malkin writes that according "to the Washington, DC-based Labor Union Report, the National Education Association in 2009 'raked in $355,334,165 in dues and agency fees' from...teachers around the country."  The Edujobs welfare scam "will essentially redistribute tax dollars to the teachers' unions to the tune of $36 million for the [NEA] and $14 million to the [AFT] according to the Grand Rapids (Mich) Press."

House Speaker Nitwit Nancy referred to the Edutheft bill as an emergency provision.  However, as "Republican critics point out, states and the feds still have $30 billion in unspent stimulus funds sitting in government coffers."  This in spite of the fact that "school districts are already in the midst of rehiring school workers laid off earlier this year," before the latest $10 billion taxpayer rip off.

The NEA's top lawyer Bob Chanin has "made the union's true interests apparent."  He brags that there "are 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars each year [to] advance their interests as education employees."  That's right, their interests are "not serving children's needs, but serving the ability to build a power base," a power base that is used to leverage Congress into shafting taxpayers.

In New York, the city's education union is preventing the Bloomberg administration from closing ineffective schools.  This is featherbedding at its worst.  Considering recent test results, the only valid question to be asked is why have they not been closed already?  At the "Choir Academy of Harlem, the percentage of students passing the English test dropped to 6 percent, from 42 percent.  At the Academy of Collaborative Education...eighth grade passing rates dropped to 2 percent, from 49 percent," after more challenging standards were instituted.  The "exams, state education officials said, had become too easy to pass, their definition of proficiency [was] no longer meaningful."

Fear not, the bureaucrats have a plan.  When the numbers reveal failure, it is time to revalue the numbers to avoid a "rise in negative teacher performance reviews, which are based party on state tests; and substandard principal performance reviews."  Due to wide spread failures, the system will grade schools arbitrarily this year.  A quarter of them will be assigned "A's, 35 percent B's, 25 percent C's, ten percent D's, and five percent F's."  City spokesman Matthew Mittenthal explained that everything "is being rejiggered to take into account this fluctuation."  Don't listen to Mark Twain; statistics do not lie.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been dealing with government education unions and the damage that they have done to his state's taxpayers.  He asserts that teachers "complain when they're getting '4%-5% salary increases a year in a 0% inflation world.  They get free health care benefits from the day they are hired for their entire family until the day they die.  They believe they are entitled to this shelter from the recession when the people who are paying for that shelter are the people who have been laid off, who've lost their homes, had their hours cut back.  And all we ask them to do is to freeze their salary for one year and pay 1.5% of their salary for their health benefits...everyone's got to be part of the sacrifice.'

However, the Corruptocrats will continue to plunder the taxpayers' wallets until they lose control of both houses of Congress.  That should begin early this November.

May your gods be with you.    

Obomunism, a Failed Experiment

Last Friday was another example of the Most Transparent Administration in History's furtive practices.  The Mid-Session Review of the federal budget was released three hours late to limit media coverage.  The document, according to this article, is "nothing short of a complete admission of failure of the White House's economic policies."

There are some worrisome details that this administration is desperate to keep under wraps.  Its forecasters optimistically predict that unemployment for 2011 will average 9%.  Their prediction that the US economy will expand in 2011-12 at a rate of 4% is delusionally unrealistic.  However, one thing that is almost certain is that the feds will borrow 41 cents of every dollar that they spend.

The article raises other interesting points.  If the federal government were "to return to the per-household spending level of the Reagan Administration, the budget would be balanced by 2012, without any tax hikes."  Simply returning to spending levels that "existed before the current recession would balance the budget by 2019."

Unfortunately, Team O-buma's approach to matching the nation's expenditures to its receipts is merely the same failed experiment; they plan to increase taxes by three trillion dollars.  This time, despite having failed each time this experiment has been conducted in the past, the mommy staters claim that it will produce different results.  Treasury Secretary Little Timmy Geithner, the administration's shill, says it will.

Gang O-buma is not comprised of stupid people.  Fearless Leader is far from dim witted; however, he is sneaky, underhanded, devious, and cunning.  The Obomunists plan to have taxpayers on the hook for nearly $20 trillion by 2020. In less than ten years, US debt will be roughly 139% of 2009's GDP.  They do this knowing full well that runaway federal spending and nationalizing the private sector will throttle the very engine that is vital to economic recovery.  Totalitarians are intentionally running the ship of state aground.

Corruptocrats have moved to control Internet content through the Orwellian decree that ISPs are actually utilities.  Now, they are trying to control search engine results so that only information that is politically expedient (note the satire here) for them can be found.  They want to take over the major newspapers with federal subsidies; this is an old socialist trick.

They have given their socialist soul mates in the nation's unions political power exponentially greater than the 7% of the workforce that they represent.  They plan to force acceptance of union members on the boards of directors of all corporations without the approval of their companies' shareholders.  Eliminating the secret ballot with the Card Check hustle will facilitate union goons forcing otherwise unwilling workers to join unions.

Here is a bit of union history; the video shows members of the Teamsters union opposing striking members of the United Farm Workers.  Growers and Teamsters signed agreements trying to freeze out the UFW.  Sentient beings should recognize that two primary union goals are to extort economically  unjustifiable compensation packages from employers (including taxpayers) and to eliminate competition that would otherwise determine labor rates through the interaction of supply and demand.  Other unions exert influence as well. 

Grades K-12 are controlled by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.  Their union's leaders have bragged openly that they no longer teach facts.  If they are not teaching factual information, of what possible use are they?  What they teach is the indoctrination of attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs.  Also, university professors are almost universally progressivist Social Marxists who hate America.  They overwhelmingly support O-buma's nationalization schemes.

Dodd-Frank finished nationalizing the economic sector.  It gave the feds the authority to confiscate any business in the nation for arbitrary reasons.  This legal club allows the feds to micromanage all businesses in much the same way that WelfareHealthCare facilitated but from a different angle.  D-F also created another huge welfare bureaucracy of quotas, set-asides, and demographic driven hiring policies that further hampers businesses.

The federal government invents crises by contrivance and maintains them to perpetrate their fraud.  Think CRA, Fannie, and Freddie.  Subversive government practices collapse or cripple economically vital sectors.  Think auto manufacturing, housing, Wall Street, and banking.  Then, having made the mess intentionally, in swoops the federal perpetrator with loans and subsidies, some of them unwanted, and viola!  All they need to do is add some oppressive regulation by unelected bureaucrats and the takeovers are complete.

Banking, communication, education, health care, housing, manufacturing, media,  transportation, and utilities have been taken over through sleight of hand legislation and regulation.  We are likely too far along the slippery slope toward communism to recover.  

Remember the Tony Soprano Rule.  First it's the money; then, it's the takeover.  Expect more O-bumunista sneakiness during the lame duck session, especially if the Theftocrats lose control of one or more Houses of Congress .  Then, they will have much to gain and few, if any, commensurate consequences to bear.

May your gods be with you.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This is how we reach out and touch someone.  Imagine what it would take to continue fighting against an enemy who can kill you with one shot from a mile and one-half away.  Envision the sort of fanaticism that would be necessary to continue opposing our combined forces when we can tag you from long range with a sniper, a UAV, a cruise missile, or up close and personal with a Navy SEAL team.

The best things in life are free, or so goes the saying.  What about free solar panels for homeowners?  Are you weary of paying the local utility to burn fossil fuels to produce your power?  The start up cost for solar power is beyond the means of many, if not most, homeowners; however, here is a way to acquire a zero down solar system and start running your computer, dishwasher, water heater, and refrigerator with clean, efficient sunlight.

Another thing that is free is trouble.  This jerk personifies the reason that God gave us concealed weapon permits.  There are nine effective methods of eliminating this sort of threat to the public.

Americans are prohibited by government from owning land outright.  This is one of the ways that they do it.  Even with a paid off mortgage and a deed in hand we still do not own the land on which we live.  Government agents determine how we can use our land, how we can dispose of it, and they keep a permanent tax lien against it that cannot be satisfied.  If we stop surrendering tribute to the tax collectors, people with guns come and remove us from our land and sell our assets at a public auction.

Liberty is freedom from interference by government agents in the lives of individuals.

Some of the people who most interfere with the lives of individuals are members of the nation's education collective.  This government union has a nearly uniform agenda across all 50 states.  It is an agenda that vilifies and balkanizes children along race and gender lines.  This agenda panders to non-achievers, social miscreants, and classroom disruptors.  It also forces children into slave labor as bright, motivated students are required to do the work of the slackers in their work groups.

War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.

It has been said that Nero fiddled while Rome burned.  O-buma hammed it up for a fawning crowd of pseudo-journalists as crude oil covered the Gulf of Mexico.  This clown-in-chief is building quite a legacy.  The question begs to be asked as to why there is so little national media coverage.  National and global media fairly shrieked over the smaller Exxon Valdez spill, and the Gulf is just as environmentally sensitive and valuable as its Alaskan counterpart.

Do you feel good about taking your children or grandchildren to the beach?  Have you contacted your elected officials?

May your gods be with you.

Do Obumoids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Except when corrupt politicians skew data by limiting research only to convenient information, overemphasizing or deempathizing it, and under or overstating projections and intentions, the Congressional Budget Office historically has been the nation's most reliable predictor of how federal policies will affect the economy.

In his State of the Union address, O-buma claimed that in 2010 jobs would be his main focus.  What he did not tell us was that his plans will mean fewer rather than more jobs.  The O-bumites are pushing what they call "green jobs."  This term is oxymoronic on at least two points.  First, the so-called jobs are mostly bureaucratic positions that are little more than overhead borne by taxpayers.  Second and most important, the CBO advises that these policies will result in a "decline in employment."

Once again, the sheeple claim that less is more.

The green jobs hustle has already failed in Spain, Germany, and Denmark, so why would the Kenyan Genius Messiah pursue a failed experiment?  Because he can and because we allow government to herd us around like pigeons looking for peanuts.

Due to our apathetic lack of resolve and commitment, we have allowed the Party-of-Government Congressional Theftocrats to give themselves a license to steal.  When they enact policies that, oh darn the luck, increase unemployment, they benefit from it by adding to the numbers of people who are dependent on their brand of government.

CBO also projects that because O-buma and his merry band of thieves are squandering America's future we will, in less than ten years, have accumulated debt totaling 90% of our GDP.  Margaret Thatcher was right, we are running out of other people's money.

Hopefully, people are also running out of patience with Communist Charlie Crist.  Now, he is comparing himself with Abraham Lincoln.  Charlie, Charlie, have ye no shame? 

Another group that suffers from his sort of messianic neuroses is the National Education Association.  They have devalued religion and religious ethical precepts--they make a special exception for Islam and its Sharia law--in favor of paganism.  This is part of their No-Standard-is-too-Low strategy of indoctrinating rather than educating children.  Unholywood is leading the charge.

For everyone who has been threatened by rogue or feral animals while exercise walking, hiking, or jogging, it is possible to do so in relative safety.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

May your gods be with you.